Questions Chapter 3 Flashcards
Explain what the following three events in the colonial context mean.
- colonisation
- political incorporation
- natioalist reaction
colonisation:
Central to the expansion ot the language. Process involving the establishment often by force, of communities of English seakers in territories around the world. The English communities positioned themselves in a relation of power to the indigenous or pre-existing populations of the territories in which they settled, while at the same time maintaining economic and cultural links with England.
The process of colonisation began in the 12th century within British Isles themselves, when English became main language of Celtic-speaking territories of Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Political incorporation (Angliederung): the colonised territory was brought under the central control of the English/British government.
Nationalist reaction :
Sometimes, but not always, led to independence. Nationalist reactions started to rise in many of the English colonies. Communities which had a distinct cultural identity started to emerge nationalist reactions.
Stage 1: Colonisation
1) What were the linguistic effects of colonisation within the British Isles?
The process of colonisation took different forms in different places.
The Germanic invasions established English in England but de Celtic languages continued to be widely spoken in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Motives for colonising these areas were political and religious and not a matter of one nation setting up a colony in another but subjugation of the population and the reinforcement of christianity.
Since English had been influenced by the Normans, Vikings and the Romans and now spread on the British Isles, the linguistic consequence was the introduction of varieties of English (along with other languages such as French and Flemish) into these territories.
Stage 2: Political incorporation
Explain:
a) What political incorporation involved.
Colonies developed and became of greater strategic importance to England and the government took greater responsibility for their administration.
The celtic terretories were the first to experience political incorpoation and later Wales, and Ireland, when it became the United Kingdom.
Many individuals from Ireland, Scotland and Wales played an active part in forming the British overseas empire.
Colonists were subject of the English monarch, economically dependent on and controlled by the mother country. The language usage of England remained a model.
Overseas it was a bit looser than within the British Isles.
After the nineteenth century the British government, rather than the various rtading companies assumed the administration of the colonies, creating the British Empire.
Then the issue of political incorporation had become complicated by nationalist reaction.
Political incorporation means that the administration of a country is brought under English control. English became the language of the state.
It involved economic and linguistic effects.
Stage 3: Nationalist reaction
Why did nationalist reactions develop in many colonies / former colonies?
Communities that feel they have a distinct cultural identity provides fertile ground for the emergence of nationalist reaction.
From the late eighteenth century onwards, different forms of nationalist activity characterised political life in many ot the colonised y the English. Language figured prominently in nationalist reaction: sometimes the precolonial language provided a focus for the assertion of a separatist identity.
Within the British Isles (Ireland, Scotland and Wales): nationalists feared for the survival of the Celtic languages. One consequenc was that they became taught languages, learnt by people who only knew English.
Overseas:
Nationalist reaction began with North America in 1776. Originally motivated by concerns over taxation and parliamentary representation, indipendence came.
Canada and Australia became dominion states, in order to prevent the same from happening.
There the nationalist reaction tended to take a cultural rather than political form.
With regard to colonialism, Schneider (2007) identifies five broad stages of historical development of new varieties of English in colonialism. For each one, explain why they are important in terms of developing new varieties of English.
a) foundation
a) foundation
English is brought to a territory, where it had not previously been spoken.
Indivenous community and settlers se themselves as distinct groups, and although there is some language contact, communication between the two is usually confined to certain members of the communities, either interpreters or those with high status.
10) In the development of new varieties of English, dialect levelling and internal variation played a role in shaping varieties that we are familiar with today. How do these relate to English? List some examples.
A) dialect levelling
B) internal variation
Many English-speaking settlers come from lowly social positions in Egnland but found themselves in a position of powere in relation to the original, precolonial population.
Ambivalent cultural and linguistic loyalities arise. The mixed demographic backgrounds and suggests that the varieties of English taken to the colonies were diverse and non-standard. When these people came together in colonies dialect levelling occured.
a) dialect levelling
Differences between speakers tended to become eroded and a more uniform variety emerged.
