Teaching Context for Stage 4

One of the key components of understanding a text is consideration of its context. We can see this idea echoed over and over again in a range of material related to teaching English and literacy, consider:

• The NSW English K-10 Syllabus, which specifies in the Rationale for students to "examine the contexts of language to understand how meaning is shaped by a variety of social factors".
• Outcomes EN3-5B, EN4-3B, and EN5-3B across Stages 3, 4, and 5, which all mention a need for recognition of different language contexts.
• Content points in the syllabus, which take it a step further through requiring students to "develop and apply contextual" knowledge by describing and analysing the context of texts (EN4-3B). Or for students to "critically consider the ways in which meaning is shaped by context" (EN4-5C).
  
• The English Textual Concepts, which includes Context as one of the twelve concepts - specifying the way in which context changes meaning in the way we read things, the way texts are shaped by outside factors, and the way values can change over time.
  
• The Literacy Progressions, which map the need for contextual understanding of words in both the Understanding and Creating Texts sub-elements from Levels 5-10.
  

For NSW High School English we start with Stage 4, where context becomes an important factor in modifying meaning when writing, or when recognising the parameters of meaning while reading.

It's easy for English teachers to start looking at context by considering the cultural or personal factors of an author, or how texts are reinterpreted and adapted over time (think Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, or Clueless as an adaptation of Emma) but sometimes I find jumping straight into this can leave some students behind. It took me a couple of years of teaching before I realised that context wasn't something explicitly taught in Primary School English, at least certainly not to the extent that the metalanguage term of 'context' had become embedded in student thinking. I can say, "What's onomatopoeia?" to a Year 8 class and, without fail, students will start shouting things like "BANG!", "CRASH!", and "CRACKLE!" If I ask, "What's context?", I usually get blank looks from the same group.

A good starting point is to break the term down into four parts:

• Who wrote it and/or to what audience?
• When was it written?
• Where was it written?
• Why was it written?

I want to get students understanding the impact of these elements on a text and, as with learning vocabulary, it's more effective for students to do rather than copy. So the starting point is to consider a single sentence delivered identically in two very different contexts:

"Stop falling asleep"

Who: said to a student vs. to an airplane pilot.

When: in the daytime vs. during a flight.

Where: in a classroom vs. on a plane.

Why: they should be doing their work vs. they should be flying the plane!

Once students understand this, give them a series of sentences and have them devise their own contexts to go with each one. They should create two separate contexts per sentence with the challenge being that these contexts should be as different as possible. Once they've finished, discuss as a class and compare the responses students came up with, exploring the idea of just how much context can matter. Considering this for single sentences is the building block of considering larger extracts of text, to short stories or articles or films, to whole novels, to whole genres or literary movements. The advancement through the progression will depend on the sophistication of the student as they work their way through the stages and courses towards their final year in High School.

Here's a worksheet that lays out the above-described context activity for students to complete: Context Worksheet.

Extension English: Elective 3 - Reimagined Worlds

The Reimagined Worlds Elective features an eclectic range of text options, some of which are potentially the most 'out there' in the entire Year 12 Prescriptions list. That said, it also has a much narrower range of text types to select from - there are no non-fiction options, no plays, no short stories. Here is a quick breakdown of representation:

• 3 novels, 2 suites of poetry, 1 film.
  
• 4 male composers, 2 female composers.
• 4 texts written in English, 2 in other languages (Calvino's text was originally in Italian, del Toro's film is in Spanish)
• 1 Italian composer, 1 American, 2 English, 1 African-American, and 1 Mexican.
  
• Breakdown of eras: 1 text from the 1720s, 1 text from the 1790s, 2 texts from the 1970s, 1 text from the 2000s, and 1 text from the 2010s.
  

Prose Fiction Options

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller... by Italo Calvino
What is it: Ha! Where do I start with this one? One of the most slippery texts to pin down in the entire syllabus due to its extreme metatextuality, Calvino's novel features (checks book) no less than eleven separate narratives. The main narrative follows a reader who picks up a book in a bookstore, the reader (both the character and you) then read the opening chapter of a thriller novel but - just as it starts to get really good - a printing error breaks the spell and the reader is forced to return the book to the store. He picks up a new copy, meets another reader who has run into the same problem, and then goes home to read the new copy only to find it is a completely different book...

