The term bogan is Australian and New Zealand slang, usually pejorative or self-deprecating, for an individual who is recognised to be from a lower class background or someone whose limited education, speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour exemplifies such a background.[1]
In New South Wales, "westie" has a similar meaning; this term refers to people from Western Sydney.[2]
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The origin of the term bogan as a pejorative is unclear; both the Macquarie Dictionary and the Australian Oxford Dictionary cite the origin as unknown. Comparison might be made with the Scots Gaelic bòcan or the Manx buggane, mythological creatures with elements of mischief, nuisance or malice.
The Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC) included the word in its Australian dictionary project[3] in 1991, attributing the earliest known reference to a 1985 surfing magazine . The 1902 poem "City of Dreadful Thirst" by Australian poet Banjo Paterson makes reference to a "Bogan shower" as a term meaning "three raindrops and some dust". However this is clearly a reference to the dry region around the Bogan River in Central Western New South Wales.[4]
There are places in western New South Wales that contain bogan in their name — for example, Bogan Shire, the Bogan River and the rural village of Bogan Gate — but they are not regarded as the source of the term.[3]
According to anecdote, the term emerged in Melbourne's outer-Western and outer-Eastern suburbs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. as a non-pejorative term, used by fans of heavy metal and hard rock music to describe themselves, and was used almost interchangeably with "head-banger". Bogans typically wore "acid wash" jeans, ugg boots, and band t-shirts; had "mullet" style haircuts; and lived in the suburbs.
The term became widely known in the late 1980s when the teenage character Kylie Mole (played by Mary-Anne Fahey) in sketch comedy television series The Comedy Company frequently used the term to disparage anyone she disliked. The same program included a sketch about a magazine called "Bogue" (a parody of Vogue), which featured traditional bogans.
The term has been used in reference to people living in the Logan region in Queensland. The place name rhymes with bogan, and people of this region have been associated with the stereotype.[5]
Australian ska-punk band Area-7 achieved one of their biggest hits with the song "Nobody Likes A Bogan".
Bogan was deemed one of twenty Australian colloquialisms by the Microsoft Corporation to be most relevant to Australian users.[6] Residents of streets such as Bogan Place and Bogan Road have been moved to action by the negative connotations of their street names and lobbied to rename them.[7]
Certain types of clothing are stereotypically associated with bogans, including flannelette shirts, monkey hoodies, Stubbies shorts, ugg boots,[8] jeans and black leggings.[9] Vehicles such as Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon utes also have similar associations.[10] In the early 90's, long standing West Auckland punk band The Warners released their last album entitled Bogans Heroes on Widside Records.
The term bogan has been employed favourably to indicate being proudly un-fashionable or "rough around the edges". Radio station Triple J held a "National Bogan Day" on 28 June 2002, which they commemorated by playing music by bands such as Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Rose Tattoo and AC/DC.[11]
"CUB" or "cashed up bogan," was used by one marketing researcher in 2006 to describe people of a blue-collar background now earning a high salary and spending their earnings on expensive consumer items as a matter of conspicuous consumption. The media adduced tennis player Lleyton Hewitt and his actress wife, Bec Cartwright, as examples.[12] Subsequently, the Kaesler Winery, in the Barossa Valley, released a Shiraz wine under the name Bogan.
Mel Campbell argued in a 2006 article in the Sydney Morning Herald that bogan (including "cashed-up bogan") is a nebulous, personal concept that is frequently used in a process by which "we use the idea of the bogan to quarantine ideas of Australianness that alarm or discomfort us. It's a way of erecting imaginary cultural barriers between "us" and "them"." Campbell argues that though many people believe they know exactly what a bogan is and what their characteristics might be, there is no defined set of characteristics of a bogan: the speaker imagines the denoted person to be different from, and less cultured than, themselves. Campbell considered "cashed-up bogan" to be a "stupid term".[13] A similar argument is made by David Nichols, author of The Bogan Delusion (2011), who says that people have "created this creature that is a lesser human being to express their interclass hatred".[14]
Although the term 'bogan' is understood across Australia and New Zealand, certain regions have their own slang terms for the same group of people. These terms include:
The term "westie" or "westy" is not synonymous with bogan, although westies are often stereotyped as being bogans. "Westie" seems to predate bogan by some years,[2] and originated in Sydney in the 1970s, to refer to people from that city's western suburbs. As Sydney's western suburbs are predominantly working class blue collar areas, the term connotes a predominantly working class blue collar person - someone with little education, little intelligence, little taste, and very limited horizons. Someone whose idea of a good time is meat pies, beer, cigarettes and playing the poker machines at the local football club. "Westie" is now in wide use in many cities and towns across both Australia and New Zealand, where it especially refers to the denizens of West Auckland. In South Australia, "Hackham Westie" denotes a resident of the notorious Adelaide suburb Hackham West.
International:
Concepts: