On the Process of New Dialect Formation
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A Historical Study of the Influences of European Immigration on the Formation of American English
ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 4, No. 11, pp. 2410-2414, November 2014 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.4.11.2410-2414 A Historical Study of the Influences of European Immigration on the Formation of American English Chunming Gao School of Foreign Languages, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, China Lili Sun School of Foreign Languages, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, China Abstract—The paper studies the formation of American English under the influence of European immigration from a historical perspective. A literature review is presented first with many important early researches on American English, the history of American English, and American immigration. Then a general survey of American English is put forward, including how American English is defined, what the typical features are, how American English is formed and developed. The focus of the paper is the influences of European immigration on the formation of American English, in which the influences of Spanish, French, Dutch and German immigration are illustrated respectively. Index Terms—American English, European immigration, historical perspective I. INTRODUCTION Language is an important carrier of a country’s national culture and is also inevitably affected by the culture. With the development of the world, the global pattern changes quickly and American culture is affecting the world in various forms. It gains great academic and practical significance to study the formation and development of American English under the influence of American immigration culture, which helps understand the history of American English, American culture and American values. -
Influences on the Development of Early Modern English
Influences on the Development of Early Modern English Kyli Larson Wright This article covers the basic social, historical, and linguistic influences that have transformed the English language. Research first describes components of Early Modern English, then discusses how certain factors have altered the lexicon, phonology, and other components. Though there are many factors that have shaped English to what it is today, this article only discusses major factors in simple and straightforward terms. 72 Introduction The history of the English language is long and complicated. Our language has shifted, expanded, and has eventually transformed into the lingua franca of the modern world. During the Early Modern English period, from 1500 to 1700, countless factors influenced the development of English, transforming it into the language we recognize today. While the history of this language is complex, the purpose of this article is to determine and map out the major historical, social, and linguistic influences. Also, this article helps to explain the reasons for their influence through some examples and evidence of writings from the Early Modern period. Historical Factors One preliminary historical event that majorly influenced the development of the language was the establishment of the print- ing press. Created in 1476 by William Caxton at Westminster, London, the printing press revolutionized the current language form by creating a means for language maintenance, which helped English gravitate toward a general standard. Manuscripts could be reproduced quicker than ever before, and would be identical copies. Because of the printing press spelling variation would eventually decrease (it was fixed by 1650), especially in re- ligious and literary texts. -
British, Scottish, English?
Scottish, English, British? coding for attitude in the UK Carmen Llamas University of York, UK Satellite Workshop for Sociolinguistic Archival Preparation attitudes ‘attitudes to language varieties underpin all manners of sociolinguistic and social psychological phenomena’ (Garrett et al., 2003: 12) ‘a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor’ (Eagley & Chaiken, 1993: 1) . components: cognitive beliefs affective feelings behavioural readiness for action speaker-internal mental constructs - methodologically challenging • direct and indirect observation: •explicit attitudes – e.g. interviews, self-completion written questionnaires • implicit attitudes – e.g. matched-guise technique, IATs borders • ideal test site for investigation of how variable linguistic behaviour is connected to attitudes – border area • fluid and complex identity construction at such sites mean border regions have particular sociolinguistic relevance • previous sociological research in and around Berwick-upon- Tweed (English town) (Kiely et al. 2000) – around half informants felt Scottish some of the time the border • Scottish~English border still seen as particularly divisive: What appears to be the most numerous bundle of dialect isoglosses in the English-speaking world runs along this border, effectively turning Scotland into a “dialect island”. (Aitken 1992:895) • predicted to become more divisive still: the Border is becoming more and more distinct linguistically as the 20th century progresses. (Kay 1986:22) ... the dividing effect of the geographical border is bound to increase. (Glauser 2000: 70) • AISEB tests these predictions by examining the linguistic and socio-psychological effects of the border the team Dominic Watt (York) Gerry Docherty (Newcastle) Damien Hall (Kent) Jennifer Nycz (Reed College) UK Economic & Social Research Council (RES-062-23-0525) AISEB three-pronged approach production • quantitative analysis of phonological variation and change attitude • cognitive vs. -
Dialects, Standards, and Vernaculars
1 Dialects, Standards, and Vernaculars Most of us have had the experience of sitting in a public place and eavesdropping on conversations taking place around the United States. We pretend to be preoccupied, but we can’t seem to help listening. And we form impressions of speakers based not only on the topic of conversation, but on how people are discussing it. In fact, there’s a good chance that the most critical part of our impression comes from how people talk rather than what they are talking about. We judge people’s regional background, social stat us, ethnicity, and a host of other social and personal traits based simply on the kind of language they are using. We may have similar kinds of reactions in telephone conversations, as we try to associate a set of characteristics with an unidentified speaker in order to make claims such as, “It sounds like a salesperson of some type” or “It sounds like the auto mechanic.” In fact, it is surprising how little conversation it takes to draw conclusions about a speaker’s background – a sentence, a phrase, or even a word is often enough to trigger a regional, social, or ethnic classification. Video: What an accent does Assessments of a complex set of social characteristics and personality traits based on language differences are as inevitable as the kinds of judgments we make when we find out where people live, what their occupations are, where they went to school, and who their friends are. Language differences, in fact, may serve as the single most reliable indicator of social position in our society. -
