British Audiences, Australian Aboriginal English Dialogue: An Audience Reception Study.

In a globalised world, ficti onal audiovisual texts are a key mediator of linguisti c ideologies across physical, social, and cultural boundaries. To understand how such audiovisual products represent identi ty and diversity, it is crucial to consider the relati onship between the representati ons and how audiences receive them. The vast majority of audience recepti on studies in linguisti cs focus on dubbed (overview in Di Giovanni 2018) and/or subti tled (e.g., overview in Nikolić 2018) audiovisual texts. With no prior work undertaken on how audiences from English speaking countries receive dialogue from 'non-standard' English varieti es found in other countries, this novel study is an initi al investi gati on into how representati ons of English varieti es are received by unfamiliar audiences, with focus on Briti sh Audiences and (Australian) Aboriginal English (AbE). AbE is a cover term for varieti es of English spoken by "80% of Indigenous Australians" (Rodriguez Louro/Collard 2021b). Representati ons of AbE in ficti onal audiovisual texts have become more frequent and prominent in the past years (Bednarek 2023: 134), and several of these texts have been exported to the UK. Drawing on data collected from a questi onnaire and focussing on lexical representati on in the programmes Mystery Road, The Heights, and The Warriors, this arti cle analyses the comprehension and interpretati on of AbE by Briti sh Audiences with an eye to understanding the indexicality of telecinemati c discourse from a transnati onal perspecti ve. Results indicate a lack of familiarity of such audiences with 'non-standard' English varieti es and identi fy the various associati ons viewers have with AbE lexis, with subsequent impacts on representati on and characterisati on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]