The Monash Corpus of Spoken Australian English

This paper takes stock of findings based on the Monash Corpus of Australian English. In 1996–97 members of the (then) Monash University Department of Linguistics embarked on the collection of a corpus in Victoria to facilitate the study of variation in phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon and discourse patterns. The largest part of the corpus was based on data from Year 10 students in ten schools selected according to socioeconomic status of locality and type of school (state, Catholic, independent including Greek Orthodox and Jewish; co-educational and single-sex, boys and girls). The data comprises two conversations per student with a stranger (including some citation reading), and two self-taped conversations, one with (usually) three generations of their family and one with same-age friends. The corpus has been used for research by colleagues and graduate students from LaTrobe, Melbourne, and Monash Universities. It has enabled some hitherto unidentified syntactic features of Australian English to be recognized (concord, articles, relative clauses). It has drawn attention to intergenerational change in certain vowels, to developments in /t/ tapping and glottalization, most especially in informal settings, to onset glottalization, and to the emergence and disappearance of ethnolects and the identification of their features. It has also been employed for studies of discourse quotatives, including comparisons with American, British and Canadian English. As yet, the corpus remains underutilized. For example, phonological analysis has concentrated on the interview data, and much could still be done on situational variation, particularly in families of migrant background. There is also scope for a new round of recordings to make the project a longitudinal one

Code switching

This review first appeared in International Journal of Bilingualism, 14, 3: 369-372, 2010. Readers of this journal are well aware of the explosion which the area of bi-/multilingualism/language contact has undergone in the past two decades. There are numerous new journals, conferences, handbooks and textbooks, and masses of monographs in the area. A central aspect of this study – one not clearly defined – is code switching. So why do we need a new book entitled Code-switching? It is a critica..

A cross-linguistic comparison of address pronoun use in four European languages: Intralingual and interlingual dimensions

As part of a major ongoing project, we consider and compare contemporary patterns of address pronoun use in four major European languages- French, German, Italian and Swedish. We are specifically interested in two major aspects: intralingual behaviour, that is, within the same language community, and interlingual dimensions of address pronoun use. With respect to the former, we summarize our key findings to date. We then give consideration in a more preliminary fashion to issues and evidence relevant to the latter

A Digital Self-management Program (Help to Overcome Problems Effectively) for People Living With Cancer:Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND: We present the results of a feasibility, randomized waitlist control group (CG) parallel design study with a 1:1 allocation ratio. Participants were randomized into an intervention group (IG) or a waitlist CG. The intervention was a 6-week digital self-management program, Help to Overcome Problems Effectively (HOPE), for people with cancer. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to test the feasibility of a digitally delivered self-management program for people with cancer. This will inform the design of a definitive randomized controlled trial. In addition, a preliminary assessment of the impact of the HOPE program via secondary outcomes will be used to assess signals of efficacy in a trial context. METHODS: Participants were drawn from an opportunity sample, referred by Macmillan Cancer Support, and were invited via email to participate in the study (N=61). Primary outcomes were rates of recruitment, retention, follow-up, completion and adherence, sample size and effect size estimation, and assessment of progression criteria for a definitive trial. Secondary outcomes were self-report measures of participants’ positive mental well-being, depression, anxiety, and patient activation (ie, confidence in managing their cancer). The intervention and data collection took place on the web. RESULTS: The recruitment rate was 77% (47/61). A total of 41 participants completed the baseline questionnaires and were randomized to either the IG (n=21) or the waitlist CG (n=20). The retention rate (attending all program sessions) was greater than 50% (all: 21/41, 51%, IG: 10/21, 48%; and CG: 11/20, 55%). The follow-up rate (completing all questionnaires) was greater than 80% (all: 33/41, 80%; IG: 16/21, 76%; and CG: 17/20, 85%). The completion rate (attending ≥3 sessions and completing all questionnaires) was greater than 60% (all: 25/41, 61%; IG: 13/21, 62%; and CG: 12/20, 60%). Engagement data showed that participants viewed between half (5.1/10, 51%) and three-quarters (12.2/16, 76%) of the pages in each session. CONCLUSIONS: All progression criteria for a definitive trial were met, as supported by the primary outcome data. The IG showed improved postprogram scores on measures of positive mental well-being, depression, anxiety, and patient activation. A full-scale trial of the digital HOPE program for people with cancer will allow us to fully evaluate the efficacy of the intervention relative to a CG. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN79623250; http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN79623250 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.2196/2426