Below are several examples of Aboriginal Australian English from the media in 2022.
Activity: For each example, discuss the social purpose.
July 2022: Indigenous Australian TV presenter Bianca Hunt posted on her Instagram page about attending The Kid Laroi's concert. The Kid Laroi is an Indigenous Australian music artist.
Hunt's Instagram caption read, 'what a deadly night... Gee I love our mob.'
The adjective 'deadly' has undergone semantic elevation to mean 'great' in Aboriginal Australian English, while the noun 'mob' has shifted to mean an Indigenous person's close friends, family or community.
June 2022: ABC presenter and journalist Tony Armstrong, an Indigenous Australian, used the compound noun 'blackfulla' in response to an abusive tweet.
This term can only be used by Indigenous Australians, making it highly dependent on context.
November 2021: Indigenous Australian Senator, Lidia Thorpe, used the non-Standard proper adjective 'Blak' in a tweet regarding a political matter.
The non-Standard use of this term has been widely adopted by Indigenous communities and supporters of Indigenous causes. You can read more about its use in our previous discussions:
July 2022: News website Buzzfeed encourages readers to 'celebrate Blak excellence.'
February 2022: VATE (The Victorian Association for the Teaching of English) featured several events promoting Indigenous education and literature.
The events were called 'Blak and Bright', an alliterative title, and 'Blak Words Live'.
July 2022: This Facebook post from the organisation 'First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria' contains several examples of Aboriginal Australian English.
Use of Indigenous slang in the exclamative: 'How deadly is this!'
Use of non-Standard adjective 'Blak' in reference to the theme for the 2022 Rising Festival: 'Unapologetically Blak'
Use of proper nouns such as 'Yorta Yorta' to indicate the land the artists belong to
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