English Language Varieties Essay Example for Free

slope verbiage Varieties EssayEnglish has spread rapidly, even since independence, either as a first vocabulary or as a medium of education for non-native speakers (Platt and Weber, 2002). The actual range of varieties of English is much greater than is strand in the British Isles. On the iodine hand we can speak of an acrolect or high spatial relation variety, and on the other a basilect or mild status variety, with the mesolect occupying the intermediate position.These price ar commonly descriptive of what is known as a post-creole continuumthat is the range of non-discrete varieties in a post-colonial situation ranging from the acrolect, which is generally precise close to the measuring stick delivery of the colonial power, through to the basilect, which structurally resembles a creole. It is sufficient here to condition a creole as a mixed language, resulting historically from contact among speakers of different and mutually obscure languages.Creoles are usu ally associated with colonial situations and are generally assigned a very low social status. Basilectal speakers, who occupy the lowest position in a post-creole continuum, are often quite unintelligible to speakers of the acrolect. All speakers occupy a range on this acrolectbasilect continuum, which correlates closely with their social status, shifting along it fit in to social context in much the same way as British speakers manipulate lingual variables. Of course, the extent of linguistic difference is much greater.Such continua have been described in Jamaica by De bivouac (2001) and in Guyana by Bickerton (1995), and it is likely, we should none, that these studies will be of increasing relevance to an understanding of the sociolinguistic structure of heathen minority communities in Britain. A detailed bill of the structure and function of pidgins and creoles is non directly germane(predicate) here, but intimacyed readers are referred to Todd (2000) for an introductor y account of the social, political and linguistic issues involved.Although respectable Victorians were already reacting potently against the prescriptive attitudes of the eighteenth century, the most extreme anti-prescriptive statements, as far as we know, are those make by round members of the the Statesn structuralist school of philology. Bloomfield (199322) felt that discovering why aint is considered bad and am not good is not a fundamental question in linguistics, and he thought it strange that spate with give away linguistic training should devote a great deal of effort to futile discussions of this topic.Bloomfield was certainly implying that the study of prescriptivism was not of central interest to linguistics he was thereby limiting the field of linguistics to a descriptive study of form and system in language which takes relatively little account of language as a social phenomenon. Some of Bloomfields followers have gone advertise than this and have attacked unscien tific approaches to language with missionary zeal. C. C.Fries (1997) seems to have equated traditional school grammar with prescription (which was by definition bad and unscientific in the view of structural linguists of the time), and in his book on English syntax he went so far as to even reject traditional linguistic terms such as noun, verb and adjective. Friess work was directed towards the educational system at the ordinary consumer. Anxious to assure all his readers that their use of language was just as good as that of anyone else, he proclaimed that there is no such thing as good or bad, countersink or incorrect, grammatical or ungrammatical, in language.English in Western Europe and America Although linguistic scholars would certainly dispute the details of this pronouncement, they have continued (for the most part) to assert or assume that their theater of operations is descriptive and theoretical and that they do not deal in prescription. In Western Europe and America most theoretical linguists would still affirm that all forms of language are in principle equal.As Hudson (2002191) has put it Linguists would claim that if they were simply shown the grammars of two different varieties, one with high and the other with low prestige, they could not tell which was which, any more than they could predict the skin colour of those who speak the two varieties. Although some show up from work by social psychologists (Giles et al. , 2000) lends some support to Hudsons point, we do not, in fact, know whether measurement languages can be conclusively shown to have no purely linguistic characteristics that differentiate them from non-standard forms of language (the point has not really been investigated).It appears to be an article of faith at the moment that judgments evaluating differences between standard and non-standard varieties are always socially conditioned and never purely linguistic. However, we shall later suggest that the process of language normalisation involves the suppression of optional variability in language and that, as a consequence, non-standard varieties can be notice to permit more variability than standard ones (e. g. in pronunciations of particular words). Thus, there may be one sense at least in which the linguistic characteristics of non-standard varieties differ from those of standards.Standard English UK Variety In the UK, one vehement critic of the supposed malign influence of linguistics on English language dogma is John sexual love (1997-2003). He has named an array of linguistic scholars (includingastonishinglyNoam