Varieties of English Reflection

In the previous reflection our topic was Language Varieties, now I am going to focus on the specific varieties of the language which I have been studying for thirteen years, English. The English language possesses different types of variation that helps us to understand the differences, between one English speaker from Scotland and an English speaker from Canada, to set an example. For there are several factors that influence English as a language; in some cases the variation is related to the language user, such as the regional and social variation; and sometimes the variation is linked to the language use, like in the case of variation associated to the field of discourse, variation according to medium and the type of variation according to the attitude. Standard English is also a main point of study in this summary, for it is compulsory to learn what it means and its importance in educational, social mass media and broadcasting matters, are something to consider when using English as a foreign language. In the previous summary, the term to discuss was Standard Language which is a wider field to study, so now the concept of Standard English will be our main focus to learn, for it is that ‘type’ of English the one that is taught in schools all over the globe, and so it is the one I was taught to learn when I was at school and the kind of English used for important matters, as in the case of governmental issues, world trades, newspapers, books and it is the English that expresses more prestige, mostly because it is used with academic purposes. In my case, I study British English, which is also known as Received Pronunciation (RP), which is the most prestigious accent in Britain. This summary is useful to learn some other relevant aspects of the English Language as a field of study, for it is necessary to learn how to distinguish the different types of variation present in the English language. The summary I made for this document can be of a lot of help to achieve some of the Lexical Analysis course objectives. I dare to say that the summary is involved with most of the course objectives; it can also be used to complement some material with some other courses, like Language, Culture and Phonetics, for the summary refers to different aspects of English, such as vocabulary, history and change, word formation and pronunciation. Varieties of English is an important document to read and to study; it can really help you to understand the basis of what you are going to teach in a few more years, because we need to know every aspect of what we are going to explain to the future generations that will be even more immerse than us, in the global world, and when we talk about global world and its several features, we are talking about the English Language.