The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies

Philip Seargeant, Ann Hewings, Stephen Pihlaja, Philip Seargeant, Ann Hewings, Stephen Pihlaja

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138913455
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351001700
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies provides a comprehensive overview of English Language Studies. The book takes a three-pronged approach to examine what constitutes the phenomenon of the English language; why and in what contexts it is an important subject to study; and what the chief methodologies are that are used to study it. In 30 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, this Handbook covers and critically examines:

• English Language Studies as a discipline that is changing and evolving in response to local and global pressures;
• definitions of English, including world Englishes, contact Englishes, and historical and colonial perspectives;
• the relevance of English in areas such as teaching, politics and the media;
• analysis of English situated in wider linguistics contexts, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic ethnography.

The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies is essential reading for researchers and students working in fields related to the teaching and study of the English language in any context.

Part 1

Defining English

1

The idea of English

Philip Seargeant

Introduction: studying something which doesn’t exist

In a famous gesture intended to prove a realist understanding of the world, the philosopher G. E. Moore held up first one hand and then another to indicate that there are external objects in the world. As everyone present could see, here were his hands, and thus it followed that an external world must exist generally (Moore 1939). We can perhaps do something similar with the English language and say that, as I’m now writing this sentence in English, it stands to reason that the English language exists. This seems obvious enough – basic common sense, in much the same way that Moore’s proof was (to his mind at least).

The reason for beginning the discussion of English language studies in this way – i.e. by pointing to seemingly simple truths about the existence of the entity which the book as a whole is about – is that over the past few years there has been a strain in some scholarship which questions whether we can really say that an entity called ‘English’ exists. Or at least, can we take it as self-evident that it is simple common sense that we know what this entity is, and that this belief should thus be accepted as an uncritical starting point for all discussions of the language?

Characterising the argument as being that certain scholars are saying English doesn’t really exist is perhaps slightly over-exaggerating. A more accurate way of putting it would be that for some, viewing languages as discrete entities is starting to be seen as sociolinguistically problematic. Alastair Pennycook, for example, wonders if

[p]erhaps it is time to question the very notions that underpin our assumptions about languages [and] ask whether the ways we name and describe [them] as separate entities … are based on 20th century epistemologies that can no longer be used to describe the use of languages in a globalizing world.

(Pennycook 2010: 121)

The argument here is that categories such as ‘languages’ (as well as ‘varieties’, ‘dialects’ and so on) are not scientifically real so much as products of a particular set of events in Western intellectual history. If we fail to take this into account when discussing or analysing English, we risk simply reinforcing the beliefs that produced the concept of the language in the first place, and this can constrain our investigation into the workings, functions and implications of language use.

Specifically, this argument is centred around the premise that the concept of discrete languages as we understand them in Western thought is a consequence of the promotion of the nation state as the principal politico-cultural unit in eighteenth-century European political philosophy (Anderson 1983). As part of this worldview, the language practices of a community were valorised as an essential element of that community’s cultural-political identity. And with the principal unit of community being understood as the nation state, so the ideology of idealised ‘national languages’ was created. These national languages were identified with a particular high-prestige standard, which was codified in grammar books and dictionaries, thus cementing its status as the ‘correct’ form of the language (Milroy and Milroy 1985). The ideology then worked in consort with the theories that developed into the modern discipline of linguistics. Although research into sociolinguistics does regularly acknowledge the idealised nature of categories such as discrete languages and varieties (Swann 2007), these nevertheless still have deep roots in the ontological presuppositions of much academic research in the subject (Seargeant 2010), and are even more central in popular perceptions of a language such as English.

