The growing Australian lexicon, expressed in the burgeoning print and literary culture of Australia that produced the likes of ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Henry Lawson, and the Bulletin, divided opinions into the twentieth century. Some celebrated Australian slang as reflective of the emergence of an Australian nationalism; others decried the lack of propriety this linguistic informality seemed to suggest.

Concerns over the infiltration of American slang into the language have periodically been expressed across Australia’s history. Serious concerns first arose at the time that American ‘talkies’ became a significant part of Australian popular culture. One commentator, F.A. Napier, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald in June 1932 that he feared visitors to Australia were shocked and appalled by the way Australians abused the language:

They state, in effect, that we employ a mongrel-like tongue that is a combination of a certain type of English, a low class of American slang, and an indefinable jargon which is peculiarly Australian, the whole producing a harsh, nasal and vulgar result, singularly distasteful to the ear.

He particularly feared the impact of American slang on children, whose moral sensibility seemed to be lowered as a result, citing an example of a precocious three-year-old boy throwing stones at a policeman and copying the speech of a ‘third-rate American “talkie”’.

In the 1970s a surge of Australian cultural nationalism saw a significant shift in attitudes towards both accent and lexicon, and Australian slang was embraced, largely without any anxiety, as a marker of Australian identity. (Although slang and a broad accent were also linked to the ‘ocker’, a figure with which Australians have, arguably, a love–hate relationship.) The anxiety that would be more commonly expressed in subsequent years was about the loss of Australian slang.

The history of attitudes towards the Australian accent and lexicon has thus been complex, because these attitudes have often reflected anxieties about issues such as our relationship with Britain, class concerns, the nature of Australian identity, and the impact of American popular culture.

Current concerns about the ‘death’ of Australian slang reflect mixed feelings over Australia’s incorporation into a globalised and internationalised world. Thorne notes that Australians are some of the most enthusiastic users of ‘global, free-market corporate jargon and buzzwords’. We are also keen Internet users, and the world of social media and the Internet is one of the most common generators of new words and slang. At the same time, however, some Australians look with nostalgia to a traditional Australia that seems to be disappearing.

But we should not declare Australian slang dead just yet. While the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang only included three ‘new’ words (we had known about a couple of them for quite some time), Australian lexicographers have been tracking many more new Australian terms (slang and otherwise) that have come into the lexicon in recent years. For example, last year’s ‘Oxford International Word of the Year’ was ‘selfie’, a word first used in Australia. Todd Carney introduced us to the activity of ‘bubbling’, formed on the Australian word ‘bubbler’ for a drinking fountain. We might order a ‘schmidi’, wear our ‘budgies’ (or leave it to Tony Abbott to do so), and we might even ‘do a Bradbury’ if we’re lucky. We will likely continue to abbreviate words and add ‘-ie’ or ‘-o’ to the end of them (‘firie’, ‘ambo’, ‘rellie’, and ‘devo’ are all examples of these words in common usage).

Our diverse and multicultural society will undoubtedly continue to contribute many new words to the lexicon, as will youth culture. These slang terms will sometimes be international, shared by social media and the Internet, but that won’t make us any less creative in our desire to find new words to express ourselves and our identity.