Which voice? Which working class?

Authors

Terence H. Irving, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

103425

Publication Details

Irving, T. H. (2015). Which voice? Which working class?. In D. Michell, J. Z. Wilson & V. Archer (Eds.), Bread and Roses: Voices of Australian Academics from the Working Class (pp. 29-37). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Abstract

I am an Australian acdemic and I have come from a working-class family, but I don't have a working-class voice. I mean this in two senses: my voice as it sounds, and my voice as evidence of a definitive identity.

I don't sound - I never sounded - working class, because my parents were from the 'respectable' working class, an elite that was proud of its skilled work and demanded recognition for it by adopting the 'educated Australian accent' of the mid-twentieth century and the rules of middle-class grammar. Today my classless voice conceals a particular history of phonetic and grammatical class relations.