World Englishes Flashcards
Different discourses- Experiential
Experiential – discourse based on a person’s observations or experience.
Different discourses- expressive
Expressive – discourse that centres around generating ideas
Different discourses- relational
Relational – discourse which addresses how one thing is logically linked to another e.g. vocal fry linked to perception of women as inferior.
Journalist Matthew Engel
“Nowadays, people have no idea where American ends and English begins. And that’s a disaster for our national
self-esteem. We are in danger of subordinating our language to someone else’s – and with it large aspects of British life.”
Something against English as a lingua Franca
If people ‘have’ to communicate in English when it is not their native language, how might they feel about this?
Jennifer Jenkins(2002) Lingua Franca Core
A Lingua Francais: a language that is adopted as a common language between
speakers whose native languages are different.
• Many learners of English do not want/need to use English with people whose first language (L1) is English.
• They are more likely to use English insituations where nobody shares an L1.
• Forexample:AnativeFrench,JapaneseandArabicspeakermightuseEnglishto
communicate.
• If this is the case, what impact might this have on the English language?
Why might people want to learn English in the 21st Century?
➢English is the official language (essentially the language of the government, law, media and education) in 67 sovereign states and 27 non-sovereign entities, the majority of which are former territories of the British Empire
➢English is the language of science, of aviation, computers, diplomacy, and tourism. Knowing English increases your chances of getting a good job in a multinational company within your home country or of finding work abroad.
➢English is a second or third language in a countless number of countries ▪One out of five people can speak or at least understand English
➢Certain varieties of English are considered superior in a range of international contexts
▪In countries such as India, English is a nativised language that performs institutional functions. Some people think that around 90% of the language spoken today may be lost by the end of the century – the rise of English is contributing to this.
Evaluate the idea that the growth of English was inevitable
The key to this question is to understand and accept that English has grown – so there must have been some inevitability.
You just have to consider the information you have and decide where it fits on the ‘inevitability spectrum’
E.g. Did the failure of Esperanto make the growth of English inevitable to a greater or lesser extent?
Example para for growth of Eng inevitability
The significance of the British Empire would seem to be the major contributing factor in support of the statement as it seems inevitable that a ruling nation would effectively ‘put their stamp’ on countries they were ruling. However the process is not as fluid as being able to insist everyone speak a certain way – Esperanto being, in a way, an example of such a failure.
Michael Rosen attributes the downfall, and subsequent uprising of English
a rise in ‘national cultures’ – a movement away from church and religion, which, combined with the power of the British Empire was a major reason for its surge in popularity
English is NOT the most widely spoken language in the world…
Currently,
• Mandarin is spoken as a native language by over 800 million speakers • Spanish by over 400 million
• English by 300 million
English is used as a first, second or foreign language by approximately
two million people worldwide
A global stage
Technology has contributed to the status of English globally- we expect a lot of communication on the web to be in English
• English is the language of science, business and air traffic control- indicates it’s a necessary language for international communication
A global stage- migration
Migration and exploration e.g. America in 17th century, Australia ‘discovery’ in 1770 and settlement in 19th century, colonisation (India, Caribbean, Africa, Far East). English remains in previous countries of the Empire due to social, political and economic power.
Strevens’ world map of English (1980)
This model illustrates not only the dominance of English, but also the separation of British English and American English. Strevens’ 1980 model separated all English varieties into having either British or American standards as their root, with American English accounting for Canada, the US, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and British English accounting for the rest of the world. an effective historical overview of the development of globalized English.
Limitations to Strevens
e major weakness of constructing a model from a map is that it is unable to take into account the English varieties that developed through contact with local vernaculars without direct relation to either British or American Standard English. is would include the recently much-discussed China English. Ethnocentric?
Manfred Görlach’s 1988 (1990)
was organized with greater depth than McArthur’s wheel, placing varieties in a series of expanding rings, fi rst with regional and national semi-standards, and fi nally creoles and non-standards. Much like with McArthur’s 1987 wheel, the further from the center the less mutually intelligible the variety and the more highly contextualized its use would be.
Limitation to Manfred Görlach’s and Streven’s map- Crystal
The models of McArthur and Görlach were organized by having the hub represent a “world standard” of English, with the different varieties of language expanding out from this center. As discussed by Crystal (1997), an enviable advantage of English is its lack of a standard variety decided by a “school” or “academy”
Rather than a binary root like Strevens’, McArthur’s model
McArthur’s model had eight categories of va-riety all arranged around the hub. In this sense, the model intimated a need for a standard without suggesting where it should come from. e model made no suggestion of which variety was valued over others, only that one may supersede another in terms of intelligi-bility.
