Conventions of Standard English

9 Key excerpts on "Conventions of Standard English"

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  Social Conventions

  From Language to Law

  • Andrei Marmor(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Four C onventions of L an g ua g e Semantics What aspects of language, and language use, are conventional? This is the question that will be addressed in this and the next chapters. The answer does not purport to be comprehensive. First, I will have nothing to say here about syntax. 1 Second, even within the domains of semantics and pragmatics, which will form the subject of these chapters, my focus will be limited to some key issues. Most of this chapter concentrates on the question of whether the literal meaning of words and linguis-tic expressions is conventional, and if so, in what sense. In the next chapter we will look at some of the pragmatic aspects of language use, questioning the possible role of conventions in securing communication that is not completely determined by the semantic content of the relevant expression. If all this looks like an odd task, the impression is not en-tirely mistaken. Philosophy of language has become extremely 1 The syntax of natural languages is extensively researched by generative lin-guistics, and the scientific details of this body of research cannot be addressed here. It may be worth noting that there seems to be nothing in the general ideas of generative linguistics that would contradict the basic ideas defended in this book. According to these theories, syntax is roughly divided between the deep, universal, rules of grammar and their surface instantiations in par-ticular languages. The former, it is claimed, does not have any humanly pos-sible alternatives, and hence deep rules of syntax/grammar are not conventions. Conventional variations, differing between natural languages, are present only at the surface. 80 chapter four sophisticated in the last few decades. Its interest in the conven-tional aspects of language, however, has been rather marginal, at best.

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  English Language, The

  From Sound to Sense

  • Gerald P. Delahunty, James J. Garvey(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Parlor Press, LLC

    (Publisher)

  These are usage rules. They have at least two jobs to do. First, they help define the standard variety of English—recall our question in our introductory chapter that asked you to consider why anything, e.g., electrical outlets, might be standardized. You probably answered by saying that standardization allows the greatest number of people to use it for the greatest number of purposes. You might also have added that if something is standardized, then it can be maintained in that form for a long period of time. Standardizing a language Delahunty and Garvey 24 has the same goals: to allow as many people as possible to communicate ef-fectively with each other, and to allow people at any time to read texts that were written perhaps hundreds of years before they were born, much as we read the novels of Jane Austen now. And standardization allows us to write texts that will be understood by many generations to come. The usage rules help ensure that standard English is used in formal writ-ing and speaking so as to make our writings and speeches clear, efficient, and effective, given our purposes in communicating and the characteristics of our audiences. Rules that tell us which forms to choose ( saw not seen or seed as past tense of see ), or what syntactic patterns to avoid (multiple noun modifiers), or to use (parallel structures) are prescriptive . Ideally they prescribe what are taken to be the most generally used formal writing and speaking practices at a particular time. Usage rules are extremely important. Speakers and writers who violate them are likely to be judged harshly. It is a major part of any teacher’s job to ensure that students can write in accordance with these rules. They can be found in composition textbooks, which often devote entire sections to them; they can also be found in writers’ handbooks of usage rules, in usage dictionar-ies, or in selected entries in desk dictionaries.

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  Native Speakers and Native Users

  Loss and Gain

  • Alan Davies(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  5 Language norms and Standard English In this chapter, I move from a consideration of second-language learning and second-language acquisition to exactly what it is, in terms of language norms (Bartsch 1988) and language judgements, that is being learnt, is being acquired. My answer for the native user is the Standard Language. What education aims to provide for both the native speaker and the native user is command of the Standard Language. What is striking about the spread of English in current times is not its variability, of which, admittedly, there is a great deal, but its stability (Sedlatschek 2009). What is it that slows down change, that pits a conservative resistance to the anarchic rush to fragment? In this chapter, I suggest that there are two such forces that encourage resistance to change: the first is language norms (Bartsch 1988) which members, those who (wish to) belong as speakers of language X, accept and practise. Such acceptance by members is reminiscent of the Codes of Ethics and of Practice which more and more occupations publish as an indication of their wish to claim professional status. The second force is the ubiquity of the Standard Language which is the main subject of this chapter. Language norms In what follows, by ‘Grammar 1’ I mean the unique grammar of each individual. ‘Grammar 2’ is the shared grammar of a speech community, and ‘Grammar 3’ the universal grammar which reflects the human language capacity. Saussure (1916) defined the scope of linguistics as being concerned with the system of language, thereby getting away from the obsession of philology with sound change (and hence variation) and, in so doing, to secure for linguistics the (scientific) qualities of stability and structure. Saussure put forward his cele- brated trinity of categories: langage (everything that goes on linguistically in the speech community); langue (the system employed); and parole (the speech of any one individual).

