Being representative? Standardisation of the spoken word in Australian and British Hansard

Parliamentary Hansard records are texts that stand at an intersection between the representation of spoken discourse and the application of standardised written norms. While they are categorised as ‘verbatim’ accounts of what is said during parliamentary proceedings, they are also edited, official government publications, and are therefore likely to represent a normative, formalised version of the language that was used. Add to this the factors of changing standards over time, different varieties of English and evolving reporting methods, and they become a valuable historical record for charting shifting attitudes towards language prescription. This chapter analyses data from Australian and British Hansard, from 1901 to the present, to assess the degree to which prescriptive practices have been applied to the originally spoken text. It looks at language features that have been identified as being indicative of spoken or written style. These include use of contractions, split infinitives and singular agreement with plural nouns. The data show generally more acceptance of the informal option in Australia in recent times, but also in the early part of the twentieth century.