Standard British English Research Articles

Pedagogic Implications of Regionally-determined Varieties of Cameroon English

With much regional variation in Cameroon English, language learning and teaching becomes very much affected in Cameroon. As the same users make use of the various forms of English as the changing circumstances require, it becomes more and more difficult for them to make clear distinctions between the varieties, and somehow all of these varieties find their way into the classroom. The classroom becomes a compendium of different home languages and cultures and there are implications for the teaching and learning of English as well as implications for the use of English as a medium of instruction. At the level of the learning and teaching of English, the dilemma of the teacher and the textbook writer lies in the question of the standard or variety to pursue in the teaching/learning process. Should it be a foreign, imported standard like British or American English or a local standard that has not yet been described and standardised? Many researchers, policy makers and language planners have spurred up discussions on the usefulness as well as the pervasiveness of the varieties and their implications for communicating with a national or international audience through the medium of English. There is also an impressive amount of code-switching and code-mixing. The implications for the acquisition of appropriate writing skills and the implications for communicating with a national or international audience through the English medium are also discussed.

A Comparison between the French and RP English Vowel Systems

This is a paper in comparative phonology, which undertakes a detailed comparative analysis of the standard British English RP (Received Pronunciation) vowel system, and that of standard French, including some observations on regional varieties.

Peculiar Patterns of Juxtapositional Assimilations in Educated Nigerian Spoken English Variety

Research into the specific phonological features that distinguish Educated Nigerian Spoken English (ENSE) within the purview of the New Englishes is still scarce. In particular, there is hardly any systematic, corpus-driven study on the juxtapositional assimilatory processes in Nigerian English to date, hence this current study. Its main objective is to examine the variety of English spoken by university students categorized as "Educated Nigerian English" (see Eka 1985, 2000; Odumuh 1987; Udofot 2004) and to identify patterns of juxtapositional assimilation that are peculiar to it. This is with a view to increasing the quantum of available data on this variety of English. The study is based on the corpus gathered from one hundred final-year university students from five Federal Government-owned universities in Nigeria. The respondents were drawn from nineteen linguistic groups including the three major Nigerian languages (Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo) and some "minor-group" and "medium-group" languages (see Egbokhare 2003). Such a selection is an attempt to make the data fairly representative of the different parts of Nigeria because of its densely multilingual nature. The study adopts both the taxonomic and generative approaches for its framework. The findings from the research reveal, among others, that 66% of the experimental group (EG) representing Nigerian respondents realized watch you /wɒtʃ juː/ as /wɔtʃ dʒu:/, eliding the palatal glide /j/, and replacing it with the palato-alveolar affricate /dʒ; and 59% of them articulated coach him /kəʊtʃ hɪm/ as /kotʃim/ with the [–h] deletion – expressions not found in the "Control", which is an exponent of the Standard British English (SBE). The work draws the conclusion that Educated Nigerian Standard English is largely endonormative and indicative of an emerging Nigerian English variety.

