World Englishes Flashcards
1
Q
Braj Kachru (1992): Circle Model
A
- Inner circle: English as it firt took shape. English as a primary language (UK, Australia, USA etc.) 380 million speakers worldwide.
- Outer circle: English as a lingua franca. Usuallly established through colonisation (the British Empire etc.) 150 million to 300 million speakers worldwide.
- The Expanding circle: English plays no role in day to day life but is used as a medium of international communication. Seen in countries like Russia and Japan. Estimated 100 million - a billion speakers.
2
Q
Schneider’s Dynamic Model (2007)
F,EXS,N,END,D
A
- Edgar Schneider’s dynamic model of postcolonial Englishes adopts an evolutionary perspective emphasizing language ecologies.
- It shows how language evolves as a process of ‘competition-and-selection’, and how certain linguistic features emerge.
- The Dynamic Model illustrates 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: [2]
1. The closer the contact, or higher the degree of bilingualism or multilingualism in a community, the stronger the effects of contact.
2. The structural effects of language contact depends on social conditions. Therefore, history will play an important part.
3. Contact-induced changes can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, from code-switching to code alternation to acquisition strategies.
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. 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.
The Dynamic Model outlines five major stages of the evolution of world Englishes. These stages will take into account the perspectives from the two major parties of agents –settlers (STL) and indigenous residents (IDG). Each phase is defined by four parameters:[2]
1. Extralinguistic factors (e.g. historical events)
2. Characteristic identity constructions for both parties
3. Sociolinguistic determinants of contact setting
4. Structural effects that emerge
3
Q
Jennifer Jenkins - English as a Lingua Franca (2006)
A
- The concept of ELF (English as a lingua franca) is simple: many learners of English today do not want/need to use English with people whose first language is English. They are more likely to use English in situations where nobody shares a L1. (e.g. a native speaker of French, a native speaker of Japanese and a native speaker of Arabic might use English to communicate with each other).
4
Q
Pidgins and creoles
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- When people speaking two different languages have to communicate, two things happen. First a basic language (pidgin) develops, with simple grammar and limited vocabulary. Second, a generation later, ths simplified language gains the normal complexity of every human language and then becomes a creole language.
- As more and more contact with the dominant European community becomes inevitable, these pidgin languages developed and became drawn towards the European language , though never becoming identical with it because of the influence of original African languages and dialects .
- The processs of development is known as creolisation and the languages that developinto the mother tounges are known as creoles.
- The creole language spoken by Afro-Caribbean’s is sometimes called patois even when people who were born in Britian and whose parents were born in Britain speak them. Many creole-speakig people in Britain today can switch readily between Patois and other varieties of English.
5
Q
McArthur: Circles of World Standard English (1980s)
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6
Q
David Crystal (2001)
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- Contemporary English uses words borrowed from over 120 languages.
7
Q
Joanna Ptzedlacka’s Study of “Estuary” Vowel fronting, Glottaling & ‘L’ - Vocalisation
A
- Between 1997and 1999, Dr. Przedlacka
studied the sociophonetics of what she calls “a putative variety of Southern British English, popularly known as Estuary English.” - In fieldwork in four of the Home Counties (Buckinghamshire, Kent, Essex and Surrey) she studied fourteen sociophonetic variables, looking at differences among the counties, between male and female speakers and two social classes.
- She studied sixteen teenage speakers, using a word elicitation task.
- Joanna Przedlacka compared her examples to data taken from the Survey of English Dialects (SED).
- She found that: glottaling (supposedly a distinctive feature of Estuary English) showed a pattern not dissimilar to that of fifty years ago, as shown in the SED data, but that l-vocalisation had increased.
- She compared the Estuary English data and recordings of RP and Cockney speakers. This demonstrated that Estuary speakers were intermediate between RP and “Cockney” as regards the incidence of t-glottaling and l-vocalisation.
- She suggests that this may be an oversimplification of the issue: one should also consider factors such as geographical
variation or idiosyncratic characteristics of the speakers.
