Identities of English A dynamic emergent scene. · Identities of English A dynamic emergent scene....

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ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY IN POZNAŃ Faculty of English

Identities of English: A dynamic emergent scene.

Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz

University in Poznań [email protected]

PAN, 18 May 2017, Vienna

There is no language like English in today’s world

The aim of the talk is to recognize the varied identities of English taking the bird’s eye view on the presence of English in the global communication. It will be assumed that new identities emerge dynamically out of environmental context.

PAN, 18 May 2017, Vienna 2

Outline of the talk

1.  Native vs. non-native English 2.  Native speaker 3.  Lingua franca vs. multilingualism 4.  Diversity vs. language death 5.  English as the language of knowledge 6.  ELFish 7.  Complexity theory for English 8.  A project proposal


Native English: sources

•  Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twentieth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.


Native English: sources

•  Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), 2005. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at http://wals.info.

•  Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info, Accessed on 2017-05-11.)


Native English?

ENGLISH [ENG] lang, United Kingdom; also in American Samoa, Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Botswana, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Denmark, Dominica, Ecuador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Finland, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Grenada, Guam, Guyana, Honduras, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea, South, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia (Peninsular), Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Midway Islands, Montserrat, Namibia, Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Pitcairn, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, St. Helena, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Pierre and Miquelon, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tanzania, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Uganda, UAE, USA, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Wake Island, Western Samoa, Zambia, Zimbabwe


Native English?

•  spoken in 105 countries •  the dominant or official language in more than 60 of the

world’s 185 nation-states recognized by the United Nations •  341,000,000 native users (1999 World Almanach) 55,000,000 first language speakers in the UK 210,000,000 in the USA 17,100,000 in Canada = 60% population 15,682,000 in Australia, 95% population 3,500,000 in South Africa, 9.1% population 3,213,000 in New Zealand, 90% population 2,600,000 in Ireland •  USA >>> Great Britain > Canada > Australia > South

Africa > New Zealand > Ireland > other 98 countries


Native English: dialects

•  UK COCKNEY, SCOUSE, GEORDIE, WEST COUNTRY, EAST ANGLIA, BIRMINGHAM (BRUMMY, BRUMMIE), SOUTH WALES, EDINBURGH, BELFAST, CORNWALL, CUMBERLAND, CENTRAL CUMBERLAND, DEVONSHIRE, EAST DEVONSHIRE, DORSET, DURHAM, BOLTON LANCASHIRE, NORTH LANCASHIRE, RADCLIFFE LANCASHIRE, NORTHUMBERLAND, NORFOLK, NEWCASTLE NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNESIDE NORTHUMBERLAND, LOWLAND SCOTTISH, SOMERSET, SUSSEX, WESTMORLAND, NORTH WILTSHIRE, CRAVEN YORKSHIRE, NORTH YORKSHIRE, SHEFFIELD YORKSHIRE, WEST YORKSHIRE


Native English: dialects and accents?

http://www.dialectsarchive.com/ •  created in 1997, the online archive of primary-source

recordings of English-language dialects and accents as heard around the world

•  “All IDEA’s (International Dialects of English Archive) recordings are in English, are of native speakers, and include both English-language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. (Many include brief demonstrations of the speaker’s native language, too.)”


Non-native English

•  350 mln non-native (vs. 322 mln native) acc. to Nettle & Romaine (2000)

•  1.6 billion speakers acc. to David Crystal (vs. 400 mln native, e.g. in Spotlight, Guardian, 2011)

English is the only language with more non-native speakers

than native speakers


The growing ubiquity of the English language the world over is turning traditional notions of who is and is not a native speaker on its head. (New America Media)

Na#vespeaker?

Native speaker? L1?

