ABSTRACT
In convict Sydney, insults and coarse language hurtled through the air. Amid the clash and clamour of forced labour and military discipline, the urgent whisper of gossip and the rising hum of commercial trade, words were wielded as weapons. Sometimes they slid harmlessly from a thick skin or an ear well accustomed to abuse. Sometimes they stuck like poisoned darts, or unleashed a furious, even violent response. Most hung on the air – peremptory, imperious, insolent, impudent or provoking – for a fleeting moment and then were lost forever. We can no longer hear these voiced insults, but from time to time insult led to dispute, and dispute ended up in a court of law. Transcripts of such cases, transmitted to the Colonial Office or reprinted in the press, capture the echoes of audible insult and transfer them into silent text. Reading those texts two centuries later, we may strain to hear reverberations of the emotion that weighted their utterance and stung sensitive auditors. By paying careful attention to the physical and emotional responses they elicited, we can glean a better understanding of how insults sounded at the time. Drawing upon scant surviving evidence of expression, intonation and response, this chapter attempts to restore some muted voices to the soundscape of the penal colony and to understand better both what people heard, and what they chose to hear.