When political incorporation happend this model of a common standard English was reinforced by the high-status English speakers sent to the colonies.
National reaction could lead to promotion of a differend standard model by encouraging the identification and codification of English.
Example: USA had Brithish people with different backgrounds, Irish, Germans, start speaking English they start to adapt their English and from then on some internal variations starts to develope.
b) internal variation
This could happen in the final stage of Schneiders modell.
As colonies expanded and became more established different ares and groups usually develop tha sense of local cultural and linguistic identity.
The usage of language became internally varied.
This happend in India.
How do the following relate to English in North America? - Displacement - Internal differentiation Indigenous languages - Colonial lag - Noah Webster
Displacement (Verdrängung)
The establishment of English-Speaking colonies in North America at the beginning of the 17th century was the first decisive stage in the colonial expansion of England that made English an international language. English settlers were the first Europeans to set up colonies.
The influence of precolonial languages on American English is relatively slight. Mostly there were only some lexical borrowing such as “moose”. Also some place names are derived from Native American.
Internal differentiation
As English settlements in became more established, a tendency towards internal differentiation arose between the southern and the northern area. So emerged one of the major modern dialect boundries of the USA: that between the northern and southern speech. Southern American English has a number of distinctive features (y’all).
These local economies developed and conflicts of economic interests with England grew. When the territory became independent the distinct linguistic identity became a key issue when founding the new republic.
Indigenous languages
The influence of indigenous languages has been relatively slight. Only some place names and borrowings were included in the variety.
Colonial lag
It has sometimes been claimed that many of the differences between American and British English can be explained in terms of a colonial lag: the language of colonial settlers is more ‘conservative’ than that of the country they left. Thus, some features of American English, such as the widespread pronunciation of /r/ in words like cart and far might be attributed to the fact that /r/ in such words was generally pronounced in Elizabethan English. Although the speech of Londoners later became /r/-less, this was too late to influence the speech of those who had already left.
Noah Webster
In 1783, America wasn’t a colony anymore but wasn’t a nation either. Linguistic uniformity, as a mean to promote a unity, was the main goal of Noah Webster. That’s why he wrote the American Dictionary. Even if speech was diverse, linuistic uniformity could follow from the achievement of a distinctive visual identity though spelling, which could in turn influence the speech over the generations.
What is a national dictionary project? Provide some examples. What are the motives for launching them?
Producing a dictionary can be an influential way of validating the distingtive linuistic practises of a community and promoting the bond between a lanugage and a cultural or political identity.
A dictionary is often used to symbolise the distinct cultural identity of a community and thus has a political as well as a linguistic rationale (Gründe).
The dictionary produced by Webster is a prime example of the promotion of a disting cultural identity for political means.
One goal was to give the indipendent nation a language. Later he setteld on an American Dictionary of the English Language. But he wanted his dictionary as a meeans of distinuishing between British and American. He did this through attempts to reform the spelling system so that the American looke different from British.
His motivations were political and haded on the belief that a national language is a band of national union.
Similar arguements are in other national dictionary projects. FOr example the Astralian Macquire Dictionary, which sees itselfs as playing a key role in the process of nation building. Similar thins in Canada.
Where as Webster wanted to establish a national language by modifying the ortography of standard British English, later national dictionary project attempt to catalogue linguistic features that they feel are distinctive of their own culture.
- Pride / separation / show cultural or linguistic identity
What is English in North America today?
Theoretically the newcomers were to form that is called the melting pot of American society in which ethnic origin is subsumed by a common American citizenship; in practice new composite identities such as “Irish American and “Italian American” have been created.
Influences from other sources have produced further diversity in terms of other carieties,, such as the spoken by Spaning-speaking immigrants from Mexico, which is “Chicano English”.
Several varieties established such as Irish American or Italian American or the Spanish influence from Mexico or African-American English.
- Reflects historical events: civil war north south
- As well social markers of social identity
What is meant by the following terms?
