A resource book for students

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World EnglishesJennifer Jenkins

• A resource book for students

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Strand 4 Variation in English across the world

• New Englishes
• Four defining criteria by Platt, Weber and Ho
  (1984)
• It has developed through the education system.
• It has developed in an area where a native
  variety of English was not the language spoken by
  most of the population.
• It is used for a range of functions among those
  who speak or write it in the region where it is
  used.
• It has become localised or nativised by
  adopting some language features of its own (e.g.,
  sounds, intonation patterns, sentence structures,
  words, expressions).

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Innovation in English

• Five internal factors to decide the status of an
  innovation (Bamgbose 1998)
• 1 Demographic factor (how many speakers use
  it?)
• 2 Geographical factor (how widely dispersed is
  it?)
• 3 Authoritative factor (where is its use
  sanctioned?)
• 4 Codification (does it appear in reference
  books?)
• 5 Acceptability factor (what is the attitude
  towards it?)

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Levels of variation

• Main levels of variation pronunciation, grammar,
  vocabulary/idiom, discourse style
• Pronunciation
• Consonant sounds, e.g., dental fricatives /?/ and
  /ð/
• Vowel sounds vary across the New Englishes in
  terms of both quality and quantity

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Levels of variation

• Grammar
• a tendency not to mark nouns for plural
• a tendency to use a specific/non-specific system
  for nouns rather than a definite/indefinite
  system, or to use the two systems side by side
• a tendency to change the form of quantifiers
• a tendency not to make a distinction between the
  third person pronouns he and she
• a tendency to change the word order within the
  noun phrase
• (cf. Platt, Weber and Ho 1984)

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Levels of variation

• Grammar
• limited marking of the third person singular
  present tense form
• limited marking of verbs for the past tense
• a tendency to use an aspect system (which shows
  whether an action is finished or still going on)
  rather than tense system (which shows the time an
  action takes place)
• a tendency to extend the use of be verb ing
  constructions to stative verbs
• the formation of different phrasal and
  prepositional verb constructions
• (cf. Platt, Weber and Ho 1984)

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Levels of variation

• Vocabulary/idiom
• Locally coined words/expressions
• Prefixation (e.g., enstool, destool)
• Suffixation (e.g., teacheress, spacy)
• Compounding (e.g., key-bunch, high hat)
• Borrowings from indigenous languages
• Idioms
• Direct translations from indigenous idioms
  (e.g., to shake legs)
• Variation on native speaker idioms (e.g., to eat
  your cake and have it)
• Combination of English and indigenous forms
  (e.g., to put sand in someones gari)

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Levels of variation

• Discourse style
• Formal character
• Complex vocabulary and grammatical structure
• Specific expressions of thanks, deferential
  vocabulary and the use of blessings
• Greeting and leave-taking

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The legitimate and illegitimate offspring of
English

• The naming of the New Englishes
• World Englishes scholar Mufwene (1997)
• Criticism of western linguists terminology
• Based on mistaken belief of language contact
  mother language gives birth to daughter language
  without any language contact
• Language contact also a feature of legitimate
  Englishes

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The legitimate and illegitimate offspring of
English

• Innovation Deviation Mistake
• Distinction by Kachru (1992)
• Innovation concerned with creativity, which is
  often not granted to Outer and Expanding Circle
  speakers
• Deviation involves a comparison with another
  variety
• Mistake (error) relates to acquisitional
  deficiency

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Emerging sub-varieties Singlish

• Singlish Colloquial Singapore English (CSE)
• Differs from Standard Singapore English (SSE)
• Not clear whether CSE and SSE are continuum or
  two distinct varieties (Deterding 2007)
• Fear that use of Singlish among children might
  affect literacy
• Main difference from Standard English is
  syntactic, lexis is dominated by English (Gupta
  1999)

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Singlish

• Grammar
• Verb features e.g. past tense not marked, no
  present tense -s suffix, copula dropped to
  describe states
• Noun features e.g. non-count nouns treated as
  count, indefinite article dropped, relative
  clause with different word order and one
• Sentence structure e.g. subject dropping,
  conjunction dropping, use of pragmatic particles
  lah and ah

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Singlish

• Pronunciation
• e.g. avoidance of th-sounds, less distinction
  between long and short vowels, rhythm very
  syllable-timed
• Lexis
• Borrowing from other Singaporean languages (e.g.
  Hokkien, Malay)
• Shifted meaning (e.g. stay for long-term
  residence)
• Conversion verbs to adjectives (e.g. blur
  confused), nouns to verbs
• Idiomatic forms peculiar to Singapore (e.g. love
  letters flaky, tube-shaped biscuits)

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The politics of Singlish

• Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) (2000)
• Promotion of SSE
• Use of Singlish discouraged
• Concerns about international intelligibility ?
  economic imperative
• Sociolinguists (e.g. Schneider 2007) have
  different view concerns about falling standards
  are common in postcolonial contexts
• Rubdy (2001) Singlish is symbol of cultural
  identity
• Wee (2002) SGEM is an attempt to eliminate
  Singlish ? breach of linguistic human rights

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Estuary English (EE)

• Roswarne 1996
• Accent variety between Cockney and RP
• Pronunciation features
• Word final t replaced with glottal stop
• L-vocalisation
• Lengthening of final vowel sounds
• Dropping of yod in words like assume
• Syllabic consonants avoided by insertion of schwa
• th-fronting
• Might replace RP or be absorbed into RP (thus
  changing RP)

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Estuary English (EE) a variety?

• Challenges to Rosewarnes account of EE
• Fails to take into account intraspeaker
  variation, i.e. adjusting accent to context
  (Maidment 1994)
• EE is StE with non-RP, London-influenced accent
  (Wells 1998)
• EE as inaccurate myth (Trudgill 2002) not a
  variety but a lower middle-class accent, unlikely
  to replace RP because not taught in schools
• Not a variety but a set of levelled accents or
  dialects (Kerswill 2007)
• A number of distinct accents, not a single and
  definable variety, is part of more general
  changes which are not exclusive to the British
  Isles (Przedlacka 2002)

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