Conventions of Standard English

6 Key excerpts on "Conventions of Standard English"

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  Argument and Evidence

  Critical Analysis for the Social Sciences

  • Peter J. Phelan, Peter J. Reynolds(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Conventions can be subtle and sophisticated. They include cultural rituals inherited through families or groups along with agreed patterns of thought, investigation and analysis which are developed in academic disciplines. Linguistic conventions are difficult to detect in everyday discourse but making conventions clear is part of the teaching and learning process in academic disciplines. This is best done within each discipline but there are some general points worth making. Being an expert, whether economist, political scientist or sociologist, involves thinking and talking like such experts. Experts acknowledge conventions. Different experts use different conventions. However, the point about being an expert is that accepted practice has to be learned. When learned, it provides a basis for creative independence of thought.

  Two basic conventions give meaning to words. Semantic conventions assign meanings to individual words so that, for example, ‘chat’ and ‘dog’ stand for groups of domesticated creatures, loved by the French and English. Semantic conventions define and are located in the fabric of a culture. To that extent, they are relative if not arbitrary. Syntactical conventions stipulate rules for generating strings of words in meaningful combinations. Linguistics offers a technical study of such rules, including the debate about whether they are innate or acquired.1 Those conventions constituting acceptable practice in the presentation and critical appraisal of argument and evidence can be identified less formally. We attempt this after reflection on what people do with words.

  LANGUAGE USAGE

  Words are used for many purposes: for example, reporting, joking, inviting, promising, ordering, questioning, persuading, describing, classifying, moralising, arguing and many more. There are conventional ways of signalling their functions. Because we acknowledge the signals, transgressions are noticed as amusing or worthy of censure. Deliberate miscategorisation can be a source of amusement, as when people talk to plants or encourage cars to start on cold mornings by uttering terms of endearment. Speaking out of turn breaks a convention and is a ground for censure. A complete study of all such conventions might be interesting but is hardly necessary. However, conversational implication,

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  A Survey of Modern English

  • Stephan E Gramley, Michael Pátzold(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1 The English language Standards and variation 1.1 STANDARD ENGLISH There is little explicit agreement about just how Standard English (StE) should be regarded. Almost everyone who works with English assumes at least implicitly that it exists, but the descriptions made of it – for example, in dictionaries and grammar books, to say nothing of 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 (see Chapter 14) which for lack of a native 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 loss of self-expression and 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 codification can also be overdone if English becomes the instrument of cultural imperialism. In order for English to occupy a more deeply rooted position within post-colonial societies it must draw on the everyday usage of its speakers, and this includes the recognition not only of non-standard forms, but also of non-native ones

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  Speaking, Listening and Drama

  • Andy Kempe, Jan Holroyd(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • David Fulton Publishers

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 4 Understanding spoken English

  Standard spoken English

  ONE OF THE problems teachers face in teaching speaking and listening, in England at any rate, is that the requirements are underpinned by a model of written English whereby pupils’ progress is, in part, registered by an increasing ability to use ‘standard English’ in a range of situations (DfEE 1999d: 55). However, applying the term ‘standard English’ to speech is highly problematic.

  Standard written English may be identified by its use of formulaic codes and conventions that appear to neutralise it by ‘establishing a practical consensus between agents or groups of agents having partially or totally different interests’ (Bourdieu 1991: 40). Bourdieu argues that any standard written language is determined by and contingent on class and power relationships. The form has to be sustained by a permanent effort of correction on the part of those institutions that depend on it to produce the need for its own services and its own products. An analogy would be the way currency works. The relationship between coins and notes and a bag of apples is dependent upon an agreement between the customer and the vendor based on common practice elsewhere. Why hand over £20 to a stall-holder for a bag of apples when the next door stall only wants 50p? As we know, though, such a relationship is constantly being corrected in line with factors such as inflation and supply and demand. What falls outside the common agreement about this standardised relationship is the possibility that, in payment for a bag of apples, the customer and the vendor strike a bargain that is mutually beneficial to them: one stall-holder may accept the offer to have her car washed, another would prefer to swap the apples for a string of sausages. Both vendor and customer understand the deal because they have agreed relative values between themselves. The standardisation is highly contextualised and rests in a tacit agreement between the two people communicating, even though this arrangement may fall outside institutional standards.

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  Language and Linguistic Diversity in the US

  An Introduction

  • Susan Tamasi, Lamont Antieau(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  elaboration aims for maximal variation in function (Haugen, 1972). Once the standard is selected and codified, its usage must then be expanded into multiple areas of society. Its use might begin in one arena, such as government, and then pass to another, such as education. Over time, its use might be extended to other areas, such as law, literature, and religion, and even, perhaps, to everyday usage in written and spoken forms. This leads to the last stage of the standardization process: acceptance. In order for a standard to survive and thrive, community members must actually acknowledge the form’s prestige and choose to use it (even subconsciously), at least within the proper or appropriate domains. Of course, the social norms that arise from acceptance of the standard variety prove fascinating. As we discuss in greater detail below, those who fully accept the standard are allowed entrée into the whole of the community, while those who do not are excluded.