<i>The English language in Canada: Status, history and comparative analysis</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The English language in Canada: Status, history and comparative analysis Beau Brock Charles Boberg. 2010. The English language in Canada: Status, history and comparative analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 272. $118.95 (softcover). The book under review contributes to the study of Canadian English by collecting and synthesizing previous studies on the language into one volume.1 The author also provides the results of two recent studies on Canadian vocabulary and phonetics, which update previous studies in those fields. The result is a book that provides an excellent introduction to the most important aspects of Standard Canadian English (SCE) and will serve as a starting point for those looking to examine other aspects of the language. Considering the wide scope of the book, this review will address only a few of the themes presented. The book is divided into six chapters, which focus on different aspects of SCE. The first chapter examines the current status of the language in Canada, including where it is used, by whom, and in what capacity. The second chapter is a discussion of the history and possible origins of Canadian English, and draws upon immigration statistics from the 18th century to the present day. The following three chapters describe the linguistic features that distinguish SCE from Standard American English (SAE) and Standard British English (SBE), namely its vocabulary, phonetic tendencies, and grammar. At the end of Chapter 3, the reader is introduced to previous studies on Canadian English, such as those in lexicography, regional dialect research, and sociolinguistics. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss studies conducted by the author on vocabulary and phonetics in SCE. The final chapter summarises the author’s findings, and includes suggestions for future research. It is also important to mention that the bibliography is substantial, containing texts from a wide variety of disciplines. It is an excellent companion to Avis and Kinloch’s Writings on Canadian English 1792–1975 (1978), significantly updating the latter with a wide variety of texts. The author begins his study by examining the current status of SCE, particularly in relation to other languages, and its role in the media. A detailed account is given of the diminishing status of English in Quebec, where its use has been curtailed in [End Page 277] recent years. It is noted that although native English speakers form the majority in Canada (18 million speakers in 2006), there are also a large number of Canadians who speak English or French as a second language (6 million in 2006), a fact which could influence the future development of the language. The author also discusses the relatively limited influence of SCE in the media, which has been dominated almost entirely by the United States, with a few notable exceptions. It is therefore difficult for Canadian English to flourish within its own borders due to the ubiquity of American produced media. The second chapter describes the history of English in Canada. The origins of SCE have been debated since the early 20th century (Bloomfield 1948, Avis 1954, to name only two). Though the author does not claim to resolve the debate in this book, he agrees with Chambers (2006), who stated that North American English originates from the language spoken by British settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries2 The language was then shaped by later settlers, including the American Loyalists in the late 18th century, as well as immigrants from the British Isles in the early 19th century. It is claimed that Canadian English was well established in the original four provinces by the 1860s3 and that further immigration did not change the local speech patterns. Much of this is supported by the numerous immigration statistics provided throughout the chapter. It is somewhat surprising that little mention is made of certain Anglo-Canadians’ attempt to maintain the British character of the language (spelling, lexicon, and grammar), as previously discussed in Chambers (2004). In the third chapter, the author describes the principal features of SCE by comparing it to SAE and SBE in order to determine which features are uniquely Canadian. To this end, the author draws upon several dictionaries of Canadian English, as well as previous lexicographical and...

When the Blind Lead the Blind: the Fallacy of Promoting Standard British English Accent in Cameroon

The paper argues, with reference to different empirical studies, that the promotion of Standard British English accent in Cameroon to the detriment of educated Cameroon English pronunciation is an unrealistic goal. The argument is based on the fact that Cameroon displays unique sociolinguistic and pragmatic realities that make the promotion of Standard British accent an unattainable goal.

China's English mystery – the views of a China ‘foreign expert’

The mysteries of exotic China arise not only from its voluntary isolation from the modern world during some of the most formative and progressive decades, but from an inability or unwillingness of the west to understand Chinese logic and thinking. The west views China with western eyes and judges China according to western standards. The west asks some seriously ignorant questions about China, such as: What is the culture of China? What do the people of China think? What do the people of China eat?To fully comprehend the absurdity of these questions, simply invert them, as Chinese college students regularly do in their English classes that are taught by foreigners: How is the culture of America? How do the people of America think? How do the people of America eat? Each populace assumes that the other is a mono-culture. This thinking also carries over into the area of lingua franca. The west assumes that all Chinese people speak Mandarin or Cantonese and have a common written language. China actually teaches that one must learn ‘Standard British English’ or ‘Standard American English’ or ‘Standard International English.’ In addition to Mandarin and Cantonese, China has 55 minority languages and an uncounted number of localized dialects such as Shanghainese, Wuhanese, and many others. There are at least three written Chinese languages, not just one, for example, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and pinyin.

