Abstract
This chapter further documents the place of yous(e) in Australian English (AuE) by analyzing occurrences in Australian literature taken from the Macquarie Dictionary’s OzCorp. Firstly, we substantiate that in AuE yous(e) has developed a singular usage alongside the plural. Analysis of the reference in 308 tokens within our subcorpus of literature finds 40% clearly have a singular referent and that such forms occur in just over half of the texts. Secondly, we provide an analysis of its social evaluation as a stigmatized form by examining its utilization in the voices authors give to their characters. Focussing on texts with high use, we uncover yous(e) is linked both to particular ‘types’ and to certain fictional worlds/milieus. In both cases, the authors draw on understandings of it as Australian and working class, with recognition of its claimed Irish origins only (potentially) indirectly indexed.
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Notes
- 1.
Henceforth youse stands for either spelling.
- 2.
- 3.
Details for the works of literature cited can be found in Table 4.1.
- 4.
To support the occurrence, we note further that the first author has recently heard Happy birthday to youse, happy birthday to youse and Remember when youse ran off by yourself with one referent.
- 5.
- 6.
The Australian National Dictionary (Ramson 1988) also recognizes the use of youse as a possessive pronoun, giving two illustrative citations.
- 7.
As discussed in Sect. 4, the results for Jonah (Stone 1911) may need to be treated judiciously.
- 8.
Note that ain’t is not a feature of contemporary AuE.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Sue Butler and Alison Moore for generously providing the yous/youse citations from OzCorp and Clare McKenna for assiduously sourcing copies of many of the OzCorp texts.
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Mulder, J., Penry Williams, C. (2020). Here’s Looking at youse: Understanding the Place of yous(e) in Australian English. In: Allan, K. (eds) Dynamics of Language Changes. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6430-7_4
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