Australia's Many Voices: Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages, Policy and Education, Gerhard Leitner

As the title of Gerhard Leitner’s two volume series on language in Australia suggests, while mainstream Australian English (mAusE) is the dominant language of power and access, there are many other languages that play a crucial sociocultural role in Australian society. The Australian language habitat is thus not a monolingual one, but rather is a multilingual tapestry interwoven with a constantly evolving mixture of indigenous languages, contact languages and migrant languages that overlays the prevailing mAusE paradigm. The way in which mAusE evolved, and its relationship to other forms of Australian English (AusE), such as ethnic Englishes, was addressed in the first volume, Australian English*/A National Language (Leitner 2004). The second volume, Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages. Policy and Education, thus addresses the other strands of the Australian language habitat that lend it much of its colour and character. This volume is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is a very brief outline of the main focus of the first volume (Leitner 2004), and an overview of the remaining four chapters in the book. The second chapter goes on to discuss indigenous languages, the third chapter addresses migrant languages, and the fourth chapter considers the development of language policy in the Australian context. The final chapter explores the relationship between language habitat change and the development of the Australian nation. The theoretical stance underpinning the discussion in each chapter is the same as outlined in the first volume (Leitner 2004).Arts, Education & Law Group, School of Languages and LinguisticsFull Tex