Title: Tongue Ties Speak: I Am Australian, I Speak Australian
Abstract: sThis chapter discusses how the language of "Australian" silences the tongues of "not Australian." The categorizing "othering" enables children to claim their "Australian" status and effectively assert and maintain speaking "Australian." The "not Australian" children too are aware of how their tongues are "othered" outside what is spoken as "Australian." They struggle to claim this "Australian" status by either self-silencing their tongues to speak only "Australian," or by tightly grouping and restricting their "not Australian" boundaries with fears of becoming "Australian." Speaking "Australian" is also parroted by staffs who educationally care for young children, and being unable to think outside this imagined language of "Australian," they find it difficult to embrace multilingual Australia. The final "øthering" discursive contest with Ganga eventually unties our "not Australian" tongues with much contention. Ganga resists to highlight that this tying imagination is English; the language of Australia's colonizers. But the "Australian" continues to imagine speaking and singing only "Australian."KeywordsEarly ChildhoodNational IdentityNational LanguageEarly Childhood SettingLinguistic BackgroundThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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