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Critical Discourse Analysis of Street Naming Practices in Bunbury, Western Australia

This thesis deals with street naming practices in Bunbury, Western Australia. More specifically, Bunbury’s street name discourse has been analysed within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis in order to illuminate its relationship with the societal power structures that have been shaped by the town’s colonial history. To do so, we used a corpus of 593 street names whose origins and meanings are detailed in Bunbury’s street name register, provided by the town’s council. The results of our research reveal that a layer of European street names has been imposed upon the land, while the indigenous Noongar people have been denied representation. Such homogenous names introduce a Eurocentric version of history into the public discourse, serving as a means of its validation and an aid for the maintenance of existing power structures. As a vehicle for public commemoration, street names have been utilised to subjugate and marginalize the Noongar community, while the imperialist demand for the establishment of a European society prevailed.

Critical Discourse Analysis ; colonial street names ; Australia

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