Riassunto personale derivato dallo studio integrato del libro consigliato "English, but not quite"

ENGLISH

The Canadian linguistic context

-Quebec English is a topic which is seldom mentioned. This term is often linked with

"Frenglish" or "franglais", but this mostly refers to the interlanguage formed by English

and French as a global phenomenon and doesn't necessarely refer to Quebec English.

-The political tension between Quebec and the rest of Canada leads to a different culture

and language, and the view that French is spoken in Quebec and English in the rest of the

country. Actually there are French communities all over Canada and English communities

in Quebec, especially Montreal. Simply, Quebec is the only Canadian province where

speakers of French outnumber those of English.

-Despite the Official Languages Act of 1969 which promulgated English and French as

the two official languages of Canada, only Ottawa and New Brunswick provinces are really

bilingual, and in Quebec, the Charte de la langue francaise (Bill 101) grants official status

to French only and bans English from many official domains and from the laws.

-Historically, Quebec has been a bilingual region since the British conquest till the

twentieth century with a wave of francophone nationalism in Quebec leading to the Quiet

Revolution, the rise of a francohpone political class and the Bill 101, which forced the

English speakers to move to other Canadian provinces, particularly to Ontario, starting the

phenomenon known as the anglophon exodus. Moreover, many migrants in Quebec were

forced to learn French by Government privileging French education to prevent the spread

of angophone schools.

-Though Quebec English is often related only to those who speak English as a mother

toungue, linguists (as Mirko Casagranda) think that it should refer also to those who speak

it as a second language. The frictions led to a situation where English speakers in Quebec

need to defend very tenaciously their linguistic identity.

English in the francophone city: sociolinguistic perspectives

Since Anglo-Quebecois coexisting identity is defined in opposition to the French

Quebecois one, one might presume that both have influenced each other. Neverthless,

the coexistence has always been so difficult that in Downtown Montreal, Boulevard St.

Laurence divides the metropolis into anglophones to the west and the francophones to the

east.

-In this bilingual context, we find that the introduction of English words and expressions

into Quebec French (qf.), gave birth to "joual", the slang spoken in Montreal, which

acquired dignity through Quebecois writers. Sherry Simons defines joual as French

infiltrated by English without permission.

-In Quebec, Anglo-Quebecois newspapers, broadcasting, and media, tend to flatten the

differences between Standard Canadian English and Quebec English in a monolithic view,

also in order to easily establish contact with the rest of anglophone Canada.

-However, in being fracophone or anglophone, there is a strong sense of

identification with one specific group only (refusing the other) and the refusal of language

mixing, though in everyday communication codeswitchin is adopted to solve bilingual

barriers.

-1) English in Canada is not much influenced by French grammar except for the invariant

tag "eh", and the double pronoun (Me, I live in Montreal);

2) as far as concerning lexis, English has borrowed extensively from French especially for

many Modern English words: Quebecois English (qe.) borrowings whenever there is no

equivalent in English (fr. depanneur- eng. convenience store->qe. "dep"), which sometimes

are mostly translated with an explanation more than an equivalent translated word (eng.

tight rope->qe. and qf. "asec").

3) phonology: Quebec English maintains the French pronunciation especially for toponyms

and proper names also when there is an equivalent in English.

-Codeswitching is rare in Quebec English: in Ottawa, for instance, where this is more

visible, they rarely produce inter- or intrasentental codeswitching but they prefer to switch

into the other language to underline cultural difference and, when the switch occures, it is

strongly marked by hesitation, repetition or intonational highlighting.

-Specialized languages such as gastronomy and advertising, French lexis is used to fill

lexical lacuna or the literal translation from French (paté chinois->chinese paté, salade-

>salad). In advertisement as well, we can find juxtaposition within the same page of the

translation or codeswitching within the same sentence. This is very common for example

in touristic brochures on Quebec underlining bilingualism as the main characteristic of the

country,or in the case of the advertisement of Aeroports de Montreal with two equivalent

slogans: "La destination hiver la destination Eté" and "The winter destination the summer

destination".

The anglophone voice of Quebec: The Gazette

In Montreal, codeswitching is spontaneous and occurs quite often. Nonetheless, as it

emerges in "The Gazette", Montreal's newspaper in English, it represents the media in

a homogenous way, that codeswitching is not easy to find: paradoxically, this reflects the

fact that the two communities represent themselves through a homogeneous language but

as two different cultural groups. One of the consequences, is that The Gazette can also be

read by every anglophone in Canada and in the United States.

