English has spread quickly. even since independency. either as a first linguistic communication or as a medium of instruction for non-native talkers ( Platt and Weber. 2002 ) . The existent scope of assortments of English is much greater than is found in the British Isles. On the one manus we can talk of an acrolect or high position assortment. and on the other a basilect or low position assortment. with the mesolect busying the intermediate place.
These footings are normally descriptive of what is known as a post-creole continuum—that is the scope of non-discrete assortments in a post-colonial state of affairs runing from the acrolect. which is by and large really near to the standard linguistic communication of the colonial power. through to the basilect. which structurally resembles a Creole. It is sufficient here to characterize a Creole as a assorted linguistic communication. ensuing historically from contact between talkers of different and reciprocally unintelligible linguistic communications.
Creoles are normally associated with colonial state of affairss and are by and large assigned a really low societal position. Basilectal talkers. who occupy the lowest place in a post-creole continuum. are frequently rather unintelligible to talkers of the acrolect. All talkers occupy a scope on this acrolect—basilect continuum. which correlates closely with their societal position. switching along it harmonizing to societal context in much the same manner as British talkers manipulate lingual variables. Of class. the extent of lingual difference is much greater.
Such continua have been described in Jamaica by De Camp ( 2001 ) and in Guyana by Bickerton ( 1995 ) . and it is likely. we should observe. that these surveies will be of increasing relevancy to an apprehension of the sociolinguistic construction of cultural minority communities in Britain. A elaborate history of the construction and map of pidgins and Creoles is non straight relevant here. but interested readers are referred to Todd ( 2000 ) for an introductory history of the societal. political and lingual issues involved.
Although respectable Victorians were already responding strongly against the normative attitudes of the 18th century. the most utmost anti-prescriptive statements. every bit far as we know. are those made by some members of the ‘American structuralist’ school of linguistics. Bloomfield ( 1993:22 ) felt that detecting why ain’t is considered bad and am non good is non a cardinal inquiry in linguistics. and he thought it strange that ‘people without lingual training’ should give ‘a great trade of attempt to ineffectual treatments of this topic’ .
Bloomfield was surely connoting that the survey of prescriptivism was non of cardinal involvement to linguistics ; he was thereby restricting the field of linguistics to a descriptive survey of signifier and system in linguistic communication which takes comparatively small history of linguistic communication as a societal phenomenon. Some of Bloomfield’s followings have gone farther than this and have attacked ‘unscientific’ attacks to linguistic communication with missional ardor. C. C.
French friess ( 1997 ) seems to hold equated traditional school grammar with prescription ( which was by definition ‘bad’ and ‘unscientific’ in the position of structural linguists of the clip ) . and in his book on English sentence structure he went so far as to even reject traditional lingual footings such as ‘noun’ . ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’ . Fries’s work was directed towards the educational system at the ordinary consumer. Anxious to guarantee all his readers that their usage of linguistic communication was merely every bit good as that of anyone else. he proclaimed that there is no such thing as good or bad. correct or incorrect. grammatical or ill-formed. in linguistic communication.
English in Western Europe and America Although lingual bookmans would surely challenge the inside informations of this dictum. they have continued ( for the most portion ) to asseverate or presume that their subject is descriptive and theoretical and that they do non cover in prescription. In Western Europe and America most theoretical linguists would still confirm that all signifiers of linguistic communication are in rule equal.
As Hudson ( 2002:191 ) has put it: Linguists would claim that if they were merely shown the grammars of two different assortments. one with high and the other with low prestigiousness. they could non state which was which. any more than they could foretell the skin coloring material of those who speak the two assortments. Although some grounds from work by societal psychologists ( Giles et al. . 2000 ) lends some support to Hudson’s point. we do non. in fact. cognize whether standard linguistic communications can be once and for all shown to hold no strictly lingual features that differentiate them from non-standard signifiers of linguistic communication ( the affair has non truly been investigated ) .
It appears to be an article of religion at the minute that judgments measuring differences between standard and non-standard assortments are ever socially conditioned and ne’er strictly lingual. However. we shall subsequently propose that the procedure of linguistic communication standardization involves the suppression of optional variableness in linguistic communication and that. as a effect. non-standard assortments can be observed to allow more variableness than standard 1s ( e. g. in pronunciations of peculiar words ) . Therefore. there may be one sense at least in which the lingual features of non-standard assortments differ from those of ‘standards’ .
Standard English: UK Assortment In the UK. one fierce critic of the supposed malign influence of linguistics on English linguistic communication instruction is John Honey ( 1997-2003 ) . He has named an array of lingual bookmans ( including—astonishingly—Noam Chomsky. who has ne’er been concerned with educational or societal issues ) . as promoting a disregard of Standard English instruction in schools. This is an wholly false claim. It is true that there has been some resistance to the instruction of English grammar. but in our experience this has arisen chiefly from the penchant of lectors for literature instruction.
