Maaate, Don't Come the Raw Prawn with Me, Alright?

Megan: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Carrie Gillon: I'm Carrie Gillon.

Megan Figueroa: I'm Megan Figueroa, and if you notice, Carrie.

Carrie: You just rolled your R. I just said my name like my people do. 

Megan: Listen, that was awesome. 

Carrie: I've been thinking about this all week because, my girl AOC out here  protecting her right to say her name, the way she wants to say her name, because that's our human to do. 

Megan: I know. She literally could pronounce it any way she wanted to pronounce it anyway.

Carrie: Yeah. I thought, this is 40 some episode, and I've always said my name's Figueroa and we introduce and that's how I say it sometimes. Although one time I'm thinking of this person who was introduced myself, and she was like, "But how do you really say it?" And I was like, "No, that's how I really say it sometimes." So I'm  glad that this is happening because it's a conversation that needs to be had about names because names are so important, but so Laura Ingram, one of the blondes on Fox News. I really don't know. 

Megan: Because she is particularly evil. I feel you're  downplaying who she is by saying it that way. 

Carrie: I know but I always confuse her face with the other ones, because I only  hear what she says and don't watch her, so I don't know if anyone... but I confused her with Nancy Grace.

Megan: They're both problematic, but whoa.  

Carrie:  I know, I know. 

Megan: She doesn't have that helmet hair that n Nancy Grace has, and also as far as I know, Nancy Grace has never done the Hitler salute. 

Carrie: Oh, God. [inaudible] did a Hitler salute. Okay. 

Megan: You don't remember that from 2016? 

Carrie:  No, I know one of them did, but see I'm conflating them all, and that's my problem. Yeah, no, you're right, she's really evil. 

Megan: Carrie: Really.

Carrie: Her thing was saying that AOC is putting on an accent or doing... wait, no. The guest that she had on was a man who says she's doing that Latina thing, and he called her Anastasio Ocasio-Cortez.

Megan: Which is multiply wrong.

Carrie: Yeah. No, for one thing, it could be anyone's name, but typically a male name.

Megan: Yes. That's definitely got the masculine ending.

Carrie: Right, and then he was an asshole and used an exaggerated pronunciation for his name, which is Dejanova, but it's exaggerated Italian pronunciation for it to be an asshole, and he also has the right to say his name however he wants to. Why are we being assholes about this? And I think the a really good point though, is that her name is easy to say for English speakers. 

Megan: Yeah. All things considered, it's one of the easier Spanish names to pronounce. 

Carrie: Right. You don't even have to roll that R, you can just say Cortez, and you're still respecting it more than most people are on Fox News are.

Megan: Well if that's the bar we're setting.  

Carrie: I know, but also my last name's is hard for some people to pronounce, so unless you're  being a deliberate asshole, I'm okay if you can't roll your Rs.

Megan: Yeah. Not everybody can roll their Rs, if you don't learn it when you're a kid, and so, yeah. That's why I'm always when I say we should try to pronounce names as best we can, there are some sounds that are really difficult for whoever to say. Right. Right. Like, so for example, for me cliques are hard for me to produce in the middle of a word, so I don't know what I would do in that instance if someone had to clique in their name. I don't know what I would do.  

Carrie: That's why I'm like do the best that you can because you're not probably not going to get it perfect, but try. At least try. 

Megan: Yes. Try, start from a place of respect, because it really is harmful, hurtful when people don't make that effort. That's your name. A name is sacred, so no I really love how she's handling it. Of course clapping back on social media as a millennial will, and as she's so good at.

Carrie: Yeah, she's very good at it.

Megan: Yeah it's something that sticks with. It's just so important. I remember because Safeway or whatever they're called in other places of the country, the grocery store, they want to say your last name, so when you use your card, and I remember being with my dad one time and they were like "Thank you, Mr"... And they're like "How do you say your name?" And he never pronounces it with English sounds ever, and he said it and this person was like" What?"

They were never going to get it, and then it just, it was an awkward thing that  just ended. because he's just not going to say it, Figueroa and I remember being a kid and that really stuck with me, and I was like 'Well, okay. I got to accommodate." So there's lots of messaging around names, but it feels good when someone gets it right or at least tries. 

Carrie: Yeah. If people mess up my name all the time and there's no racial or an ethnic issues going on with it. It's just a somewhat unusual last name that's all, and people always want to stick in an extra I, Gillian and it is weird. I'm  privileged, so it doesn't really matter, but it does a little bit upset me. Just a little.

Megan: Do you never have a Spanish speaker say Gion.

Carrie: Oh yeah, so sometimes Spanish or French speakers will pronounce it the sort of more French, Spanish way. There are Belgian Gion, but it's not Belgian.

Megan: Yeah, but your last name isn't French. 

Carrie: No. No. It's Scottish.

Megan: Your people never said Gion? 

Carrie: No. Well, probably not. No, but if you pronounce it that way, that seems less weird to me because I'm well, in Canada could be a French name right potentially, so if you pronounce it that way, I am like, "It's fine." Adding the extra I is weirdly more upsetting.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Wait, Gillian, you said Gillian. 

Carrie: Yep. Happens all the time.

Megan: That's them reading it and seeing that there's no I there at the end. 

Carrie: Yeah. There's adding, because I guess there's Gillian Gillian.

Megan: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I didn't say it, but I was thinking of Gillian Anderson all time and imagining her in sex education and how good she looks and all those outfits. I love that. 

Carrie: Oh my goodness. She is fabulous. 

Megan: That's such a good show. You've seen it right? 

Carrie: Yes, and I've loved her since the X-files, so this is a real big don't be an asshole situation here. 

Megan: Try. Try.

Carrie: Just try and God I can't help but think of that key and Pale sketch. 