Brunei English: a developing variety

ABSTRACT: A considerable amount of time has elapsed since the existence of a distinct variety of English, Brunei English (BNE), was mooted in the early 1990s. A subsequent study conducted by Svalberg in 1998 suggested that BNE was then in its infancy and that its speakers were largely unaware of the differences between it and Standard British English (STE). However, it was predicted that BNE would, in all likelihood, expand and stabilise over time. This paper seeks to explore how BNE has evolved and is developing in a contemporary context. An adapted and extended version of Svalberg's original grammaticality judgement test was given to a class of 29 Lower Sixth Form students aged 16–17 at DPMAMB College. The participants involved had relatively high proficiency levels in STE, having all achieved credit grades in the Brunei-Cambridge GCE O Level English Language examination the previous year. The original test had focused solely on the grammatical acceptability of featured items. In extending it I added a number of lexical items commonly heard in everyday conversations and exchanges and some that emerge consistently in both student and public texts. It was considered that having participants assess both lexicality and grammaticality would yield a wider-ranging picture of the forms and functions characteristic of BNE today and a greater illumination of its role in meeting the expressive needs of Bruneians.

Intonation and Attitude in Nigerian English

Intonation is an important phenomenon in language believed to have strong effect on communication. It is often said in reference to the primacy of intonation meaning over lexical content that "It's not what you said, it's how you said it!”. To this effect, a number of scholars have argued that intonation conveys different attitudes in English and is principally responsible for misunderstandings between native and non-native English speakers. This paper, therefore, attempts to ascertain the extent to which Nigerian speakers of English use English intonation tunes to express attitude as it is in Standard British English. Twenty-two subjects comprising television reporters using English for their professional assignments and confirmed to have been exposed to basic training in English intonation during their academic studies and/or in the course of their professional training were made to read five utterance items designed to test their knowledge of attitudinal function of intonation. The analysis shows that the respondents were deficient in the use of English intonation tunes to express attitude as they only scored 15.5% overall appropriate production of intonation tunes in the utterance items. It was concluded that the subjects demonstrated a restricted use of intonation in communication, as intonation was rarely used to express attitude. This confirms earlier claims that Nigerian English users make restricted use of the complex intonation tunes of English especially those tunes assigned to reflect the speaker’s attitude to the listener or what is being said.

Introducing diversity of English into ELT: student teachers' responses

The growing use of English by its L2 speakers for their international communication has started to suggest a need for many changes in ELT, particularly in traditional EFL countries. One of the changes discussed among some sociolinguists is the introduction of different varieties of English from the two traditionally highly regarded varieties, i.e. standard American and standard British English, into ELT. This is to develop students� proficiency for international communication with other L2 speakers who use different varieties. To implement this change, it would be important to provide the necessary teacher education and training. Using Japan as a typical EFL country whose ELT aims at teaching English for international communication, this paper discusses how student teachers themselves worked with a teacher education programme that recognizes the diversity in English and analyses their responses to the idea of introducing different varieties into ELT.

The role of syllable structure in external sandhi: An EPG study of vocalisation and retraction in word-final English /l/

A pre-vocalic connected speech context is said to enable the resyllabification of word-final consonants into an onset, thus conditioning alternations. We present EPG data on English word-final /l/, measuring the extent of alveolar contact and the rate of vocalisation, the extent of dorsal retraction (representing “darkness”), and the timing of alveolar contact relative to dorsal retraction. Two dialects of British English are considered, namely Scottish Standard English and Southern Standard British English. Results are that /l/ alternation is systematic: the tongue tip contact of word-final /l/, quite categorically for some speakers, is more onset-like in pre-vocalic and more coda-like in pre-consonantal contexts. This alternation is not along the lines predicted by a segmental resyllabification account, however. First, the segmental identity of the following consonant (/b/ or /h/) may be as powerful a factor in conditioning the presence or absence of alveolar contact for some speakers. Second, glottalisation of lexically vowel-initial words regularly occurs, but does not seem to condition the appearance (or otherwise) of tongue tip contact. Third, the tongue dorsum remains retracted and does not adopt an onset-like form or timing even when /l/ is pre-vocalic. Thus categorical resyllabification of a word-final /l/ segment based on phonotactic acceptability is rejected as a mechanism controlling English L-sandhi in connected speech. Instead, we propose a gestural-episodic model, in which individual gestures display different levels of coherence in lexical syllable roles, while in connected speech, segmental sequences are influenced by similarity to well-rehearsed lexical sequences, if they exist.

