The more we poke around in matters linguistic, the more it seems apt to invoke the metaphor of Russian dolls – the further in you go, the more you find replicas in miniature. While the metaphor should not be pushed too far, we might think of language as our biggest Russian doll. Inside her we find the English language, and inside her a particular regional dialect; for example, Australian English. Going further in, we will find sociolects (ways of speaking marked by socioeconomic class), genderlects (ways of speaking marked by gender) and ethnolects (ways of speaking marked by the coexistence of a different mother tongue). Still further in, we will find that venues come with their own subsets of language codes. By a venue, I mean a particular combination of circumstances: place (where), people (who), topic (what) and mode (whether, for example, the language is spoken or written). A wedding venue, for example, is partly about a formal public event participated in and witnessed by family and friends. Likewise, the talk that engages dog-owners in a neighbourhood park is shaped by its own rules of where, who, what and how. This chapter contains ten such venue-based sections that explore the language characteristics of their particular circumstances.

Permanent fatal error

My screen is frozen.

With no warning, up pops a message from the dark depths of that place where messages live before they pop up.