Man 1:  Aarron. Where are you? Where is Aarron right now? No. Aarron? Well, you better be sick. Dead on mute. Aaron here.  
Oh man. Why didn't you answer me the first time I said Aaron? I'm just asking you I said it 4 times, so why didn't you say it the first time I said a Aron?  
 
Man 2: Because it's pronounced Aaron.

Man 1: [inaudible] You done messed up Aaron.  

Carrie: Yeah, ask people how they want their name to be pronounced too, because maybe they want it to be pronounced more Anglicized. 

Megan: I'm fine with Figueroa. It's fine, but other Figueroa's might not be. Well, although it's really hard for some people to roll that R.

Carrie: I know. Although, but some try people try to say Figueroa or Figuro.

Megan: Those are so much worse. 

Carrie: There's sometimes that they can do something. 

Megan: Yeah, but yeah there are some people who have a name that looks like it should be pronounced a certain way because, let's say you know Spanish or French or whatever, but they actually anglicize it. You have to pronounce it the way that they pronounce it, otherwise you're not listening.

Carrie:. You're not listening. Yeah. 

Megan: You're not being respectful.

Carrie: Names.

Megan: Well, go get them. Go get them Anastasio, just keep on keeping on. 

Carrie: It's so bad. It's so bad. Of all the things you could have done to mock her name, what? 

Megan: Yeah. Come on. 

Carrie: Just makes him look not smart. 

Megan: Yeah. That's the least of the things that make them look not smart.

Carrie: No, I know. I know, I know, but I think it's because it's so simple. It's such a simple thing to do. It's like "What?"  

Megan: Oh yeah. Well, I guess get off that pedestal.  

Carrie: Stop yelling at our listeners who probably already do what we're saying  there.

Megan: I know. Everyone's like, "Yeah. We were thinking the same thing this week." Very important stuff. It was good thing too because we have a very funny episode today. Very fun.

Carrie: Yeah, that's true. I almost feel like we should be ranting more to make up for the fact that this one is a more fun one, but you get to listen to me try to pronounce his last name with an Australian pronunciation. Apparently a North American saying McMahon sounds bad, so Tony McMahon. We talk to him all about mostly Bogan, the word Bogan and Boganism, and I learned so much, so, so much. 

Megan: Well, I learned what Bogan was, and I've never heard it before, and now I see it everywhere. 

Carrie: Yep. That's how it works. 

Megan: Well, enjoy. 

Carrie: Today our guest is Dr. Tony McMahon from RMIT University, who teaches creative writing and literature, but also in cinema studies. He's going to talk to us about all things Australia, including the word Bogan, so welcome Tony.  
 
Tony: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Megan: Hi.  

Carrie: Thanks for coming on. 

Megan: I like how Carrie introduced your name like a question. I was like "Is that right?" 

Carrie: Did we get Australian enough?

Tony:  Well, Americans always sound really weird when they try and say Australian things. Like just as a little example for our Australian listeners. Can I get each of you guys to just say the word good day. 

Megan: Good  day. 

Carrie: Good day.  
    
Tony: Not bad. Not bad actually. Most Americans I've heard say good day. Like they'll say, oh, good day, but it's good. It's good day, so I guess being linguists, you guys have got a bit of a leg up.

Carrie: Yes, we do.  
 
Tony:  Yeah. Not a bad effort. Look, you did sound ridiculous when you said McMahon though, just say McMahon. That's how Americans roll with it, so yeah, just say that .  

Megan:  All right, fair enough. Yeah, so we have you on the show because we want to talk about the word Bogan, what it means, who uses it, etcetera, and as complete outsiders it does not have any real punch for us, but I know that it means something in Australia, so what does it mean? 

Tony: Yeah. Okay. Well, again, for the American listeners, the closest relative in your language would probably be white trash. For UK listeners Chavs I think they're called in the UK. If you've got French listeners, there's a term in French which I'll probably get the pronunciation wrong, but I think it's Bof[?] and it just means a largely uncultured person. Someone who is probably not very educated. Someone who likes... can I say not the finer things in life.

More concerned with, perhaps V8s and bourbon and Coke, than fine wine and a nice hybrid or something. There are really important differences though between the Australian Bogan and something like the American white trash, and interestingly, those differences are mostly geographic. I think in Australia, the Bogan is almost exclusively defined by an outer suburban geography, so the Bogan is found on the outer suburbs of the big cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. 

Yeah, so they're fond of the mullet. Do you guys know what a mullet is?  

Carrie: Oh, of course we know what a mullet is. Meghan, you don't know what a mullet is?

Megan: No, I do, but I just thought it was very American for some reason.  

Tony: Yeah, short, spiky hair on the top long at the back, fond of the mullet motorsports as I mentioned, and Jim Beam, so interestingly you can walk into any pub in Australia, ask for a Bogan and Coke and the bartender will just start mixing. They know that a Bogan and coke means a bourbon and coke.

Megan: How funny. 

Carrie: Yeah, so is when you say the Bogan, it could be the people that they're referring to and also the geographic area?  
 
Tony:  No, it's people from certain geographic areas, so it's generally western suburbs of both Sydney and Melbourne. Interestingly in Hobart which is the capital of Tasmania, they're called, Chingas, or sorry, Chingas which is, there's a suburb called Chigwell on the outer reaches of Hobart. I believe it is someone, correct me if I'm wrong, but so yeah, they're referred to by the actual name of the suburb, so I think Bogan is used widely now all over Australia. 

The etymology of the world, although it's unclear exactly how it came into use. 1 theory, one that I particularly because it has to do with geography, is that when I was growing up Bogans used to be called Westies. They were people from the west of Melbourne and Sydney, and apparently there's a river. Again, someone, correct me if I'm wrong. Apparently there's a river called the Bogan River that runs, way, way outside of the western suburbs of Sydney, and it demarcates Sydney from a more rural version of New South Wales.

