English Language Varieties Essay

incline has spread rapidly, nevertheless since independence, either as a first-class honours degree talking to or as a medium of education for non-native let looseers (Platt and Weber, 2002). The corporeal(a) range of varieties of English is much greater than is found in the British Isles. On the sensation hand we burn down speak of an acrolect or senior high billet variety, and on the other a basilect or low status variety, with the mesolect directing the intermediate position.These terms are 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 real close to the standard linguistic communication of the colonial power, through to the basilect, which structurally resembles a creole. It is sufficient here to characterise a creole as a mixed row, resulting historically from contact between speakers of different and mutually dim talking tos.C reoles are usually 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 according to social context in much the same focusing as British speakers manipulate linguistic variables. Of course, the extent of linguistic deviation is much greater.Such continua abide been described in Jamaica by De camp (2001) and in Guyana by Bickerton (1995), and it is likely, we should n iodine, that these studies leave behind be of increasing relevance to an apt of the sociolinguistic structure of ethnic minority communities in Britain. A lucubrate account of the structure and function of pidgins and creoles is not directly relevant here, scarce interested readers are referred to Todd (20 00) for an introductory account of the social, political and linguistic issues involved.Although well(p) Victorians were already reacting strongly against the prescriptive attitudes of the eighteenth century, the most extreme anti-prescriptive statements, as far as we know, are those make by whatever members of the American structuralist school of linguistics. Bloomfield (199322) felt that discovering why aint is considered naughtiness and am not good is not a fundamental question in linguistics, and he thought it strange that people without linguistic training should hallow a great deal of effort to futile discussions of this topic.Bloomfield was for certain 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 stock and system in language which takes relatively little account of language as a social phenomenon. Some of Bloomfields followers watch g angiotensin convertin g enzyme further than this and have attacked unscientific approaches to language with missionary zeal. C. C. heat up (1997) seems to have equated traditional school grammar with prescription drug (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 procedural. Friess work was directed towards the educational system at the ordinary consumer. Anxious to assure all his readers that their use of language was retri exceptory as good as that of anyone else, he proclaimed that there is no such thing as good or bad, correct or incorrect, grammatical or ungrammatical, in language.English in Western europium and America Although linguistic scholars would certainly dispute the details of this pronouncement, they have move (for the most part) to assert or assume that their discipline is descriptive and theoretic and that they do not deal in prescription. In Western europium 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 nigh evidence from work by social psychologists (Giles et al. , 2000) lends whatsoever support to Hudsons point, we do not, in fact, know whether standard languages can be conclusively shown to have no purely linguistic characteristics that key out them from non-standard forms of language (the matter has not really been investigated).It appears to be an article of credence at the moment that judgments evaluating differences between standard and non-standard varieties are always socially conditioned and never purely linguistic. How ever, we shall later suggest that the process of language standardisation involves the suppression of optional variableness in language and that, as a consequence, non-standard varieties can be observed 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.measure English UK Variety In the UK, one vehement critic of the hypothetical malign influence of linguistics on English language teach 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 drop of well-worn English teach in schools. This is an entirely fake claim. It is true that there has been some opposition to the program line of English grammar, but in our experience this has arisen mainly from the prefere nce of lecturers for literature teaching.Far from disapprove 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 pen clear and correct standard English. Experienced teachers will not take kindly to an attack that simply appears to them as ignorant, assumptive and pointlessly offensive.The linguists academic interest in the humankind capacity to learn and use language is not a nemesis 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 bomb to examine and explain the different norms and conventions of speech and writing, or that we should fail to have it away that standardised usage is most fully achieved in writing. Nor does it follow that we should neglect the fact that non-standard spoken vernaculars have grammars of their own.To investigate the structure of language varieties is an intellectual 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 brighten and understand what standard English actually is and appreciate more hardly 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 skittish to dissociate their account of the root 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. hotshot 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 despicable catering to mass ignorance under the supposed trade protection of democracy. His essay is outspoken and full of emotive language (pseudoscientific mumbo gargantuan, rock-bottom illiteracy, barbarians, vandalism, etc.), and it betrays ignorance of what linguistics is about. To Simon, linguists are roughly equated with some menace that is threatening Western (i. e. American) civilisation from outside. It is unfortunate that misunderstand ings and misapplications of the American structural linguists teaching should have made it seem primingable for anyone to write in this ignorant way. As many people still come across 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 formal 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 inherent part of the life of language.By refusing to be interested in prescription, he adds linguists only ensure that every enterprise of linguistic grooming will be dominated by ignorant enthusiasts and incompetent pedants (Haas, 20023). Si nce 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, make by Routledge.Several relevant books on language variation have appeared, and linguistic correctness was the topic of the 1996 BBC Reith Lectures, delivered by Jean Aitchison (1998). In the regular army much of the interest in language differences has been driven by public concern about the language of ethnic minorities. In 1997, the Linguistic party of America published a document inspired by a controversy about Ebonics (African American Vernacular English), which was recognised by the Oakland (California) give instruction Board as a legitimate form of language.It ended with the following(a) comments There is evidence from Sweden, the US, and other countries that speakers of other v arieties can be assist in their learning of the standard variety by pedagogical approaches which identify the legitimacy of other varieties of a language. From this perspective, the Oakland School Boards finis to recognize the vernacular of African American students in teaching them Standard English is linguistically and pedagogically sound.