Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Division of English Language and Literature
English for International Communication
Spring 2007
Crystal (2003) Chapter 5.2, pp. 140-191 - Answers
1. What are `new Englishes` and what are their causes and possible long-term effects?
Crystal calls the new dialects or versions of English that are currently appearing all over the world as the English language is increasingly more accepted and learned voluntarily and completely in the outer circle (maybe even the expanding circle) the new Englishes. In a way this title or name is misleading because some of these forms of English have been around for a long time. In the case of Indian English and particularly in the Englishes of the Carribean, they might actually be older than some of the more established dialects of the inner core like American or New Zealand English.
The big thing about the new Englishes is not their young age but their increasing power. As we mentioned earlier in this course, during the British colonial period the number of English speakers in most but not all the different colonies was quite low in comparison to the general population. Localized dialects of English were around but were spoken in small numbers and spoken by peoples who had little power outside their own small circle. The colonial power overshadowed any local groups in a profound way. This is not longer the case.
One interesting thing we have continually observed about the expansion of English is that It was not until the post-colonial period that the number of English speakers or people proficient in English has risen sharply. This sharp rise in the number of English speakers both in and out of former colonies has enabled the rise of the new Englishes.
The basic cause of the new Englishes is not a mystery. In language contact situations, as was found in colonial situations and as is currently found on a global scale in relation to English, we find that languages begin to blend. Elements of languages are mixed as people become bilingual. Language is a carrier of culture and is a medium by which our thoughts are formed and transmitted. Thus, it should not be surprising that in situations where people who have, or a speech community which has, an established native language will carry elements of that native language over onto the language that they are learning. This transfer effect will be more pronounced when there are few native speakers of the learned language (English) for the learners to talk to and correct them. There is no one (a native speaker) to give a clear indication of what is expected and how things are perceived by the colonial elites to actually work in the target language. Since most of these people in the outer and now a days in the expanding circle use English to speak with people who have the same L1 or, at best are also non-native speakers, they can use some of their own L1 norms in communicating in the second language (L2). As a simple example a native speaker of Hindi in northen India attending an English medium school will easily be able to use Hindi concepts and even elements of Hindi pronunciation in that setting because all the other kids in school are also speakers of Hindi and easily understand what they are saying. Looking closer at this example we can see another reason besides simple contact and language transfer and blending which is a major cause of the new Englishes movement, namely that of schooling.
During the colonial period, in most colonies, education was only available to a small number of rich people. In the latter stages of colonization, after WWII, and in the post colonial environment new governments scrambled to educate their people. We clearly feel and understand that education is an important tool in developing a country`s wealth. All of a sudden in all these former colonies English was learned by all the young people. The colonizers were gone or were on the brink of leaving so the teachers were mostly locals who spoke or accepted a localized version of English. As these new countries (former colonies) were left alone they had the chance to expand on their own local variety because there was no overlord standing around telling them what was right and what was wrong. Local dialects then came to flourish and be prevalent in local areas.
It is always hard to predict the future, but the long-term effects of these new Englishes is that they may very well change the face of English as we know it. As central controls and the power of the core English countries diminish there is no telling what will happen in the diversely spread dialects of English.
2. How do different dialects of English vary in grammar?
Certainly some of the new Englishes vary in their grammar and in fact so do the old or more established Englishes. One of the big problems in trying to find differences in grammar, as rightfully mentioned in Crystal (2003) is that there is a strong preference for standardized written forms when analysing or addressing grammar. There is not supposed to be grammatical variation among native speakers of a language according to the currently most influential linguistic theory (the UG model). Obviously this theory is wrong especially when we start to look at spoken forms of language which some researchers claim are actually different grammatical systems than their written counterparts. To prove this point Crystal (2003) goes to great lengths to show is some of the differences between UK and American English varieties in their use of individual grammar elements in non-traditional elements of grammatical analysis. After doing this he then goes on to show us a wide range of quite variant forms from the outer circle, mentioning that they are not empirically substantiated. In effect what we get is a clear affirmation that different dialects of English do indeed vary in their grammar. While this phenomenon certainly exists in the dialects of the inner core it is an even stronger trend in the outer circle as will be explained more specifically in the question below.
The interesting question here revolves around what causes these conspicuous grammatical changes. The two main causes most commonly cited are either effects from the languages that the speakers already know and share in common or the `universal` effects of learner English. Some researchers in second language acquisition have claimed that there is a preset or universal path that all second language learners follow as they move ever closer to the (mystical) native speaker norm. This path called interlanguage involves set steps regarding grammatical use. I, personally, believe in grammar in a different way and as a different kind of system which interacts and is affected by other linguistic elements like vocabulary and as such is prey to all sorts of variation and change. Based on this we would expect the spoken forms of different new Englishes to vary tremendously as the spoken forms of core English do as well but to an even greater extent.
