Gender and Language Contact Research in the Australian Context

Abstract

The focus of this paper is a (re)consideration of explanations and (re)presentation of second-generation bilingual women and their discourses of identities, language choice and language maintenance in Australia in the light of new directions for gender in language contact research. Here we present a (re)view of the value, roles and directions of past and present research about gender and language contact as well as provide an example for future directions through an examination of the emergent discourses of identity of a young Australian-born woman of Greek parentage living in Melbourne.