ABSTRACT
The train leaves Chatswood station. A woman in her early thirties sits down, talking on her mobile. ‘對對!’ (right right!), she affirms to her interlocutor. English is mixed in with her Mandarin Chinese: ‘Otherwise 我就覺得他就去找 someone better 好了, 是吧?’ (Otherwise, I feel like he can just go find someone better, right?). Other English words and phrases such as ‘weird’, ‘turn around’ and ‘you are right’ are interspersed through the predominantly Chinese conversation. Like Hurstville to the south (see Chapter 2) or Ashfield to the west, Chatswood is one of the growing new ‘Chinese suburbs’ of the city, where a range of linguistic resources, including English and varieties of Chinese, are deployed. These mobile resources – on a phone on a train to an interlocutor also presumably comfortable with these mixed resources – are common in the transport networks across the city.