I think there were this theory says that there was a saying, which was, you are such a Westie that you're even further west than the Bogan River, and it then became Bogan, and so yeah people don't say Westie anymore, but they do say Bogan, so yeah I moved to the inner city when I was 17. I've lived most of my life in the inner city, but I grew up in the outer suburbs, and I'm still a Bogan. Even though I live in the inner city, I still consider myself a Bogan, or at the very least a recovering Bogan. Perhaps a lapsed Bogan or something.   

Megan: What's it like being a Bogan at a university?

Tony:  It's awesome. It's grouse. How much can I swear on this podcast, guys?  

Megan:  As much as you want.

Carrie: As much as you want. Yes

Tony:  I can use really any terminology. Okay, so I'll probably start doing that at some stage, so yeah, it's fucking grouse being a Bogan at a university. It really is. Look I live in Melbourne in the state of Victoria, which is the most progressive state in Australia. It may be different somewhere else, I don't know, but I always found that my voice, people at university were, were quite interested in what I had to say, and the perspective that a recovering or a lapsed Bogan brought to a lot of things. 

Your podcast is largely about the discrimination to do with language, but I've got to say, I don't have that many stories, especially at university. I really feel like I wasn't excluded from important conversations because of the way I spoke, or the particular variation my voice provided. I found that people were quite interested in that.  

Megan: Oh, that's really great. because I feel like rednecks or white trashier don't have that as much of a good time at universities, especially the Portia universities.  

Tony: Well, there's a couple of things to say about that, which probably gives us a bit of an insight into Australian culture, and what we think about language. Now, the Bogan is pretty closely related to the larrikin. Do you guys know what a larrikin is? Is that a...
 
Carrie  Only because I looked it up. 

Megan: I don't know at all.  
  
Tony:  Yeah. Yeah, so, it's  commonly defined as usually a male who has this anti-authoritarian stance, but a real sense of fun bringing down people who think they're better than him, and this is a much loved figure in Australian literature, in Australian culture, in Australian cinema, think of someone like Crocodile Dundee, sort of the ultimate, Aussie Larrikin. 

Megan: That's awesome. 

Tony: Goes to New York has all this fun, that's not a knife, all that stuff.  

Man 1:  You got a light buddy?  

Mick:  Yeah, sure kid. There you go.  
  
Man 1 : Your wallet.  

Woman 1: Mick, give him your wallet. 

Mick: What for?

Woman 1: He's got a knife.  
  
Mick: That's not a knife. That's a knife.  

Tony: Yeah, the Bogans closely related, so there's a sense in which the Bogan is I wouldn't go so far as to say loved, but certainly tolerated, and I think that had something to do with how accepting people have been of me, and I suppose perhaps your listeners can judge, but I think that my Bogan accent has diminished over the years as well. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as it used to be, so that might have something to do with it as well. 

The main discrimination of experience, it's actually come from myself, it's like a self-inflicted censorship. For many, many years I was like, "Oh, I can't go to university I'm Bogan. I'm just a Bogan. I can't stand up in front of a room full of people and say, listen to me. I've got something interesting to say. I'm just a Bogan from Strathmore, that's not going to happen." I still feel that today, feel that even now on this podcast. As I said to you earlier, I'm not a linguist. What am I doing on a linguistics podcast? I'm just this Bogan .  
    
Carrie: Yes, but you know what Bogan means, and we do not, so you're the expert, so speaking of all of that, what is most saliently Bogan in terms of language? What is it that you would pick up on or someone else would pick up on and go, "Oh, you must be Bogan."  
   
Tony: Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't think there's a huge difference in what you might call sort of working class or lower working class Australian English and Bogan English. There's a couple of words like grouse, is a  really clearly Bogan word but there's not too many others. It's more the tone, it's more the excessive use of the word fuck as an adjective. At least 3 times a sentence. Like, "Yeah, I fuckin walk down the street." And there's no G on the end of fucking, so yeah, it's mainly tone. 

Yeah, as I mentioned in the emails, there's a count as a term of endearment between men usually, is a very singular Bogan thing, so there actually aren't that many terms that you can point to and go, "Oh, that's Bogan." It's more the way that it's used. Another one is the extraordinary elongated mate. We call everyone mate in Australia. Americans say Buddy but not  all the time. We say it all the time in Australia, every second sentence. Again usually reserved for men, but that's changing, so if we want to talk more about discrimination in this language, we might want to talk about it from gender perspective.

Yeah, so Bogan usage of the word mate becomes mate, and it's lots and lots of A's in the middle, it's what are you fucking doing, mate? Yeah, so that's really it.  

Megan: Are there any famous people, or TV shows that are good examples of being Bogan?  

Tony: Yeah, well, the most famous and one that probably  kicked Boganism off, if Boganism can it? I suppose anything you're talking about [inaudible], can't it? But I can't remember what the show was called. It was some mid to late 80s Australian, television comedy show a sketch comedy show, and there was a character on it called Kylie Mole.  

Kylie: My name's Kylie, and, if you can think of the Backes holiday ever, well, that's what I'm having  now, because guess what we had to do on Saturday, go to the National Park spewing, because only Bogan of the parents go to National Parks, but at least I stayed in the car, because who wants to see native trees? Ooh, a native tree. Ooh, another native tree. I'll really have an organism over that.  

Tony: Mole in Australia has a very specific meaning, but Kylie, actually, interestingly when I was doing a little bit of research for this chat, I found that, Kylie is actually an indigenous Australian word meaning something, which I've forgotten, which isn't very good, is it? But anyway, so this character Kylie Mole, I would say she sort of kicked off Boganism. There's a very famous, Australian film called The Castle, which for our New South Wales listeners will be the castle, but here in Victoria, we say the castle, and that was  populated by largely Bogan characters.

One of whom was Eric Banner, who went on to big things in Hollywood. Eric Banner is a serious Bogan actually.  

