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Part of
Cultural Keywords in Discourse
Edited by Carsten Levisen and Sophia Waters
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 277] 2017
► pp. 55–82

Chapter 3
Bogan as a keyword of contemporary Australia

Sociality and national discourse in Australian English

| Griffith University

This chapter studies the word bogan as a cultural keyword of contemporary Australian public discourse. The word bogan is specific to Australian English, with its closest counterpart in other Englishes being chav in British English and white trash or redneck in American English. Through a semantic analysis of the word, this chapter demonstrates that the social category of “bogans” remains a negative concept, denoting a certain group of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who are car-loving, prone to violence and have a certain bogan outlook on life. However, the chapter also shows that in contemporary Australian discourse this originally negative concept can be transformed into a way of self-identification, and as a way of positively embracing Australian nationalism. This analysis is supported by studies in the ethnopragmatics and historical pragmatics of Australian English, which show a general tendency to value the “shared ordinariness” of people and to discursively “heroise” the little man, and the semi-criminal person. Applying the NSM approach to linguistic and cultural analysis, this chapter provides new analyses of the meaning of bogan, and cultural scripts related to the concept. It also opens up the study of the emergence of new cultural keywords, and on the semantic and discursive diversity within Anglo Englishes.

Keywords: bogan , national discourse, cultural semantics, ethnopragmatics, Australian English
Article outline
  • 1. Bogan as an Australian cultural keyword
  • 2.The ethnopragmatics of Australian English
    • 2.1Data on bogan
  • 3.The semantics of bogan/s
  • 4.“Bogan pride” and the discourses of Australian nationalism
    • 4.1A great place to live, a great country
    • 4.2The spirit of Australia
    • 4.3Communicative scripts
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.03row
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