•  only a monolingual speaker has a chance to develop ALL (non-exhaustive) ranges/functions in one language

•  one can be a prototypical native speaker of ONE language only

•  “prototypical native-speaker-ness”: being a native speaker of one language in a generally monolingual community (cf. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk & Weckwerth 2012)


A prototypical native speaker

•  native language patterns of phonetic perception are formed in the first year of life (e.g., Werker 2003)

•  Werker and Tees (1984): –  Hindi retroflex vs. dental “d” sounds and the Hindi voiceless

aspirated vs. breathy voiced –  English-learning infants of 6-8 months as well as L1 (Hindi)

adults and older infants could discriminate these non-English distinctions, while English adults and English learning infants of 10-12 months failed

•  as for production, a link develops between perceptual and motor processes by the second half of the first year


A prototypical native speaker

•  a native language serves the most primitive, basic, primeval purposes first (and for life; “sandpit vocabulary” etc, but also everyday paraphernalia like eating, digestion, hygiene, sex, health etc.), while other functions are built on later, and also in other languages (in multilinguals), which is connected with education in the most holistic sense

•  the “language for making love” (cf. Crystal 1995)


A non-prototypical native speaker

a non-prototypical native speaker – a bi- or multilingual who uses more than one language for everyday communication


A non-native speaker

•  a non-native speaker is a learner

•  a learner may eventually become a non-prototypical native speaker, but never a native speaker (since s/he no longer covers ALL required functions/ranges in one language only, s/he will not be monolingual again)


Lingua franca

Lingua franca is a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.


English as a lingua franca: early predictions

“…some are of an opinion that one could deal with multilinguality by an introduction of one of the most common “living” languages as a general international language. […] Taking into account group psychology, we must consider such an idea (move) impossible to carry through. Let us not forget about an unremovable international envy as well as national pride.”

Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan. 1908. O języku pomocniczym międzynarodowym. (On an international auxiliary language.) A lecture

delivered in Warsaw on May 5, 1908. Kraków: Drukarnia Literacka pod zarządem L.K. Górskiego.

•  B. considered pronunciation and structure as well as spelling (lots of homonyms) of the candidate languages (English, German, French) to be too difficult for other nations


English as a lingua franca: early predictions

“English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century...American population will in the next age produce a greater number of persons who will speak English than any other language.”

(John Adams 1780, Andresen 1990: 35) “will probably be spoken by more people, in the course of two or three centuries, than ever spoke any one language, at one time, since the creation of the world.”

(Benjamin Rush, Andresen 1990) “If ...we would have the benefit of seeing our language more generally known among mankind, we should endeavor to remove all the difficulties, however small, that discourage the learning of it” ; he considers French to be number one; thus, he wishes a spelling reform “to facilitate the spread of English in the world marketplace”

(Franklin, Andresen 1990: 51) PAN, 18 May 2017, Vienna 19

Multilingualism

•  Multilingualism –  most people in the world today are bilingual or multilingual –  not a modern phenomenon: language contact was a feature of

all the ancient civilizations, always due to language contact (cf. Thomason 2015: 11)

•  Patterns (Andresen & Carter 2016: 131ff) –  the compromise pattern (Paraguay, Guaraní & Spanish) –  the neutral language pattern (Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian

(Malayan)) –  the dominant language pattern (colonial languages in former

colonies, e.g. E. in South Africa and India)


Multilingualism

•  Policy and education (Andresen & Carter 2016: 140) –  the minority language is promoted (Catalan) –  minority languages are supported alongside majority

languages through bilingual education (Three Language Formular in India)

–  majority language is promoted (E. in the US via ESL courses)


Multilingualism

•  The best method to preserve minority languages is to sustain bi/multilingualism –  Bilingualism Matters research and information centre (Antonella

Sorace, Edinburgh) –  informed decisions of the speakers based on research rather

than misconceptions –  proficient bilinguals are not like monolinguals in either language:

convergence between L1 and L2 –  more cognitive flexibility => less ‘monolingual nativeness’ in L1

=> more success at learning L2 –  obtaining a cognitive reconfiguration that allows successful late

bilinguals to efficiently handle cross-language competition (Sorace 2016, SLE)


Translanguaging & multilingualism

•  Translanguaging –  the way multilinguals communicate using resources from their

repertoires (Cenoz 2016) –  originally developed as a pedagogical tool alternating the

languages used for input and output in the context of Welsh-English bilingual education in Wales

•  Sustainable translanguaging: five principles (Gorter 2016, SLE) 1. Create functional “breathing spaces” 2. Produce a need for use of the minority language 3. Use all resources of emergent multilinguals 4. Link spontaneous and pedagogical translanguaging 5. Raise knowledge about languages