Scope for Study: The entire text, every sentence, every word, has a near-infinite scope for study. The first person and second person points of view play games with the reader - are we, the reader, also the reader in the novel? Questions like this will allow for discussions of metatextuality and reflexivity, the potential for postmodernism to break down all meaning beyond repair, and the way that each framing chapter works as a synecdoche for a different part of the reading process, EG. The role of the bookstore, the act of reading in the home, the act of reading as an academic activity, the act of reading from a publication standpoint, a translation standpoint, the writer's standpoint, a government's standpoint. And the constant starting of new narratives as deliberate disruptions designed to pull the responder out of the passivity of reading. And then there's the other characters in the framing narrative, each one symbolising a different kind of reader. There's a lot to unpack, even in a book that is constantly unpacking itself before out eyes.

NESA Annotations: Infuriatingly, there aren't any notes for this text in any of the last three annotation documents. It's a shame because I am intensely curious as to what would be the best approach in teaching If on a winter's night a traveller...

Verdict: Wow. What a mind-blowing, intellectually stimulating, exhausting, maddening read. I got a lot of this and I imagine it would be exponentially rewarding on a second, third, or fifteenth reading. But I don't know if I would want to teach it to students. It's suited to the Literary Worlds Common Module more than anything... I think I would want to see which students were in aclass and how their tastes and minds work before I tried to put this book in front of them. I think it could go either way, depending on the nature of your class.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

What is it: Genly Ai is in the second year of his diplomatic mission to the cold, inhabited planet of Winter, where he has worked slowly to establish contact with the king of one of the world's nations. Winter, like the other eighty-six known inhabited worlds, is populated by a human society who have long since forgotten their connection to Earth. It is Ai's goal to encourage the inhabitants of this world to join the Ekumen, a confederation of cooperating planets, but first he must gain an audience with one of their leaders. Ai's journey across Winter is not simple, however, as he finds himself fundamentally unable to fully grasp the nature of this alien society - a culture unique among all the worlds in that the people there are biologically androgynous.

Scope for Study: A perfect text for the Reimagined Worlds Elective in that it presents a literary world designed to challenge the way the reader thinks about gender and biological sex, especially the ways in which gendered identity can be constructed. Le Guin's work can be examined by students in terms of its use of the science fiction genre, the way it refracts through a prism of second-wave feminism, and the author's intensive world-building. Students will be able to analyse Le Guin's combination of a first-person perspective with an invented lexicon, in particular the way that it shifts from italicised usage, denoting unfamiliar words, to unitalicised, which reveals the enculturation of Ai. The use of first-person narration to reveal characterisation and to explore theme can also be examined, one example being the initial inability of Ai to trust some of the other characters.

NESA Annotations: You'll find annotations for The Left Hand of Darkness in the 2015-2020 Annotations document, from when the text was included as part of the Module A: Genre 'Science Fiction' Elective. The dot points help to contextualise Le Guin's classic as a 'landmark' for both the science fiction genre and modern feminist literature. Highlighted elements also include the interrelationship between the setting and the narrative, the use of multiple points of view, and the novel's 'anthropological and sociological' exploration of gender, sexuality, politics, pacifism, loyalty, sacrifice, mythology, and morality.

Verdict: A wonderful science fiction classic that manages to avoid many of the genre's cliches (laser battles, bug-eyed aliens, glitzy technology) whilst maturely examining complex ideas. Students may need to have some patience and an open mind when they start reading as Le Guin isn't one to weigh her text down with unnecessary exposition - in this case she prefers to start the novel in media res and let the reader's learning happen more gradually and gently. I think I'd love the chance to develop some resources for this text and would probably teach it if the opportunity arose.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

What is it: In the great age of British sail, one Lemuel Gulliver sets out travelling and is shipwrecked in lands hitherto unknown. He becomes caught up in the wars between the miniature Lilliputians and Blefuscudians and becomes a kind of pet in a land of giants known as Brobdingnag. Upon escaping these disproportionate realms, Gulliver visits Laputa, an island in the sky, and the Grand Academy of Lagado, where bizarre forms of research are being undertaken. In other lands he encounters immortals and ghosts and - finally - he spends time in the strangest land of all, the country of the Houyhnhnms, a nation of intelligent talking horses and devolved brutish humans.

