Riassunto esame Inglese II

Creolization

Early policy tried to "fix" creole Englishes, recent policies take a much more positive view of creoles and encourage them to be embraced and recognized. Viewed more and more as languages in their own right, rather than languages that need to be "fixed".

Standard language ideology, ownership, and identity

A standard language ideology of English has emerged in reaction to the variation and change. Standard language ideology relates to the way society thinks about language standards in terms of what is "correct" or "acceptable". Language is always changing: in terms of vocabulary standardization.

Most of those people who believe in standard language ideology claim a standardization of vocabulary. However, a standard English is not easy to define because the language is an unstable construct. Even native English speakers do not speak a standardized version, it is increasingly difficult to define a native speaker in multilingual societies.

The idea of a

Standard implies stability, but language is unstable. Standard English is incompatible with the complex reality of how English is used worldwide. Language is always changing, and thus a view that English is a monolithic entity that is impervious to variation is an incorrect assumption.

English language is a living entity which feeds on other languages, speakers, cultures, and societies: in areas/times of extreme contact with speakers of other languages, the English language has sometimes undergone massive changes.

English can vary on a number of linguistic levels including: sound, vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and pragmatics.

English language variation in the British Isles:

Colonization influenced language within the UK too. Population from colonies (India) were brought to the UK to fill labour needs, as were people from African colonies.

Phonemic variation: there are 5 accent groups:

1. Scotland and the north of Ireland
2. South of Ireland
3. Wales
4. North of England
5. South of England

South of England

It is not easy to categorize Englishes into neat categories

Vowels: variation and conformity exist across and within these accent groups. For example, there is conformity between Irish and northern accents in terms of pronunciation of the strut vowel.

Vocabulary

Borrowing from indigenous languages – the result of an influence of contact with Celtic language in various parts of the British Isles has resulted in the adoption of borrowed lexical items.

same meanings different words.

Grammar-syntactic variation:

• Aspect use of progressive aspects (verbs + ing)
• Irregular verb variation (writ instead of wrote)
• Adverbs take the same form as the adjective (I the children sings)
• Plurality and concord with collective nouns (Northern Subject Rule: OK – they sings beautifully NO)
• Negation double negation still exists
• Auxiliary verbs (want instead of should)
• Pronouns (I instead of gendered pronouns: me; she’s a beautiful car)

English language variation in Canada and the USA

English was brought to North America from the early 1600s. In the following centuries, the population spread across the continent. The emergence of a standard American English did not happen in the same way as in the British Isles. American English is an institutional construct with no native speakers.

In the USA, there is no official language, although English takes on the role of an official language for most political, administrative, and educational functions. English is the official language of Canada, alongside French.

Phonemic variation manifests in a geographic distinction, sometimes in an urban-rural division and according to ethnicity:

• Vowel merges vowel shift occurred in Canadian English
• Vowel lengthening Canadian rising
• Diphthong shift phenomenon of describes the tendency to raise the diphthongs

More conservative in terms of the regularization. Modal verbs – modals in Australasia see the decline of shall in favour of will, and should in favour of ought. The region also sees better or gotta instead of have to or should (e.g. we better go; we gotta go).

Pronouns – inconsistency of use of gendered pronouns. In Australia there are less regional variations than the UK or USA: the ‘broad’ accent is associated with working class, and the ‘cultivated’ accent is associated with riches.

English language variation in the Caribbean. The history of English in Caribbean is not uniform: while nations like Jamaica earned independence early, others like Barbados were British colonies until 1966 pidgin and creoles was formed due to colonization in the Caribbean islands. The English of the Bahamas has more in common with North American Englishes due to its place in history as a settler destination for Anglo-Bahamian British loyalists who escaped the US after the

Revolutionary War

In most nations an official distinction is NOT made between the English creole and the official language. The distinctions between and English creole and the English language are blurry, the language taking on basilects forms. Jamaica makes an interesting case: there is a distinction between English and (a co-official language), so they have 2 languages. While English is used in formal public settings, patois is used in informal private settings. For many Jamaicans, English is a second language.

Phonemic variation

• Vowel merges
• Dental fricatives
• Rhoticity
• Vowel assimilation
• Consonant clusters

Grammar-syntactic variation

• Tense and aspect: omission of the verb to be: you [are] fat, I [am] smart, he [is] over there.
• Levelling of verbs to the present in the Caribbean (e.g. he swim yesterday).
• Auxiliary verbs – double-modals (he might could come) are common in Jamaican English, but not in Bahamian.
• Pronouns – like many British varieties of English discussed in Section 4a,

Substitution of pronouns is pervasive across the Caribbean. Gendered pronouns (e.g. she's a good boat) are also pervasive, perhaps due to the influence of seafarers in the islands.

Summary

The 'native' Englishes were developed from transported Englishes from the British Isles. Contact with other languages and accents in each region gave birth to new varieties of English.

The Englishes of Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand are the result of koineization process. Plantation colonies in Jamaica, Bermuda, and other parts of the Caribbean resulted in the development of new varieties of English through creolization.

In America divisions in power and language that are based along race and regional lines, rather than class and regional lines as seen in the UK.

Due to the youth and mobility of the Australian population, there is far less regional variation than in the UK and USA.

CHAPTER 7

ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA → Language acts as a tool in

Globalization has helped people to connect, but it has also influenced the language itself. When a language goes global, it becomes bigger. The languages that are large tend to spread and diversify, while those that don't have a community to sustain them may disappear. When a language becomes enormous, it can become a lingua franca.

ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) researchers have shown that ELF has a global ownership. ELF speakers exploit the language in different ways to suit their own needs. The usage of ELF and the use of "non-standard forms" are more than mere errors. ELF speakers use their plurilingual resources to achieve communicative success through negotiation oriented towards intelligibility.

There are certain features of language usage in ELF:

• Article usage is often dropped (e.g. "I always walk to shop as it's so close") or redundant (e.g. "I went to the home after work").
• Relative pronouns used in relative clauses often differ from established norms, with "who" and "which" being more frequent.
• Prepositions may be used differently.