The main reason that recent scholarship has drawn attention to the ideological foundations of some of these underlying presuppositions is because the eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century frameworks of social organisation which gave rise to them are arguably no longer valid for the world we now live in (Blommaert 2009). The impact of globalisation particularly has altered the social, cultural and political landscape, and with it the sociolinguistic practices of millions of people around the world. Yet there is a disjunction between the practices people manifest in their everyday language use, and the way language is conceptualised, be it in public discourse, policy initiatives, or even in different disciplines of scholarship. Or to put it another way, there is a division between the language practices and resources that speakers of English use, and the idea of English as a particular cultural, political or (social) scientific entity. And an understanding of the latter – the concept of English – is of vital importance because the way people think about a language influences the attitudes they take towards it, as well as towards broader social issues in which language is involved. This chapter, therefore, will examine the ‘idea’ of English as it is constructed in society. It will begin with an overview of the theoretical concerns which shape this approach to English, before moving to analyse examples of the ways in which concepts of English are constructed in various different domains, and the implications these have for English language studies more generally.

Current issues and topics

Linguistic ideologies

In his essay on ‘Oratio imago animi’, the seventeenth-century dramatist Ben Jonson writes of the way that language acts as a marker of a person’s character (Jonson 1947 [1641]: 625):

Language most shewes a man: speake that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired, and inmost parts of us, and is the Image of the Parent of it, the mind. No glasse renders a mans forme, or likenesse, so true as his speech.

The belief expressed here is that the way a person uses language is an index, or indictor, of his or her character. Jonson is talking of articulate thought (‘speech is the image of the mind’, as the title of the essay has it), but in expressing one’s mind the material form this takes – in terms of accent, style, prosody and so forth – is something upon which we make judgments about the social status, moral character and cultural background of the speaker. These judgements are a product of the shared beliefs that circulate within communities, and which interpret linguistic traits as metonymic for statistically co-occurring social attributes and stereotypical social features (related to class, gender, ethnicity and so forth).

These shared beliefs are what are commonly referred to as language ideologies. In his foundational paper on this topic, Silverstein (1979: 193) describes language ideologies as ‘any sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure or use’. In other words, they are the embedded beliefs that a group shares about language and language use which structures the way in which language is perceived by a particular group and in which it operates as social practice within that group. These beliefs are occasionally articulated as explicit conceptualisations of language, but they can also implicitly shape the way language is used, or the attitudes and stances people take towards it. It is this structuring that Silverstein calls the ‘indexical’ layer of language – the way certain elements of language use point towards embedded beliefs concerning the social, political or cultural nature of acts of speech.

A key point within this theorisation of language and social practice is that language ideologies are never about language alone. Instead, they incorporate the ties between language and other social dynamics such as gender, class and nationality (Woolard 1998). Use of a particular syntactical form, for example, can index a complex of ideological beliefs about class or cultural background, and these then provide a frame in which interaction between participants takes place. Furthermore, syntactical features or particular accents always exist within a wider ecology of linguistic practices wherein diversity is marked differentially, so that a particular feature is given symbolic significance in relation to the other features with which it is contrasted (and particularly ‘standard’ concepts of the language).

Another conceptual distinction introduced by Silverstein (1998) is that of the ‘language community’ as opposed to the more common sociolinguistic notion of the ‘speech community’. Whereas a speech community is the grouping who have broadly similar patterns of language use in terms of accent, dialect, pragmatics and so forth, a language community is one which has a shared conception of the language as a named entity, and thus consider the idea of the language as part of their collective identity. An example would be groupings who view English (or a particular variety of it) as in a sense ‘their’ language, and promote this shared commitment as a central part of their communal identity. In other words, beliefs such as the idea that language homogeneity across a nation is a natural state of the world are particular, albeit very deeply embedded, language ideologies about the relationship between societies and linguistic practices (Kroskrity 2000).

Structuring language conceptualisation

As noted above, ideologies are manifest in both discourse and practice – in how people speak about a language, as well as in how they use and relate to it. As such it is a potentially very broad area for investigation, and in this chapter I will therefore narrow the focus to concentrate specifically on the ways in which the concept of English is constructed in discourse.

So how does language conceptualisation take place? There are five key elements to the process, which can offer a useful structure for its analysis. These are the mode, the domain, the function, the context and the means – all of which I will explain in further detail below (and then provide extended examples of in the next section).

