LINGUIST List 12.697

Tue Mar 13 2001

Review: Wright, Development of Standard English

Editor for this issue: Terence Langendoen <terrylinguistlist.org>

What follows is another discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion Forum. We expect these discussions to be informal and interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially invited to join in.

If you are interested in leading a book discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available for discussion." (This means that the publisher has sent us a review copy.) Then contact Simin Karimi at siminlinguistlist.org or Terry Langendoen at terrylinguistlist.org.

Directory

  • Lamont Antieau, Review: Wright

    Message 1: Review: Wright

     Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 23:08:59 -0500
    From: Lamont Antieau <elwouldix.netcom.com>
    Subject: Review: Wright


    Laura Wright (ed), (2000) The Development of Standard English, 1300-1800: Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts. Cambridge University Press, 236 pp.

    Reviewed by Lamont Antieau, University of Georgia

    A collection of papers first presented at the International Conference on the Standardisation of English in 1997, this book examines the development of Standard English from a variety of perspectives. Although earlier works would have you believe that the case of the rise of Standard English has been solved, Laura Wright shows in the introduction of this book that some of these accounts are rather contradictory and, on the whole, not very satisfying. In reopening the case of the rise of Standard English, the book offers 12 papers written by various scholars, particularly those working in historical and sociolinguistics. The papers are divided into two sections of six papers each. The first part is entitled "Theory and methodology: approaches to studying the standardisation of English" and deals with the evolution of the Standard English ideology. The second part is entitled "Processes of the standardisation of English" and focuses on ways of investigating the spread of Standard English.

    Part one 1. Historical description and the ideology of the standard language (Jim Milroy) In trying to look at language as scientifically as possible, linguists typically try to avoid popular notions of "correctness." In this article, however, Milroy shows how scholars working in practically all areas of linguistics have been affected by the ideology of Standard English to some degree - from the prescriptive grammarians of the 18th and 19th centuries to linguists currently working within historical, generative, and even variationist frameworks. For historical linguists, this problem is created by the standardization of texts by editors who are influenced by what they think texts should have looked like. In doing so they create the illusion of a more homogenous language than the raw data would actually suggest. Linguists working within the generativist framework are affected by the ideology in their dependence on their own idiolects for data, idiolects that have undoubtedly been affected by Standard English at some point in their academic careers. Variationists are also influenced by the ideology of the standard, particularly those who propose that prestige is one of the primary motivations for linguistic change as speakers consciously adopt features used by speakers of the upper socioeconomic classes. Milroy suggests that variationists might focus on the avoidance of stigmatized forms as motivation for language change rather than continuing the current emphasis on prestige.

    2. Mythical strands in the ideology of prescriptivism (Richard J. Watts) Watts describes the standardization of English as the byproduct of a number of myths that have been created and perpetuated concerning the English language. One of these myths, for example, is the "language and nationality myth," which is the use of standardized language to create the illusion of cultural homogeneity within a nation. As Watts points out, one of the interesting things about these myths is the paradoxes created by their interaction. For instance, in opposition to the "language and nationality myth," the "language variety myth" proclaims the virtue of English based on the great dialectal variety that it allows. It is these myths, and the interaction between them, Watts argues, that form the foundation for the ideology of prescriptivism that began its rise in the early 18th century.

    3. Rats, bats, sparrows and dogs: biology, linguistics and the nature of Standard English (Jonathan Hope) In this article, Hope argues that in historical linguistics the family-tree model has gone from being a useful metaphorical device to an inflexible model that shapes how linguists look at their data. The effect this has had on the study of individual languages has been the tendency for scholars to postulate a single dialect as the ancestors of languages, in contrast to the multiple dialects one might expect to find, the study of which would better explain, for instance, "the hybrid nature of Standard English" (49). Rejecting the notion of a single ancestor does more than merely allow the construction of an alternative model of the standardization process of English, but allows for the redefinition of what is meant by the term standardization.

    4. Salience, stigma and standard (Raymond Hickey) Salience is one of many words used in linguistics that are seldom defined in a very rigorous manner. This article discusses salience as evidenced by linguistic stereotyping and ridicule, particularly with respect to Irish English. Hickey also discusses a number of phenomena that trigger salience, including homophonic mergers, deletion and insertion, and grammatical restructuring, as well as possible reactions to salience, including hypercorrection, phonological and lexical replacement, and the use of salient features for local flavoring. Hickey observes that salient features originate from language-internal causes, but quickly take on sociolinguistic value as they become part of colloquial registers in a locale, sometimes developing into stereotypes that others incorporate into their models of speech for a region.

    5. The ideology of the standard and the development of Extraterritorial Englishes (Gabriella Mazzon) During the time of the English colonization of America, Australia, and New Zealand, prescriptivism was very much in vogue in England. In this article, Mazzon examines the effect that prescriptivism had on these new varieties of English. One result was that the new varieties, when finally recognized as varieties in their own right, were compared to the standard by speakers in England. Eventually British English speakers developed an attitude of linguistic superiority over colonial speakers, reinforcing the attitudes of linguistic insecurity that existed in the colony. Mazzon also finds that linguists have in some cases made comments that have actually perpetuated this notion of the inferiority of Extraterritorial Englishes.

