Rats, bats, sparrows and dogs: biology, linguistics and the nature of Standard English

Hope, Jonathan

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511551758.004

Cited by 45 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Trudgill (2009) sees non-levelled features such as thirdperson singular -s, or the inflected genitive phrase (butlars frocke, as opposed to northern butlar frocke) as an arrestedor perhaps just greatly delayeddrift towards analogical regularisation. 20 Hope (2000) sees it as a feature of written high-register language; that that which is high-register must be differentiated on the page from that which is low-register, and use of linguistically-unlikely features achieves this. But such matters were resolved considerably after the transition phase and the switch to Proto-Standard English.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

16. A multilingual approach to the history of Standard English

Wright¹

2017

Multilingual Practices in Language History

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This paper focuses on three developmental stages in the history of English which are apparent from a multilingual perspective but which are currently omitted from textbooks: the late medieval mixed-language business system, the fifteenth century tip-point when the switchover to English was imminent, and the subsequent shift to Proto-Standard English. I survey recent work which shows a disruption phase in the last few decades of the fourteenth century in both Anglo-Norman and mixed-language writing. Starting with this disruption phase around the 1370s and continuing to the tip-point to monolingual English around the 1480s (the dating is not concrete, it varies from archive to archive, but roughly fits these parameters), I argue that the intervening century constitutes a period of transition from Medieval Latin to Proto-Standard English. 2 Three developmental stages as viewed from a multilingual perspective Prior to the fifteenth century, Londoners (and people elsewhere in Britain) kept accounts not in monolingual English, but in either a Medieval Latin or Anglo-Norman French matrix, with English (and sporadic words from other languages) embedded in a syntactically orderly manner. Certain linguistic elements were particularly resistant to representation in Medieval Latin or Anglo-Norman. Names of people, their social ranks and titles, place-names, currencies weights and measures, and the names of specific traded commodities were likely to be retained in their original form. Nouns and deverbal-ing forms could, noncategorically, appear in English. Illustration is given with some extracts from the London merchant and moneylender Gilbert Maghfeld's account-book for the years 1372-1395. The main matrix language (that is, the syntactic framework) is Anglo-Norman:

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

16. A multilingual approach to the history of Standard English

Wright¹

2017

Multilingual Practices in Language History

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“…In any process of linguistic standardisation, the promotion of one variety to the status of standard leads to the devaluation of the other linguistic varieties. This means that the development of the standard may eventually lead to the authoritative extension of a class-based use of language as an example of correctness, inducing native speakers to believe that their (dialectal) usage is incorrect (see Trudgill 1975;Milroy and Milroy 1985;Hope 2000). In fact, as Milroy (2001a: 531) states, standardisation constitutes the imposition of a 'legitimised' uniformity upon linguistic variation for (social, economic, political, historical, regional, etc.…”

Section: Prescriptivism and The Standard Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Canons in Media Language and Professional Voice

Campoy

Cutillas-Espinosa

2017

Comp.J. Eng. Stud.

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Abstract. Linguistic prescriptivism is an ideology and authority based practice that has traditionally vindicated the use of norms of language as social conventions on correctness, appropriateness, aesthetics and validity, also affecting media language. The aim of this paper is to explore the theoretical underpinnings of the Script Design model, which underlines the need to consider not only responsive and even initiative based performance, but also the script or use of a professional voice, as part of structural constrains, that conditions the individual linguistic behaviour in public occupations. The debate on responsive-initiative motivations in stylistic variation is a central issue of the traditional pendulum-oscillating dilemma in social theory about the relationship between structure and agency, i.e. between sociolinguistic limitations and creativity, and also between speaker intention and listener understanding. Despite their social or regional background, speakers modify their linguistic production in public depending on the market characteristics and the structural constrains. The spirit of the Script Model, therefore, alludes to the standing debate in both classical and contemporary sociological theory over the primacy of social structure or agency in shaping human behaviour and the meaning of human behaviour itself.

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“…The promotion of a language variety to the status of standard is widely known to imply ± as two sides of the same coin ± the dialectalisation and/or devaluation of the others within a multilingual or multidialectal context. This means that the development of the standard may eventually lead to the authoritative extension of a class-based use of language as an example of correctness, inducing a majority of native speakers to believe that their (dialectal) usage is incorrect (see Hope 2000;Trudgill 1975Trudgill , 2002. In fact, as James Milroy (2001: 531) states, standardisation constitutes the imposition of a`legitimized' uniformity upon linguistic variation for (social, economic, political, historical, regional, etc.)…”

Section: Standardisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Broadcasting standardisation: An analysis of the linguistic normalisation process in Murcian Spanish

Campoy¹,

Jiménez-Cano²

2003

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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The samples used from radio programme recordings have been demonstrated to be very useful sources for the study of styles and the analysis of linguistic variation and change. The aim of this paper is to show the results of a longitudinal study of Murcian speech carried out following a real-time approach with a retrospective trend design in order to detect and measure the apparent increasing diusion of standard Castilian features from northern Peninsular Spanish over Murcian Spanish, a traditionally non-standard region. For this purpose, following the methodology used in similar studies, we focussed on the quanti®cation of the level of standardisation of people interviewed in radio broadcasts in the last twenty-six years. In this way, the correlation of linguistic variables with social variables (groups) and time intervals, allowed us to compare and analyse the sociolinguistic behaviour of the dierent social groups in terms of standardisation (adoption of Castilian Spanish features) or non-standardisation (maintenance of local Murcian features) and trends.

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Rats, bats, sparrows and dogs: biology, linguistics and the nature of Standard English

Cited by 45 publications

References 0 publications

16. A multilingual approach to the history of Standard English

16. A multilingual approach to the history of Standard English

Canons in Media Language and Professional Voice

Broadcasting standardisation: An analysis of the linguistic normalisation process in Murcian Spanish

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