Origins of NZ English
Origins of NZ English There are three basic theories about the origins of New Zealand English, each with minor variants. Although they are usually presented as alternative theories, they are not necessarily incompatible. The theories are: • New Zealand English is a version of 19th century Cockney (lower-class London) speech; • New Zealand English is a version of Australian English; • New Zealand English developed independently from all other varieties from the mixture of accents and dialects that the Anglophone settlers in New Zealand brought with them. New Zealand as Cockney The idea that New Zealand English is Cockney English derives from the perceptions of English people. People not themselves from London hear some of the same pronunciations in New Zealand that they hear from lower-class Londoners. In particular, some of the vowel sounds are similar. So the vowel sound in a word like pat in both lower-class London English and in New Zealand English makes that word sound like pet to other English people. There is a joke in England that sex is what Londoners get their coal in. That is, the London pronunciation of sacks sounds like sex to other English people. The same joke would work with New Zealanders (and also with South Africans and with Australians, until very recently). Similarly, English people from outside London perceive both the London and the New Zealand versions of the word tie to be like their toy. But while there are undoubted similarities between lower-class London English and New Zealand (and South African and Australian) varieties of English, they are by no means identical. -
Chapter X. Language and Social Class1
1 Chapter X. Language and social class Paul Kerswill 1. Introduction In the Preface to Pygmalion (1913), George Bernard Shaw wrote: ‘It is impossible for Comment [p1]: Capitial initial I think, don’t you? I can’t an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or understand why this file is so huge despise him’. This was stated in the context of the famous play, in which a phonetics when saved as rtf. What was the picture?? No, there shouldn’t be professor, Henry Higgins, trains Eliza Doolittle, a young Cockney (or working-class one! Londoner), to use what would today be known as Received Pronunciation (RP). Under some protest, Eliza acquiesces to this because she sees the tremendous social advantage of a middle- or upper-class accent. But the play is about more than accent. Eliza has to use ‘correct’ grammar and she mustn’t swear. And she has to dress and comport herself in a way befitting a lady. What underlies all the changes Eliza undertakes is the notion that society is stratified (layered) and, moreover, that there is a direct correspondence between this stratification and all levels of language and language use (grammar, pronunciation, pragmatics, even which language is used). Stratification is not neutral: it implies inequality, and Eliza reluctantly sacrifices her social identity as a working-class Londoner in order to gain what she perceives as the advantages of a higher social class. All human societies – not just London’s – are internally differentiated, whether by gender, age, ethnicity, caste or class. These are all at a ‘macro’ level, that is, broad groups into which people can be categorized. -
A Corpus·Based Investigation of Xhosa English In
A CORPUS·BASED INVESTIGATION OF XHOSA ENGLISH IN THE CLASSROOM SETTING A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS of RHODES UNIVERSITY by CANDICE LEE PLATT January 2004 Supervisor: Professor V.A de K1erk ABSTRACT This study is an investigation of Xhosa English as used by teachers in the Grahamstown area of the Eastern Cape. The aims of the study were firstly, to compile a 20 000 word mini-corpus of the spoken English of Xhosa mother tongue teachers in Grahamstown, and to use this data to describe the characteristics of Xhosa English used in the classroom context; and secondly, to assess the usefulness of a corpus-based approach to a study of this nature. The English of five Xhosa mother-tongue teachers was investigated. These teachers were recorded while teaching in English and the data was then transcribed for analysis. The data was analysed using Wordsmith Tools to investigate patterns in the teachers' language. Grammatical, lexical and discourse patterns were explored based on the findings of other researchers' investigations of Black South African English and Xhosa English. In general, many of the patterns reported in the literature were found in the data, but to a lesser extent than reported in literature which gave quantitative information. Some features not described elsewhere were also found . The corpus-based approach was found to be useful within the limits of pattern matching. 1I TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 CORPORA 1 1.2 BLACK SOUTH -
Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination
Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900 Silke Stroh northwestern university press evanston, illinois Northwestern University Press www .nupress.northwestern .edu Copyright © 2017 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2017. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available from the Library of Congress. Except where otherwise noted, this book is licensed under a Creative Commons At- tribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. In all cases attribution should include the following information: Stroh, Silke. Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2017. For permissions beyond the scope of this license, visit www.nupress.northwestern.edu An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 3 Chapter 1 The Modern Nation- State and Its Others: Civilizing Missions at Home and Abroad, ca. 1600 to 1800 33 Chapter 2 Anglophone Literature of Civilization and the Hybridized Gaelic Subject: Martin Martin’s Travel Writings 77 Chapter 3 The Reemergence of the Primitive Other? Noble Savagery and the Romantic Age 113 Chapter 4 From Flirtations with Romantic Otherness to a More Integrated National Synthesis: “Gentleman Savages” in Walter Scott’s Novel Waverley 141 Chapter 5 Of Celts and Teutons: Racial Biology and Anti- Gaelic Discourse, ca. -