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  The Emergence of the English Native Speaker

  A Chapter in Nineteenth-Century Linguistic Thought

  • Stephanie Hackert(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Chapters 8 and 9. 112 Defining and delimiting “English” and “standard English” ity. It provided linguists with a convenient solution to the problem of linguistic heterogeneity: the language as a whole was restricted to one of its forms, which was the language of the great writers, which, in turn, was labeled the “standard.” 6 The question of standard spoken English and the dialects 6.1 From written to spoken standards for English As the previous chapter has outlined, the term standard English had obtained one very clearly defined use in the second half of the nineteenth century: it indicated the common and uniform literary language which served as the theoretical and methodological basis of the work of linguists and lexicographers, who focused upon it because they needed it to define and delimit their object of investiga-tion and description, the English language. There was another use of the term standard English , however, which referred back to an older idea: that of a spoken standard. Uniformity and commonality were immediately recognized as being impossible goals with regard to speech, and so the definition of this form of the language proceeded primarily by means of the definition of the social charac-teristics of its speakers. With regard to spoken English, the term standard thus assumed an evaluative sense immediately (cf. Crowley 1996: 162). The following excerpts illustrate the concern with pronunciation in the nineteenth-century debate about standard English.

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  Standard English and the Politics of Language

  • T. Crowley(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  What is of particular interest for our argument in the quotations cited is that there is often a running together of both senses of the term ‘standard’. Sometimes it appears to mean a value which has to be met and other times it appears to mean a uniform practice. What is likewise of interest is the conflation of written and spoken language. Does ‘standard’ when used of language refer to a level that has to be met in written language, or a uniform set of practices of writing? Or does it mean a level that has to be met in the spoken language, or a uniform set of ways of speaking? Such problems are in fact highly difficult to disen- tangle and an attempt will be made to unravel the complexities by studying the use of the term ‘standard language’ in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century language studies. However, before moving to an examination of such usage a brief examination will be made of a major difficulty facing many nineteenth-century linguists working in Britain: what is a language and where do we find it? This was accompanied by a more specific difficulty facing those working within the historical study of the language at this period: what is the English language and where is it to be found? Finding a language: where to look and what to look for It is a commonly held view that Ferdinand de Saussure launched the discipline of general linguistics through the theories encapsulated in the posthumous Course in General Linguistics first published in 1916. Central 80 Standard English and the Politics of Language to the launching of the new discipline, it is generally argued, was Saussure’s radical distinction between langue and parole. That is, the distinction between the linguistic structure that exists as a Durkheimian ‘social fact’ and the usage that the structure facilitates which is individ- ual and contextual.

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  Standards and Norms in the English Language

  • Miriam A. Locher, Jürg Strässler, Miriam A. Locher, Jürg Strässler(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Typically, it is referred to as ‘standard’ English. If, however, it can be shown that ‘standard’ English does not exist, at least as a linguistically describable variety, then Kachru’s functionalist arguments will be further supported by evidence of a different kind. In Bex (1993, 1996), I attempted to show the unreality of ‘standard’ English. However, in Bex and Watts (1999: 7–8) we also argued that throughout history there have been powerful forces attempting to ‘strait- ‘Standard’ English, discourse grammars and ELT 229 jacket’ the language into acceptable forms both grammatically and phonol-ogically. Such forces are frequently represented by people who are deemed to possess linguistic ‘authority’ and in Bex (1999), I discussed some of the authorities of the 20 th century and noted that they were not obviously trained linguists and this tradition persists, as exemplified by John Hum-phrys (2004). Occasionally, however, professional linguists will declare themselves on the prescriptivists’ side. In recent years, a notable example has been John Honey (1997) who argues that ‘standard English’, apart from being based on written forms of the language is that used by ‘edu-cated’, or prestigious, speakers. He includes among such people those ... [who have graduated] from (often famous) universities, of literary reputa-tion, or [who have] the ability in all other respects to use the language in highly acceptable ways – or who are in some other way high-status figures (like royalty) ... (Honey 1997: 161–162) This is puzzling for a number of reasons.