Far from detering ‘grammar’ . university linguists have been closely involved in keeping and promoting its instruction. No 1 has of all time opposed the instruction of standard English. and many of those named by Honey as ‘enemies’ of standard English have devoted much of their callings to learning it—training pupils to compose clear and right standard English. Experienced instructors will non take kindly to an onslaught that merely appears to them as ignorant. assumptive and pointlessly violative.
The linguist’s academic involvement in the human capacity to larn and utilize linguistic communication is non a menace to the instruction of Standard English. and it can be a great benefit. It does non follow from the educational necessity to concentrate on the criterion that we should pretermit to analyze and explicate the different norms and conventions of address and authorship. or that we should neglect to admit that standardized use is most to the full achieved in authorship. Nor does it follow that we should pretermit the fact that non-standard spoken slangs have grammars of their ain.
To look into the construction of linguistic communication assortments is an rational demand that can non be compromised. and which in no manner contradicts the importance of the instruction of literacy in a standard linguistic communication. Amongst other things. research on existent linguistic communication in usage can assist us to clear up and understand what standard English really is and appreciate more precisely what its functions and maps are. We will non better practical linguistic communication instruction by disregarding such affairs or by badmouthing those who study colloquial address and non-standard slangs as ‘enemies of standard English’ .
The writers of simple books on linguistics. nevertheless. have normally been dying to disassociate their history of the topic from that of traditional enchiridions of rightness. As we have seen they normally dismiss prescription routinely. and assert that linguistics is descriptive. Their general point—that. if one is to analyze the nature of linguistic communication objectively. one can non do anterior value-judgments—is often misunderstood. and it has sometimes called Forth splenic and misinformed denouncements of linguistics as a whole.
One illustration amongst many is Simon ( 2002 ) . In an essay entitled ‘The Corruption of English’ ( 2002 ) . Simon blames structural linguistics and literary structuralists for an alleged diminution in linguistic communication usage and for permissive attitudes to linguistic communication: ‘What this is. masquerading under the euphemism “descriptive linguistics”…is a benighted and ugly catering to mass ignorance under the supposed auspices of democracy. ’ His essay is vocal and full of affectional linguistic communication ( ‘pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo’ . ‘rock-bottom illiteracy’ . ‘barbarians’ . ‘vandalism’ . etc.
) . and it betrays ignorance of what linguistics is approximately. To Simon. linguists are about equated with some threat that is endangering Western ( i. e. American ) civilization from outside. It is unfortunate that misinterpretations and misapplications of the American structural linguists’ instruction should hold made it seem sensible for anyone to compose in this nescient manner. As many people still interpret descriptive linguistics as unfriendly to criterions of use. there has clearly been some failure of communicating between lingual bookmans and the general populace.
One ground for this is that ‘mainstream’ linguistics has concentrated more on the abstract and formal belongingss of linguistic communication than on linguistic communication in its societal context. Bloomfield ( 1993 ) . as we saw supra. considered that prescription was irrelevant to linguistics as a ‘science’ . Yet some linguists have been straight interested in prescription. Haas ( 2002 ) . for illustration. has pointed out that prescription ‘is an built-in portion of the life of language’ .
By declining to be interested in prescription. he adds: ‘linguists merely guarantee that every endeavor of lingual planning will be dominated by nescient partisans and unqualified pedants’ ( Haas. 2002:3 ) . Since Haas made these remarks. some societal and educational linguists have been really active in noticing on public attitudes and educational policies. and some have represented the topic on consultative commissions. A general linguist. R. A. Hudson. is responsible for the Language Workbooks series. published by Routledge.
Several relevant books on linguistic communication fluctuation have appeared. and lingual rightness was the subject of the 1996 BBC Reith Lectures. delivered by Jean Aitchison ( 1998 ) . In the USA much of the involvement in linguistic communication differences has been driven by public concern about the linguistic communication of cultural minorities. In 1997. the Linguistic Society of America published a papers inspired by a contention about ‘Ebonics’ ( African American Vernacular English ) . which was recognised by the Oakland ( California ) School Board as a legitimate signifier of linguistic communication.
It ended with the undermentioned remarks: There is grounds from Sweden. the US. and other states that talkers of other assortments can be aided in their acquisition of the standard assortment by pedagogical attacks which recognize the legitimacy of other assortments of a linguistic communication. From this position. the Oakland School Board’s determination to acknowledge the slang of African American pupils in learning them Standard English is linguistically and didactically sound.