The key to understanding the basic idea of grammatical variation and why we would expect this to happen when speakers of a specific language are separated or embedded in different cultures and of course have different linguistic profiles (mono-lingual as opposed to bilingual or multilingual) is to try to get a better fix on grammar and what it really is. Traditionally grammar is thought to be defined by a series of rules which speakers of a language must learn in order to be able to use and understand the language. What is emerging largely from new studies of the brain (the field of cognitive neuroscience) is that there is no such thing as grammar rules simply because the brain simply cannot store and process them as has been thought. This is an important realization because it frees us from the mistaken belief that language learning can be relegated to the learning of vocabulary and grammar rules and that people who can`t do this are stupid. This traditional view has often been used to support ridiculous ideas of the linguistic and ethnic superiority of one group over another. Of course from the conquerors point of view it would seem that the conquered people, who are striving to learn a new language often under terrible physical and mental conditions (learning is first and foremost a physical act) and with minimal real input and in the environment and culture different from that of the target language use, are idiots who are too stupid or too lazy to learn proper English, for example. In this view all you have to do is concentrate and learn the rules as language was thought to exist as a separate skill form everything else. This is simply not the case. Language is deeply connected with other aspects of our lives through the wiring of our brains. So `mistakes` and strange usage patterns often have more to do with previous skills and the fact that the speaker is good at them rather than they are stupid or a bad learner of the new language. The fact is that grammars are not fixed through rules. There are no rules. Grammar comes from patterns we have observed time and time again in others AND links/associations one makes between what is already known and what needs to be learned. Elements of language (linguistic units like words) come to be linked together as we hear them together, what we hear together we use together and this is where grammar comes from in a very basic sense.
3. How do different dialects of English vary in their use of vocabulary?
The area of vocabulary is where we would expect to find the most differentiation both in new Englishes to standardized English as well as between different dialects of new Englishes. This is simply because vocabulary is associated with and created from contacts with the real world. Because languages vary in the worlds in which they are used we would expect a large amount of transfer here. Concepts that are derived from our contact with the real world. Thus, you learn the name of a specific object by encountering it in the world either directly, through personal experience or indirectly through language (someone tells you about it) or print (you read about it or see a picture of it with its name somewhere). The world is filled with billions of possible concepts both concrete and abstract. These concepts need to be pulled into our heads as we experience the world and we, as humans, do this through language. We name these concepts, or rather we learn the names of the concepts that our cultures have chosen to pay attention to. Speakers of languages used in different cultures and different places will have named different concepts from the world and even the concepts that are similar will never be exactly the same because each cultures` experience with these similar concepts (like dog) will be different. So, vocabulary items are connected to a wide range of different conceptual information from the world. When words are introduced from another language they will simply be connected to the preexisting word in the speaker`s first language and all the concepts associated with the L1 word will magically be associated with the L2 form as well. This is why we expect to get so much transfer form the L1 to the L2 in the area of vocabulary, simply because vocabulary is closer to the real world than grammar (maybe). In a learning situation like we find in the outer core where English has moved into new areas where other languages exist and simply cannot be killed straight off (as occurred in North America and Australia) we would expect the forms of English to be altered by the second language speakers. It would be very strange if they weren`t.
One last thing about languages and the brain - different languages in the brain do not create separate systems. They blend together and use the same information. They form one bigger system with lots of shared, but also some separate concepts as the base of the entire system no matter how many actual language are part of the entire mass. Don`t struggle to separate Korean and English, integrate them because theat is what your brain wants to do whether you know it or not.
4. What may happen to the English language in the future?
As we mentioned last week, the future is impossible to predict accurately. There are two main forces that determine the future development of languages. Of course the first of these are the natural changes that languages undergo over time. All languages are in a constant state of flux. They are constantly changing in natural ways. These natural changes are driven by the society/societies which use the language. Languages which are no longer spoken by a community of people cease to change. So natural language change is directly linked to or affected by societal change. These are changes which are hard to see because they are not caused by any one event. Societal change is a highly complex process and the causes and effects are not usually written down until much later. The other force which impacts languages more and more as societies develop is the force of politics.
