The semantics of bushfire in Australian English

Abstract

Australian English can act as a mirror of conceptualisations of and attitudes towards extreme weather and climate events in the country, such as bushfires, drought, cyclones and floods.1 This variety of English encodes specific local meanings; for example, in the domain of landscape, words like creek and bush have particular senses in Australian English (Arthur 2003; Bromhead 2018). Bushfire is an Australian word for an uncontrolled fire in dry trees and shrubs, an event that can threaten homes and people, as well as vegetation and wildlife. The word could be seen as analogous to wildfire as used in North American English for forest fires.2 However, this would be to misunderstand the semantic content brought by the component bush. This chapter provides a rigorous semantic analysis of bushfire, discusses the term’s status as a cultural keyword in Australian English and offers a cultural script of Australian practices surrounding bushfires.