Eric: Hello Kids. Today, I'm going to be reading to you from his top little book. It's a great little novel and it's called Snow White and the 7 little Dwalves. Here we go. Once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess who lived in a beautiful Castle. 
Carrie: Really?  

Megan: That's cool. Good to know.   

Tony:  Yeah. He made a documentary called Love the Beast, which was about his car.  
 
Carrie: That's very redneck.    
  
Tony Yeah, and Barry Bogan as well, and of course it was a Ford V8 from I think a 1977 model Ford V8 or something, which he's had since 1977 and still owns today, and he's restored it several times, and the whole film is about him and his car, so yeah, Eric Banner is a very famous Bogan.  


Megan: You said that Boganism started off with a woman. What does it mean for a woman to speak in this way? Do you think that women might be discriminated against more for it because you've had good experiences? Would a woman have the same? 

Tony: That's a good question. I don't know. Australia's a very  racist, sexist place if you scrape just beneath the surface, but yeah they're still white women, so that's one thing I guess. Look, I'd only be speculating, but yeah, I feel  it probably would, there probably would be more discrimination for a Bogan woman than a Bogan man. 1 of the things I think that  helped me out was I was a straight white male, so yeah I was a Bogan, but I was still a straight white male, and again, maybe it's just my age, maybe this is changing, but I've certainly met many Bogan women, and it is interesting.

As you say that Kylie Mole was one of the first really well-known Bogans, but I always think of it as a very gendered language, that whole use of the word countess, a term of endearment. I don't think that happens between men and women. Again, I stand to be corrected. It's been a while since I've moved in Bogan circles too much. Although I do still go to the drive-in a lot  and I haven't seen it there, but yeah I suspect that there's lots of stuff that is different when you're talking about language between Bogan women and Bogan men.  

Carrie:  You said, you said drive-in? Is that what I think it is? Like movies or is there something different there?  

Tony: No, no driving movies. Yeah very Bogan thing.  
 
Carrie: Really? Why is that?

Tony: I don't know. It's the nature of the films they show. You don't ever see anything  alternative, or art house or the drive-in. ,  
Carrie: You're right, you're right.

Tony: Eric Banner's film was a huge hit at the driving. Every year they have a special event in play Mad Max, and it's all about cars. Most western countries in the world fuel is really expensive here, so you don't see many V8s on the road anymore, but you do see them at the drive-in still.

Megan: That's fun.

Tony: Yeah. Drive-ins are awesome. Recovering Bogan, lapsed Bogan, both of those don't really do my situation justice, because there's still several things about being a Bogan that I adore, and one of them is the drive-in movies. I'm a third generation drive-in movie goer. My dad used to take me when I was a kid. I took my daughters when they were kid, and when they were little, they used to say, "Oh, daddy, when we grow up and get a car, we'll take you to the drive-in."

Sure enough, my older daughter when she turned 18, the week she got her car, rang me up and said, 'When are we having the drive-ins?: So third generation. Yeah.   
 
Megan: I love it.

Tony: Yeah. It's awesome. Have you got many in, Arizona?  
 
Megan:  No. 

Carrie: There are a couple, but there's not very many because it's very hot here in the summer. 

Megan: It's so hot. Yeah.

Carrie: When I was a kid, I grew up in Canada, but when I was a kid, we went to the drive-in for sure, but I can't think of a single drive-in in the part of Canada I'm from anymore. They're disappearing for sure. 
 
Tony: Yeah, I've been to America twice in the last 3 years, and both times I've gone to maybe 3 drive-ins each time, so there's three hundred of them in America still. Oh, yeah.  
   
Carrie: Yeah. Well, you've been to more than I have because I've been to 0 in the United States, only in Canada.

Megan: I've been to 0.

Carrie: You already brought up a bunch of these other terms that I was going to ask you about Chiga, and Westie, but what about Yabo? That's a word I've definitely heard in lots of Australian shows, but I don't know what it means really.

Megan: Yabo?
  
Tony: Yeah. Yabo. Yap. 

Megan: Isn't that boobs? Yabos? 

Carrie: What? No. 

Megan: I heard that. What I thinking of?

Crrie: I don't know.

Tony: I've never heard of that. [inaudible] my life I've swung thinking of when I said Yobo, so thanks Megan, but yeah look, Yobo is a term very similar to Bogan, and another one is Occa. Occa, I think again, not being a linguist, but I believe that Occa is more someone who has a very broad Australian accent. Yabo is more about how somebody acts. They act like a Yabo, drinking beer and watching football and, and so they're all related to Bogan, but they're all slightly different. Yeah. ,  

Megan:  Okay, so what was someone from  the inner city of Melbourne? That's a big city. What might a stereotypical person that grew up there think of Bogan speech.

Carrie: Or Bogan generally?  
 
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. Look, again, well, my daughters grew up in the inner city, so I can  speak for them a little bit, although I must make sure never to tell them about this podcast, because they'd be really mad at me, but I dare say there'd be a slight repulsion, but only very slight, not to the point where that person would necessarily be excluded from a conversation, or any social niceties that happen to be happening. There's definitely othering of the Bogan, but I said before that Australia was a really racist, sexist country if you scratch the surface, and it is.

Especially if you're an indigenous Australian that's a whole can of worms that possibly doesn't need going into on a podcast about linguistics. I don't know, but although there are a lot of indigenous language, there's three hundred indigenous languages in Australia, which is pretty interesting, but yeah so the racism thing, the exclusion of people, the othering of people. If you are straight white and male like most Bogans are, or even if you're straight white and female, that othering only goes  so far, so it's almost  this very gentle discrimination if you are straight and white, but it's definitely there. There's definitely a demarcation.  

Megan: We've been  throwing around the word Bogan. Is it okay for us to use it? We're total outsiders.

Carrie: Yeah. I was just  using it like it's nobody else's business. I was just woo. Now, I feel bad.

