AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGE, The

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AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGE, The. The title of a book on Australian English by Sidney James Baker (1912–76), a New-Zealand-born journalist working in Sydney (1945, Angus & Robertson; 1966, revised, Currawong). Baker attempted to do what H. L. Mencken had done for AmE: establish the independence of the variety and find in it the fullness of an Australian cultural identity. Always tendentious, often idiosyncratic, frequently exasperating because assertive and undocumented, the work has none the less been popular and influential. Baker was interested primarily in the colloquial and in slang. Drawing on written and oral sources, he compiled lists of words from all walks of life, many subsequently shown not to be exclusively Australian. However, his division of local vocabulary into such subject areas as the bush, the road, and the city was influential in shaping the perception of AusE.

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