- pidgins and creoles
- expanded pidgins
Pidgins :
The most extreme consequence of language contact.
Only the vocab appears to be English and the grammar is derived (abgeleitet) from elsewhere.
Pidgins:
New languages that come into being through language contact which occurs between speakers who need to develot means of communication (trading) but do not share a common language.
Pidgins have a smakll vocabulary and little grammatical compexity. Much vocabulary is taken from a specific lanugage and this is know as lexifer.
Difference to creole: Pidgins are languages without native speakers - that is they are learnt later in life by people who already have a first language. As pidgins passed to the children, it becomes to them a first language and a creole.
Creols
Some pidgins change into creols by means of a process whereby the language becomes a mainstay of everyday communication in the community and children are brought uf speaking it as their first language.
Some argue, that creoles and pidgins have developed in separate places in which Europeans and non-Europeans interacted differently. Trade colonies gave rise to pidgins. If European are there regularly in the initial stage of settlement it gave rise to creoles.
expanded pidgins
The distinction is not alway clear-cut. Languages can be pidgin and still be official language and seems to be creolised in urban ares. In this case expanded pidgin is applied to a variety which is used in various different domains (education and administration), hase some native speakers, but is not considered to have the status of a creole.
What is Camfranglais?
A mixed variety for communities of urban youth. Consits of English, French, Pidgin and indigenous language in Cameroon.
The linguistic situatio in Cameoon is comlicated by the fact that is history includes episodes of colonisation by a numer of European countries.
What is the driving force behing replacement?
Jamica
The oigins of slave trade belong to earlest stages of colonial activity in 1562. The fist slaves were brought from West Africa and sold them in the Caribbean, where John Hawkins filled his ships with goods and sailed back. It is not known what language they spoke.
Account for the development of Creoles in parts of the Caribbean, such as Jamaica.
It is not known what language the fist slaves spoke. It is possible that it was a pidgin what was used between Africans and Portugues for trading.
A trade controlled by the Portugues was from Africa to the Caribbean, which was colonised by the Spanish. They used their pidgin in dealing with African middle-men who traded slaves. But it seems that the Portugues-based pidgin was used widely enough to survive the attempts by the English and the Dutch to capture the slave trade.
Possibly Hawkin’s slaves substituted Spanish word for the Portuguese ones in their pidgin and thus created a Spanish-based pidgin.
But the lack of evidence makes it hard to keep track.
But evidence show that slaves came from several parts of Africa did not speak the same language.
It was even a policy of slave traders to bring people of different language background together in the ships to prevent rebellion.
Pidgin would have been the only form of communication an over generations African languages would habe been abandoned.
Slaves from different countries were brought together and they established several pidgins. Pidgin was the only form of communication available to slaves on the new plantations, and over the generations the African languages they spoke were abandoned. The pidgins needed extending and adapting to communicate properly as they had only been used for simple kinds of interaction and grammar would have been limited. The process of extension and adaptation is called creolisation.
Creolisation happened in many parts of the English-speaking Caribbean, including Jamaica.
- → Jamaican Creole (words from Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hindi, Chinese)
- Decreolisation: teaching of standard English.
- In many other parts of the Caribbean, use of creole is firmly linked to a sense of local identity.
See if you can explain to someone else why there is such a diverse range of English around the world.
Spread around the world trough colonisation and therefore language contact happend with indiginous community and within the English community itself.
There was already diversity before the colonial times.
- human interaction / influence from other languages (influence from the outside)
- influences from the inside
- environments
Is it true that the colonial period has an influence on current English language teaching practises?
Language education was reserved for the instruction of a small elite who would mostly fulfil key administrative roles for the governing of the colony.
English hast not been seen as something for the masses (in contraty to today). One reason for this was to remain safe.
Not so much theories and practises were developed in Britain but rather that the Empire became the crucial context of develompet of ELT, from where theories and practises were then imported into britain.
ELT was important to the developments that occurd in colonial context. Language teaching practises that werde developped then also had an important influence on the practisce and theories of today.
