ENTRY SELECTION PROCESS

The entries included in the AusDICT need to meet several criteria. First, they need to be representative of the Australian English languaculture (as described in §6.2), which means that they should be relevant, but not necessarily exclusive to the Australian

context. Second, the entries need to cover invisible culture, which meant that potential

entries which did not describe culturally-salient terms were discarded. Cultural keywords (using the criteria in Levisen & Waters, 2017) were included and, in some cases, particular words which were representative of other entries were also included. Third, the entries needed to relate to identified topics as being difficult for migrants to acquire, either from the language teachers during the survey or focus groups, or from topics suggested by the literature (§3.2.2), or from topics included in other textbooks (cf Boyer, 1998; RIC Group, 2007). Finally, the entries, sections, and modules themselves needed to meet the criteria set out in §3.5.2. As a result, some additional entries were added in order to meet these requirements. Of course, it is not possible for a dictionary of this size to include every relevant entry. It can only aim to include at least those which teachers in Australia felt needed the most explanation to their students. Further discussion of ways in which this dictionary could be expanded are discussed in §12.5. The starting point for the dictionary entries was existing NSM publications which contained explications and cultural scripts for English (including where publications specified Australian English, Anglo English, and unspecified varieties of English, but excluding specifically American, British and Singaporean compositions). Each of these publications (e.g. Goddard, 2009; 2012b; Jordan, 2017; Peeters, 2004; Stollznow, 2003; Wierzbicka, 1991; see Appendix IX for full list) argues for the included concepts as Australian concepts, even if they also overlap with other varieties of Englishes. The result of this process was a compilation of 486 explications and 176 cultural scripts—a total of 662 proposed entries. This set was then sorted using the same coding system as for the topics discussed by teachers (discussed in §8.3 and see Appendix II) although the system was expanded throughout the coding process. Where scripts and explications fell into two or more places, they were placed into the conversational context (e.g. workplace, school, etc.). The context was more relevant for the module-based layout of the AusDICT than the interaction type (such as ‘requests’).

The number of compositions were reduced by removing the duplicates—especially in instances where there was a significant publication gap between the two versions. In most cases, the most recent version of the composition was kept. Then, the number of compositions was again reduced based on the relevance of the composition (usually an explication) to invisible culture. This step of the reduction process removed explications which were outside of the scope of this project, despite their pedagogical value in teaching language—for example in teaching the differences between near-synonyms. These explications are discussed in Chapter 12.

At this point in the process, I compared the list of content problems mentioned by teachers to this list and added placeholder titles for those that were missing (an

additional 140 proposed headwords). Many of these additional entries were on specific terms or phrases in Australian English with which students had difficulty. I used the evaluative criteria (see Chapter 7) and other publications (e.g. the publications where the first set of explications and cultural scripts were drawn from—listed in Appendix IX) to add proposed headwords where there were intellectual gaps between a high-level concept and a term, or between a way of interacting and the values which informed that (for example, the high level cultural script of ‘being polite’ or ‘being funny’; the norm ‘asking people to bring food to a gathering’ to complement the phrase ‘bring a plate’; the word ‘reckon’ and phrase ‘what do you reckon’ to give phrases for the section on expressing opinions). In some cases, there was an intellectual gap to fill, sometimes there was a single missing link in a series of connected ideas, and in some cases, there was only a single composition in a set of related ideas.

An example of the latter is the module on Education (see AusDICT). Several concepts in this area were suggested by teachers, however there were only two previously published compositions in this domain. Further, the entries suggested by teachers were all at the interactional and behavioural level, leaving the higher-level values

unmentioned. In this case, I used the data from the workshops to gather the teachers’ underlying perspectives in the domain, including the focus group where I focussed on it as a topic of discussion. This conversation generated some general perspectives and opinions about the nature of teaching and education which were then translated into STE as entries. This process generated 25 additional compositions.

This process resulted in 468 proposed entries for the AusDICT. This was consolidated to the final number of 333 entries for the dictionary by removing some of the modules which contained too few entries for pedagogical usefulness. Some modules which were removed in this stage were “Visiting the Doctor”, “Family Life”, “Compliments”, “Apologies” and “Sayings and Idioms”. These are all important topics for invisible culture and interactions in Australian English, however they require a more in-depth treatment than can be provided within the scope of this project. These modules and other possible ones are further discussed in Chapter 12. The final AusDICT presented in this thesis contains 333 entries in 12 modules (see Table of Contents in the AusDICT, and Chapter 11).

Some of the module topics which were included were based on quite different criteria. Some, such as the module on “Key Values and Attitudes” are obviously related to invisible culture in Australia, which is the focus of this resource. Others, such as the module on “Swearing” are less obviously connected. The module on swearing was included because of the high number of questions teachers get about swearwords in Australia, and how influential swearwords and swearing can be in negotiation social

interaction in Australia (Goddard, 2015). In addition, it is an important element in teaching culture and invisible culture to include explicit discussion of ‘taboo’ topics (such as swearwords) (Liyanage, Walker, Bartlett, & Guo, 2015), because they highlight the implicit assumptions and expectations of culture better than many other topics. It is also out of this consideration that I have included the frequent swearwords in Australia.

It is apparent on a brief reading that there are a number of topics and particular interactional styles which have not been included in the AusDICT. In particular are those of Indigenous Australian language, including Aboriginal Australian English (see also the discussion in Chapter 6). It is a considered decision to leave these entries out from the dictionary, for the main reason that I do not have the subject matter expertise for research into these topics. As with the topics discussed above, it is insufficient to provide a cursory insight into these interactional styles, and such in-depth ethnographic research is outside of the scope of this study. Existing publications in this area (such as Harkins, 1994) provide a foundation for such work in these varieties. Inclusion of this information should be areal, and an expert would be able to provide information and research on the invisible cultural elements in each of these languages. This calls for collaborative research and as such, this omission, and the omission of other languages and dialects spoken in Australia, is intentional and strategic, for reasons discussed in Chapter 6, and further discussed in Chapter 12.