Vowel fronting - The word blue uttered by a speaker from Buckinghamshire, has a front realisation of the vowel, while other front realisations can be heard in boots, pronounced by a Kent female and roof (Essex female). A central vowel can be heard in new, uttered by a male teenager from Essex. Back realisations of the vowel, as in cucumber, uttered by a Kent
teenager are infrequent. - The vowel in butter has a back realisation in the speech of an Essex speaker, but can be realised a front vowel, as in dust or cousins, both uttered by teenage girls from Buckinghamshire.
- Glottaling - Glottaling of syllable non-initial /t/ is not the main variant in Estuary English. Here the word feet, spoken by a Kent female, exemplifies it. Realisations where the /t/ is not “dropped” are more frequent - as bat, (Surrey speaker).
- Intervocalic /t/ glottaling is virtually absent from the Estuary English data. Here is one of the very few instances of it in the
word forty, uttered by a Buckinghamshire female. (Here Dr. Przedlacka has a link to an audio file to exemplify the speech
sound.) - It is frequently found in Cockney, as in daughter, said by a teenager from the East End of London.
- L-vocalisation - The majority of tokens with a syllable non-initial /l/ have a vocalised realisation, as in milk (Kent speaker).
- Dark l, which is the usual RP realisation (as in an RP speaker’s pronunciation of ankle), is also present in Estuary English, alongside clear tokens, as in pull (Essex teenager). However, clear realisations of /l/ are infrequent in the data.
- Joanna Przedlacka’s conclusion is that “Estuary” does not correspond to anything very coherent:
“The study showed that there is no homogeneity in the accents spoken in the area, given the extent of geographical
variation alone. Tendencies observed include: vowel fronting, as in goose or strut, and syllable non-initial t-glottaling, which are led by female speakers. Contrary to speculation in other sources, th-fronting is present in the teenage speech of the Home Counties, the variant being used more frequently by males. Generally, social class turned out not to be a good
indicator of change, there being little differences between the classes.” - This would tend to support Jane Setter’s view, that “Estuary” is not so much a variety as an umbrella term that covers a range of accents. - While she identifies them as belonging to the south east, one should also note Paul Kerswill’s tracking of their movement to the Midlands and further north.
8
Q
Inner Circle
A
- The Inner Circle refers to English as it originally took shape and was spread across the world in the first diaspora.
- In this transplantation of English, speakers from England carried the language to Australia, New Zealand and North America.
- The Inner Circle thus represents the traditional historical and sociolinguistic bases of English in regions where it is now used as
a primary language: the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, anglophone Canada and South Africa, and some of the Caribbean territories. - English is the native language or mother tongue of most people in these countries.
- The total number of English speakers in the inner circle is as high as 380 million, of whom some 120 million are outside the United States.
- The inner circle (UK, US etc.) is ‘norm-providing’; that means that English language norms are developed in these countries.
- The outer circle (mainly New Commonwealth countries) is ‘norm-developing’
- The expanding circle (which includes much of the rest of the world) is ‘norm-dependent’, because it relies on the standards set by native speakeris in
the inner circle.
9
Q
Outer Circle
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- The Outer Circle of English was produced by the second diaspora of English, which spread the language through imperial expansion by Great Britain in Asia and Africa.
- In these regions, English is not the native tongue, but serves as a useful lingua franca between ethnic and language groups. Higher education, the legislature and judiciary, national commerce and so on may all be carried out predominantly in English.
- This circle includes India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, non-Anglophone South Africa, the Philippines (colonized by the US) and others.
- The total number of English speakers in the outer circle is estimated to range from 150 million to 300 million.
10
Q
Expanding Circle
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- The Expanding Circle encompasses countries where English plays no historical or governmental role, but where it is
nevertheless widely used as a medium of international communication. - This includes much of the rest of the world’s
population not categorized above, including territories such as China, Russia, Japan, non-AnglophoneEurope (especially the Netherlands and Nordic countries), South Korea, Egypt and Indonesia. - The total in this expanding circle is the most
difficult to estimate, especially because English may be employed for specific, limited purposes, usually in a business context. - The estimates of these users range from 100 million to one billion.
11
Q
Diaspora
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- a group of people who spread from one original country to other countries, or the act of spreading in this way.