    6. Metropolitan values: migration, mobility and cultural norms, London 1100-1700 (Derek Keene) In this paper, Keene examines the historical evidence of London and its effect on the rest of England, including such things as records of migration into the city and records of debt to Londoners. In order to determine the influence and power of Londoners, Keene look at how decisions made in London on such things as measurement standards impacted all of England. Showing the complexity of relevant cultural patterns that have been simplified in previous discussions of the development of Standard English, Keene argues that explanation of linguistic change should not only take into account the social, political and economic forces that potentially motivated those changes, but also the political agendas of the historians documenting those forces. Although he leaves it largely to linguists to explain how language change results from these patterns, Keene proposes that historians and linguists should work together to find answers to questions such as those dealing with standardization.

    Part two 7. Standardisation and the languages of the early statutes (Matti Rissanen) Rissanen examines The Statutes of the Realm for evidence of standardization of English in the 15th century. Opting to focus on features besides spelling conventions found in these texts, Rissanen focuses on the distribution of shall and will, the occurrence of multiple negation and compound adverbs, and the use of provided (that). By doing so, Rissanen finds that the language of the early statutes provides a great deal of evidence 0in the standardization of English, particularly noting that these features occur in the Statutes long before they turn up in the standard elsewhere.

    8. Scientific language and spelling standardisation 1375-1550 (Irma Taavitsainen) Taavitsainen compares spelling in scientific writings during the period of 1375 to 1550 to various Central Midlands text types, particularly with respect to the words such, much and any. Taavitsainen explains the differing patterns of adopting standard features in each of the text types as the result of conflicting forces due to the prestige held by scientific writings, making the spread of standard features in these writings slower than in other text types.

    9. Change from above or below? Mapping the loci of linguistic change in the history of Scottish English (Anneli Meurman-Solin) Meurman-Solin uses the Helsinki Corpus of Scots and the Corpus of Scottish Correspondence to investigate whether linguistic change occurs as the result of conscious decisions to emulate the speech of the upper classes or as the result of unconscious decisions that develop in the lower classes. The data Meurman- Solin examines suggests that the standardization of English in Scotland proceeded without the pressure from above that existed in England. Furthermore, the data shows that among some texts there is a movement toward Standard Scottish English, while in others the movement is toward Standard English.

    10. Adjective comparison and standardisation processes in American and British English from 1620 to the present (Merja Kyto and Suzanne Romaine) Kyto and Romaine use the Corpus of Early American English and the ARCHER corpus to examine diachronic variation with respect to the earlier use of inflectional comparative adjectives (e.g. faster), the more recent periphrastic comparatives (e.g. more fast) and the use of the double comparative (e.g. more faster), which occurs less frequently than the other two construction types and is considered a nonstandard feature of English. The periphrastic comparative was a linguistic innovation that went along with the trend of English as it moved from an inflectional language during the Old English period to a more analytic one. While in some places the periphrastic form almost totally eliminated the use of the older inflectional form, in other places there was a gradual "comeback" of the older forms. The set of data Kyto and Romaine examines shows that speakers of British English were at the forefront of this change with American English speakers not reincorporating the inflectional construction until later.

    11. The Spectator, the politics of social networks, and language standardisation in eighteenth-century England (Susan Fitzmaurice) In this paper, Fitzmaurice discusses the influence of the English periodical The Spectator on the prescriptive grammarians of the 18th century. Examining such evidence as the citations of the periodical in works such as the Dictionary of English Normative Grammar, as well as grammatical rules issued by The Spectator and later adopted by prescriptive grammarians, Fitzmaurice finds that The Spectator served as a model of language for the prescriptivists, not because of its linguistic purity, but because of its extreme popularity among literate, middle-class Englanders.

    12. A branching path: low vowel lengthening and its friends in the emerging standard (Roger Lass) In this paper, Lass traces the development of /a:/ in English, as well as the evolution of its status among grammarians from description to evaluation. Examining the work of various grammarians dating back to the middle of the 16th century, Lass traces the development of /a:/ in English, as well as the evolution of its status from what in Labovian terms would be an "indicator" to a "marker" or even a "stereotype." This negative evaluation caused the use of /a:/ to recede for awhile, although later it began to spread once again. Lass notes that the interesting thing about this linguistic change is not only the two reversals of spread and recession, but the long amount of time the change took to complete.

    This book is a well-written and well-organized examination of a topic that does not get the attention that it deserves. Perhaps the greatest contribution the book makes is in the length to which it goes beyond spelling to look at other aspects of language, particularly morphology and the lexicon. Another impressive feature of the book is the great variety of methods used by its authors, including the examination of historical corpora, grammar books, scientific texts, and legal documents. The variety not only kept this reader interested in the subject, but gave me many ideas of how to go about conducting my own research.

    One thing the book does not address much that would have been interesting is how other languages may have helped shape Standard English, either through immigration or external pressures. French, for example, is rarely mentioned in the book, though one might suspect that French had some part to play in the standardization of the language during the period under investigation. However, answering the question of the influence of foreign languages on the standardization of English might very well be a book in its own right. Nevertheless, this book performs a valuable service by questioning earlier assumptions about the topic and using new methods to look for alternative answers.

    The reviewer: Lamont Antieau is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia, where he teaches introductory linguistics and English composition. His research interests are in dialectology, corpus linguistics, pidgins and creoles, and pragmatics.