A Survey of Modern English

Stephan Gramley, Vivian Gramley, Kurt-Michael Pätzold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000089912
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A Survey of Modern English covers a wide selection of aspects of the modern English language. Fully revised and updated, the major focus of the third edition lies in Standard American and British English individually and in comparison with each other. Over and beyond that, this volume treats other Englishes around the world, especially those of the southern hemisphere countries of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as well as numerous varieties spoken in southern, eastern and western Africa, south and southeast Asia, and the Pacific. The main areas of investigation and interest include:

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• pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary;

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• multiple facets of English dialects and sociolects with an emphasis on gender and ethnicity;

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• questions of pragmatics as well as a longer look at English-related pidgin and creole varieties.

This authoritative guide is a comprehensive, scholarly, and systematic review of modern English. In one volume, the book presents a description of both the linguistic structure of present-day English and its geographical, social, gender, and ethnic variations. This is complemented with an updated general bibliography and with exercises at the end of each chapter and their suggested solutions at the end of the volume, all intended to provide students and other interested readers with helpful resources.

Chapter 1

The English language
Standards and variation

1.1 Standard English (StE)

There is little explicit agreement about just how StE should be regarded. Almost everyone who works with English assumes at least implicitly that it exists, but the descriptions which have been made of it – for example, in dictionaries, grammar books, and manuals of style – indicate that there is a certain amount of diversity in people’s ideas about StE. Yet there are dictionaries, grammars, and manuals of style, and what they document – some would say prescribe – is what is most often understood by StE (see §§1.3 and 1.4).

A standard language is used as a model in the speech community at large. In §1.3, you will read about four defining characteristics involved in the process of standardization: selection, acceptance, elaboration, and codification. That this is necessary is evident in the cases of so many indigenous languages in Third World countries (Chapter 12) which for lack of an indigenous standard have adopted a standardized European language such as English, hoping in this way to ease the path to “economic prosperity, science and technology, development and modernization, and the attractions of popular culture” and paying the price of some loss of self-expression and some diminishment in feelings of cultural worth (Bailey 1990: 87). The result is that “the old political empire with its metropolis and colonial outposts has nearly disappeared, replaced by a cultural empire of ‘English-speaking peoples’” (ibid.: 83). This quotation indicates that the move to English or, some might say, its imposition can also be overdone if English becomes the instrument of cultural imperialism. In order for English to occupy a more deeply rooted position within postcolonial societies, it must draw on the everyday usage of its speakers, and this includes the recognition not only of nonstandard forms but also of nonnative ones. While this is a current which moves contrary to StE in ENL (English as a Native Language) countries, it is also one which is likely to invigorate English worldwide and make it more flexible.

To look at this from another angle, StE is “the kind of English which draws least attention to itself over the widest area and through the widest range of usage” (Quirk and Stein 1990: 123). It is most clearly associated with the written language, perhaps because what is written and especially what is published is more permanent and is largely free of inadvertent slips and is transmitted in spelling, which is far more standardized than pronunciation is. Compare the relatively few AmE-BrE differences in orthography (§9.3.6) but the numerous national and regional accent standards (Chapters 3, 7–12). Two criteria may help us understand what it is that “draws least attention to itself” over the widest geographic spread and stylistic range. For one, there is the criterion of educated usage, sometimes broadened to include common, colloquial usage and probably most reasonably located somewhere between the two (§1.4). The other criterion is appropriateness to the audience, topic, and social setting. However these criteria are finally interpreted, there is a well-established bias toward the speech of those with the most power and prestige in a society. This has always been the better-educated and the higher socio-economic classes. The speech – however varied it may be in itself – of the middle class, especially the upper middle class, carries the most prestige: It is the basis for the overt, or publicly recognized, linguistic norms of most English-speaking societies. This is not to say that working-class speech or, for example, what is called British Black English (§7.5.4) or African-American English (AAE) (§8.5.2) are without prestige, but these varieties represent hidden or covert norms in the groups in which they are current. For a member of such a group not to conform to them would mean to distance themselves from the group and its dominant values and possibly to become an outsider. Language, then, is a sign of group identity. Public language and the overt public norm are what determine StE.

Although a great deal of emphasis has been put on what StE is, including lists of words and structures often felt to be used improperly (§1.2), it is perhaps more helpful to see how language use is performed. One approach is to see accommodation as a process which helps speakers communicate in a manner which is (1) socially appropriate (whether middle class or working class), (2) suitable to the use to which the language is being put (its register), and (3) clear. This means that while we, the authors, recognize the effects of the varying characteristics of users as well as the diverse uses to which the language is put, we will, nevertheless, orient ourselves along the lines of educated usage, especially as codified in dictionaries, grammars, phonetic-phonological treatments, and a wide assortment of other sources. In doing this, we are more Anglo-American than Antipodean, more middle than working class, and look more to written than spoken language – except, of course, in the treatment of pronunciation (Chapter 3) and spoken discourse (Chapter 5).

