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Standardization
Standardisation
Varieties of English
Week 3
Dr Dimitra Vladimirou,
Goldsmiths, University of London
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Questions for today
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How did English develop its standard forms?(process of
standardisation)
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What are some of the differences between standard and non
standard varieties of English?
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What are some of the attitudes towards non standard
varieties of English and what are the methods we can use in
order to study them?
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What are the features of global Englishes?
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What are the issues related to English as a Lingua Franca?
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Today
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Standard vs. non-standard varieties
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Processes of standardisation
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Grammatical features of non-standard varieties
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Attitudes to language variation
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Global Englishes
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English as a lingua franca/ linguistic imperialism
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Definitions
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‘The variety of the English language which is normally
employed in writing and normally spoken by ‘educated’
speakers of the language. It is also, of course, the variety of
the language that students of English as a Foreign or Second
Language (EFL/ESL) are taught when receiving formal
instruction. The term Standard English refers to grammar and
vocabulary (dialect) but not to pronunciation (accent).’
(Trudgill and Hannah 1994)
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Standard varieties: definitions
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‘Standard English is that variety of English which is usually
used in print, and which is normally taught at schools and to
non-native speakers learning the language. It is also the
variety which is normally spoken by educated people and
used in news broadcasts and other similar situations. The
difference between standard and non-standard, it should be
noted, has nothing to do with differences between formal and
colloquial language or with concepts such as ‘bad language’.
Standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants and
standard English speakers swear as much as others.’
(Trudgill 1983: 5)
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Standard varieties: definitions
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‘[…] it is difficult to point to a fixed and invariant kind of
English that can properly be called standard language,
unless we consider only the written form to be relevant. […]
it seems appropriate to speak more abstractly of
standardisation as an ideology, and a standard language as
an idea in the mind rather than a reality – a set of abstract
norms to which actual usage may conform to a greater or
lesser extent.’ (Milroy and Milroy 1999: 18-19)
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Standard varieties: definitions
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‘…the standard forms are standard because they are used by
people with sufficient power and control over major
institutions to make their way of using language and looking
at the world seem the ‘norm’.’(Andersen 1988)
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Standard vs. non standard features
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1. Standard English fails to distinguish between the forms of the
auxiliary forms of the verb do and its main verb forms. This is
true both of present tense forms, where many other dialects
distinguish between auxiliary I do, he do and main verb I does,
he does or similar, and the past tense, where most other dialects
distinguish between auxiliary did and main verb done, as in You
done it, did you?
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2. Standard English has an unusual and irregular present tense
verb morphology in that only the third-person singular receives
morphological marking: he goes versus I go. Many other dialects
use either zero for all persons or -s for all persons.
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3. Standard English lacks multiple negation, so that no choice is
available between I don’t want none, which is not possible, and I
don’t want any. Most nonstandard dialects of English around the
world permit multiple negation.
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Standard vs. non standard features
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4. Standard English has an irregular formation of reflexive pronouns with some forms
based on the possessive pronouns e.g.myself, and others on the objective pronouns
e.g. himself. Most nonstandard dialects have a regular system employing possessive
forms throughout i.e. hisself, theirselves.
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5. Standard English fails to distinguish between second person singular and second
person plural pronouns, having you in both cases. Many nonstandard dialects maintain
the older English distinction between thou and you, or have developed newer
distinctions such as you versusyouse.
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6. Standard English has irregular forms of the verb to be both in the present tense (am,
is, are) and in the past (was, were). Many nonstandard dialects have the same form for all
persons, such as I be, you be, he be, we be, they be, and I were, you were, he were, we
were, they were.
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7. In the case of many irregular verbs, Standard English redundantly distinguishes
between preterite and perfect verb forms both by the use of the auxiliary have and by
the use of distinct preterite and past participle forms: I have seen versus I saw . Many
other dialects have I have seen versus I seen.
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The process of standardisation and
language planning
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How do we obtain agreed-upon standard forms?