Tony:  I think so, yeah. As a covering Bogan, I'm not offended by it at all. Most Bogans will readily admit that they're Bogans and most Bogans will be completely okay with it. Perhaps because they're not  discriminated against as violently as perhaps indigenous Australians are. Then it's fun. It's a fun term. It's used with a sense of larrikinism if you like. A sense of having fun at somebody else's expense, but just slightly, you know what I mean?  

Carrie: Right, so I got a description of Bogan from some website or other. Basically redneck uncultured person, which is basically what you've been saying, but according to the Australian show Bogan Hunters, a real Bogan sports a flannel.  
  
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. You got to have a fucking ass mate.  

Carrie:  Do you know what that is, Megan? 

Megan: No. 

Carrie: Can you guess?

Megan: A flannel shirt?

Carrie:  Yes.  

Tony: Well done. Well done. 

Carrie: A mullet, missing teeth.  
  
Tony:   Missing teeth are good.  

Carrie: Homemade tattoos preferably the Australian flag or Southern Cross, and has an excess of Australia paraphernalia. 

Tony: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

Carrie: Okay, I was like I can picture this. I know exactly what this is.

Megan: It has the missing teeth, and then home drawn tattoos. Is this  speaking to class? 

Tony: Oh, Yeah. It's definitely a class thing. I should have mentioned that right off the bat, it's definitely a lower working class thing. Absolutely. Although we do have a very interesting variant that has emerged just recently called the Cashed Up Boger.  
 
Carrie:  I was going to ask you about that. Go ahead. 

Tony: Okay. Well, most lower working class people me being the exception, your average Bogan doesn't make their way into  a university setting into your typically well-paid job. Australia has a... not so much anymore, but Australia used to be one of the most egalitarian societies in the world. What is it neoliberalism and economic rationalism has put paid to that to some extent, but there are still remnants, and one of those remnants is that our minim wage is 4 times higher than it is in America.

If you are a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter, you can make pretty good money, and many Bogans have gone into this field, and they're now making loads and loads of money, spending it on really fast cars, motorcycles, Australian paraphernalia, and speeding around the outer suburbs and in the where the bush meets the city, riding around the bush on their motorcycles. Yeah, so that's the cashed up Bogan, so I guess it's still a class thing, but it's just slight variation on the  typical class dynamics we'd associated with Bogan.  
   
Megan: Does that mean a cashed up Bogan, they still go to the drive-through though? 

Tony: Drive- in.

Megan: Are they still going to the.... sorry, drive-in ? Yes. Drive- in.

Carrie: Everyone goes to the drive through. 

Megan: They're still going to the drive-in, but with  
  Fancier cars.

Tony: They still go to the drive-in, but they're doing it in  $30,000, what you guys would call pickup trucks and what we call Utes. They're going with in $30,000 Utes with 2 brand new KTM 450s on the tray, motorcycles they are.  

Megan: Thank you. I'm like, " I don't know."

Tony: Yeah, but both worth $10,000 each, so yeah they're a lot shinier than us really lower working class Bogans. Although I shouldn't say that because I have a KGM 450 as well, but I do have a 1999 model Toyota High Ace fan, so not the typical Bogan car.  

Megan: I wonder if, because this has been like or for my background is a Chicana, Mexican American. Cars are big cultural things, so there are places where people go to show off their cars, and  everyone's just around looking at cars. Does the drive-in then become a I'm going for a movie too, but we're also going to show off our car?  
  
Tony:  Totally. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, there's three drive-ins in Melbourne, or one of them is I guess it's in Melbourne, but it's a long way out, so there's 3 drive-ins in Melbourne. One of them every year has a combination what they call a show and shine, and then they show an old movie, it's got cars in it,  American and Graffiti or Back to the Future or Mad Max or something. It's codified by that event, but yeah it happens throughout the whole year.  

Carrie: What else should we talk about, about when it comes to Bogan or Australia? Is there anything that we're missing from this conversation?  

Tony: Perhaps given that Bogans use that mostly Australian English, they don't really have their own version of the language, that may happen one day, but not yet. Do you want to talk a little bit about just Australian English in general?

Carrie:  Sure.

Tony: My take on it is that it's this really weird mix of UK English, Irish English, because there's a lot of Irish immigrants came to Australia, well, no sorry, Irish convicts I should say come to Australia, and that's certainly where my lineage is on Irish convict lineage, and it definitely shows. There's recently some American thrown in. Obviously we get all the American TV shows, watch all the American movies, American hegemony being what it is. No offense guys, but...

Megan: No, please. 

Tony: Yeah, we obviously take on a lot of that, but there's also indigenous Australian terminology thrown in. I guess that one of the defining characteristics of Australian English for me especially lower working class Australian English is the excessive use of rhyming slang. Yeah like an English a London invention, rhyming slang like Cockney I believe, but brought out here and put into this pot and mixed in with all these Irish and Scottish and then later on Italian and Greek immigrants, to become this entity within itself and just taken to the next level.  

 Australians use rhyming slang a lot. It's a really interesting form of slang I think, because again, not being a linguist, I'm really interested that it's this code that if you guys came and visited me, wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about, but I can walk down the street and speak to someone and say,  "How are you China?" And they'll know exactly what that means. 

Carrie: Like mate.

Tony: Yeah mate. China plate mate. Yeah.  
 
Megan: Oh, wow. What? 

Carrie: Yeah, some of them I know of, but there's many that I don't. 

Tony: Yeah. Ham and eggs for legs, boat race for face, Al Capone for phone. Yeah, it's pretty interesting, and I mentioned earlier the indigenous Australian languages. There's over 300 of them. Many indigenous words have made their way into really wide usage among non-indigenous Australians like mate. It's mainly place names. Like there's a suburb in Melbourne called Maribyrnong but if you read it it's M-A-R-I-B-Y-R-N-O-N-G, and so if you see it written and try and read it as a non-Australian, you're just never going to be able to do it properly. 