Colloquial Singapore English got: functions and substratal influences

ABSTRACT: Got in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE) has grammatical and semantic functions which are very different from standard varieties of English such as Standard British English (BrE). This paper provides a comprehensive description of the usage of the word. Seven distinct meanings are identified: possessive, existential, realis modality (further divided into temporal location, aspect and emphasis), idiomatic use in the expression where got?, passive, ‘to receive/obtain’ and ‘to become’. With regard to these seven meanings, the paper then makes a cross‐linguistic comparison between CSE and four languages which played a role in the formation of CSE, namely BrE, Hokkien, Cantonese and Baba Malay. The results of the comparison show that it is Hokkien that constitutes the main substrate of CSE. This claim is further supported by sociohistorical facts and a comparison between CSE and Baba Malay of two expressions that are potentially of Malay‐origin, namely the kena passive construction and the idiomatic expression where got?. Moreover, the paper also maintains that the sources of the various uses of got can be classified into three, two of which were gained through successful L2 acquisition and the other through a combination of simplification and relexification.

Expanding the tomato controversy: an exploratory study of the perception of standard British and American English in Portugal

ABSTRACTThe recognition and reception of the two major international varieties of English in Portugal.English has become the predominant language of the globe and Portugal is no exception to this predominance. It is the language that Portuguese people mostly use in international settings, the idiom dominating youth culture, science and technology, and a skill generally required in the tertiary sector. Though proficiency in English is far from attained at a national level, it is a subject that has been taught from the fifth grade in Portuguese schools for almost thirty years and which was recently made compulsory in primary schools.However, the presence of English in Portugal far antedates its use for international, professional and academic purposes and its elevation to an international, global or world (standard) language. This recent condition was prepared by a long history of contact with Britain and its varieties and by a more recent record of low-mediated contact with American English due to the influx of American mass culture.

How Can Teaching English Help to Promote National and Regional Heritages? On Basic Global English (BGE) and "advanced global English"

Since English is the most prominent European and global lingua franca, there are reasons to respect this role of English also in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). While TEFL in Europe is oriented toward bringing learners’ competences close to either standard American English or standard British English and the respective cultures, a concept of TEFL especially for compulsory stages of language learning may opt for including cultures, without focussing the American and the British ones. The contribution will illustrate the concept of Basic Global English (BGE), which was created for learners at level 0 to prepare them for communication with people of other mother tongues in general, which includes looking at communicative strategies and cultural aspects from regions and nations that the group of learners choose on their own. This way English becomes not a threat to other cultures, but a door-opener to all kinds of national and regional cultures. From these, learners may then select one or two for getting to know this culture and its language more thoroughly. The contribution presents recent developments in the project on “Basic and Advanced Global English”.