-Examples from The Gazette are:

1) borrowings "deja vu" and "au pair" though they are very common both in English and in

other languages.

2) "Vive la difference" a French expression often used within the English text, evoking the

pluralism of Canadian national identity.

3) proper name codeswitching, often referring to to brands or institutions: "Skate with les

Canadiens" instead of "Skate with the Canadiens" where the full name of the ice hockey

team is "Canadiens de Montreal". Moreover, during the article, its name is translated in

English as "The Montreal Canadiens". The choose of "the Canadiens" could be also

justified by the fact that it is the way in colloquial language the team is referred to.

4) quotation codeswitching: in a dialogue between teacher and pupil about accents in

French, the journalist reports the student saying "an accent aigu".

5) spontaneous, free and creative codeswitching: "Unlike nous autre" is ironically

employed to highlight the tensions between the two cultural groups during the electoral

campaign.

5.AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH

Introduction (from American English)

The language spoken nowadays in the United States, American English, is generally

recognized as a dialect of English compared with standard British English.

-The birth of the term Americanism was coined in 1781 by a Scottish traveller. However,

by the end of the eighteenth century the English language spoken in the United States

acquired a distinct character, process defined as "colonial lag", the retention of earlier

linguistic features for a certain period of time.

-Important factors in defining the Standard American English are:

1) the economic prestigious social classes of population, through which North East and

mid Western dialects were attributed the position of Standard American English.

2) In general, defining standard and non-standard varieties of a language, also depends

on the amount of deviance from the linguistic norm.

3) In United States historical developments have been fundamental, such as slavery, Civil

war and immigration.

4) In United States ethnicity and race played a fundamental part, changing its vocabulary,

phonology and patterns, and leading to code-switching: in particular the term

"ethnicity"assumed a more positive value expressing the sense of belonging to a culture

and people and represented by the evident dialect speech. The term "race" has a more

negative connotation and refers more to the sense of being than the sense of belonging,

and it is often more connected linked with corruption, stigma, debased behaviour.

However, used within the same community, the stigmatized features are regarded as

solidarity and sense of belonging to the community, while attempts to deny them or to use

more standard features within the community are considered snobbish and pompous.

-Non standard varieties of American English have played a big role in defining the

standard language in the United States.

A critical diachronic and synchronic description of Black English Vernacular

(development)

-African Americans are the only immigrant group who did not bring their language to the

United States as most slaves were prohibited to speak their own language for fear of

plotting and rebellions.

1) "Black English, Ebonics, Black English Vernacular, African American Vernacular English

or African American English", are all terms which have been used to refer to what it was

considered a debased and illiterate form of American English till 1970s.

2) Nonstandard "Negro English" was one of the first terms used. Later, it was followed by

"Ebonics" coined by combining the words "ebony" with "phonics" to refer to black sounds,

and to refer to the language of the African slave trade.

3) In 1997, the Linguistic Society of America recognized Ebonics as a dialect of English,

including socio-linguistic point that we all master different varieties depending on various

social settings.

-There are two major theories about The Ebonic origin (and a recent one):

1) the Anglicist hypothesis: Africans would have learned regional and social varieties of

English from the white slavers and colonists they came in contact with, in particular

with white plantation owners and the servants of Great Britain (who were present in great

numbers on the American plantations), both speaking non-standard dialects of English.

Over the generations, only a few traces of African remained.

2) the Creolist hypothesis: since slaves were deliberately separated in order to avoid

plotting and rebellions, they created a creole language based on their bosses languages

and their own languages to communicate: an English-based creole which spread

throughout American South and during the time North African American changed greatly.

3) recent research implementations: since Ebonic, especially of older speakers, appears to

be more influenced by the regional dialect of the area, a process of decreolization occured:

slaves lived in small plantations at close contact with whites and moved from plantation to

plantation to be frequently sold and favouring language contact with the white dialects.

4) the indigenous variety (BEV or AAVE) is probably a semi-creole, drived from the Creole

of the West Indian slaves and the seventeenth-century regional speech of the British

settlers.

-The emerge of AAVE as supra-regional variety of English is given by the diffused

mobility of African Americans in the last century.

The main linguistic features of African A