Received pronunciation (RP)
Generally accepted
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The process of standardisation and
language planning
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Four steps in the process of language standardization
(Haugen, 1966)
Language planning can be thought of as a normative
response to linguistic diversity
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1. Selection: possibility of choosing between alternatives
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Often the most prestigious dialects is chosen, or an amalgam
of different dialect (e.g. in the case of Basque)
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The process of standardisation and
language planning
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2. Codification: The creation of a linguistic standard
(graphisation, grammatication, lexicalisation), language
experts, academics
Spelling and
Society: The
Culture and
Politics of
Orthography
around the
World
(Mark Sebba)
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The process of standardisation and
language planning
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3. Implementation: Sociopolitical realisation of the decisions
made in the previous processes (marketing techniques,
examples, Greek academy on Greeklish, language marketing
in Israel)
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4. Elaboration terminological and stylistic extension of the
selected code
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English and standardisation
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Selection: South-East Midlands dialect prominent politically,
commercially and academically (encompassed political and
commercial centre of London, universities of Oxford,
Cambridge: ‘East Midlands triangle’)
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à No reason why it shouldn’t be any one of the other
dialects. No linguistic but political + social reasons for SE!
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Process of standardisation begun in 1476 Caxton,
introduction of printing press in England
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Codification: began in 18th century: dictionaries and
grammar books were written (e.g. Dr Samuel Johnson, A
Dictionary of the English Language, 1755)
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English and standardisation
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EXAMPLE:
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He doesn’t have no money
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Multiple negation
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(mathematical reasoning)
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English and standardisation
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Elaboration: Concerns the expansion of the language so that it can be
used in a wide range of contexts and for many functions. Occurred in
the centuries following the evolution of the print process and involved
borrowing extensively from Latin and French.
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Acceptance/implementation: this involves its use in government,
public office, the production of books, newspapers, the variety’s
introduction into the education system. It is accepted by most as the
prestige variety, even by those who do not use it
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Goal of standardization: ‘Minimal variation in form, maximal variation in
function’ (Haugen, 1966:348)
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Language Attitudes and ideologies
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Language Attitudes and ideologies
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYuC8wdh-Ok
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Language Attitudes and ideologies
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Indexical relationships and language ideologies
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Covert and overt prestige
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Patterned ideological responses to linguistic variation
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Coupland (2007):
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Prestige
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Social attractiveness
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Revisiting standard Englishes
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in a sense, the [American English] standard of popular
perception is what is left behind when all the non-standard
varieties spoken by disparaged persons such as Valley Girls,
Hillbillies, Southerners, New Yorkers, African Americans,
Asians, Mexican Americans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans are
set aside. In Britain, where consciousness of the special status
of RP as a class accent is acute, spoken standard English
might similarly be described as what is left behind after we
remove from the linguistic bran-tub Estuary English,
Brummie, Cockney, Geordie, Scouse, various quaint rural
dialects, London Jamaican, transatlantic slang and perhaps
even conservative RP as spoken by members of the upper
classes” (L. Milroy 1999: 174).
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English in a global context
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75 territories where English is spoken as either a first
language or an official (institutionalised) second language
(Jenkins 2015)
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‘the total of 430 million (speakers of English) does not give
the whole picture. For many countries no estimates are
available (Crystal 2003)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZI1EjxxXKw
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English as a foreign language (EFL)
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English as a second language (ESL)
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English as a lingua franca (ELF)
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New Englishes
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- they are learnt in the context of an education system rather
than at home
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- they have developed in an area where English is not the L1 for
most
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- they are used for several functions among those who speak
them (inter-group language, say in Parliament, media)
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- they have become ‘indiginised’ (adopted local terms),
‘nativised’ (adopted structural features of local languages and/
or language learning process)
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The New Englishes differ from British English and from each
other at the level of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and
discourse style. Some differences (among many) are:
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Global Englishes: Kachru’s circles
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Global Englishes
Norm dependent
Norm developing
Norm
providing
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English as a lingua franca
A more neutral
approach
Linguistic description
Social and economic
power
Global diffusion of
particular forms of culture
and knowledge
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Linguistic and cultural imperialism
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If the center always provides the teachers and the definition
of what is worthy of being taught (from the gospels of
christianity to the gospels of technology and science) and the
periphery always provides the learners, then there is a
pattern of imperialism (Pennycook 57)