AustLit

Author's note :

Linguistic footnote

During Julia Gillard’s time as prime minister of Australia, her political vocabulary was a rich source of neologism. ‘High dungeon’ and ‘Taliband’ were both of her coinage. ‘Tenant’ for ‘tenet’ was also one of hers. She was not the first to discover the usefully suggestive pronunciation ‘hyperbowl’ for ‘hyperbole’, but she was among the first to use it in parliament, and certainly the very first ever to deploy it while occupying the office of prime minister – a demeaning position into which she was forced by the typically Australian misogynistic males of the Labor Party caucus. The use of ‘fuselage’ for ‘fusillade’ was a contribution from Kevin Rudd, but I have given it to Gillard on the assumption that she would have thought of it eventually. ‘Behalves’ is my own discovery and might prove useful: through barbarisms, our language is often changed for the better.