Celeste Rodriguez Louro

Celeste Rodríguez Louro, G. Collard

Celeste Rodríguez Louro, G. Collard

Celeste Rodríguez Louro, G. Collard

ABSTRACT The Yarning Corpus consists of acrolectal Aboriginal English data gathered in metropolitan Perth, WA. It features video-recorded interactions with 58 Aboriginal English speakers born between 1931 and 2009. Using this corpus, we sought to uncover variation and change in Aboriginal English in Nyungar Country, Southwest WA. We designed a cross-cultural research model that allowed us to document sociolinguistic aspects of Aboriginal English “yarning” – a First Nations cultural form of storytelling and conversation which we used to capture diverse voices in sociolinguistic research. The corpus features video-recorded interactions with 58 Aboriginal English speakers born between 1931 and 2009. These materials amount to 517,600 words of unscripted, interactional speech data from 36 women and 22 men aged 10–88 who speak Aboriginal English as their vernacular. We focus on speakers who use Aboriginal English as their main language of communication, and who do not speak ancestral languages fluently. The Yarning Corpus allowed us to enrich sociolinguistic research methods by utilizing an approach grounded in a relational ethic. It also made it possible to explore the quotative system of Aboriginal English, and to contribute to more inclusive models in the design of medical media and Artificial Intelligence-powered technologies for First Nations communities.

Ben Hutchinson, Celeste Rodríguez Louro, G. Collard, Ned Cooper

In Australia, post-contact language varieties, including creoles and local varieties of international languages, emerged as a result of forced contact between Indigenous communities and English speakers. These contact varieties are widely used, yet are poorly supported by language technologies. This gap presents barriers to participation in civil and economic society for Indigenous communities using these varieties, and reproduces minoritisation of contemporary Indigenous sociolinguistic identities. This paper concerns three questions regarding this context. First, can speech technologies support speakers of Australian Aboriginal English, a local indigenised variety of English? Second, what risks are inherent in such a project? Third, what technology development practices are appropriate for this context, and how can researchers integrate meaningful community participation in order to mitigate risks? We argue that opportunities do exist—as well as risks—and demonstrate this through a case study exploring design practices in a project aiming to improve speech technologies for Australian Aboriginal English. We discuss how we integrated culturally appropriate and participatory processes throughout the project. We call for increased support for languages used by Indigenous communities, including contact varieties, which provide practical economic and socio-cultural benefits, provided that participatory and culturally safe practices are enacted.

Lucía Fraiese, Celeste Rodríguez Louro, M. H. Gardner, G. Collard, James Walker

This original sociolinguistic ethnographic study examines social practices and (ING) variation in Aboriginal English, an indigenized variety of English spoken by First Nations people in Australia. Based on 42 hours of audio recordings and ethnographic data with 31 girls at a predominantly First Nations boarding school in the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, we find higher rates but similar linguistic conditioning of [ɪn] compared to other Englishes in Australia. Additionally, a third variant [ɪŋk] emerges as an iconic affective resource. We also explore the indexicalities of (ING) variants. Our analysis reveals that (ING) use reflects group orientation towards or against school norms and is mediated by access to other languages as identity markers. [ɪŋk] serves an independent function as an iconic resource for emphasis or to signal high emotion.