Outlines of Chapters 3,4&5
Chapter 3 (Recap)
•In chapter 3, we discussed the types of colonization and the patterns of linguistic consequences that resulted from them.
• We distinguished between countries whose populations were
- Displaced
- Subjugated
- Replaced
•We followed on
patterns of rule (displacement by native speakers, political incorporation or indirect rule, slave trade and replacement of local labor force) ,
patterns of language contact (English as a first language – and dialect leveling, influence of the substrate, the development of pidgins and creoles) in each pattern
identity related issues in response to the colonization (nationalist reactions) ,
and discussed Schneider’s model of the formation of a variety (Foundation, Exonormative stabilization, Nativisation, Endonormative stabilization & Differentiation) .
•This all led to an understanding of one of the most important historical reasons for the international spread of English. It was also the reason for the distinction between Kachru’s first two categories of English speakers:
* those of the Inner Circle
* those of the Outer Circle
Chapter 4 -- Recap
•In chapter 4, we continued with a discussion of the second main reason behind the spread of English world-wide, its global status.
•The chapter discussed the power that English had in many different domains, which assisted in spreading around the world.
•We discussed the influence of its political, socioeconomic, technological, educational & cultural power.
•The chapter addressed different mechanisms, especially as related to the media,which assisted the dissemination of English around the globe and discussed different views with regards to this spread.
•Reading A complemented the discussion by referring to mechanisms of, and attitudes towards the globalization & glocalization of English, and the resulting cultural homogeneity because of the dominance of English as a Lingua Franca of the whole world (and arguments about whether or not that also brought about linguistic homogeneity) .
•One main development besides the global spread of multicultural identities and varieties of English, is the development of what Kachru labeled as the Expanding Circle of English speakers.
Refer to chapter 4 for the details of mechanisms that helped promote English as the global lingua franca of the world – agents of power that supported the spread of English.
Chapter 5 - Outlined
•In chapter 5, Jennifer Smith continues to work within the framework of Kachru’s Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles, and adopts a sociolinguistic approach to language study. The main questions that had been answered in Chapters 3 &4 was:
* How did English become an international language with multicultural identities and diverse forms?
* Why is English, and not any other language, the global language of the 20th and 21st centuries?
The questions answered in this chapter are:
* How do these varieties of English differ/ what are their distinguishingfeatures from Standard English of England?
•The levels of language to be discussed are:
- Lexis
- Grammar : Syntax
Morphology
- Phonology: Vowels and Consonants and their phonetic realization
Stress patterns (Rhythm)
Intonation
•
To summarize some of the effects of various socio-historical effects, the table below categorizes some of the variations in different types contexts ranging from Inner Circle (Old and New World), Outer Circle (2nd language and Pidgin ) and Expanding Circles.
You can use these examples as samples to fill the table with your own information as you summarize Chapter 5.
There are many reasons for variation in English across the different circles of English speakers.
Descriptions of different language varieties tend to emphasize their distinctiveness, identifying and seeking to explain specific features.
Varieties are compared to a perceived standard (often Standard English in England). The perception of distinctness is also evidenced in the names given to the varieties (Geordie, Scots, Hiberno-English, Indian English…)
Some of the main reasons that help variation in the Old World, Inner Circle are:
a)variation in the dialects spoken by different Anglo-Saxon tribes who first brought English to Britain/ patterns of settlement.
b)time-depth of English in the region;
c)the long history which has allowed further differences to develop;
d)contact with other languages such as Celtic, Norse and French.
e)retention of old forms of English
f)innovation within the regional dialects
Country / Circleالبلد/ الدائرة / Explanation for Variation
تفسيرلاختلاف / Linguistic Features that Distinguish the dialect
الميزاتاللغويةالتيتميزاللهجة
England- Inner Circle, Old World
-North vs. South
-The Black Country
إنجلترا - الدائرةالداخلية،قديمالعالمية
شمالمقابلالجنوب
الأسودالبلد / Geographical Isolation/ (e.g. south and north of the Fens, an isolated swampy area which in the past was difficult to cross)
Other examples include the case of the Black Country (see comment on pp.202-3).
العزلةالجغرافية / (مثلالجنوبوالشمالمنالفينات،وهيمنطقةمستنقعاتالمعزولةالتيكانمنالصعبفيالماضيبعبور)
ومنالأمثلةالأخرىحالةالأسودالبلد (انظرالتعليقعلى pp.202-3). / Laugh (/laf/ in the north, while it is now /la:f/ in the south;
Butter (/bUt∂/, changed /b^t∂/
The changes described are examples of changes that happened in the south, but not in the north, as neither the people nor the linguistic changes could cross the swamps
التغييراتوصفهاهيأمثلةعلىالتغيراتالتيحدثتفيالجنوب،ولكنليسفيالشمال،كمالاالشعبولاتغييراتلغويةيمكنعبورالمستنقعات
Scotland-Inner Circle / It might be thought the source of variation is mainly the influence of theGaelic indigenous languages; but little of Gaelic influence can be traced. Some of the main reasons are:
a)Innovation within Scots, the Scottish dialect of English,
b)Retention of Old English forms
a)gied/ telt/ selt are examples of innovations that developed over time in Scotland, but not in other English speaking contexts; they may be seen as attempts to regularize the form of the past tense.
