What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Anonymous asked: (1) About this post: post/151555449686/hollowedskin-derinthemadscientist I don't know much of the history of Australia but I only know that originally the British used it as a punishment. Australia was where they set up prisons and where criminals were banished to. If it's rudeness (2 every1 else) as a norm for friendly informality, i keep thinking that this is part of it. but as i said idk much. i only know this, that colonialism fucked the locals as usual, and that nature is trying to kill u

The fact that Australia was originally meant as a British penal colony does have a lot to do with it, I suspect, as does the fact that a large portion of our early European migrants were Irish and Scottish. (Ireland and Scotland don’t have quite the same linguistic approach to informality as Australia, but they do have some similar feelings about insults, and they have a lot of good historical reasons to hate the British, who were initially in charge.) So you can make a good case for it developing, at least in part, out of the fact that terms of respect and rank were initially imposed on a bunch of workers and criminals who hated the people in charge, but couldn’t openly express that fact.

The other thing is that Australian culture has a really deep-seated dislike of anyone who sets themselves up as being “better” than someone else. A positive aspect of this is our egalitarianism; a corresponding negative aspect is what we call tall poppy syndrome, where we react aggressively to the - sometimes very reasonable - idea that a particular person might actually have more skills than someone else. It feeds into some really nasty anti-intellectualism, because so many Australians just go apeshit if you try to suggest that Person A’s ignorance about a topic is not, in fact, as useful as Person B’s knowledge.

Also, uh. We have a really intense and unhealthy drinking culture, particularly among men - and that’s not a new thing, by the way, it’s literally built into our entire colonial history - and that impacts our language use and approach to informality, because it’s kind of hard to maintain strict honour and discipline, whether verbally or otherwise, when everyone is shitfaced on cheap rum. I mean, one time in 1916 a gang of drunk soldiers basically destroyed a town, so for ages all our pubs closed at 6pm - but did that stop us getting drunk or teach us how to drink in moderation? HELL no: we just developed a habit of drinking the bar dry at last bell, because STRAYA. This is part of what we call larrikin culture, and while that’s not the be-all, end-all of Australian society, it still has a pretty pervasive influence on our language and drinking customs.

Plus, there’s the fact that for a really long time - up until the 50s or 60s, I think, though I’d have to check - pure Australian accents were never heard on Australian radio. I know this because both my parents used to work for our major broadcaster, the ABC, as radio journalists back in the day, and if you wanted to be an announcer, you had to learn to use received pronunciation, because it was considered more ‘proper’. (Which is why, as the child of two incongruously well-spoken Australians, I learned to code-switch my diction as a kid depending on whether I was hanging out with children or adults.) So there was - and still kind of is - a sort of cultural embarrassment around the idea that our accent isn’t ‘formal’ enough for lots of highbrow things, coupled with the idea that you’re being a class traitor if you either try to do highbrow things in an Aussie accent or change your accent to suit your medium. Like there’s literally a wonderful Australian attempt at reviving opera right now, and the people involved are, however jokingly, worried that they aren’t allowed to do it because accents.

In conclusion Australia has a really awkward relationship to authority or deference of any kind, culturally speaking, and it tends to fuck us up in some interesting ways.

  1. xiongfeiyen reblogged this from fozmeadows
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  4. lumos-is-my-strength-blog said: Its cool to see someone expose something they arnt 100% proud of in their country
  5. lumos-is-my-strength-blog said: Ok see, as an American i grew up in what i was told was the most hated country of the world and even its citizens believe the stereotype that we’re just rebel hillbily drunks that eat nothing but lard fried lard. I was always told any other country that speaks english, Chinese or Japanese is automatically better than us (sorry the ingrain hatred for mexico took spanish off that list however much i disagree) when ive always wanted us to be seen as a REALLY big new york.
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  8. kissmeagainarthas said: The sociological aspects are fascinating to this ignorant American. :D
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