Standard Southern British English As Referee Design in Irish Radio Advertising
Joan O’Sullivan Standard Southern British English as referee design in Irish radio advertising Abstract: The exploitation of external as opposed to local language varieties in advertising can be associated with a history of colonization, the external variety being viewed as superior to the local (Bell 1991: 145). Although “Standard English” in terms of accent was never an exonormative model for speakers in Ireland (Hickey 2012), nevertheless Ireland’s history of colonization by Britain, together with the geographical proximity and close socio-political and sociocultural connections of the two countries makes the Irish context an interesting one in which to examine this phenomenon. This study looks at how and to what extent standard British Received Pronunciation (RP), now termed Standard Southern British English (SSBE) (see Hughes et al. 2012) as opposed to Irish English varieties is exploited in radio advertising in Ireland. The study is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of ads broadcast on an Irish radio station in the years 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007. The use of SSBE in the ads is examined in terms of referee design (Bell 1984) which has been found to be a useful concept in explaining variety choice in the advertising context and in “taking the ideological temperature” of society (Vestergaard and Schroder 1985: 121). The analysis is based on Sussex’s (1989) advertisement components of Action and Comment, which relate to the genre of the discourse. Keywords: advertising, language variety, referee design, language ideology. 1 Introduction The use of language variety in the domain of advertising has received considerable attention during the past two decades (for example, Bell 1991; Lee 1992; Koslow et al. -
Natural Phonetic Tendencies and Social Meaning: Exploring the Allophonic Raising Split of PRICE and MOUTH on the Isles of Scilly
This is a repository copy of Natural phonetic tendencies and social meaning: Exploring the allophonic raising split of PRICE and MOUTH on the Isles of Scilly. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/133952/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Moore, E.F. and Carter, P. (2018) Natural phonetic tendencies and social meaning: Exploring the allophonic raising split of PRICE and MOUTH on the Isles of Scilly. Language Variation and Change, 30 (3). pp. 337-360. ISSN 0954-3945 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394518000157 This article has been published in a revised form in Language Variation and Change [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394518000157]. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University Press. Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can’t change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Title: Natural phonetic tendencies -
The Ideology of American English As Standard English in Taiwan
Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume.7 Number.4 December, 2016 Pp. 80 - 96 The Ideology of American English as Standard English in Taiwan Jackie Chang English Department, National Pingtung University Pingtung City, Taiwan Abstract English language teaching and learning in Taiwan usually refers to American English teaching and learning. Taiwan views American English as Standard English. This is a strictly perceptual and ideological issue, as attested in the language school promotional materials that comprise the research data. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was employed to analyze data drawn from language school promotional materials. The results indicate that American English as Standard English (AESE) ideology is prevalent in Taiwan. American English is viewed as correct, superior and the proper English language version for Taiwanese people to compete globally. As a result, Taiwanese English language learners regard native English speakers with an American accent as having the greatest prestige and as model teachers deserving emulation. This ideology has resulted in racial and linguistic inequalities in contemporary Taiwanese society. AESE gives Taiwanese learners a restricted knowledge of English and its underlying culture. It is apparent that many Taiwanese people need tore-examine their taken-for-granted beliefs about AESE. Keywords: American English as Standard English (AESE),Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), ideology, inequalities 80 Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Vol.7. No. 4 December 2016 The Ideology of American English as Standard English in Taiwan Chang Introduction It is an undeniable fact that English has become the global lingua franca. However, as far as English teaching and learning are concerned, there is a prevailing belief that the world should be learning not just any English variety but rather what is termed Standard English. -
Immigration During the Crown Colony Period, 1840-1852
1 2: Immigration during the Crown Colony period, 1840-1852 Context In 1840 New Zealand became, formally, a part of the British Empire. The small and irregular inflow of British immigrants from the Australian Colonies – the ‘Old New Zealanders’ of the mission stations, whaling stations, timber depots, trader settlements, and small pastoral and agricultural outposts, mostly scattered along the coasts - abruptly gave way to the first of a number of waves of immigrants which flowed in from 1840.1 At least three streams arrived during the period 1840-1852, although ‘Old New Zealanders’ continued to arrive in small numbers during the 1840s. The first consisted of the government officials, merchants, pastoralists, and other independent arrivals, the second of the ‘colonists’ (or land purchasers) and the ‘emigrants’ (or assisted arrivals) of the New Zealand Company and its affiliates, and the third of the imperial soldiers (and some sailors) who began arriving in 1845. New Zealand’s European population grew rapidly, marked by the establishment of urban communities, the colonial capital of Auckland (1840), and the Company settlements of Wellington (1840), Petre (Wanganui, 1840), New Plymouth (1841), Nelson (1842), Otago (1848), and Canterbury (1850). Into Auckland flowed most of the independent and military streams, and into the company settlements those arriving directly from the United Kingdom. Thus A.S.Thomson observed that ‘The northern [Auckland] settlers were chiefly derived from Australia; those in the south from Great Britain. The former,’ he added, ‘were distinguished for colonial wisdom; the latter for education and good home connections …’2 Annexation occurred at a time when emigration from the United Kingdom was rising.