6 thoughts on “Fall 2012”

1. About article #2 (Standard English and the complaint tradition)
   1. Another reason why promotion of standardization may not work on variations is because the phonological differences can be part of the people’s identity.
   2. English teaching, it is true that in recent years due partly to new technology new students are abbreviating words and sentences and find more mistakes when correcting papers. It also influences the learning of a second language because fewer students learn (or can’t remember) grammar and how to apply the rules to their L1.
   3. The standardization process is important when learning a second language. It will be optimal to use both the standard language during instruction (e.g. Spanish) and introduce the variations of the language in context.

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2. I found this article to be quite interesting, because I often hear complaints about how people speak now and how texting and the internet are ruining our language. However, in certain linguistics classes, we learn that writing is something that is taught, while language is something that is acquired. We are taught that a native speaker of a language is never wrong. Keeping these facts in mind then how can language be “ruined”? Obviously the article discusses standardizations, but there really is no one correct way of speaking. Language is fluid and can change, when something new is discovered we add words in order to be able to communicate this new thing or concept. At the same time, a standard way of talking is important because it is the only way we are able to understand each other, but I don’t believe there is one “correct” way of communicating. The article even shows that English has changed over the years, and there probably will always be people criticizing the changes. But as society and times change, I think it is important for language to change with it.

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3. The article mentioned only three percent of British speakers speak RP. I wondered if that percentage included speakers who acquired RP as a second dialect. Native speakers of Bostonian, Southern, or African American English often acquire General Standard English as a second dialect because prejudices against non-standard dialects may affect the speaker’s social mobility. In light of our class discussion today, I also thought about if differences exist between second language acquisition and second dialect acquisition.

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4. When people learn their 2nd language, they use textbooks or other teaching materials to get knowledge of the language. Learners take the language on their textbook as the “correct” one and they try to acquire the language in that way. However, it is interesting that there are so many variations in one language and every variation is “correct” for people who using it. Thus, it may seem strange to make one variation of language “standard” because every single variation can be “standard” in some sense as the article says. At the same time however, it is also true that a particular style of a language sometimes have to be recognized as “standard” in order to make it easier to teach the language to learners.

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5. Standard English and the complaint tradition – Based on Milroy, the reality that personal channels of communication have more influence than mass media on adoption of oral language conventions is reassuring for those afraid of the advent of Orwellian Newspeak. It may already be sufficient that media select what is fit for news and that they promote awareness of a language standard which some people may parallel with declining morality in society. In a way, personal channels can be seen as reversing the influence of media and manifesting themselves through twitter feeds, blogs, youtube comments… etc. This is in stark contrast to authoritarian and colonial eras where countries sought to standardize language for communication in order to solidify their power and subjugate colonized populations.

   While Milroy at times seems rather English-centric, his remarks echo evolutions in the French language and how for example, the Oïl languages came to prominence and were eventually used for official purposes giving rise to modern French. He traces complaints about correctness of language over several centuries and these examples validate the ideological link between grammar and authority. The fields of historical linguistics and socio-cultural linguistics can certainly reveal the effects created by legislation and educational policies on populations speaking non-standard dialects. Milroy makes a good case that in even in this age of abbreviated language, there never really was a “Golden Age” of literacy. Today societies are faced with different challenges. One of them is the reality that learners need access to higher levels of academic literacy to be functional and productive members of their communities. In this sense and in the context of an interconnected global society, I suppose we are forced to submit to a written standard that (as Orwell might see it) is increasingly further from the “language of the people”.

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6. This article shows that no matter what time period we are in, there is always someone bemoaning the decline of the English language. Language shift a normal part of any living language. The article mentioned that the use of non-standard varieties of English and their characterization as “worse” than standard English is based on social rather than linguistic factors. Because the goal of the article seemed to be mostly to dispel the idea that there is one single right way to use English and that the issue of teaching literacy is more complex than grammarians would portray it to be, it did not get into the details of the damage these ideas do (beyond offending linguists) and how all communities could be better served. I was reminded of some examples from my Sounds of Englishes class of a method used in, I believe, a Californian school. Many of the students speak African American English in the home. Rather than simply stigmatizing their home dialect, students are taught to use General Standard English at school by giving them translation tasks between their two dialects. Neither dialect is framed as superior to the other, they are just presented as appropriate in different situations.

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