The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

5English in Australia and New Zealand

SCOTT F. KIESLING

1 Introduction

Besides their obvious geographical proximity, why are New Zealand English (NZE) and Australian English (AusE) the subject of a single entry in this handbook? Speakers and scholars of each variety may feel justifiably slighted by not rating their own chapter; however, there are reasons to discuss them jointly. The relatively short distance from Sydney to Auckland has meant that there has been significant travel and migration between the two since colonization. This intermigration is likely one of the factors that has led them to have similar ways of speaking. There is thus a very strong linguistic motivation to include them together. Finally, they both were colonized by the British fairly late (Australia in 1788 and New Zealand c. 1840), and thus find themselves at similar stages of development. These colonization dates have also been claimed to be one of the causes of linguistic similarity (Trudgill 2004; Gordon et al. 2004). This colonization period is shared by South Africa and some other smaller colonies, but these are geographically distant, and most arose in very different social and language‐contact situations. Certainly each of these two Englishes could fill its own chapter, but there is a logical basis in grouping them together when viewed from historical, geographical, and linguistic viewpoints.

I provide brief descriptions of NZE and AusE, including current changes taking place in the linguistic ...