Chomsky, who has never been concerned with educational or social issues), as encouraging a neglect of Standard English teaching in schools. This is an entirely false claim. It is true that there has been some opposition to the teaching of English grammar, but in our experience this has arisen mainly from the preference of lecturers for literature teaching.Far from discouraging grammar , university linguists have been closely involved in maintaining and encouraging its teaching. No one has ever opposed the teaching of standard English, and many of those named by Honey as enemies of standard English have devoted much of their careers to teaching ittraining students to write intelligibly and correct standard English. Experienced teachers will not take kindly to an attack that simply appears to them as ignorant, presumptuous and pointlessly offensive.The linguists academic interest in the human capacity to guide and use language is not a threat to the teaching of Standard English, and it can be a great benefit. It does not follow from the educational necessity to focus on the standard that we should neglect to seek and explain the different norms and conventions of speech and writing, or that we should fail to acknowledge that standardised usage is most full achieved in writing. Nor does it follow that we should neglect the fact that non-standard spoken vernacular s have grammars of their own.To investigate the structure of language varieties is an adroit requirement that cannot be compromised, and which in no way contradicts the importance of the teaching of literacy in a standard language. Amongst other things, research on real language in use can help us to clarify and understand what standard English actually is and appreciate more exactly what its roles and functions are. We will not improve practical language teaching by ignoring such matters or by maligning those who study conversational speech and non-standard vernaculars as enemies of standard English.The authors of elementary books on linguistics, however, have usually been anxious to decouple their account of the subject from that of traditional handbooks of correctness. As we have seen they usually dismiss prescription routinely, and assert that linguistics is descriptive. Their general pointthat, if one is to study the nature of language objectively, one cannot make prior value -judgmentsis oft misunderstood, and it has sometimes called forth splenetic and misinformed denunciations of linguistics as a whole.One example amongst many is Simon (2002). In an essay entitled The Corruption of English (2002), Simon blames structural linguistics and literary structuralists for an alleged decline in language use and for permissive attitudes to language What this is, masquerading under the euphemism descriptive linguisticsis a benighted and woful catering to mass ignorance under the supposed aegis of democracy. His essay is outspoken and full of emotive language (pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo, rock-bottom illiteracy, barbarians, vandalism, etc.), and it betrays ignorance of what linguistics is about. To Simon, linguists are almost equated with some menace that is threatening Western (i. e. American) civilisation from outside. It is unfortunate that misunderstandings and misapplications of the American structural linguists teaching should have made it seem reasonab le for anyone to write in this ignorant way. As many people still take care descriptive linguistics as inimical to standards of usage, there has clearly been some failure of communication between linguistic scholars and the general public.One reason for this is that mainstream linguistics has concentrated more on the abstract and egg properties of language than on language in its social context. Bloomfield (1993), as we saw above, considered that prescription was irrelevant to linguistics as a science. Yet some linguists have been directly interested in prescription. Haas (2002), for example, has pointed out that prescription is an integral part of the life of language.By refusing to be interested in prescription, he adds linguists only ensure that every enterprise of linguistic planning will be dominated by ignorant enthusiasts and incompetent pedants (Haas, 20023). Since Haas made these comments, some social and educational linguists have been very active in commenting on public attitudes and educational policies, and some have represented the subject on advisory committees. A general linguist, R. A. Hudson, is responsible for the Language Workbooks series, published by Routledge.Several relevant books on language mutation have appeared, and linguistic correctness was the topic of the 1996 BBC Reith Lectures, delivered by Jean Aitchison (1998). In the USA much of the interest in language differences has been driven by public concern about the language of ethnic minorities. In 1997, the Linguistic Society of America published a document inspired by a rivalry about Ebonics (African American Vernacular English), which was recognised by the Oakland (California) School Board as a countenance form of language.It ended with the following comments There is evidence from Sweden, the US, and other countries that speakers of other varieties can be support in their learning of the standard variety by pedagogical approaches which recognize the legitimacy of other v arieties of a language. From this perspective, the Oakland School Boards decision to recognize the vernacular of African American students in teaching them Standard English is linguistically and pedagogically sound.