Category Archives: varieties of English

And I’m like, dude, pick on someone your own size

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Last month, this article in the UK’s Observer got under my skin enough that I sat down and wrote a response in the form of a letter to the editor. There are so many linguistic misperceptions and downright falsehoods in the piece that, frankly, I had a hard time knowing where to start. Likewise, I had a hard time fitting all of my beef with the piece into the 300-word maximum specified for letters to the editor.

I chose to focus on what bothered me most, and that is that this man, who I am aware is a “very important person” in Britain, started the entire tirade by complaining about his granddaughter. Like, what kind of person does that? As if teenage girls don’t have enough self-esteem issues without their grandfather complaining about them in a newspaper which is read by millions of people around the world.

At any rate, it is clear that the letter will not be published elsewhere (no doubt there are bigger fish to fry than some linguist complaining about self-important men complaining about the demise of English), so I’ll publish it here.

Dear editors,

With reference to Peter Preston’s concerns about his granddaughter’s English (“The Americans are coming — but we’re like, whatever,” 30.07.2017): I assure Mr. Preston with 100 percent certainty that his granddaughter does not speak American English. Ask a hundred British people to assess her speech compared to an American teenager, and they will tell you the same thing: his granddaughter speaks British English. It is not the same British English that Mr. Preston speaks, and it won’t be the same English spoken in the UK in 50 years, but it is unmistakably British English. Unlike Mr. Preston’s claims, British English will never be “absorbed” by American English.

 

How do I know this? Because I am a scientist who studies language systems. My statements are based on 150 years of research in the field of linguistics, not on opinion. Mr. Preston’s complaints offer nothing new or enlightening, nor for that matter anything grounded in science. Contrary to popular belief, the influence of television and other forms of media remains relatively negligible when it comes to language contact and change. As Mr. Preston points out, vocabulary items such as you guys, like, and awesome may drift into everyday speech, but these are just words. Changes in how sentences are put together, changes in pronunciation – that’s a different story. The effects of media influence in these core areas is a growing field of inquiry: note, for example, Professor Jane Stuart Smith’s work on changes in the pronunciation of Glaswegian English in connection with the EastEnders series.

Decades of research shows that teenage girls are trendsetters when it comes to language change, and, no, people like Mr. Preston do not like it—after all, they are teenage girls, a most maligned segment of our population.

But really, picking on his own granddaughter?

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth Peterson, PhD

University Lecturer, English Philology

Department of Modern Languages

Unioninkatu 40, Box 24

University of Helsinki, Finland 00014

Round Table with Professor Edgar Schneider: Similects, universals or something else? Problematizing historical and social perspectives on ESL varieties

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Together with Raphaël Domange, a PhD student from the University of Stockholm, I am hosting a round table on a most current and relevant topic: the views we hold of second language varieties of English (for example, English as it is used in India, Ghana, Singapore, etc.), and how we talk about and research such varieties.

The round table, which takes place on June 16, 2017, will be led by a leading scholar in the area of World Englishes, Professor Edgar Schneider from the University of Regensberg, Germany.

The day will begin with focused discussions on a few key areas: 1) “Angloversals” vs. similects, 2) education and ideologies, and 3) methods and theory.

In addition to Professor Schneider, we have nine other scholars who will be joining us as discussants. Here is a bit of information about them.

Heli Paulasto, University of Eastern Finland. Heli joins us as an expert on so-called Angloversals. Here are a few of her publications on this topic:

Meriläinen, L. & Paulasto, H. (2017) ‘Embedded Inversion as an Angloversal: Evidence from Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle Englishes’. In Filppula, M., Klemola, J. & Sharma, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Paulasto, H. (2014) ‘Extended uses of the progressive form in L1 and L2 Englishes.’ English World-Wide 35 (3), 247-276.

Lea Meriläinen, University of Eastern Finland. Lea is also an expert on Angloversals.

Meriläinen, L. & Paulasto, H. 2017. “Embedded Inversion as an Angloversal: Evidence from Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle Englishes”. In Filppula, M., Klemola, J. & Sharma, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Meriläinen, L. (fc.) “The progressive form in learner Englishes: Examining variation across corpora”. To appear in World Englishes.

Paula Rautionaho, University of Tampere. Paula is investigating the use of progressive vs. non-progressive in ESL varieties. 

“The effect of grammatical contexts on the progressive vs. non-progressive alternation across World Englishes” (with Sandra C. Deshors, ICAME 2017.

