Australian culture and Australian English: a response to William Ramson

In addition to responding to a polemic from Ramson, this paper seeks to address the issue of Australian culture and its relation to Australian English. Ramson seems to deny the existence of any Australian culture and identity, and of any significant links between culture and language (hence his dismissive attitude to the great pioneer in the study of Australian English and "national character", Sidney Baker). This paper defends the notion of Australian culture, and shows how modern semantics can help to analyze it in accurate and revealing ways. It also demonstrates the links between modern semantics and modern lexicography, and the need to go beyond the nineteenth-century methodology of James Murray.