McArthur and Görlach’s model strengths
in both wheel models (McArthur’s and Görlach’s), British Standard English is placed at the same distance from the center as South Asian or East Asian Stan-dardizing English; each recognizable standard is given the same relative value as the others. This protected these models from the criticism of being biased toward native speakers that has been leveled at later models, as they separated each section into a geographic region that assigned no increased value by its position
Braj Kachru’s “Three Circles” model (1985)
. intended as a descriptive model to illustrate the diasporas of the language. described the move-ment of English from a small number of donor countries, which were in this model. Known as the “Inner Circle,” moving to the former colonies, known as the “Outer Circle,” and fi nally to countries where English has no offi cial function, known as the “Expand-ing Circle” (1985: 12). Unlike the “wheels,” Kachru’s circle model did not have a world standard English at its center.
Park and Wee (2009)- Limitations of the Three Circle’s Model 1
consid-ered three issues relating to the modern use of English that the ree Circles model, as applied in current research, does not adequately encapsulate. First, the model classifi es users by country, thereby appearing to assign all users of English in a country the same variety and proficiency- the model does not account for individual users’ actual ability in the language.
Park and Wee 2
The second criticism is that the three Circles in the model only account for three main categories of historical contact with English, and are therefore limited in their ability to represent the roots of English variety.
Park and Wee 3
The fi nal criti-cism is that there are sub-varieties of English that cannot be accounted for by the model, such as performance blends like “raplish” (Pennycook 2003: 528) in Singapore and Japan, K-Pop in Korea (Lee 2004). such blends are active demonstrations of hybridization and development of local variety.
Kachru Norm dependent
Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Vietnam
Brazil, Sweden, Zambia, Iran
Norm developing
Malaysia, Philippines
Norm providing
Britain, USA, Australia, New Zealand,
India, Singapore
Yano’s 2001 cylinder model (Figure 4) added a third dimension.
The head of each variety’s cylinder would be the point at which that variety was mutually intelligible to all other users of English, and therefore unaff ected by context. a third dimension added by Yano’s cylindrical representation of varietal comprehensibility
Yano limits
such a combination does not completely take into account individual users’ ability, only the variety in its context. In order for user orientation to be modeled, the in-clusion of an additional element and a fi nal dimension is required. Individual users’ abili-ties relative to each other and the value that they personally put on varieties, both of which can change over time, are the fi nal stages to complete our hypothetical hybrid model
Yano extra info
hybrid/cylinder model - 3D
acrolect = most prestigious dialect or variety of a particular language
mesolect = in between basilect and acrolect
basilect = least prestigious dialect or variety of a particular language
Head unaffected by context and understood by all users of English
Top-facing surfaces of each cylinder then grouped together to form single faces that represent different varieties of English
Combines geography, comprehension and competency
Edgar Schneider - Postcolonial Dynamic Model (2003)
language evolves as a process of competition and selection and this is how certain linguistic features emerge
history determines the variety of English used
contact with multilingual/bilingual speakers influences the strength of English
social factors - linguistic identities maintained
Five stages of evolution Schneider
Foundation Exonormative Nativism Endonormative stabilisation Differentiation
What happens in the foundation stage of Schneider’s model?
Language enters a new territory
What happens in the Exonormative stabilisation stage of Schneider’s model?
Language use begins
What happens in the nativism stage of Schneider’s model?
Old and new language become more closely linked
What happens in the endonormative stage of Schneider’s model?
More independence, own norms and standards are established
What happens in the differentiation stage of Schneider’s model?
The new variety of language develops its own regional and social differences
Give 3 benefits to Schneider’s dynamic model:
- It considers the language users’ own experiences, not just geographical regions
- Clearly spilt up so it’s easy to follow
- It takes into account how a language adapts itself
Give 4 drawbacks to Schneider’s dynamic model:
- Only looks at post-colonial countries
- Doesn’t consider how these countries can influence other englishes
- Has no sense of overlap - English doesn’t happen in divided stages
- It finishes too early
What does Schneider’s dynamic model illustrate?
How the histories and ecologies will determine language structures in the different varieties of English, and how linguistic and social identities are maintained
Five underlying principles underscore the Dynamic Model: 1
The closer the contact, or higher the degree of bilingualism or multilingualism in a community, the stronger the effects of contact.
Dynamic Model 2
The structural effects of language contact depends on social conditions. Therefore, history will play an important part.
Principles for Dynamic Model 3
Contact-induced changes can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, from code-switching to code alternation to acquisition strategies.
Dynamic Model 4
Language evolution, and the emergence of contact-induced varieties, can be regarded as speakers making selections from a pool of linguistic variants made available to them.