Scope for Study: A strong understanding of Gulliver's Travels will need to be heavily framed by context. Coming at the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, when the intellectuals of Europe were increasingly gripped by a desire to know all that could be known, Swift's novel works as a satirical travelogue. Students should examine the historical, social, and political context of the times in order to better understand the objects of mockery that the narrative takes aim at. In many ways, Swift's novel can be viewed as ahead of its time - a humanist work that critiques the unkind nature of European society. Students will also be able increase their understanding of Swift's context through the way in which he represents his own world through the imaginary realms to which Gulliver travels.  

NESA Annotations: Annotations for Gulliver's Travels can be found in the 2015-2020 document, where it appears as part of the now retired Extension English Genre study. In these notes the focus is on the way the text functions as a comedy. Mention is made of the way in which Swift examines various aspects of human nature and how humour can be used as a tool for social criticism. Opportunities for challenging teaching and learning include: comparing the structure and language of the novel to modern-day comedies, the use of irony and parody, and the other genres this early text can be read as fitting into (science fiction, fantasy, early travel literature, the modern narrative novel, etc.)

Verdict: I love Gulliver's Travels. It's such a hugely influential work on so many texts that it's hard not to read it and join up the dots as you go. That said, it still stands on its own as an entertaining 18th century adventure full of wonder and sharp humour. It's a wonderful view into another time, and hopefully Extension students will appreciate Swift's lively imagination and ability to create a seemingly endless series of curiosities. 

Poetry Options

The Complete Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• The Eolian Harp
• Kubla Khan
• Christabel

What is it: Whilst only comprising of four texts, this suite of selected poetry includes two of the  longest poems to be found in the entire list of Prescribed Texts. Coleridge was instrumental in the popularising of the Romantic genre, with this poetry reimagining his world through a prism of belief in what he called 'One Life' - the idea that all humanity and nature is connected through a relationship with God. The poetry covers such disparate visions as fantastic fever dreams induced by opium ('Kubla Khan'), an unfinished proto-Gothic tale of a mysterious, supernatural woman ('Christabel'), an upcoming marriage as a catalyst for re-assessing one's connection with the world around them ('The Eolian Harp'), and a caution against the folly of man in violating the natural world ('The Rime of the Ancient Mariner').

Scope for Study: Students will need to make extensive consideration of Coleridge's context - his history of anxiety, depression, and drug addiction, and his role as a poet within the Romantic movement. Each of the individual poems will need to be looked at also in terms of how they fit within the poetry genres and subgenres of the era, with texts such as 'The Eolian Harp' figuring as part of a themed series created by Coleridge, 'Kubla Khan' attracting an 'outlier' status of sorts through virtue of its difference within Coleridge's body of work, and 'Christabel' eventually becoming known as one of the poet's greatest works despite its unfinished nature. Students will also benefit from examining the complicated rhyming schemes of the era, the way in which canonical responses to the poetry have been shaped through criticism over time, and Coleridge's choice to frame his thematic explorations through the use of symbolism or deliberately archaic language.

NESA Annotations: Like several of the older texts in the Prescriptions list, Coleridge is not featured in any of the annotations documents. The Wordsworth entry in the 2015-2020 Annotations features a few cursory mentions of the poet for his part in the growth of the Romantic genre.

Verdict: Coleridge is cool. I remember being a 16 year-old student studying him in Advanced English back in the 1990s and thinking, wow, this old guy smoked heroin and wrote massive poems about cursed albatrosses so Iron Maiden could turn them into epic metal songs... what a rock star! I guess I'm biased as Coleridge is one of the few poets I enjoyed reading back in high school but, that said, I get even more out of his work now that I'm an adult so I think this suite still has a lot of merit. It's placement within the Extension syllabus works fairly well as part of the Reimagined Worlds Elective.

Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith

• Sci-Fi
• My God, It's Full of Stars
• Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?
• The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
• The Universe as Primal Scream

What is it: Tracy K Smith's poetry defies easy definition... it explores so much; the legacy of a parent, the stars as metaphor for our need and/or inability to understand, the divisions and connections between each of us, and the future shape that humanity will take as a collective. It's hard to do justice to Smith's work in a summary (or any poet, for that matter) while trying to remain objective. There are some long poems that take a multiplicity of forms and tones on their journey from start to finish, and there are some shorter poems that are economic and precise.

