Bogan

Bogan (/ˈboʊɡən/ BOHG-ən) is Australian and New Zealand slang for a person whose speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour are considered unrefined or unsophisticated. Depending on the context, the term can be pejorative or self-deprecating. The prevalence of the term bogan has also been associated with changing social attitudes towards social class in Australia. Specifically, the term has been related to the decline of masculine conceptions of meritocracy in Australia, and a growing ambivalence towards traditional sites of working class culture. Since the 1980s, the bogan has become a very well-recognised subculture, often as an example of bad taste. It has antecedents in the Australian larrikin and ocker, and various localised names exist that describe the same or very similar people to the bogan. The origin of the term bogan is unclear; both the Macquarie Dictionary and the Australian Oxford Dictionary cite the origin as unknown. Some Sydney residents' recollection is that the term is based on the concept that residents of the western suburbs (stereotyped as 'Westies') displayed what are now termed 'bogan' characteristics and that an individual who displayed these characteristics to a strong extent was as 'west' as the Bogan River in western New South Wales. According to another anecdote, the term emerged in Melbourne's outer-western and outer-eastern suburbs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The term became widely known in the late 1980s when the teenage character Kylie Mole (played by Mary-Anne Fahey), in the Australian sketch comedy television series The Comedy Company, frequently used the term to disparage anyone she disliked. The same program included a sketch about a magazine called Bogue (a parody of Vogue), which featured traditional bogans. Merrick and Rosso (from Melbourne) also used the term on their Triple J national radio show. The Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC) included the word in its Australian dictionary project in 1991 and said the earliest use they found was in the September 1985 issue of surfing magazine Tracks: 'So what if I have a Mohawk and wear Dr. Martens (boots for all you uninformed bogans)?' In 2019, Bruce Moore of the Australian National University published a piece in The Conversation, in which he suggested an earlier usage or origin of the word, discovered by historian Helen Doyle: an article in a student magazine published at Melbourne's Xavier College in 1984, which describes a fictional toy—the 'bogan doll'—which possesses many characteristics of the bogan stereotype. There are places in western New South Wales that contain bogan in their name—for example Bogan Shire, the Bogan River and the rural village of Bogan Gate. Bogan Gate, for example, is derived from the local Aboriginal word meaning 'the birthplace of a notable headman of the local tribe'. Residents of streets such as Bogan Place and Bogan Road have been moved to action by the negative connotations of their street names and lobbied to rename them, prompting Ku-ring-gai mayor Nick Ebbeck to joke that he was a bit of a bogan himself. The 1902 poem 'City of Dreadful Thirst' by Australian poet Banjo Paterson makes reference to a 'Bogan shower' as a term meaning 'three raindrops and some dust', although this is likely a reference to the dry area around the Bogan River. Makeshift gates in a rural fence in northwest NSW were known as bogan gates at least as early as the 1960s. Some features regularly associated with the bogan stereotype include residing in the outer working class suburbs of larger cities, having teeth that have not had dental care due to cost, having an anti-authoritarian or jingoistic stance, as well as being interested in classic rock music, hoon driving and excessive alcohol consumption.