Multilingual speakers

•  “competence of multilingual speakers is fluid, not fixed, difficult to measure but real” (Gorter 2016, SLE)

•  multilinguals use their linguistic resources in a social context and shape this context in communicative interaction

•  “The greatest impediment to recognising, valuing and utilising our language potential is a persistent monolingual mindset. Such a mindset sees everything in terms of monolingualism being the norm.” (Clyne 2005)

•  monolingual bias in studying multilingualism •  multilingual people actually do not have one basic code

comparable to monolinguals •  language interchange in multilingual setting


Multilingualism & diversity: conflicting policy agendas (Gorter 2016, SLE)

Multilingualism Language learning Progress Competitive Employability Mobility Higher priority

Diversity Minority languages Protection Endangerment Heritage Identity Lower priority



Diversity vs. language death

(Whalen & Simons 2009)

How did English become a global language?

Crystal (2011) •  the power of people who use the language •  combination of power factors (the British Empire, the

Industrial Revolution, the US economy, cultural developments such as the telephone, pop music, the internet) which developed initially through the medium of English

•  the structure of the language is not a factor (cf. Baudouin’s concerns)

Criteria for an ideal language (Dixon 2016) •  6 features to be avoided (E. has 5 of them) •  35 features welcome (E. does not have many of them)


Language constellation: hierarchy of prestige in Europe (Gorter 2016, SLE)

English Few ‘larger’ languages:

Spanish, French, German, Italian Other state languages:

Dutch, Danish, Greek, Slovenian, etc Regional minority languages:

Basque, Frisian, Catalan, Welsh, etc Migrant languages:

Arabic, Turkish, Berber, Somali, Kurdish, etc


English and linguistic diversity

•  languages die out at the alarming speed due to a variety of reasons (language dominance being only one of them)

•  only in the case of replacing L1 has English been a ‘killer language’ (cf. the dominant scenario)

•  it is essential to preserve as much of linguistic diversity as possible, and, paradoxically, English serves as a tool (e.g. in language revitalization) and becomes a ‘father language’

•  paradoxically again, by learning English as L2 people become bilingual


English and linguistic diversity

•  having more than one lg in the brain no matter which is an advantage

•  translations in EU cost 2 Euros a person a year, only 37 per cent of Europeans speak some English, so English only regime would cut the majority off the documents (Romaine, SLE 2016)


English as the language of knowledge

Alastrué & Pérez_Llantada. eds. (2015) •  lingua franca in higher education and research (as in

trade, commerce, business and tourism) •  inevitable reality rather than an ‘imperialistic colonization

maneuver’ •  perceived in rather neutral terms as a ‘default language’,

‘nobody’s land’, opportunity, a facilitating tool, instrumental rather than a threat, personal choice of scholars, entails more academic advantages than disadantages

•  a language for communicating in academia and not for national or cultural identification


Imprisoned in English

•  Wierzbicka (2014) “offers a definitive version of the author’s long-standing argument that English is a misleading and unreliable guide to ‘independent reality’ and should not be used as a ‘transparent medium’ of science” (Pavlenko 2015 review, 970)

•  Wierzbicka herself offers NSM (natural semantic metalanguage) •  the pervasiveness of L1 (E. or other) influence on the L2

raises important questions about the authenticity of our data and correctness of our analyses (972)

•  the time has come for linguists too to become more open about how we know what we know (972)


ELFish

•  ELF - a non-native model for non-native speakers of English

•  a set of phonetic features, proposed as a didactic priority in teaching English as a foreign language

•  a ”phonological core” in teaching would guarantee: –  intelligibility –  local identity –  learnability of important elements


Jenkins, Jennifer 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ELFish: features

•  rhotic accent, pronounced as GA retroflex approximant •  no flap •  no <th> •  no dark l •  importance of aspiration •  importance of glottal h •  importance of fortis/lenis contrast •  cluster reduction allowed only medially and finally •  importance of vowel length •  vowel quality ignored •  no weak forms (but learners must know them in order to

understand) •  importance of lexical stress •  rhythm, intonation, phonostylistics not important


ELFish: critique

•  an implicit conflict between production and perception abilities of the learners: they are supposed to perceive and understand without being able to produce (cf. Motor Theory of Speech Perception)

•  a teacher as a model is not to be imitated: a problem of evaluation

•  “The result is that learners in Hong Kong, Poznań, Tokyo, etc - who are most likely to use their English with other non-native speakers - are being taught varieties of English that are more appropriate to conversation among native speakers in Brighton or Baltimore.” Poznań thanks!