Scope for Study: Students will be able to engage with Smith's poetry by drawing out the intertextual and philosophical connections prompted by each piece. Breaking each poem down into its component elements will allow for structural understanding and the identification of theme but, perhaps, it will be discussion afterwards as a group that provides a more rewarding experience for students. Smith is also a useful focal point for discussing the context of now, being that the poetry is both of our current times and also looks forward to the times that are yet to come.

NESA Annotations: As one of the newer texts on the syllabus, annotations for this suite can be found in the 2019-2023 version of the document. Attention is called to the diversity of form and tone found throughout the selected poetry. There is also, perhaps to the relief of many a teacher looking at teaching this text, an articulation of a potential synthesis behind the selected poetry - with the annotations connecting the five poems together as a body of work that 'addresses universal questions' regarding the meaning of life. There are some other useful pointers too, making these annotations particularly essential. 

Verdict: Sci-fi poetry! How could you not be interested in that? The problem with reading through all these texts for the Extension English electives is that it makes me want to teach more of them then I could ever possibly manage. I'd love to explore this poetry with a class of curious students. I think if I were to undertake the Reimagined Worlds Elective it would very difficult to narrow my choices down to just three texts.

Film Options

Pan's Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro
What is it: It is 1944, in the the dark days of post-Civil War Spain, and a young girl named Ofelia finds herself living with a new stepfather. This man, Vidal, is revealed to be a brutal fanatic in opposition to the rebels in the area who still fight on for freedom. Ofelia finds herself navigating a world increasingly filled with tragedy while she is simultaneously drawn into another, more fantastical world by a mythical faun. The Faun charges Ofelia with three magical quests, the reward for which will be immortality and passage to a magical kingdom, and the two worlds begin to bleed into one another.

Scope for Study: There's so much to get stuck into with this film in terms of director Guillermo del Toro's auteur status, with Pan's Labyrinth both functioning as an ongoing exploration of the fantasy and horror genres and as a serious artistic meditation on issues relating to Spanish history, nationalism, and identity politics. Students will be able to examine the use of dual narratives, advanced editing techniques, and the often devastating juxtaposition of reality and fantasy throughout the film. If paired with, say The Left Hand of Darkness, there is also suitable scope for the exploration of gender and the use of speculative fiction to examine divisions between the masculine and feminine.

NESA Annotations: Found in the latest version of the Annotations for the 2019-2023 syllabus. Space is given to the text's function as a parable, its exploration of fascism and the human condition in the face of hardship, and del Toro's highly textured allusions to fairytales. Identified challenges include the way the film fits and reflects the magical realism genre, and its use of allusion and intertextuality. 

Verdict: A wonderfully dark and evocative fantasy firmly grounded in a piece of history generally unknown to most people outside of Spain. I think this would be a rewarding film to teach, especially in connection to any of the other texts prescribed here - either as supporting material or a counterpoint. It's also the sort of film that will challenge students in a variety of welcome ways, be it the use of subtitles, its foreign context, or the adult treatment of the fantasy genre by one of its cinematic masters (I know this is off-topic, but if you're interested in this sort of thing then check out one of del Toro's earliest films, Cronos, for its unusual depiction of the vampire myth). Caution though - Pan's Labyrinth is rated MA15+ in Australia, which can be tricky in relation to the Code of Conduct and individual schooling contexts.

Literary Homelands Essay Response

I sat the Trial HSC Exam.

I'd seen other English teachers talk about doing this, and I'd done it earlier on in my career with Standard English to 'test' myself for reassurance, so the idea to undertake an Extension English 1 examination wasn't completely foreign to me. I won't lie and say it was a piece of cake; I have to admit that I felt kind of nervous walking into an examination with no notes to rely on and having to write a response legibly enough by hand.

I also feel nervous sharing my responses here on the blog... going into that big cold school hall and having to adhere to those time limits was surprisingly intimidating, but maybe the writing will be useful to someone's students. Hopefully.

Anyway, I wanted to do this for a few very important reasons.