The *amn'tgap: The view from West Yorkshire

The absence ofI amn'tfor the first person singular present tense negative form is taken to indicate that there is a gap in the paradigm. Recent accounts take a morphosyntactic approach and phonology is largely ignored. Such accounts typically focus on contemporary forms of Standard English. This paper, in contrast, compares nineteenth-century and contemporary West Yorkshire (WY) aux+n'tforms and pursues a largely phonological solution. The paper sets out to demonstrate that WY has never had a *amn'tgap and that changes over the past century shed light on the *amn'tgap problem. Contemporary WY is known to exhibit a phenomenon called secondary contraction, wherebyshouldn't[ʃʊdʔ], for example, may be pronounced [ʃunʔ]. I argue that secondary contraction is responsible for the creation of homophones foramn'tandaren't: [aːnt]/[aːt]. I will consider the possibility that certain aux+n'tforms have become lexicalised and that this has triggered secondary contraction as a phonological repair strategy. With the analysis of WY data as a backdrop, the paper then pursues the possibility that lexicalisation may have occurred, at a much earlier date, in precursors of Standard British English (SBE). Indeed, it seems plausible that homophony foramn'tandaren'tmay have led to prescription against new realisations ofamn't. The paper will show that grammaticallyamn'thas evolved in exactly the same way as other auxn'tforms, and it is only commentators who have treated it differently. If this is so, the *amn'tgap in SBE is man-made rather than grammatical in nature.

ASSESSING WORLD ENGLISHES

English worldwide may be viewed in terms of spread and of diffusion. Spread refers to the use in different global contexts, such as publishing and examinations, of Standard British or American English. Diffusion describes the emergence of local varieties of English in, for example, India or Singapore, comparable to the earlier emergence of Australian English, Canadian English, and so on. In nonformal settings, interlocutors make use of their own local variety of English, their World Englishes (WEs). In formal settings, notably in English language assessment, it seems that the norm appealed to is still that of Standard British or American English. Since English as a lingua franca (ELF) appears to make use only of the spoken medium, there is less of a demand for an ELF written norm. At present what seems to hold back the use of local WEs norms in formal assessment is less the hegemony of Western postcolonial and economic power and more the uncertainty of local stakeholders.

Comparative Optimality Theory Analysis of Primary Stress Assignment in Standard British and Nigerian English

This work presents a comparative optimality account of primary stress assignment in Standard British English (SBE) and Nigerian English (NE), particularly from the point of view of Igala users of English as a second language. Data for this study included ready- made exercises and already recorded cassettes, which deal directly with primary stress assignment in SBE. This is in addition to the researcher’s knowledge of these varieties of English, his choice of a native speaker of SBE as a language helper as well as useful pieces of information collated using wordlists. The method for elicitation of segments was mainly perceptual. The study has demonstrated how the constraint ordering in Standard British English is ‘naturally’ re- ordered in Nigerian English observing that the different constraint orderings notwithstanding, these constraints are the same, and are present in each of these varieties. It has shown also that Optimality Theory satisfies the requirement that any serious theory of phonology must rely heavily on well-formedness constraints, which means it must be committed to universal grammar, a fact that places the theory at an advantage over its predecessors

Using two varieties in the ESL classroom

From data collected through the observation of 15 community junior and senior secondary schools, and a survey of 43 English language teachers in the observed schools, the paper describes the conflict in the use of Botswana English and Standard British English in the English language classrooms. The findings of the study reveal teachers' uncertainty regarding the model of English to use in the classroom, students' fear and confusion regarding the varieties of English appropriate in various contexts and a hostile learning environment which makes students reluctant to engage in meaningful interaction in English. It is necessary for policy makers to begin to think about the nature of the English being taught in schools. Teachers will need to acquire student management skills to improve the environment in which English is acquired. Keywords : varieties of English, English language teaching MARANG: Journal of Language and Literature Vol. 17 2007: pp. 1-11

Intonation and Phonation in Young Adults with Down Syndrome

This paper investigates various aspects of intonation and phonation in young adults with Down syndrome. The speech of nine speakers with Down syndrome was analyzed acoustically for different aspects of intonation and phonation. The results of these analyses were compared to similar speech samples of nine typical speakers of Standard British English. The controls were matched for age and gender. Different aspects of speakers' individual pitch framework were analyzed, ie, organic and linguistic pitch ranges, voice compass, and declination. Phonation was investigated acoustically as maximum phonation time, jitter, and shimmer. The results suggest that speakers with Down syndrome exhibit normal respiratory capacity, a reduced organic pitch range, and a somewhat reduced linguistic pitch range. In terms of the melodic variation in the intonation patterns, a higher mean speaking fundamental frequency was found with generally a less melodious rendering of the intonation contours and a shallower declination. The analysis of phonation indicated reduced jitter, while shimmer did not deviate significantly from the control group. Although the observed deviations in the Down syndrome speakers are suggestive of lack of laryngeal control at the physiological level, it cannot be excluded at this stage that they may also reflect personality characteristics or the use of different linguistic strategies in implementing intonation patterns.

