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Academic Paper

Title:	Academic and public attitudes to the notion of ‘standard’ Canadian English
Author:	Stefan Dollinger
Email:	click here to access email
Homepage:	http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sdollinger/
Institution:	University of British Columbia
Linguistic Field:	Sociolinguistics
Subject Language:	English
Abstract:	This paper reflects on ‘standards’ in Canadian English in scholarly research and the public debate about English in Canada from a number of viewpoints. The goals of these reflections are three-fold. First, I aim to characterize the chasm between scholarly and public debates about a language ‘standard’ in Canadian English (CanE). While this debate is not new (e.g. Kretzschmar, 2009: 1–5 for a recent example), its application in the Canadian context is a desideratum. Second, I aim to characterize the standard in CanE from a demographic point of view: what is this standard and, above all, which Canadians (and, more importantly, how many) presently speak it? And third, what can linguists who research Canadian English offer to the public, and how can the perceived gap in knowledge be bridged?

	This article appears in English Today Vol. 27, Issue 4, which you can read on Cambridge's site .

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