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  The Politics of English

  • Marnie Holborow(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Standard speech came to be defined as the variety of speech which 'by reason of its cultural status and currency is held to represent the best form of that speech' (Harris 1988:18-19). Items were selected and then sealed: '[a]s soon as a standard 168 The Politics of English language has been formed . . . the lexicographer is bound to deal with that alone' (quoted in Crowley 1989: 117). The publication of the OED thus 'set a historic seal of approval on that choice'. Thus, Murray's compilation of the dictionary becomes both the discovery of the standard language and the creation of it. As Harris notes: There can hardly be a more remarkable example in intellectual history of quoting one's own evidence in order to establish the validity of what was claimed/ Standard English was simulta-neously discovered and created. It was indeed a self-fulfilling prophecy (Harris 1988: 17). The invention of this particular brand of Standard English fitted well with the ideology of the dominant social class of Victorian times. It provided a convenient model for mass education which set Standard English aside as the language of the educated and also implied that the speech that working-class children brought to school needed to be improved. By the end of the century, this divide between Standard English and people's spoken language had become an established fact. This description in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) captures something of the degree to which this division had become 'common sense': Mrs Durbeyfield habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality. (Hardy 1992: 28) Standard English had thus become what 'persons of quality' spoke, a badge of education and class. It was during this period that further distinctions were made for 'correct' pronunciation.

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  Standards of English

  Codified Varieties around the World

  • Raymond Hickey(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  139 7 The idea of Standard American English WILLIAM A. KRETZSCHMAR, JR, AND CHARLES F. MEYER 7.1 Introduction ‘Codification’ of a standard language might be thought to consist of the rela- tively simple act of writing down what people say, particularly what people say in the capital city. 1 The idea of a standard for language arose in the neo- classical period, when there was new confidence that science and observation could find the reasons behind the workings of the world around us. Great progress was made then on many fronts, for example Newton’s formulation of our (neo)classical laws of physics. National language academies were founded at this time in many countries, institutions that continue to the present day, to preserve and regulate the purity of language. 2 However, nothing could be further from the truth for language as people actually use it. As attractive as it may be to think that language in use is (or should be) perfectly regular and subject to natural laws similar to those formulated in the physical sciences, so that we just have to observe well what the best people say and the best writers write in order to codify the rules, standard languages are actually institutional products. It is the academy that makes the standard. Codification is not the writing down of what people actually say and write, but the formulation of rules for what people should say, often based on cultural factors like the polit- ical influence of the capital. National interest in a standard variety of American English developed soon after the United States gained independence from England. In letters to Congress in 1780, John Adams proposed the establishment of an acad- emy that would develop norms for Standard American English: 1 Of course language codification can be a complicated topic, both politically and linguistic- ally. Haugen 1966 offers a good early discussion in which codification is the second step of four steps in the creation of standard languages.

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  Towards a Standard English

  1600 - 1800

  • Dieter Stein, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Dieter Stein, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  1. Notions of standard A major theoretical issue lies in the fact that it is not the case that all of the in-cipient or, to various degrees, embryonic forms of more widely used prestige 2 Dieter Stein varieties in the history of English could, by a more strict definition, be called standard languages. There seem to be three uses of the term standardiza-tion. There is an extended use which would apply to all manner of varieties, the notion of standardization with standard as the resulting variety. To this type of variety James Milroy (this volume) assigns the term supra-local language norms. These constitute localized or regional norm standards. Such varieties are instances of language convergence in various degrees and certainly carry prestige, which is largely a function of their use in various combinations of the following situations, such as are listed by Görlach (1988: 133-134): a) as a written language b) as a literary language c) as a religious language d) as a language of education and science e) as a language of the law courts, parliament and the court etc. f) as a lingua franca g) as a national language h) as a language of the mass media (newspaper, radio, television etc.). This first, wide, notion of the term standard seems to be inherent in the majority of work on at least the history of English (Görlach 1988, Trahern 1989). A second, narrow or restricted, definition of standardization was devel-oped in language planning research in countries with no nationally accepted varieties and with the problem of having a language in addition to a range of dialects. Haugen (1966) describes the following constitutive processes in creating a standard language: • selection • codification • elaboration • acceptance. Garvin (1964), based on Garvin and Mathiot (1960), gives the following defining features for a standard language: 1. the intrinsic properties of a standard language; 2. the functions of a standard language within the culture of a speech commu-nity; 3.

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