Tiny Words, Big Meanings: An Analysis of Diminutives in Australian and Global Englishes

This paper is a corpus-based, comparative study focusing on diminutive usage in Australian English (AusE) and six other English variants. The aim is to investigate Australian diminutives, compare their usage frequency between AusE and six other English variants, examine their collocates, and compare their frequency to the base form word. This study was conducted using the GloWbE corpus. Diminutives do not only imply smallness; they can also imply attitude, familiarity, intimacy, and/or colloquialization. Three diminutives, which are used in AusE, have been pre-selected by the author: brekkie/brekky, Aussie, and barbie. Moreover, the English language (and the AusE variety) uses the suffixes -ie/-y for nouns, among others, making them diminutives. AusE uses these suffixes far more often than the six other English variants investigated. The collocates that were found explain the meaning of the diminutives. The base form word is usually used more frequently than the diminutive. New Zealand English (NZE) also uses diminutives fairly, whereas American (AmE), Canadian (CanE), British (BrE), Irish (IE), and Indian English (IndE) use them seldomly.