The third criterion listed above, clarity, is often evoked by alarmists. Its loss, resulting in the demise of English, is foreseen and lamented by popular grammarians and their reading public. This is best treated in connection with the question of language attitudes.

1.2 Language attitudes

People evaluate language either positively or negatively, and the language they pass judgment on may be their own, that is, that of their own group, or it may be the language of others. It may be spoken or written, standard or nonstandard, and it may be a native, a second, or a foreign language variety. Whatever it is, an evaluation is usually reached on the basis of only a few features, which are very often stereotypes which have been condemned or stigmatized as “bad” or have been stylized as “good.” And because language is such an intimate part of everyone’s identity, the stance people take in regard to their own and others’ language frequently leads to feelings either of superiority or of denigration and uncertainty.

These feelings are strengthened by the attitudes prevalent in any given group. Sometimes a whole group can be infected by feelings of inferiority. It is reported, for example, that “there is still linguistic insecurity on the part of many Australians: a desire for a uniquely Australian identity in language mixed with lingering doubts about the suitability and ‘goodness’ of [AusE]” (Guy 1991: 224). Many Australians seem to feel that a middle-class British or Cultivated Australian accent is somehow better, and they rate speakers with a Broad AusE accent less favorably in terms of status and prestige though more highly as regards solidarity and friendliness (Ball, Gallois, and Callan 1989: 94). In England, the attitudes people have toward RP (“Oxford English” or “the Queen’s English”; §7.3.1) may vary from complete identification including all sorts of attempts at emulation to rejection of it as a “cut-glass accent” or as talking “lah-di-dah” (Philp 1968: 26).

Few people would hold up RP as a worldwide model, and most seem to accept the many different English pronunciations used, hoping to understand them, joking about unexpected or odd differences, yet involuntarily and inadvertently judging people’s character by the attitudes which these accents call forth. Matched-guise tests, for example, have revealed many such attitudes. In these tests, people are asked to judge the personal features of speakers on the basis of their accent. In reality a single speaker has been recorded rendering a standardized text with various accents. The intention is to eliminate the effect of individual voice quality by using the same voice in each guise. Although there is the danger that such speakers will, in some cases, unwillingly incorporate mannerisms not attributable to a given accent and thus prevent a fair comparison, the results have revealed such things as the tendency of English speakers in England to associate speakers of RP with intelligence, speakers of rural accents with warmth and trustworthiness, and speakers of non-RP urban accents with low prestige (with Birmingham at the bottom). GenAm speakers enjoy relatively much prestige in England but are rated low on comprehensibility (Giles and Powesland 1975). In the United States network English (GenAm) – the variety probably most widely used in national newscasting – has high prestige; Southern accents, in contrast, have little standing outside the South; AA(V)E (African American (Vernacular) English) has negative associations for Whites.

Evidence for the way in which accent stereotypes support conventional views of the world is supported by research on children’s shows in American television and movies (Dobrow and Gidney 1998; Lippi-Green 2012; Fattal 2018 for the following). Analyses of accent use show a distinctive us vs them perspective (GenAm vs. BrE, German, Eastern European, and nonstandard or regional AmE accents), “The most wicked foreign accent of all was British English.”¹ Take the example of The Lion King, where “Mufasa is heroic and steadfast, while Scar is cynical and power-hungry.” The study points out,

Mufasa has an American accent, while Scar, the lion of the dark side, roars in British English. In a climactic scene in which Scar accuses Simba of being the “murderer!” responsible for Mufasa’s death, the final “r” in his declaration floats up into a sky bursting with lightning ….

Furthermore, “Scar’s minions, the hyenas, spoke in either African American English or English with a Spanish accent.” In sum, “Foreign accents and non-standard dialects were being used to voice all of the ‘bad’ characters”; additionally, “German and Slavic accents are also common for villain voices.”

With the enormous variety of feelings and the strength language attitudes have, it is natural to ask where all this comes from. Fundamentally, attitudes are anchored in feelings of group solidarity or distance. It is normal to identify with your own group; therefore, what is really curious is why some people have ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• 1 The English language: standards and variation
• Part 1 English as a linguistic system
• Part 2 Uses and users of English
• Part 3 National and regional varieties of English
• Key to the exercises
• Bibliography
• Index