‘l-vocalization’ such as pronouncing ball as ba’ is another example of innovations
b)Examples of retention of older forms of Englishinclude:
-Non-prevocalic or rhotic /r/
-The use of lexical items: ken, yon
-The presence and use of a ‘velar fricative’ /x/ making ‘thought’ into thocht, ‘night’ into ‘nicht, ‘fight’ into ficht
-The pronunciation of the vowels in oot, hoose, outside as /u:/ rather than ‘out’ , ‘house,’… /aU/ [that is as it was pronounced before the major change in the 15th century that caused the raising of vowels and which was labeledThe Great Vowel Shift ] / Examples of variation include:
So we a’gied down there. (gied=went)
I selt it a few year ago to the rowp man.
Doctor Paterson telt him right up, right oot .
Let yon be his, let yon be his hoose.
I ken you’re right.
I thocht ‘Ouch, I’m nae getting intae that..
Can you not see her?
My hair needs washed.
That is in addition to :
-‘l- vocalization’
-non-prevocalic /r/or what is known as rhoticity.
-hw pronunciation and spelling instead of wh
-including patterns of word order, such as:
needs washed, or Can you not see?
Ireland – Inner Circle
-Northern vs. Southern Ireland
Variations within the Northern Area
-East vs. West / “Linguistically, as well as politically, Ireland is divided into two broad sections, the north and the south’ related to patterns of settlement.
The northern area is divided further into threemajor dialect regions/ isoglosses- which are geographical boundaries of particular linguistic features, represented by lines on dialect maps. These are Ulster Scots (derived from Lowland Scots settlers; Mid-Ulster English (derived from settlers coming largely from northern England); and a variety spoken in the west, (arising from Ulster English), added to which is the capital of Belfast, where a number of different varieties converge.
In the southern area, Irish slowly receded from east to west, resulting in two broad dialect areas for Southern Irish English, also known as Hiberno-English.
Some grammatical patterns [example it-clefting, [which includes clefting the sentence into two parts, each clause having its own subject and the first starting with it]of Hiberno-English are derived from Irish, but many are also derived from seventeenth century English which was taken to Ireland by colonists and has since become obsolete in England. / Some phonological features include: (mainly influenced by versions of Lowland Scots in Scotland)
-a low unrounded back vowel so that soft sounds like saft (/sa:ft/)
-the velar fricative /x/ in words like thought to be pronounced as thocht.
-l-vocalization in words like ball (to give ba’)
Many grammatical forms also can be traced to Scots, such as:
-Youngsters gets far too much and they’ve no manners some of them at all.
- Singular (s) with plural subject, when noun;
- Standard English agreement when the subject is a pronoun: they‘ve
-They are after doing the work=they finished the work.
-It’s looking for more land, a lot of them are. (It-clefting)
Wales – Inner Circle
North and West vs. South / Dialects in the south are said to have strong affinities with dialects in the south-west of England and West Midlands, whereas northern and western regions are said to be more influenced by the structure of Welsh, particularly in areas where English has the least time depth.
Metropolitan/urbanized Cardiff and Port Talbot. / The influence of Welsh can be seen on English grammar
For example, the reference to habitual action:
(a)He goes to the cinema every week.
(b)He do go to the cinema every week.
(c)He’s going to the cinema every week.
(a) is in general use in Wales
(b) is found in areas of early Anglicization and is linked to Midlands dialects.
(c) is largely confined to late Anglicization areas and can be connected to the influence of Welsh.
Difference in prosody (features of pronunciation that include stress, rhythm, intonation, etc.:
Popular in Welsh accents is a ‘sing-song’ or ‘lilting intonation’ and that might be because the vowel in the final unstressed syllable for words such as sofa and butter is lengthened
USA -- Inner Circle, New World
A / History of colonies goes back to 1607, the first colony in Jamestown, Virginia, followed by Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. First wave of colonizers came from southern England, so New England and the South have common linguistic features with southern British English. The aristocratic nature of input is preserved in the Boston- Brahmin’ families in New England – parodied sometimes in film for their ‘posh’ accent
Most of the second wave settlers came from northern England, Scotland and Ireland and are said to have constituted the basis of colonial mid-Atlantic American speech – which became the basis for
the mainstream, inland northern and western type of American English (Schneider) / In the process of linguistic mixing and blending, the marked forms (i.e. which are unusual) disappear in favor of unmakred forms (i.e. those which are shared by a large number of dialects). This resulted in rather leveled, homogenous varieties in the West, but with more divergence varieties remaining along the east coast.
USA -- Inner Circle, New World
B / In spite of more homogeneity in America than in the British Isles, three examples of heterogeneity can be described:
Ocracoke dialect, spoken on an island in the Outer banks of North Caroline, first settled I in 1700s and isolated for 300 years from the rest of the USA / She weren’t there.
