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