Maribyrnong. We have Maribyrnong, Dingo[?] and as I said earlier, apparently the word Kylie. I'm really interested in the term no worries as well, because for me interestingly, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel it's an Australian term that has actually made its way into American usage. 

Carrie: Yep, so it has. Yep.

Megan: No worries? Really?

Carrie:  You don't use it at all?

Megan: No, I do, but I'm an American, so I assume we have created everything.

Carrie: No, yeah, no it's definitely from Australia definitely. Yeah.  

Tony: We also have a variant, which I'm hoping with the help of this podcast might make its way into American usage too, and the variant is no wackers.  
  
Carrie: I don't think I've heard that. 

Tony:  Which it's short for no wucking furries, which is... okay stay with me, so no wucking furries is a cleaning up of no fucking worries, so people would say don't fucking worries all the time, but it became, well, you couldn't say that in front of your grandmother or your grandfather or women perhaps. There's a whole thing about swearing in front of women, women in Australia, which is really  interesting from a gender perspective. 

It was cleaned up to know wucking furries, and then abbreviated, we love abbreviating things in Australia, to no wackers.

Megan: That's amazing. 

Tony: Yeah. I'm hoping that that gets used in the next Tom Cruise movie.  

Carrie: You heard it here first. 

Tony: That's right. That's right.  

Megan: Yeah. There's a lot of like  you say, a lot of shortening in Australia. There's a some in other varieties, but I swear Australia takes it to a whole new level. 

Tony: Oh, yeah, yeah. 

Megan:  I don't even know is this how you say it? Rego?  

Tony: Rego. Yep. 

Megan: As in car registration. I've never heard that before. 

Tony: Yeah, yep. That's really common. I would actually feel like I was being a wanker another Australian term if I said registration.

Megan: Oh, interesting. Yeah. 

Tony: I just always say rego and look again, I could be wrong, but I dare say that that's a lower working class Australian term that's probably made its way into almost exclusive usage by pretty much everyone. The only person who wouldn't say rego would be a very, very what we might call up themselves, , person, but it's everything names as well. If you guys ever come to Australia, it's Caz and Meg[?]. I know a lot of people name Megan hate being called Meg. That would just be too bad really if you come to Australia, because literally everybody would call you Meg.

 You might get Megs, but it would probably be Meg. Carrie you might maybe get Carrie, but for the most part it'd be Caz.  

Megan: I love it.

Carrie: That's interesting because I will try to try to shorten my name and it ends up being Care, which just doesn't even work. Caz sort of works.   
  
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. We don't do that in Australia. Like, you see Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm being called Lair all the time.

Lair: Hey, Mayor, let me ask you something, what's going on with Ted and Cheryl?  
  
Mayor: Ted told me he was interested in seeing her, and I told him to go for it. 

Lair: Well, I was kind wondering if he's going to go out with her, well, why not you go out with me?   
  
Mayor:  Wow. Lair.  
   
Tony: We would say Laz or something maybe.  

Megan:  Interesting. 

Carrie: That actually makes more sense to make it Lairs instead of Layer.

Tony:  It's hard to say Layer.  
 
Megan: Yeah. I can't say Layer. It's really weird. 

Carrie : Yeah. I need another sound after that. Wait, so what would you be, would you be Tons?  
   
Tony: Tons, yeah Ton. 

Megan: Also vego. I just learned that one. 

Carrie: Like vegemite?

Megan: No vegetarian.

Tony: Vego.

Megan: Bikey is my favorite. 

Carrie: What is that?

Megan:  Like a biker, just sounds way cuter. 

Carrie: Just exactly what I think it is. Okay. Wait, is this why you flannel shirt is flano? The same thing's going on here.   

Tony: Exactly, so, yep. Wow.  

Megan:  Everything ends in an E or an O. Sickie. This one I already knew. 

Carrie: Is that just someone who's sick?

Megan: Nope. 

Carrie: I don't know. 

Megan: According to this, you chuck a sickie to stay home, you stay home from work from being sick. Take a sickie is how I always thought it was.  

Tony:  Yeah. Chuck sickie, throw a sickie. Another really good. Another one bit no whacking furries is king oath. If you say something to me, and I want to say absolutely, one term I can use is king oath, which is shortening of fucking oath, which just means yes fucking oath.  

Megan: Wow. That's awesome.  

Tony: Yeah, king Earth is a very specific lower working class Australian term.  

Carrie:  I wonder, I have to ask about my... well, before I met you of course Tony, my favorite Australian was Thor, Chris Hemsworth. Is his pretty typical Australian English that he speaks? 

Megan: You mean just generally, or when he is in the movie? 

Carrie: When he is in the movie. Is he speaking Australian English or not at all? 

Tony: Even though I do have a very similar body to Chris Hemsworth. Don't laugh. I must admit to not having seen any of the 4 movies, even though they do play at the drive-in, so I probably should've, and I'm not averse to a bit of pop culture, but the Marvel stuff I just really can't anymore, just can't do the whole blowing up thing, so I don't really know much about Chris Hemsworth, but I dare say not. I dare say that he has dialogue coaches and stuff that, and for a product a Marvel movie, they're Marvel movies right? Thor?

For a product  that, I dare say he's the way he speaks will be, will be very carefully curated. Is he in Ghostbusters? Is he the one in the new Ghostbusters? 

Megan: Yes, he is. He is. He's Kevin the Dummy.

Tony: I feel like he was speaking a pretty authentic version of Australian Ghostbusters, but with just with some of the edges taken off, if you know what I mean.  

Carrie: Yeah, and that would be for our consumption I'm guessing, for American consumption?  
 