Good English for What?: Learners' Motivation as a Factor in Declining Learners' Performance in English Language Acquisition and Use in Nigerian Schools

Learners' performance in the acquisition and use of any given language is ordinarily as much the result of the quality of learning opportunities available and the learning environment (the supply‐side factor) as the quality and strength of the learners' motivation and response (the demand‐side factor). However, one side sometimes proves more decisive than the other. This paper argues that, during the period 1980–2005, a sharp decline in the motivation of young English‐language learners occurred, as a result of certain historical developments discussed in the paper, and that a drop in learners' motivation is probably the most powerful explanation for the equally sharp decline in learning effectiveness and in young learners' proficiency in the use of English which occurred during the same period, particularly since about 1990 (the Learner‐Motivation/Performance Thesis). The paper argues that the change which has occurred in societal perception of the function, status and value of English language as a result of the historical developments identified raises some interesting sociolinguistic questions, in particular, regarding the long‐term status of English in Nigeria. In this regard, it is argued that while the change may not imply that the death of English as a generic language is imminent in Nigeria, it does suggest that the death of ‘Good English’ (Standard British English) is imminent in the country and that the peculiarities of the local variety of English likely to replace Good English will probably create serious intelligibility problems for Nigeria in its international transactions.

An Intraspeaker Variation Study of Scottish English /r/ Pharyngealisation

Pharyngealisation— the retraction of the tongue towards the pharynx— of prepausal and preconsonantal /r/ has been recognised as an emergent strategy of derhoticisation in Scotland’s Central Belt (Stuart-Smith 2007). However, previous studies have focused on the incidence of this phenomenon between speakers, with little attention paid to intraspeaker variation. The question remains: How does Scottish English derhoticisation behave in a situation of style shifting? We explore the intraspeaker variation of comedian Frankie Boyle, a recognisable speaker of Scottish English, comparing his production of apical and pharyngealised /r/ in prepausal and preconsonantal environments in two interview contexts. The acoustic correlates of /r/ pharyngealisation are characterised as a rise in F3 with reduced energy in the formant. This is quite different from the plummeting F3 associated with an apical realisation of /r/, allowing for a binary categorisation of pharyngeal and apical tokens as well as an analysis of F3 frequency as a continuous measure.We present evidence that Boyle makes significantly more frequent use of pharyngealisation when interviewed by Kevin Bridges, a fellow Glasgow native, than by Richard Osman, a Southern Standard British English (SSBE) speaker. Further, a secondary analysis of phonation quality shows that Boyle uses significantly more creaky voice with Osman than with Bridges, allowing for a fuller understanding of Boyle’s style in each context. Attempts to attribute the observed differences in pharyngealisation rate to factors other than interview context (e.g., linguistic factors or discussion topic) yielded insignificant results, further reinforcing the notion that the style shift is due to interview context. Even within the binary categories of pharyngeal vs. apical, an analysis of formant frequency found that, on average, Boyle produced “ more apical” apicals with Osman (lower plummeting F3) and “ more pharyngeal” pharyngeals with Bridges (higher rising F3), suggesting that these forms are dynamic and can be strategically produced to varying degrees. This evident style shift between interview contexts is an ideal platform for a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of various sociolinguistic theories. Ultimately, we conclude that audience design best captures the interactional effects observed, but reference to second order indexicality is required to understand what social meaning Boyle achieves through style shifting.