Ocker

The term "ocker" is used both as a noun and adjective for an Australian who speaks in Strine, a broad Australian accent, and acts in a rough and uncultivated manner.^[1] Richard Neville defined the ocker positively as being "about conviviality: comradeship with a touch of good-hearted sexism".^[2] However, the term is mostly understood to be pejorative compared to other terms, including larrikin, mate, cobber and bloke.^[3] In the 1980s, Carol Thatcher (daughter of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) was said to have been met with a hostile reception when she attempted to write a book comparing "ockers" with "poms".^[4] John Richard wrote that the "awful ocker" juxtaposed with the "loveable larrikin".^[5]

"The ocker" was in popular use in the 1970s and 1980s, although was seen by cultural commentators to have dissipated by the 1990s. However, a number of commentators observed the emergence of an ocker chic in which middle-class people, predominantly males, took on the style, accent, mannerisms and backstory of working-class people or other mythical "national types", including the ANZAC soldier and the stockman, but without the vulgarity of the ocker. The idea was first raised by Donald Horne and Max Harris in the mid-1970s but was not conceptualised until Diane Kirkby's work in the 2000s. The larrikin is the positive term used by people engaged in ocker chic to describe themselves or others and is seen in favourable contrast to the Bogan, which is thought of as being neither sophisticated nor reflective of Australian values.^[6]