ELFish: critique

•  while native-speakers are not supposed to be models, and standards are not supposed to be the reference points, still, the learners are expected to approach RP or GA

•  intelligibility and irritability are measured against native speakers

•  a typological perspective excludes a possibility of finding one common core for learners from various linguistic backgrounds

•  the proposed system is artificial, since an arbitrary selection is made from among the structural features of a natural language: learnable?


ELF news

•  ELF 9, Lleida, Catalonia, June 2016 “Framing English within multilingual policies and practices” –  most talks about ELF not English

•  an emergent paradigm in the study of multilingualism which is characterized by a holistic view of multilingual speakers’ linguistic repertoires and the softening of the boundaries between languages

•  English (ELF)-medium education in multilingual university settings (Smit 2016)

•  What strategies can the teacher adopt to provide ELF learners with intelligible and comprehensible English for as yet undetermined interlocutors? (Derwing 2016)


Complexity theory for English

•  various identities of English emerge on the world scene

due to use and contact

A complex system is “a system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution.” (Mitchell 2009: 13) •  “some effects arise without particular causes, as the result of

random interactions of large number of elements in complex systems. (..) they emerge without any deterministic cause.” (Kretzschmar 2015:1)


Complexity theory for English

•  “We all participate in speech, but the language is a little different (…) for each one of us individually” (Kretzschmar 2015:3)

•  “Complex systems allow the stable patterns to emerge on which we rely for effective communication in social interactions.” (Kretzschmar 2015:20)

39 PAN, 18 May 2017, Vienna

A project proposal

English in [a participating country]. •  English in Poland, Austria, Norway, Italy, etc. •  International consortium •  Major goal: how non-native users change English •  Particular goals: linguistic description of a variety,

relation between teaching and effect, influence of L1, influence on L1

[email protected]


Identified identities

Native English (prototypical): Monolingual

Non-native English (incl. non-prototypical native): Bilingual/multilingual EFL – lingua franca (a natural phenomenon) for communication and knowledge Local EFL’s influenced by local L1’s (and influencing them) ELF – ELFish (an artificial construct)


References

Andresen, Julie Tetel. 1990. Linguistics in America 1769-1924. A critical history. London: Routledge. Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan. 1908. O języku pomocniczym międzynarodowym. (On an international auxiliary language.) A lecture delivered in Warsaw on May 5, 1908. Kraków: Drukarnia Literacka pod zarządem L.K. Górskiego. Dixon, R.M.W. 2016. Are Some Languages Better than Others? Oxford: OUP. Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info, Accessed on 2017-05-11.) Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna and Jarosław Weckwerth. 2012. “The ‘native speaker’ and prototypicality.” In: Agnihotri, R.K.; Singh, R. (eds.) Indian English: Towards a new paradigm. Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 225-230. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna and Joanna Przedlacka (eds.). 2nd edition. 2008. English Pronunciation Models: A Changing Scene. Linguistic Insights. Bern, Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang. Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), 2005. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at http://wals.info. PAN, 18 May 2017, Vienna 42

References

Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2007. English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: OUP. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2017. A review in ELT Journal 71/1. Jones, D. 2003. English Pronouncing Dictionary. 16th edition, edited by P. Roach, J. Hartman and J. Setter. CUP. (with CD-ROM) Pavlenko, Aneta. 2015. A review of Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. By Anna Wierzbicka. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Language, volume 91, number 4 (2015). Seidlhofer, B. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twentieth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com. Upton, C., W. A. Kretzschmar, Jr, & R. Konopka. 2001; 2003. Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English. OUP. + 2017 by Routledge. Wells, J.C. (1990) (2000). 2008. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. 3rd edition. Pearson Longman. (with CD-ROM) PAN, 18 May 2017, Vienna 43


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