5 Dynamic Model
Which features will be ultimately adopted depends on the complete “ecology” of the contact situation, including factors such as demography, social relationships, and surface similarities between languages etc
Ebonics- (African American
Vernacular
English)
drop is and are, and that both permit dropping
word initial d, b, and g in tense-aspect markers. phat ‘excellent’ and bling-bling
“glittery, expensive jewelry’. words like kitchen ‘the especially
kinky hair at the nape of one’s neck’ and ashy ‘the
whitish appearance of black skin when dry, as in
winter’. Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the
omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’
(pas”) and ‘hand’ (han), the pronunciation of the th in
“bath’ as t (bat) or f (ba), and the pronunciation of the
vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah,
rahd). Some Ebonics
pronunciations are more unique, for instance, drop-
ping b, d, or g at the beginning of auxiliary verbs like
‘don’t’ and ‘gonna’, yielding Ah ‘on know for “I don’t
know” and ama do it for “I’m going to do it.”
Ebonics
These distinctive Ebonics pronunciations are all sys-
tematic, the result of regular rules and restrictions;
they are not random “errors* -and this is equally true
of Ebonics grammar. For instance, Ebonics speakers
regularly produce sentences without present tense is
and are, as in “John trippin” or “They alright”. But
they don’t omit present tense am.
Why do some feel negative about Ebonics
regard it as a sign of
limited education or sophistication, as a legacy of slav-
ery or an impediment to socioeconomic mobility.
American poet Maya Angelou
who found the Oakland School Board’s 1996
Ebonics resolutions “very threatening”
language classification- Levi Strauss
That we all understand the world in terms of opposites, he theorised that this way of viewing the world was common to people across all cultures.
Two key terms Saphir Whorf
a) Linguistic determinism: the language we use to some extent determines the way in which we view and think about the world around us.
b) Linguistic relativity: people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently from one another.
Saphir Whorf
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis revolves around the idea that language has power and can control how you see the world. Language is a guide to your reality, structuring your thoughts. It provides the framework through which you make sense of the world.
Pidgin
is a language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but is a contact language. That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish to communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will enable them to do so. a grammatically simplified form of a language, typically English, Dutch, or Portuguese, some elements of which are taken from local languages, used for communication between people not sharing a common language.
BBC definition of Pidgin
The Oxford English Dictionary definition of Pidgin is: A language containing lexical and other features from two or more languages, characteristically with simplified grammar and a smaller vocabulary than the languages from which it is derived, used for communication between people not having a common language; a lingua franca.
Simply put, Pidgin English is a mixture of English and local languages which enables people who do not share a common language to communicate. It is widely spoken in Nigeria, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.
What is so special about Pidgin?
It’s quite fluid, it keeps changing all the time and it’s expressive as well,” says Bilkisu Labran, head of the new BBC language services for Nigeria.
Why might prescriptivists be against Pidgeon
Pidgin hardly follows standard grammatical rules e.g. I no no (I do not know)
Why might it be argued that Pidgin is unfairly treated
Although it is commonly spoken, Pidgin is not an official language anywhere in West Africa.
In many schools, children are disciplined if they are caught speaking Pidgin, rather than English.
How many people use pidgin
Nigeria is estimated to have between three and five million people who primarily use Pidgin in their day-to-day interactions. But it is said to be a second language to a much higher number of up to 75 million people in Nigeria alone - about half the population.
How did Pidgin originate?
West African Pidgin English, also called Guinea Coast Creole English, was a language of commerce spoken along the coast during the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th Centuries.
This allowed British slave merchants and local African traders to conduct business.
It later spread to other parts of the West African colonies, becoming a useful trade language among local ethnic groups who spoke different languages.
What is a Creole
a mother tongue formed from the contact of two languages
- starts off as a pidgin
- Native speakers, more complex and has stronger syntax and vocabulary
What are common grammatical characteristics of a pidgin language?
reduction of noun and pronoun particles to a much simpler form
- reduplication
- reduced structure and reduced vocabulary
Substrate Language
a language with lower prestige
based off of the dominant language
Superstrate language
a language with higher prestige
- dominant language
- spoken by people with more power and higher education level
Neocolonialism
When one country tries to take over another by forcing political economic and cultural views onto them
Diaspora
the dispersion of any people from their original homeland.
Covert Prestige
one that is generally perceived by the dominant culture group as being inferior but which compels its speakers to use it to show membership in an exclusive community.
ex: ‘street cred’: If you talk street, you may not be accepted by the power majority, but you earn respect among those who reject the values of that power majority.
