<i>Freakin’ Swimming and Everythink</i> : School Practices and Variable (ING) in an Australian Indigenous Boarding School

ABSTRACT This original sociolinguistic ethnographic study examines social practices and (ING) variation in Aboriginal English, an indigenized variety of English spoken by First Nations people in Australia. Based on 42 hours of audio recordings and ethnographic data with 31 girls at a predominantly First Nations boarding school in the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, we find higher rates but similar linguistic conditioning of [ɪn] compared to other Englishes in Australia. Additionally, a third variant [ɪŋk] emerges as an iconic affective resource. We also explore the indexicalities of (ING) variants. Our analysis reveals that (ING) use reflects group orientation towards or against school norms and is mediated by access to other languages as identity markers. [ɪŋk] serves an independent function as an iconic resource for emphasis or to signal high emotion.