Phraseology and Culture in English

particular perspective with regard to what is being conceptualised (Verha-
gen, in press). For example, in terms of spatial configuration, two entities 
may be described as either ‘X being over Y’ or ‘Y being below X’. All these 

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forms of conceptualisation appear to be mediated by people’s cultural ex-
perience and worldview (e.g. Palmer 1996; Sharifian 2003). 
The above-mentioned view that languages or language varieties that 
emerge from the process of linguistic dissemination largely embody cultural 
conceptualisations of the new speech community, has received due support 
from recent research on Aboriginal English (Malcolm 2001; Malcolm and 
Rochecouste 2000; Malcolm and Sharifian 2002; Sharifian 2001, 2002a, 
2002b). At the discourse level, the analysis of more than 100 self-contained 
narratives from Aboriginal English speakers revealed that discourse in 
Aboriginal English is predominantly governed by schemas that are widely 
derived from the cultural experience of Aboriginal people (Malcolm 2001; 
Malcolm and Rochecouste 2000). The following cultural schemas were 
among the most frequently represented in the narratives that were analysed: 
Travel 
The representation of the experience of known participants, organ-
ized in terms of alternating travelling (or moving) and non-travelling 
(or stopping) segments, usually referenced to a time of departure and 
optionally including a return to the starting point. 
Hunting 
The representation of experience of known participants, organized 
with respect to the observation, pursuit and capture of prey, usually 
entailing killing and sometimes eating it. Success is usually associ-
ated with persistence expressed with repeated and / or unsuccessful 
actions (e.g. shoot and miss, look and never find). There are a num-
ber of sub-schemas associated with hunting, including Cooking, Fish-
ing and Spotting. 
Observing 
The representation of experience, usually shared experience, in terms 
of observed details whether of natural or social phenomena. 
Scary Things The representation of experience, either first-hand or vicarious, of 
strange powers or persons affecting normal life within the commun-
ity and manifest in the expression of appearance and disappearance or 
seeing or not seeing / finding evidence of the phenomenon in question. 
Family 
The representation of experience in relation to an extended family 
network. 
Source: Malcolm (2001: 17) 
Sharifian (2001) observed that Aboriginal English speakers often oper-
ate on the basis of widely shared schemas and as such do not find it neces-
sary to produce complex verbal utterances. Instead, they largely appear to 
rely on the use of elliptical utterances, which he calls minimal discourse, to 

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Multiword units in Aboriginal English
379
report or describe a whole event, sub-event, etc. Another feature of Abo-
riginal English that supports the view that it clothes Aboriginal cultural 
conceptualisations is its non-reliance on the linear conceptualisation of 
‘time’ in organizing discourse, which is a pervasive organizational principle 
in the discourse of Standard Australian English (Sharifian 2002a). Among 
the usual anchor points that Aboriginal people employ for the construction 
of discourse in Aboriginal English are place as well as events such as rela-
tives’ funerals. A good number of the texts in Aboriginal English that have 
been analysed by the authors begin with utterances such as In Geraldton …, 
or It was in Nanna’s funeral …. These features are in consonance with 
Aboriginal cultural experience in which one’s country, in the Aboriginal 
sense, and events such as one’s grandmother’s funeral hold a much more 
significant place than the linear conception of time. 
Another feature of Aboriginal English which highlights the role of sche-
mas in discourse processing is the frequent incidence of what Sharifian 
(2001: 129) calls schema-based and image-based referencing. This refers to 
the frequent use of deictic devices such as that or dat to refer to events and 
entities that do not appear to be present either in the physical context of 
speech or in the linguistic context of the deictic devices. In other words, the 
antecedents of these devices are neither ‘endophoric’ nor ‘exophoric’. Rather, 
they appear to retrieve their antecedent from the image or the schema that is 
activated in the mind of the speaker at time of speech. For instance, an
Aboriginal English speaker may produce utterances such as I went to dat 
funeral or I seen that green snake with no prior reference to the funeral or 
the snake (see further examples under 3a, below). This phenomenon, which 
is highly frequent in Aboriginal English, may arise from the widely held 
assumptions of shared schemas among the speakers. “Standard” varieties of 
English do not seem to operate on the basis of schema-based and image-
based referencing to the extent that Aboriginal English does. 
At the level of lexicon, it is observed that even everyday words such as 
family and home evoke cultural schemas and categories in the community of 
Aboriginal English speakers that largely characterize Aboriginal cultural 
experience (Sharifian 2002b, 2005). The word family, for instance, is associ-
ated with categories in Aboriginal English that move far beyond what is 
described as “nuclear” family in Anglo-Australian culture. Almost every-
body who comes into frequent contact with an Aboriginal person may be 
referred to by a kin term such as brother or cousin. The word mum may 
also be used to refer to people who are referred to as “aunt” in Anglo-
Australian culture. Such usage of kin terms does not of course stop at the 

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level of categorization but usually evokes schemas associated with certain 
rights and obligations between those involved. The word home in Aborigi-
nal English usually evokes categories that are based on family relationship 
and not so much the possession of a building by a nuclear family. For in-
stance, an Aboriginal English speaker may refer to one’s Nanna’s place as 
“home”. 
The vernacularization of English by Aboriginal people has, then, involved 
the use of English lexical items with semantic shift. It has also involved the 
modification of English lexical items, either by changing the form of indi-
vidual items or by bringing together items which do not normally come 
together in the English of non-Aboriginal speakers. We will attempt to 
provide comprehensive evidence of this in what is to follow.