Jan-Ola Östman, University of Helsinki. Jan-Ola is interested in language contact, language minorities, language ideologies and language rights.

http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:730884/FULLTEXT01.pdf

http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:730884/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Simo Määttä, University of Helsinki. Simo comes from an interpreting and translation perspective. He is also interested in language rights.

Määttä, Simo. (2017, submitted) English as a Lingua Franca in Telephone Interpreting: Reformulations, Mistakes, Representations, and Linguistic Justice. The Interpreter’s Newsletter 22. Special Issue on Corpus-based Dialogue Interpreting Studies. Bendazzoli,C. (ed.).

Määttä, Simo. (2017) ELF, Community Interpreting, and Linguistic Injustice. Paper at the the ELF10 conference at U Helsinki, panel 4 on June 13. 

Joseph McVeigh, University of Helsinki/University of Jyväskylä. Joe is interested in discussing issues that deal with a native-speaker bias and the teaching of English. Joe is currently finishing his PhD for the University of Helsinki.

Andy Kirkpatrick, Griffith University. Andy is interested in the role of local Englishes and langauge education policy in Asia. He is hosting a panel on the future of English as a Lingua Franca at ELF10 Conference in Helsinki.

Iris Schaller-Schwaner, University of Fribourg. Iris is interested in exploring the notion of similects, in addition to practical and oral skills.

Schaller-Schwaner, Iris (2015). ELF oral presentations in a multilingual context: intelligibility, familiarity and agency. In: Bowles, Hugo & Cogo, Alessia (eds.) International Perspectives on English as a Lingua Franca: Pedagogical Insights (International Perspectives in ELT) Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan: 72-95.

Svetlana Vetchinnikova, University of Helsinki. Svetlana is an expert on English as a Lingua Franca. She is a co-organizer of the ELF10 conference in Helsinki.

During the morning session, 9.30 to noon, these discussants and Professor Schneider will discuss our main themes in focus groups. In the afternoon, 1 to 4 pm, Professor Schneider will serve as the main discussant as the groups summarize their discussion. The afternoon session is open to the public.

In pursuit of “Bad English”

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Later this month, I’m off with my family for a visit to Trump’s America. No, not Trump’s America, per se–that’s just an unfortunate sidenote (I hope) — but rather a visit to the wonderful linguistics program at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh. The researchers in this program have been trendsetters for decades in their community-centered linguistic investigations, providing an inspirational model of how we as scholars can give back tangible benefits to the communities we work with.

The purpose of the visit is to re-acquaint myself and to update my knowledge, from a U.S. perspective, about the relationship of ethnicity, education, language rights and human rights. After 13 years of living in Finland, it is clear that my understanding of the situation in the U.S. has become outdated and distant. I’ll be in Raleigh for just about three months, and during that time I have my work cut out for me: I hope to finish three chapters for my book, “Bad English”: An introduction to language attitudes and ideologies, which is under contract with Routledge, a UK-based publisher. The folks at NCSU, including my host Jeff Reaser, have very generously agreed to give me both feedback and input on my manuscript.

The book is based around a course I have taught at the University of Helsinki for many years. In the course, we talk about how some people have strong attitudes against the way other people speak — for example in a multi-ethnic or urban variety of English — and how that came to be the case. We talk about why language attitudes exist in English, how those attitudes got there, and how they are perpetuated. We also talk about several varieties of English that many (myself not included) would consider marginal or “incorrect”: English as a global lingua franca, creole varieties of English, African American English, and even the English of children who are learning it as their mother tongue. The reason we study all these different varieties is so that we can observe what they have in common, and how the attitudes toward them compare.

The book, which is expected in 2019, will cover the same themes, in addition to discussing London English, New Delhi English, and Singapore English. I clearly have my work cut out for me! I am lucky to have several academic friends whose work I can draw from and who I can collaborate with. My own students have been an immense help with the process, informing the work every step of the way.

To make it crystal clear: the book is NOT about putting down or ridiculing varieties of English and the people who speak them. The reason it is called “Bad English,” in quotes, is because this is how many people refer to these varieties, but without exactly knowing why. This book explains why. In doing so — I am not going to pretend otherwise — I hope to succeed in changing the way readers view these varieties. It seems to have worked on my students; lets see how it goes with a wider audience.

I was surprised to notice that the book is already listed in Amazon India: http://www.amazon.in/Bad-English-introduction-attitudes-ideologies/dp/1138237469 Along with a page count and expected publication date! This is quite amazing, considering I have not written the book yet! Nonetheless, feel free to leave a review. (I’m joking, I’m joking)