ABSTRACT
The Australian accent is one of the clearest markers of Australianness. The Australian accent is uncontested as the dominant definition of Australianness, yet it is skewed towards working-class Australian values and ideology. The politics of Murphy’s theory of accents are clear enough, but that isn’t to say that Hawkespeak doesn’t exist as a significant political phenomenon. Cricket seems a more difficult sport in terms of which to show the presence of an Australian accent, since Australians ostensibly play by the same rules as every other nation. It is true that American interests own the company that produces Vegemite. No account of the Australian cultural accent is complete without mention of sport. As with other instances we have looked at, we have the puzzling phenomenon of something distinctively Australian whose uniqueness is hard to demonstrate. To show a contemporary use of this myth we will draw on an article published in the Australian on 26 April 1986.