Politics will largely determine what will happen to English, for it should be clear at this point that languages and language usage, their lives and deaths are always linked to and determined by politics. Counties make laws regulating the use and disuse, even the misuse (in France and Spain for example) of the language(s) to be used. Such laws are enforced and this expedites societal change. Languages can be changed dramatically in a short period of time due to political changes. Korea, for example after WWII and the Korean War went through huge political changes which saw the replacement of Japan and China as active players in Korean politics by the US. Not surprisingly, Japanese was banned and English was officially embraced as a required subject in schools. This has lead to great subsequent linguistic changes in Korea which have sent ripples across the world. Politics matters, a lot.
The future development of English will largely be determined by political changes, not in the inner circle (It is largely irrelevant for the rest of the world if the US makes English official) but in the outer and expanding circles. Control over the fate of English has already been wrestled away from the inner core by the masses in the outer and expanding circle who are coming of age both politically and economically and are empowered to make their internal political decisions, particularly about language (South Africa is a good example of this). Political entities need to choose to accept or reject languages and even the particular form of the language. Thus, as mentioned in class, while things like technology can slow down the rate of linguistic change through what we call below long-distance or indirect contact, such change is ultimately determined by the political decisions countries make regarding English.
5. Is there going to be an English family of languages and what does this mean?
To say that there will someday be a family of English languages is to predict that English will go the same way as Latin did in the past, thus creating a family of Romance languages, all of which are derived from a single language, Latin. While such a possibility does indeed exist, the situation today is however different. It is different because we have technology and this technology allows for a wholly different kind of linguistic contact situation. When the Roman empire waned and the central government slowly fell away contact was lost between speakers of Latin across the vast ranges of the former Roman empire. More than just this, many advanced technologies were also lost. Hence, new languages were created. Today we have contact not through physical proximity or a centralized entity working to hold large areas of land together, but through technology. This technology allows different linguistic groups to contact each other across the former impenetrable barriers of space and time. We can call this long-distance or indirect contact. Thus, Korea and the US are quite far from each other. A vast ocean divides them and there is minimal direct contact between Koreans and Americans, yet there is a massive amount of indirect contact (of course this is very strongly in the favor of English). Koreans are confronted with English every day of their lives in a multitude of ways. This comes, as we saw in the previous chapter not solely from US power, but through the forces of English-faced globalization. So even if British/American power wanes, English will still be there. Contact can come from elsewhere or anywhere in a globalized world. Even Korean and Japanese products intended for the world market are coded in English. So, the basic answer then is that English will not disappear. The question, however, remains as to whether English will split into different types of recognizable languages (a language family like the Romance family of languages derived form the split of Latin)? This we cannot answer simply because it is a question of politics more than anything else but one thing we can say is that the world (predominantly the outer circle and inner core will probably become increasingly bi- or multi-dialectical.
The bottom line is that English is too important as a global lingua franca for it to be allowed to break into different mutually unintelligible languages. Something like WSSE (World Standard Spoken English) will come into being and it already has. It will become more fixed in its forms as time goes on. This WSSE is interesting from a cognitive viewpoint in that it is a homogeneous form of English. Through a natural process of development called blending we see in all proficient bilinguals, it will come to contain only shared features of all the dialects. Specific features of dialects will only be used in the dialectical region. How much these different dialects will be different remains to be seen but what is quite certain is that the more different the dialects the more we will need WSSE, or something like it.
6. What are some of the different positions people in the outer circle have taken to the role of English in their lives ?
There are basically three, maybe four different possible positions people in the outer circle can take towards English.
A. Ban it - Resist it.
B. Accept it in its one if its standard forms.
C. Accept it is a localized form.
D. Both B and C
Having looked at the history of the spread of the English language like we did we can certainly understand option A. Any culture group or person that has had a language forced upon it/them is going to be angry about it and may very well resist that language. In our brief studies of different countries we have, however, yet to see strong resistance to English. This is in part due to the excellent job the US and Britain have done of distancing themselves from the violence of their pasts and mostly due to the great promise that English brings. English is too powerful a tool internationally for developing countries to simply discard it. Also, the power elite not only in the outer but increasingly in the expanding circle are speakers of English. They have a strong emotional attachment to the language and systems of inner core countries and therefore want to see English retain a position of power because it gives them advantages (Nehru in India is a clear example of this). Because of the force of elites English has retained a high status in the countries of the outer circle. Moreover such countries have been quite slow to recognize their own local dialects and in the case of Singapore have been slow to support or legitimize such dialects. As we mentioned previously this is generally the result of differences in status between spoken and written language forms. Spoken language is often ignored or thought to be irrelevant in relation to written forms. Since many of these dialectical variations are not written and often can`t even be written they are discounted. The acceptance of such dialects, because this requires a strong political basis, is impossible without strong governmental intervention. This explains the current situations in the outer core we have in relation to English.