Tony: I would think so, yeah it's not as bad as the first Mad Max movie was dubbed when it was shown, when it was shown in America in 1979, and I believe some sections of Crocodile Dundee were also dubbed when that shown. I believe so. 

Megan: I'm not surprised actually.  

Carrie: I didn't know, so Megan, he has a British accent when he's Thor. 

Megan: Does he?

Carrie: Yeah, very much so. 

Tony: Oh, does he? 

Carrie: It's a Posh English accent in that movie. Yeah. He's like a God. He's supposed to be  as Posh as you get. There's no way they would let him have an Australian accent in that.
  
Thor: The hallways were dripping with blood and gore, and then I removed Evelyn's head from his body. His guts flew everywhere, and of course I ate his eyeballs, so we could never find his way back to the halls of Valhalla.

Megan: Which is the British apparently is the most Posh that you can get. 

Carrie: Well, certain, well within British like the English of the Queen, he doesn't have that. 

Megan: Oh, of course. Of course. 

Carrie: He doesn't have the queen's English, but it's more Posh.  

Tony: We had that in Australia too. There's a thing, not so much when I was at school, but perhaps a few years earlier when you were taught to speak the Queen's English. You were taught to speak like an English person in Australia, and certainly going back to the discrimination thing, all the news readers on television, anyone who hosted a TV show on Australian television, they all spoke in basically a British accent.  

Megan: Similar thing in Canada too until about the 50s, there was this dialect called Canadian dainty that was a mid-Atlantic dialect. Yeah. Christopher Palmer, that's his accent?   

Christopher: No, no, no, no, no, no. 

Woman 1: I'm told him a long time ago you were quite good. 

Christopher: Well, that was a very, very, very long time ago.

Woman 1: I remember father play something we know.  

Megan:  Okay, but it's not called that anymore.

Carrie:  Well, it's called that, but nobody has it except for  him . 

Megan: Oh, oh, okay, okay, okay. Well, apparently I can't tell what English accents. I just can't differentiate.  
 
Tony: Yeah, I got that a lot when I was in America, especially when I got out into... because I drove from LA to Normal, which is just south of Chicago for this Wallace conference, and so I went through Utah and Colorado and Wyoming and Iowa, so I was in all these out of the way places, and I find that the further away I got from the big cities, people just couldn't understand me. They couldn't understand my accent, and anyone who did thought I was  English or Canadian or South African.  

Carrie: Canadian? 

Tony: I know. I know.

Megan: South African I can understand, but not Canadian.  

Tony: Yeah. I got asked if I was Canadian several times. Yeah.  

Carrie: Wow. Okay.  Americans just need to be exposed to more accents.  

Tony: They need to listen to your podcast more, is what we should happen.  

Megan: Yeah. Although apparently it's not working for me.

Carrie: You just need to watch more Australian TV shows on TV apparent shows, English TV shows, etcetera, etcetera.

Megan: Oh, well, the flight of the Concords do, I would have a hard time between them and Australian, I think. 

Carrie: Oh, really? To me they sound quite different, but I think it's just because I've had more exposure than you have.   

Tony: There's not much variation in the Australian accent between places. I'm from Melbourne, if you've had someone from Sydney on the show or someone from Brisbane or Perth, you wouldn't actually notice that much difference in their accent, and that's pretty extraordinary when you think of the distances involved. Melbourne to Perth, it's probably the equivalent roughly of LA to New York.  

Mega: What? Wow, and there's no difference really. 

Carrie: Yeah. No discernible difference.  

Tony:  Yeah. Yeah. There's some really slight differences and some slight differences in usage that mainly between Melbourne and Sydney actually, but yeah. Yeah, sort of which are a lot closer. It's interesting, and then you think of somewhere  England where you've got Manchester, and then forty miles away you've got Liverpool and the differences in the accents are extraordinary. I had no clue what that's about.  

Carrie: I think it's immigration patterns, because it's  similar in North America, it's not quite as extreme, so Canada has a few regional dialects, but the big difference is urban, rural. That's really the big difference and at least for the white population, and in the United States there's definitely regional differences but not as extreme as the UK, and I think it's just because of the way we immigrated. There's a little bit more homogeny in each area.
  
Tony: Yeah. Yeah, and probably the same thing could be said for Australia, I guess.  

Carrie: Yeah, and maybe it was even more homogenous at the very beginning, I don't know. 

Tony: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It probably was. 

Carrie: There's this  really, bananas  analysis of why Australian English sounds the way it does, from some guy that I don't remember his name, but he claimed that it's because everyone was drunk back in the day, so Australian English is just drunk English . 

Tony: Yeah. I've heard that as well, it's not the craziest theory I've ever heard. To be honest Australians do like to drink a lot. I'm not a drinker myself, but yeah I have been, and it is a big part of the culture here. I suppose lots of places to drink a lot.  

Megan: Oh yeah. It doesn't definitely has no... what do you call it? Monopoly on that and it was similar in the United States when it was first colonized by the English, there was a lot of drinking going on, so no that's not it.

Tony: Interestingly, it's up until very, very recently, it's never really been seen as a bad thing in Australia. It's actually been  people have been proud of it and I haven't done this, but I assume that if you Google a photo or if you type Bogan into Google images, you'll get a photo of someone in what we call a wife beater, which is the singlet. Missing a couple of front teeth, a mullet and holding probably a can of booze of some kind.

Megan: That's exactly what just happened.  

Tony: Right. Okay. Yep. Yep, so yeah it's definitely part of the culture here in ways that I don't think it is in a lot of other places, whether we actually drink more than other people, I'm not so sure.  
 
Megan: Maybe slightly more, but I don't think it's that much. Not enough to make your accent be different. 

Tony: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  

Megan: Oh my gosh, sorry, I just Googled Bogan and I'm seeing the flano and the mallet happening. 

Tony: You'll fit in here perfectly now, Megan, you can say flano. You now what flano is.

