A History of Australian Voice and Speech in the Australian Legend and Beyond

In his 1960 review of 'The Australian Legend', Norman Harper identified one of the strengths of Russel Ward's examination of the Australian national character as its 'indefatigable research into folk lore, folk songs and literature'. The book's focus on speech, slang and folk expression was also welcomed by John Greenway who commended Ward's use of folksong as historical evidence of an 'otherwise voiceless people', and hoped such analysis would 'guide everything that will be done in this field in the future'. I wish to explore the way in which speech and language is considered in 'The Australian Legend' and then to broaden the discussion to examine the possible methodological uses of such social historical evidence. Greenway was clearly overly optimistic that Ward's speech focus would guide further research. In 1958, the use of speech and language as the basis for historical argument was uncharacteristic for historians, and some fifty years later it remains an under-explored aspect of historical research. In alerting us to the importance of speech and to the evolving Australian intonation, and to the sound of speech and the significance of the auditory to understanding an emerging culture, Ward's work made a significant intervention in exploring the phenomenon of the history of linguistic formation. In recent scholarship, the importance of the auditory and listening to sound, often electronically conveyed, has become pivotal to the ways in which historians have begun to discuss the culture of everyday life.