First, there are the different modes in which conceptualisation takes place. By this I mean the different semiotic resources – verbal discourse, image, movement – which can be used to communicate ideas. Clearly the most prominent in this respect is verbal discourse – using language itself to talk or write about the nature of language – as this allows for the most flexible and richest way of generating and expressing conceptual meaning. Yet representations can also take place in other modes. There are examples, for instance, of ideas of language being represented visually – either diagrammatically (e.g. family trees of historical language development) or pictorially. In the Middle Ages, for example, there was an established iconography for ideas about grammar (Seargeant 2016), and throughout the history of art the visual trope of the Tower of Babel has been a popular subject.

The second point of note is that conceptualisation occurs in different domains. That is to say, language is the object of study for a wide range of different scientific disciplines, while at the same time featuring as an idea in non-scientific domains such as the arts, humanities and social sciences. While linguistics is, of course, the principal site of study, concepts of language are also commonly constructed in the cognitive sciences and psychology, in politics and educational contexts, and in philosophy, as well as literature and everyday contexts.

Each of these have a different set of concerns and aims, a point which stands as the third element of conceptualisation. A broad division can be made here between those conceptualisations which have as their aim the representation of language as it actually is (in so far as we can determine this), and those which present language as it could or should be (in their opinion). Scientific representations, for example, aim to flesh out a concept of language which fits as closely as possible with the observed phenomena of how language exists and works in the world. This is not necessarily the case in other domains.

A useful way of looking at this divide is by means of the distinction put forward by Searle (1995), building on the work of J. L. Austin and G. E. M. Anscombe, between two ‘directions of fit’. This maps the relationship that a conceptual term has with the phenomenon it is representing. There can be a ‘word-to-world’ direction of fit, whereby the term represents the reality of the observed phenomenon, i.e. an utterance is used to describe the way things in the world already are. For example, when I say ‘I have been to Tokyo’ I am describing an event that has actually occurred in the world. The opposite of this is a ‘world-to-word’ direction of fit, whereby the utterance is used as a declaration of something that is meant to come to pass, and thus provides a structuring device for an action or phenomenon. An example of this would be saying ‘I’ll meet you at half past seven’, and in doing so discursively projecting a version of a future reality which then acts as a structure for my upcoming plans.

In scientific discourse, representations are aiming for a ‘word-to-world’ direction of fit, whereby the term ‘language’ or ‘English’ equates as closely as possible to the actuality of these phenomena, and can function as an accurate conceptual category for analytic purposes. In this context the function of conceptualisation is, on the whole, straightforward, in that it is meant to provide an accurate representation which contributes to linguistic science. As we have seen, however, there are conflicting views of precisely what language or English can mean even in this context, and indeed much of the business of linguistics is concerned with refining this conceptualisation.

The opposite direction of fit also occurs for language conceptualisation in certain domains. Language policy, for example, promotes ideas of language which are then used as a template for regulating actual language use. This is found in particular in education, where choices about which variety or register should act as the standard become a set of norms to which students are then socialised. Similarly, language planning and policy initiatives project ideas about forms of language to which communities are urged or forced to conform. In this case the functions of conceptualisation will be related to purposes of social cohesion or identity, or to other cultural and political ends. When, for example, a national standard is prescribed in the curriculum, and other (local) languages or varieties are discouraged or banned, the political aim is likely to be a means of fostering and enacting an ideology of national unity. In the pure sense, a standard national language is an ideal. There is no direct correspondence between the representation of, say, English that it puts forward, and the real-life diversity and variety in English that is found in even the most homogeneous of communities. Yet within society this concept of the language often underpins policy and pronouncements due to the role that it plays in the belief systems of those with regulatory power.

An even more salient example of the ‘world-to-word’ direction of fit is the case of the inventors of artificial and reduced languages, such as Esperanto or Basic English. In these cases, the aim was to make actual language practice (the ‘world’) adapt to the tenets of their invented or contrived systems (the ‘word’). For those advocating these projects, the concept ‘language’ was used to refer to a phenomenon which did not actually exist in the world but which they felt could be engineered into existence and become a reality of social practice for the population through promotion and education.

The fourth consideration of language conceptualisation is that it always happens w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1 Defining English
• Part 2 The relevance of English
• Part 3 Analysing English
• Index