Megan: I love wearing a flannel shirt. 

Tony: Do you? 

Megan: Yes, I do.

Carrie: She does, she wears them a lot. I was going to ask this earlier, and I thought maybe I'm wrong, but their images just came up in my search, so are Kath&Kim Bogan? 

Tony: Yes. Yeah, definitely. 

Carrie: Oh. Awesome. That was my guess, but I wasn't sure.   

Tony:  Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps a slight variation I think in that Kath & Kim perhaps don't think they're Bogans. They actually  aspire to greater things with their tacky furniture and their Daewoo cars and what have you, but no they definitely are. Definitely are.  

Cathy:  Kimmy Kimmy, look at me please. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Now I've got one word to say to you, Kim, go back to Brett Toots week. Get real. You'll never do any better.  

Tony: There's a great story about Kath&Kim, a friend of mine, worked at the ABC and she got a job on Kath&Kim doing some production stuff, and they were out at a shopping center in the outer suburbs, a big mall. They were filming, so they were filming these scenes from Kath&Kim out in the Bogan heartland naturally, because that's where it set, and people were walking by and going, "Oh, what are you filming, and they said, "Oh, Kath&Kim." And everyone was, "What's that?"

Nobody knew about it. Kath&Kim is very much inner city people laughing at Bogans. Like we were talking about before. This was early in the production run, so it may have changed a bit now, but I think it's interesting that there wasn't a  sense of reflection by Bogans when a show like Kath&Kim came out, it was very much as I said an inner city thing made for inner city people, sipping their Chardonnay and laughing that poor Bogans  

Megan: I did wonder about that because, for example Kath, I think it was Kath or no, Kim. One of them would always call Chardonnay, Chardonnay, so it felt like maybe they were mocking rather than reflecting their own, so anyways. 

Tony: Totally.

Megan: It's good to know.  

Kelly: I'm still waiting for my Chardonnay.

Kim: I think you mean Chardonnay? No, Kelly it's French, the H is silent. 

Kelly: No, it's Chardonnay Kim. 

Man 4: It is Chardonnay Kim.

Kim: Yeah. No, Chardonnay. Chardonnay. Chardonnay. Your pack of shunts.  

Tony: Totally, and the 2 women, Gina Riley and I can't remember the other one's name, but the 2 women who play Catherine Kim are, not lower working class people. They are  very well off highly educated people, so I know that a lot of my  Bogan friends have problems with that, that idea of inauthenticity if you like. That's a very  common theme I think amongst us Bogans that yeah we are Bogans and we are ridiculous and we get that, and yeah make fun of us all you like.

Humor is such an important part of the Australian psyche, especially having a laugh at yourself, very, very huge part of larrikinism, Boganism, what have you, but when it's someone who isn't from your tribe doing it, it's a whole different kettle of fish.  

Megan: Absolutely. 

Tony: Yeah, and of course they made an American version of Catherine Kim. With American actors set in America?  

Carrie: I think they were going to, but if they did, it didn't make any splash.  

Tony: No, no. I'm pretty sure they did it fail pretty badly, but it will be interesting to see how that Boganism was characterized for an American audience, were they just made out to be white trash.

Man 3: What do you do?  

Woman 2:   I'm a trophy wife.  
  
Megan: Anyway, it does exist. They did at least make a promo for it. Well, I learned something today for sure. 

Carrie: I know. I feel I'm going out into the world more knowledgeable. 

Megan: Definitely.

Carrie: That's literally true. 

Tony: Or more Bogan.  

Carrie: More Bogan.

Megan: All right, well, is there anything? One last message you'd  to leave our listeners?  
 
Tony: Going back to the thing of the lack of discrimination I've experienced in being a Bogan in academia. I think it's probably important to acknowledge the Australian notion of what we call the fair go. This idea that that anybody regardless of their background should be able to be heard. It's a really beautiful thing. It's a pity it doesn't extend to indigenous people or women in most cases, but yeah, and it's really only exclusively for straight white males, but it is nonetheless a beautiful thing. 

It's the American idea of freedom. When I was there I noticed  how seriously people take this notion of freedom, and you've got  a history of slavery to as a sort of counter narrative to that  problematizes that, and here in Australia we've got a history of almost genocide of indigenous people that really problematizes the idea of the fair go, but it's something that I think needs to be continually reaffirmed and thought about, and it does exist and it is a really noble idea if we could just extend it to... we've extended it to a Bogan like me, and if I can teach in a university in, Melbourne, then surely anybody can, so yeah. 

I just think that's really important to continue to think about.  

Megan: Yeah. That's really cool. Thank you. 

Tony: Cool. No worries.

Megan: How would you say don't be an asshole? What is your most Bogan way of saying it? .  

Tony: Oh yeah. Okay. I'm really glad you asked this because I did want to say this. All right here we go. Mate don't come the fucking raw prawn with me all right? I don't know, I have no idea where that comes from. Don't come the raw prawn. I assume a raw prawn is you throw the prawns on the barbecue, and one doesn't cook properly, and you get the raw one, it's a really bad thing, but don't become a raw prawn. I don't know, but it's just so, so cool, isn't it? 

Carrie: Yeah. I love it. 

Tony: Don't come the raw prom with me, mate.  

Carrie: So evocative.

Tony: Words to live by.

Carrie: Words to live by. Yes. 

Megan: It really is. That is the golden rule, isn't it not?

Tony: Yep. 

Carrie: Wow. Oh, thank you so much Tony. It's great talking with you. 

Megan: Yeah, thank you.

Tony:  No worries. 

Megan: Thank you Tons.

Tony: Thanks Megs, Caz. 

Carrie: All right, don't be an asshole. 

Megan: Don't be an asshole. Bye.

Carrie:  The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon for Halftone Audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at vocal fries pod. You can email us at [email protected] and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

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