1. There doesn't seem to be a textbook out there filled with Extension English 1 essay responses. I inquired about this with a publisher that I've previously contributed Standard and Advanced essays to and the response was, understandably, that the market was too small. I decided that starting to write my own essays might be the way to go about it.
2. I wanted an essay that was written in as close to student conditions as possible. I sometimes think that the 'Band 6' (or in the case of Extension, Band E4) responses provided by teachers (myself included) are slightly disingenuous as they often aren't written by hand, in timed conditions, or isolated from revision notes.
3. Understanding how the examination works feels like a really important thing that I should know. The only way for me to get a fair summation of this is to do it myself, otherwise I'd forever be an observer looking in.
4. I often feel like I shouldn't ask my students to do anything that I wouldn't do. I want to be able to perform well in exam scenarios... teaching students how to write essays for exams without being able to do it myself has made me feel in the past like I was missing something.
   

I was lucky this year as the examination had been set and finalised several terms ago so I was able to go into the examination without remembering what the questions were. As I said earlier, it was kind of nerve-wracking, and I found myself wandering around mumbling quotes to myself in the preceding days in an effort to memorise some appropriate textual evidence.

The Experience

In the past I've given my Extension students the advice that they should do their Elective essay first, and that they should devote 1 hour to each of the two papers. I tried to follow this advice and I was mostly successful, but here's what I learned:

• I ended up needing at least 70 minutes to write an essay with four properly supported body paragraphs.
  
• The Literary Worlds section, even with its two separate parts, only ended up taking me about 30 minutes. The more organic nature of imaginative writing meant that I wasn't constantly needing to stop and keep track of what I was doing in quite the same way that I needed to for an essay.
• I planned out my essay fairly carefully. This burnt up valuable time but it was entirely necessary to ensure that I didn't stray too far from the question or my thesis. I kept having to stop myself mid-paragraph to go back and check on the question, the thesis, and my plan - this is part of why this section took me so long.
• My planning involved quickly writing down my 12 quotes/textual examples, brainstorming a thesis statement of sorts, and then calling upon four different talking points that our study of Literary Homelands is built around in class. I then matched up each of the textual examples to each of the talking points before I started writing my response.
  
• In writing the Literary Worlds imaginative response I had to be careful to remember I was writing for the purpose of reflecting. To this end, I ensured that I consciously used a couple of techniques that I could discuss in reference to the way we had studied the module in class - this meant crafting a piece of writing that allowed for some implied discussion of reader-response theory, demonstrated how I had both mirrored and subverted the stimulus text, and indicated an understanding of the question that had been posed in the examination.
  
• Side Note: I was conscious of writing something that was of benefit to my current students, so I resisted writing too academically. That is to say, I wrote within the constraints of what I hope my students will be able to write. If I'm being honest and self-critical then I think that my elective essay may be too formulaic and that my imaginative piece could have leaned a bit more on the Joyce stimulus.
  

The best aspect of all of this is that I can now safely say I have a much better appreciation of what Extension students need to keep in mind while doing their exam. In concise terms: it's a lot.

The Exam Questions

The exam used is from the practise responses that can be easily found online at the NESA website. I wanted to try and make sure that the Trial HSC matched the HSC as much as possible, so I've relied on this exam for the first two times I've taught this course.

In light of this, if my students went looking for these practise papers and did them all in advance then they'd have a big advantage going into the trial exam. But, really, I think I'd be so overjoyed that they did this much preparation that I wouldn't mind them having this 'advantage' (I say 'advantage' but really, it's just assessment as learning). Suffice to say, I aim to write a new, original paper next time I teach the course - whenever that may be.

The Responses

Section 1, Part A

She sat outside watching the morning sun embrace her backyard. Eveline had never felt more awake than she did now.

This was a new world of action and desire and excitement and endless opportunities. Her memories of home were fading, in fact - 'home' was starting to disappear altogether. Home? But Australia was now home. That place in the past, Ireland, was something that happened to someone else. Not home.

"Mrs. Jones, when do you expect your husband will be arriving?"

It took a moment for Eveline to register that the butler was talking to her. She turned and caught his raised eyebrow before he re-composed himself.

"Oh, I don't know - he's always traveling. I shan't be surprised if you never get to see him."

