“Laid back” and “irreverent”: An ethnopragmatic analysis of two cultural themes in Australian English communication

Abstract

Building on previous semantic and ethnopragmatic studies of Australian English (Wierzbicka 1997, 2001, 2002; Goddard 2006, 2009, 2012), this chapter focuses on two clusters of words and associated discourse practices, in Australian English. The first relates to the personal domain, the key words being 'laid back' and 'easy going'. These are high frequency descriptors of the stereotype, including self-stereotype, of the imagined typical "Aussie". The other cluster includes the expressions 'not taking oneself/something too seriously' and the word 'irreverence', which we claim deserve to be recognized as Australian cultural key words. We explore their manifestations in the public domain, specifically in comedy, public affairs television, and the music genre of hip hop. The chapter proposes lexical semantic explications and cultural scripts framed in the NSM metalanguage of simple cross-translatable words.