  Whereas the process of standardization is theoretically straightforward, its implementation is more complex. Language change is normal and natural, and no matter how hard society tries, as long as a language has native speakers, it will continue to change and vary. Due to the inevitability of language change, the creation of new forms, and the emergence of new words, speakers must always actively maintain the standard form. Through the sub-process of acceptance, the standard must go through continual renewal. The reality remains, however, that there will never exist a community in which every person uses the standard form in every utterance. Therefore, if a linguistic standard is never fully realized, we must recognize it for what it is—an abstract form or a linguistic ideal—rather than a homogeneous way of speaking. Or, as described another way, standard language is only a social ideology, not a linguistic fact.

  CONCLUSION

  We have examined how different definitions of grammar lead to contrasting views toward language and its speakers. On the one hand, those who take a prescriptive view find correctness and prestige in formal language use that follows the rules of traditional grammar. Most language mavens tout this view, and it is the one most commonly referenced in the public discourse. On the other hand, those who take a descriptive view—linguists, most contemporary lexicographers, and students taking courses on language and linguistic diversity in the United States—strive to describe the rules underlying language as it is used day-to-day by fluent, native speakers. The main concern of descriptivists is whether an utterance fits into the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structure of the language, not whether a type of speech is correct according to the rules of an abstract and arbitrary standard. Linguists recognize that grammatical forms are acquired through natural language acquisition (internally), not by rote memorization of punctuation rules (externally). In other words, descriptivists concern themselves with the grammaticality of language.

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  Authority in Language

  Investigating Standard English

  • James Milroy, Lesley Milroy(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Paradoxically, it also seems to arise partly from the desire to maintain norms. To the extent that localised pressures for maintenance di ff er in their aims from those of the standard ideology, there is a permanent tension between language use that is maintained by solidarity pressures and usage that is maintained, or enforced, by status-based ideologies. Despite the great improvements in communication that have come about in the last two centuries, these competing pressures seem to have had the e ff ect of maintaining greater diversity in spoken English usage than the standard ideology would require (see further the discussion of ‘social norms’ and ‘community norms’ in Chapter 6). 3.3 Spoken English and the e ff ects of literacy In the previous section, we were concerned with the e ff ects of change and maintenance on spoken language rather than written language. In that section, and in previous chapters, we have generally referred to written language in terms of its importance in the ideology of standardisation. One function of written language and the writing system (its conventions of spelling, grammar and word-choice) is to enforce or maintain standardisation. Furthermore, as we have seen, it is only in the writing system that a high degree of uniformity has been achieved. The ideology of standardisation has been less successfully applied to spoken language, which continues to be subject to quite extensive variation and change. One reason why the norms of colloquial English grammar have not been so successfully standardised is that they have not in the past been so fully described as the norms of written English have been: for this reason it has not been possible to codify them to the same extent

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  Alphabet to Email

  How Written English Evolved and Where It's Heading

  • Naomi S. Baron(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  You have a number of options. You might keep changing your standards (which is what happens when new editions of dictionaries come out). Another possibility is simply to accept a gap between formal standards and actual current usage. (This gap often shows up between writing and speech, since writing tends to reflect earlier norms while speech commonly embodies innovation.) A third option—the one Jonathan Swift proposed—is to decree that linguistic time must stand still. While this chapter is called “Setting Standards,” it deals both with calls for language standardization and attempts to impose linguistic prescriptivism. What’s the difference?

  Language standardization means establishing one language variety (either in speaking or writing) as the norm against which all other usage is measured. Sometimes it’s assumed that everyone will adopt the same linguistic patterns (as in spelling). In other cases, the norm is held out more as a reminder of the gap between social classes. Received Pronunciation has been a “standard” in British English for more than a century, yet the majority of the population was never really expected to adopt it.

  Prescriptivism involves claims about the correctness of particular linguistic constructions (don’t use double negatives, keep the parts of an infinitive together, make subjects and verbs agree). Commonly, prescriptivism is the mechanism through which standardization is realized.

  Standardization of English was a slow process, with different components of the language being standardized incrementally. As we’ll see, the core of a written standard was established as far back as the mid-fifteenth century. Adoption of the modern set of punctuation marks (though not necessarily their uses) was in place by the early seventeenth century, while consistency in spelling took many decades more. The notion of standardizing pronunciation was even longer in coming.

  THE PRINTER’S HAND

  In the mid-1970s, I received a set of author’s proofs for an article that was to appear in a respected linguistics journal published in the Netherlands. As I began reading, it became clear that whole lines of the original manuscript had been omitted, yielding quasi-sentences—beginning with capital letters and ending with periods to be sure, but jamming together beginnings of one set of arguments with endings from others.

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