She’s to the house.
He kept a-looking for the rain.
He might could do it. (double modal)
It is nasty-some out there today. (‘some is an intsifier).
Using her pronoun in subject position instead of she.
In words like sofa where the last syllable is unstressed, the Ocracoke dialect gives full length to the vowel and replaces the final schwa with a long /i/ sound – sodi , extry (instead of soda, extra)
Country / Circle / Explanation for Variation / Linguistic Features that Distinguish the dialect
USA -- Inner Circle, New World
C / New York working class accent
It is stigmatized by mainstream American speech, but people have lots of pride in it, and the lack of social mobility within the group as well as their closely knit community and the sense of identity promotes the preservation of that accent/dialect
Young generations make changes/ innovations but not to match mainstream usage. / Prevocalic (Non-rhotic) “r” which is disliked by prestigious New Yorkers.
USA -- Inner Circle, New World
D / African American Vernacular English
Two hypotheses explaining its variation from mainstream American dialect:
The Creolist Hypothesis advocates in the 1960’s and 1970’s advocates of this argument proposed that contact between the slaves were different in pattern from contact patterns among European settlers. They had little contact with their enslavers: the contact was with other slaves other slaves who all spoke different African languages.
The Anglicist Hypothesis, dating mainly in the 1950’s; sees source of creole spoken by slaves as being the different varieties of European languages going back to the British Isles who brought about different varieties into the Americas which were then learnt by the slaves. (they give as evidence the fact that some features of AAVE can be found in certain “traditional” or “relic” dialect of say Irish or rural English or Scots…
In current usage, the features of AAVE are emphasized as a sign of ethnic and ancestral identity, even among educated and African Americans
The substrates / African languages are the varieties that provide the most important contributions to the grammars of the pidgins and creoles (that developed out of them); while the superstrate (in this case, English, language of the powerful) has the major influence on their vocabulary – is the lexifier language. / Grammatical variations
Sometimes my ears be itching.
She sick (omission of copula)
She walk down the street every day (absence of s in singular third person verb forms).
Jack car (absence of possessive s) p.218
Phonological examples include
Lif’ up the box (the reduction of consonant clusters
She live on the skreet (skr for str in initial consonants)
I aks him for money (use of ‘metathesis’ where consonant order is switched).
This ain’t right.
They had fixed the door and they had painted the walls. (past perfect without having two actions one preceding the other, i.e. where Standard American would use a simple past verb)
Country / Circle / Explanation for Variation / Linguistic Features that Distinguish the dialect
Australia and New Zealand -- Inner Circle, New World / English came to Australia and New Zealand relatively late, in the eighteenth century; most of them were convicts;
75% of the settlers were (and immigrants still are) of British origin, while other Europeans constitute about 20% and the remaining 5 % are Asians and Aborigines (1%). Aborigines were displaced by British settlers.
Settlement in New Zealand in 1800’s came upon agreement between Maori chiefs and the British Crown; Some settlers came from Germany and Scandinavia but the majority remains to be of British origins. New dialects got formed with children around 1850’s, and the Gold Rush may have diluted the influence of settler dialects.
Settlement patterns in New Zealand, such as Scottish settlers in Southland create a difference in pronunciation / Many linguistic features are shared by both Australia and New Zealand.
In pronunciation:
*The linking ‘r’ : law and order becomes
(lawr and order)
*l-vocalization (ball is pronounced as bah)
* pronunciation of (t) in both writer and rider is the same.
In intonation: they share HRT (High Rising Tone ) used for declarative sentences; it has also be referred to as AQI (Australian Questioning Intonation)
Differences exist:
The vowel in ‘Fish and Chips’ is raised and fronted so they become ‘feesh and cheeps in Australia, while they are pronounced as fush and chups in New Zealand.
Southland New Zealand has a rhotic, non-prevocalic /r/ which is not the case in the rest of New Zealand
Country / Circle / Explanation for Variation / Linguistic Features that Distinguish the dialect
India – Outer Circle / The British first arrived in India in the early 1600’s, established trading posts in a number of cities and took control of the East India Company. By 1756, the British were practically controlling the country through the Company’s great influence. This was followed by the Raj, a period of British rule that lasted till the Independence in 1947.
English was first taught to the local population through the work of Christian missionaries, but by the 19th century, it was increasingly accepted as the language of government, of the social elite, and of the national press.
India has a complex multilingual situation making it difficult to establish the influence of particular Indian languages on the forms use, but because ofextended contact, many forms of English may be the result of transfer from, for example, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati and a combination of languages.
Frequent switching between English and other languages sometimes led to the development of mixed varieties such as Hinglish, a mixture of Hindi and English.
The case of India is similar to many regions in Asia and Africa, where colonization took the shape of subjugation of the population who were not displaced, so English was in direct contact with the native/ indigenous languages and the influence of these substrates is revealed in the new forms of English that develop (New Englishes) / Phonological forms of variation: