Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
History of the English Language
Fall 2006
Crystal (2003) Chapter 5 - Answers
1. Why might some countries/cultures/individuals in the outer core be resistant to English?
With recent changes in Korean society young Koreans might also be able to tap into some of the antipathy that outer core countries feel towards English, but of course the situation is different. Koreans might today feel pressured by English because English is used as a way of distinguishing people within Korean society. To be perceived well in society English is seen as a necessary commodity. This is different than the role of English in the outer core countries, at least in the past. Koreans have the freedom to choose English and they have. Koreans themselves have placed English in a place of importance in schools and companies. But it is also easy to avoid English even if people have the choice to do so in Korea. In the outer core there is no escape from English. In schools English isn`t just an annoying subject, it is the only language that people are taught to learn in. For most people in the world, not only are they not taught to read and write in their own language at school, but there are no print resources to support the literary development of their own language. In many outer core countries the only books they can get are in English. Of the 800+ languages in Papua New Guinea, for example, educational materials/reading materials are only available in two languages English and, to a much more limited extent, Tok Pisin. Until recently if you went to court in the Philippines the entire proceedings were held in English. Lawyers and judges were only allowed to speak English and the testimony of non-English speakers was translated into English for the court, all this in a country with virtually no native English speakers. In Belize (formerly British Honduras), for example, the official language is English which means all official governmental activities are conducted in English, but no one actually speaks English as a first language. Only 33% of the population speak Belize Kriol English, which is based on English, and most only know this language as a second language. So if anyone wants any official help from the government they are going to have to write up appeals and make formal inquiries in standard English. This may be a huge problem for many people since only 70% of the population is literate. We can see that when English is unavoidable people can begin to hate it. Especially for older people who lived through the colonial period and its direct aftermath English might be seen as a evil force used to demoralise and dehumanize them. English wasn`t just a useful tool for gaining additional access to the world, it was the only means of getting any access.
2. What are the main arguments for or against official English in the US?
There are basically two opposing sides in the official English argument. The people in favor of official English want English to be officially sanctioned as the language of the entire US. They believe that doing so will encourage new immigrants to learn the language. It is a widely held belief by proponents of official English that the current population of immigrants is of so large that they do not see the necessity of learning English. Immigrants are, in this view, happy to just keep using their native languages and the current situation in which the government supplies services in different languages only serves to support the non-learning of English.
The anti-official English group sees no need for legislation ensuring that English be learned and feel that in doing so people who do not speak English will be punished for doing so. They support linguistic diversity and the idea that people need time, help and support to learn English. In this view, immigrants should be encouraged to keep their own languages as they also learn English and should not be penalized for wanting to do so. Laws ensuring the use of and protecting the rights of linguistic minorities will obviously be done away with if a blanket law making English the official language of the US passes and this is a sticky issue for Native American support groups.
It should be mentioned that both groups both essentially believe that English is the language of the US and that immigrants should learn English, in fact they will have to if they want access to things like jobs and education. What the two groups disagree on is the necessity of legislation. It should also be acknowledged that the attempt to legislate the use of English does smack of racism which we discussed above in relation to the why now? The question to bear in mind is that these same immigrants which some people are trying desperately to keep out are not only allowed to join the US military but are actually encouraged to do so and there are currently 37,401 non-US citizens fighting in the US army on active duty with more than 45,000 in total in the army.
3. What are `new Englishes` and what are their causes and possible long-term effects?
Crystal calls the new dialects of English that are appearing all over the world, as the English language is finally accepted and learned voluntarily in the outer 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 age but their power. As we mentioned earlier in this course, during the British colonial period the number of English speakers in the different colonies which now comprise the outer circle was low. It was not until the post-colonial period that the number of English speakers or people proficient in English has risen sharply, hence the rise of the new Englishes. These dialects have been around but in small numbers and spoken by peoples who had economic power only locally and not at all globally.
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. There is no one (a native speaker) to give a clear indication of what is expected and how things actually work in the target language. Extensive modelling of the specific language forms used by native speakers is missing. Since most of these people in the outer circle 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 target language (TL). As a simple example a native speaker of Hindi in northen India going to school in English will easily be able to use Hindi concepts and even elements of Hindi pronunciation in English in that setting because all the other kids in school are also speakers of Hindi and easily understand what they are saying.
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 from core English countries diminish there is no telling what will happen in the diversely spread dialects of English.
4. 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. 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 us 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 oblivious 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 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. 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.
5. 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, their personal experience or indirectly through language (someone tells you about it) or print (you read about it or see a picture of it somewhere). The world is filled with billions of possible concepts both concrete and abstract. All of 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 basis 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.
6. What may happen to the English language in the future?
As we mentioned earlier, 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 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. Countries 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 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. 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 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.
7. 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 technologies were lost and contact was lost between speakers of Latin across the vast ranges of the former Roman empire. Hence, new languages developed. Today we have contact not through physical proximity or a centralized entity working to hold large areas of land together, but through communication 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. 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 te more we ill need WSSE, or something like it.
Sonntag (2003) Chapter 3
1. What are the main forces that the Bretons need to contend with in the preservation of their language and how are they dealing with this?
There are basically three things which the Breton movement needs to contend with. They are:
The French Government
The main force or at least the most directly confronted, and for that reason the easiest, force they need to contend with is the French government. This is because the French government has long be touting the idea that the French language represents the French State. Since the French Revolution the French government has been pushing the idea that there is one language of France and that is through this glorious language that France will achieve not only unity (which is the main concern of the US as we read last week) but also grandeur. There are in fact 29 living languages spoken in France. In France, supposedly, there is no room for other languages because if other languages exist and are supported by the state then that will entail a weakening of the French language itself. A weakening of the French language of course is, by definition, a weakening of the French state. While in a globalized world this may seem like an outdated concept it is obvious that this concept is still alive and well in France as a result of even recent laws passed to protect the French language against incursions from English. In such a context there is little room for linguistic pluralism, such as now exists, for example, in neighbouring Spain. It would seem then that this overall policy of the French government has in a way of forcing the Breton people to take drastic measures including violence because the only way for them to survive as an individual people under such conditions will be to break away from French government control, which we have seen amounts to linguistic control. The Breton have little to lose by being belligerent as regards the French government.
Globalization
Globalization itself, with its tendency to neutralize a lot of the more individual aspects of different societies, poses a serious threat to any kind of society on the brink of disaster. In order to understand this we need to think a little bit about what it might be like to live in a minority society. For us, members of strong, robust societies we see globalization as a tool for us to enhance our society. Because we come from societies with strong economies and a strong linguistic background and feelings of societal membership we do not worry overly much about some of the marginal effects of neutralization, because we know our society will endure even though it might change a little/lot. When you get up in the morning and come to school, looking around you never wonder about whether any of this will survive into the future or whether your children or grandchildren will be able to enjoy the world in the same way that you do. For people in robust societies survival is a given. Now, this is definitely not true for people in minority societies. These people live on the brink of disaster. When they wake up in the morning and look out their window they need to wonder whether any of their society will survive intact into the next generation. And, sadly, the answer is often a definitive no (We can see this by looking at the pitiful numbers of many of the speakers of Australian aboriginal languages. It is clear from these numbers that the societies definitely will not make it into the next generation.). Maybe the best way to think about a minority society is to think of it as a society which is ill and dying, because they certainly are extremely fragile. When you are ill or fragile any small thing has a huge effect on you. This is why globalization is such a threat to the small, highly marginalized, and therefore fragile societies. The neutralization effects of globalization could simply neutralize any of these societies right out of existence, and they often do. We discussed the example of Ireland (Republic) and the abysmal failure of the government to universally revive the Irish language after independence was won despite a tremendous effort to do so. The simple reason is of course globalization. If the Irish language had been replaced by, for example, Swedish and not English it probably would have revived rather nicely because neither language is particularly useful in the world, but there is no way that Irish can compete with English, the very language of globalization. So, if anything puts the death blow to Irish it won`t be the British themselves but globalization. In the very same thing very well may happen in Brittany.
Themselves
Of course they also need to deal with themselves. There are two sides to globalization. Simple physics tells us that for every affects there is a counter effect and so it is with globalization as well . Although globalization leads to a neutralization of regional differences there is a backlash to this, not necessarily jihad, but a backlash nonetheless. Some people are bored with globalization and as a result will go out of their way to seek out minority cultures to align themselves with. They want to feel the exotic or traditional, possibly in the knowledge that these exotic cultures will be gone as a result of globalization quite soon. The Celts provide a perfect group to latch onto. The Celts represent an old traditional Europe. The entire Central European region used to be run by a giant Celtic Empire which ran from Ireland in the West through central Europe, and in somewhat dispersed pockets, all the way into Western China. Many people seek to latch onto this old glory. We would generally think of as being a very positive thing because it offers not only economic benefits to Celtic revival movements, but also provides a lot of media coverage and generates sympathy for their cause, bu there are negative effects. From the outside it looks wonderful but from the inside it`s a bit of a disaster. It becomes hard to define exactly who is a Breton and who isn`t. Who is the movement for exactly? Is the movement for those who want to come to Brittany and experience traditional Breton culture for a few days or is it really for Breton people who want to live in their own traditional lifestyle according to their wishes? And of course there are certain Breton people who benefit from this in a monetary way, thus clouding the movement even further.
2. What is the main underlying cause of the resistance of the French and the Breton against the incursion of English?
In principle, the Breton people are worried about the French language and not the English language as such. Dealing with the English language is much lower on their list of priorities, but they are worried about the neutralizing effects of economic hegemony or globalization and it is important to realize that while all developed countries have a vested interest in pushing globalization, globalization does wear just one face, that of the US. Floundering culture groups like the Breton are worried about having their individuality stripped away by global marketing and selling campaigns. And without this identity then there is no point in continuing their political struggle to bring back their language. Why save the language when the culture that created it is already gone or morphed out of any recognizable shape.
Traditional identities and linguistic rights can`t be separated for minority groups. Language is the first and foremost best way of preserving culture. It is a check on rampant change. Languages as the ultimate purveyors of culture must be preserved for culture to survive. Keeping the language alive and robust is the first indicator of a robust culture. We can understand how the Breton people view this as a fragile minority culture, but maybe it is hard to understand the French position.
While the Breton need their language for survival no one would ever doubt the survival of the French language. The French culture is a robust one and as such should certainly be able to handle change. But traditions dies hard and the government has a had a typical knee-jerk reaction to the linguistic aspects of globalization, trying to curtail them legally, while at the same time pushing the economic aspects of globalization with all their might. This is a kind of paradox along the linguistic-economic plane which extends in to the local-global plane. Locally the French government is pushing French language hegemony, while globally they are opposing English-language hegemony. The paradox is almost funny were it not for people like the Breton, or Basque who suffer greatly under this paradox.
3. Why has McDonald`s been targeted in France ?
The choice of the pro-Breton movement to bomb a McDonald`s was an amazing stroke of genius. First and foremost, bombing a McDonald`s will draw a huge amount of attention. It will also draw sympathy for their movement in the eyes of average French people who may misconstrue their intentions. McDonald`s is a symbol. It is a symbol of the American face of globalization, and while the Breton people are not necessarily get fearful of English incursion, they are scared of economic imperialism under this American face. The French people are n
ot necessarily so scared of American imperialism as they are terrified of English incursion on their glorious French language. The bombing of McDonald`s marries these two concerns under one horrifically violent act. What it really does is make the French people feel that they may be share more in common with the Breton than previously thought.