The butler sniffed, clearly unimpressed. What did Eveline care? This was the other side of the world. If she wanted to say she was Mrs. Jones, that she had an ersatz husband off fighting wars or exploring jungles, that she was educated and upwardly mobile... If she wanted to say these things then how could this snooty, ridiculous butler challenge her? In Australia, she could be anything.

Yes. The morning sun was radiant as it glinted off the river over yonder, as it reflected off the greenhouse, and breathed life into everything it touched. Eveline? Who was Eveline? She was Sabrina Jones now. She must think of herself as Sabrina, not Eveline.

"Pass me that, would you, James?" she said in her best, most haughty voice.

The butler reluctantly gave it to her and she held it high in the sunlight.

Beautiful.

Let them try and take it away from Sabrina. Just let them try.

Section 1, Part B

In order to invite the reader into my continuation of Joyce's 'Eveline' I took the opening sentence of the writer's original text and mirrored its structure while subverting its intentions. Where Joyce wrote of the character looking out from an interior world through a window, I decided to place her outside to symbolise a difference in place. Where he wrote 'evening', I have used 'morning sun'. This is intended to suggest a new, positive beginning for the character through the use of pathetic fallacy, and Eveline is no longer 'tired' (as described in Joyce's opening lines) but now "had never felt more awake".

To give the impression of this being a more energetic setting and frame of mind for Eveline, I used polysyndeton, "action and desire and excitement and..." The character is clearly open to new possibilities now that she has left Ireland for Australia. A stream-of-consciousness approach is used in the second paragraph with fragmentary and truncated sentences, as well as rhetorical questions, to show the process whereby Eveline constructs a new identity for herself - Sabrina Jones. This acts as a symbol for the embracing of new opportunities.

Needing to generate a potential for conflict, I have made some suggestion that the butler is suspicious by having him ask after her "ersatz husband". The reader is encouraged to engage with further mystery through my choice to have the object at the end remain unnamed. By referring to it obliquely as just 'it' and using an enigmatic, one-word paragraph of "Beautiful" (which could refer to anything - the object, this new situation Eveline is in, the view of the backyard), I hope to unsettle the reader enough to provoke their own reader-response: a deliberate choice with no intended meaning at this point, as I want to convey how reader-response theory can work.

Download Section 1 Response.

Essay Plan

Section 2

Composers use their texts as a platform from which character voices are employed to illustrate the changing world. As a result of processes of modernity such as marginalisation, hybridisation, colonialism, and the instability of language, these characters become representative of the formation of complex identities that result from shifting homelands in the 20th and 21st centuries. The creation of these identities can be observed in texts such as Eileen Chong's suite of poetry, Burning Rice, the play The Secret River by Andrew Bovell, and Ding Xiaoqi's short story, 'The Angry Kettle', each of which provide a forum in which authors can explore the aforementioned ideas.

With the impact of diasporic migration, communities and individuals often find themselves marginalised within Australia's constantly changing society. Eileen Chong explores this idea in her homage to her Chinese ancestry, 'My Hakka Grandmother', with the line "Wild birds in search of a new place to call home" illustrating the lack of power inherent in migrating peoples. The Hakka people are a nomadic group lacking in a fixed homeland, as evidence by the use of the adjective 'wild' in a metaphor designed to evoke images of a group forced to 'fly' from place to place. The connotation of the word 'new' further conveys the idea that the persona's people have lost their previous homeland: they lack the security afforded by a fixed community. This process of disempowerment in similarly expressed in Xiaoqi's short story 'The Angry Kettle', wherein the Chinese protagonist faced with a symbol of white Australian dominance, the titular kettle, remarks that she "barely had the guts to look straight at it". This allusion to the kettle's power lends the object a sense of personification as if it were an intimidating force to be reckoned with - an item that symbolises historical English superiority in Australian society. The process of marginalisation that results from unequal relationships of power is further explored in Bovell's adaptation of 'The Secret River', in which the play's events reach an appalling climax whereby the increasingly dominant white settlers massacre the Dharug people while singing a song of home, 'London Bridge'. The contrast between the tragedy that befalls the Dharug and the image of grown men singing a song so well-known to children provides a tonal dissonance that illustrates the way British power has disrupted the natural balance of the Dharug people - a process of violence that pushes them to the margins of their own world, so to speak.

