Standard English

Bex, Tony; Watts, Richard J.

doi:10.4324/9780203263013

Cited by 96 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…African American Vernacular English (Ebonics) is found to have subtle and complex tense aspects that do not exist in mainstream English (Green, 2002; J. A. Walker, 2001), if such standard English exists (Bex & Watts, 1999; Trudgill, 2006). Classifications often ignore, for example, that not all African Americans speak Ebonics, and not all persons who speak it are African American.…”

Section: Won’t English Become the World Language?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Key to Global Understanding: World Languages Education—Why Schools Need to Adapt

Tochon

2009

Review of Educational Research

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This review article is a plea for the education community to reconsider the place of world languages teaching within the schools. With globalization, languages education should be one of the strategic goals of public as well as private education. The article reviews research on the best age level for learning a language, the assets of bilingualism, the problems that arise from lack of recognition for other languages and cultures, the ways to change current language education, and the integration of international language policies. The literature reviewed points at how the issues discussed can be resolved to increase global understanding.

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Section: Won’t English Become the World Language?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Key to Global Understanding: World Languages Education—Why Schools Need to Adapt

Tochon

2009

Review of Educational Research

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“…As I mentioned above, the 2014 ‘English Usage (Guides) Symposium’ interested me greatly, and this was in part because it laid bare the reciprocal hostility of linguists towards puffed-up language conservatives. Back when I first started thinking about my preface to Plain Words , I was noodling around online one day when I lit upon an interesting passage in a book by Tony Bex and Richard Watts called Standard English: The Widening Debate (1999). In discussing the supposed rules of good English, Bex, in his own article, painted the following picture of my great-grandfather: ‘ … we imagine Gowers picking his way delicately through a number of conflicting claims’ (Bex, 1999: 102).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Back when I first started thinking about my preface to Plain Words , I was noodling around online one day when I lit upon an interesting passage in a book by Tony Bex and Richard Watts called Standard English: The Widening Debate (1999). In discussing the supposed rules of good English, Bex, in his own article, painted the following picture of my great-grandfather: ‘ … we imagine Gowers picking his way delicately through a number of conflicting claims’ (Bex, 1999: 102). Those are the words Bex wrote; but the version of his text in front of me had evidently been uploaded using a digital scanner, so what I was surprised to find myself reading was actually this: ‘ … we imagine Gowers puking his way delicately through a number of conflicting claims’.…”

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confidence: 99%

Writing Horrible Words

Gowers¹

2018

English Today

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At the ‘English Usage (Guides) Symposium’, Cambridge 2014, I was invited to account for my revision of Plain Words (Gowers, 2014), the style guide originally written by my great-grandfather, Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966). And because, by the time I gave that talk (see Gowers, 2018), I was already writing my own book on the English language, intended as a sort of adjunct to Plain Words, the arguments aired at that Cambridge gathering were particularly interesting to me. That said, they also left me more daunted than ever by my own project.

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“…Of course, one must be careful to define exactly what is meant by RP. As mentioned above, by broadening the definition slightly to 'NRP', 'BBC English' or the even more diffuse concept of 'Standard English' (see Bex and Watts, 1999), it is likely that the percentage would be substantially increased.…”

Section: Criticisms Of Ns Models: Rpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonological features of Hong Kong English : patterns of variation and effects on local acceptability

Sewell¹

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Phonological Features of Hong Kong English: Patterns of Variation and Effects on Local Acceptability by SEWELL, Andrew John Doctor of PhilosophyThe changing dynamics of international communication in English have led to a intense questioning of the relevance of native-speaker pronunciation models in language teaching and testing. In addition, the World Englishes approach to local varieties has increased their level of recognition. Both of these developments suggest that English pronunciation models need to be reviewed, and Hong Kong represents an interesting case study. Although it has been claimed that Hong Kong English is at the 'nativization' stage, the existence of exonormative attitudes towards English is also well known. Two important questions arise from this inherent tension, neither of which has been intensively addressed in previous studies. Firstly, although many of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation have been described, patterns of inter-speaker variation have not been investigated in detail. Secondly, the attitudes of Hong Kong English users towards the phonological features of their own variety have not been studied in ways that take account of such variation.This dissertation addresses both of these questions by being features-based in approach and using local listeners to evaluate accent samples. After an initial review of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation, a preliminary study surveys the occurrence of consonantal phonological features within a mini-corpus of speech samples taken from local television programmes. Its findings are presented in the form of an implicational scale, which not only shows the relative frequencies with which different features occurred, but also indicates the existence of implicational patterns of co-occurrence. In the main study, twelve authentic accent samples (eleven Hong Kong speakers and one British speaker) were presented to 52 first-year undergraduate students for evaluation as to their acceptability, defined here as acceptability for pedagogical purposes.Multivariate statistical analysis discovered firstly that phonological 'errors', as marked by the student listeners, were the most important measured factor in determining the acceptability scores, and secondly that only certain types of 'error' or 'feature' had significant effects. These features were either related to L1 transfer or involved other salient phenomena such as idiosyncratic alterations to syllable structure. The explanatory part of the study includes acceptability as one of the factors determining feature persistence, in an 'ecological' or 'evolutionary' model of L2 phonology acquisition and development that combines the findings of the preliminary and main studies. Among the other factors that determine feature persistence or disappearance, salience, intelligibility and markedness are invoked as important influences.The acceptability data also has pedagogical implications, in that local listeners did not give the British accent the highest acceptability rating. ...

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Standard English

Cited by 96 publications

References 0 publications

The Key to Global Understanding: World Languages Education—Why Schools Need to Adapt

The Key to Global Understanding: World Languages Education—Why Schools Need to Adapt

Writing Horrible Words

Phonological features of Hong Kong English : patterns of variation and effects on local acceptability

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