The ability of migrant identities to find a foothold in their new homeland may also inevitability lead to a process in which new, hybrid identities are formed. Against their best wishes, the people of the Dharug in 'The Secret River' find themselves subjected to the influence of their European invaders. This is perhaps best exemplified by the ex-convict Thornhill giving Ngalamalum the anglicised name of 'Jack'. Despite the insistence of his son Willy that the Dharug man's name is easy to pronounce with practice, Thornhill's self-assurance in his own culture results in his own choice of name being imposed on Ngalamalum, a metonym for the process of re-naming that has seen Aboriginal culture develop accordingly in times since. This process is explored in other ways by Chinese-Australian migrants too, with Chong's poem 'Chinese Ginseng' labelling the taste of the eponymous Chinese medicinal herb as 'bitter-sweet' - a paradoxical description that showcases her mixed emotions about the traditions of her mother and illustrates the complex ambiguity of being Chinese in the Western world. Conversely, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' resists the attempt of her housemate Michael to subsume her traditional identity completely. When Michael racistly asks her if Chinese people have to eat 'fried food' she hyperbolically retorts with a question of whether all Australians have to "treat their kettles like sweethearts," a simile that subverts his discriminatory question by turning it back on him. In considering each of these texts it becomes clear that the ongoing development of cultural identities is something that happens in connection to opposing identities that exist in the same space.

The creation of shared spaces is, in the case of Australia, a result of the 18th and 19th century practice of colonialism. In 'The Secret River', the settler Thornhill makes the claim that "dug-over dirt" is as "good as planting a flag." This simile references a belief that the British way of using land is the only true proof of ownership, and is used by Thornhill to discount the validity of Dharug pre-existence along the Hawkesbury River. This event is representative of larger historical events that impacted on Australia's Indigenous peoples and would have an ongoing ramification on their concept of identity in years to come. The violent impact of colonialism is also felt in more subtle ways, with Chong's persona in 'Burning Rice' sadly looking at her burnt rice and metaphorically describing it as "my ancestors' ashes in a bowl", an observation that illustrates the loss of connection to her previous homeland that has result from living in a nation still characterised by British cultural dominance. This dominance is also evident in 'The Angry Kettle', with the ever-present kitchen implement signifying the living spectre of British colonialism that still sits, 'shiny' and important, in the average Australian home. The narrator of this short story demonstrates this through the juxtaposition cause by her dirty 'fingerprint' on the gleaming kettle - an act that symbolises the intrusion of Asian identity into the homogenously white world that had grown from British colonisation of Australia. Each of these texts convey how composers use the voices and presence of these characters to explore the way identities change through experience.

The instability of language is another key component of literary texts that embody changing cultural identity. In Chong's poem, 'Winter Meeting', the persona describes a meeting with an older Chinese poet in Melbourne. As a suggested for her depression, Kim Booey Cheng tells the persona to read the famous traditional Chinese poets. She is, however, unable to, reflecting, "But where you go / I cannot follow... I lost the language years ago." This metaphor reveals the way in which a Chinese-Australian's changing command of Chinese language can affect one's sense of cultural connection. In contrast, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' is unable to grasp the finer nuances of Australian English, describing her housemates words as "pouring out", a verb choice that carries a connotation of natural force, of hot water from a kettle, of something that cannot be stopped so that understanding can be checked. It is at this point in the story that the reader first gets a sense that a division is appearing between the protagonist and her housemate, and it is a division created by a difference of language. The power of language is utilised in a different way by Andrew Bovell in 'The Secret River'. The Aboriginal characters speak in the Dharug dialect, which is used to allow the audience to experience the cultural barriers between the British and the Indigenous. At various points in the text there are moments of misunderstanding that result from Thornhill's ignorance of the language, and his unwillingness to learn it foreshadows that it is a language doomed to extinction.

Through examining 'The Angry Kettle', 'Burning Rice' and 'The Secret River', readers can get a sense of how cultural identity is fluidic, flexible process that happens in interaction the development of new 'homeland' spaces. Through a process of self experience, characters shift and resist and hybridise in the modern world, and authors present their voices so this can be better illustrated.

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