Unit 19: Standard versus Non-Standard

The question of what constitutes Standard English (usually abbreviated to SE) is one of the most written about in language studies. This unit does not aim to summarise all the definitions, or factors involved in arriving at a definition. One of the best places to look for a quick summary of that kind is Crystal 1995:110. The topic is also treated very thoroughly in Freeborn et al 1993 who give plenty of examples of standard and non-standard English, together with amusing commentary. Instead, this Unit will, somewhat arbitrarily, and probably somewhat riskily, alight on some of the more contentious points for discussion.

Activity 1 This letter appeared in the Birmingham Post on 8th Jan. 1997. It is of a genre which most readers of newspapers will instantly recognise. Read it and consider the points which follow: Language Horrors Sir, - There has been considerable discussion in recent weeks about the merits and demerits of regional accents and the way in which they are perceived. It has been suggested that the Birmingham accent sounds miserable and that the people are regarded as unintelligent. Strong Scottish accents are disliked by some people because of their stridency. In my opinion it does not matter one jot how one speaks. The important thing is what one says and how it is said. The unfortunate trend nowadays is for people to speak "poor English", with use of colloquialisms and grammatical errors. Phrases such as "He done well", I ain't seen nothin'", "I writ him a letter", etc., are an affront to our language; and children, in particular, should be corrected if they use such expressions. There can be no excuse for speaking incorrect English and everyone should take pride in speaking properly. It is fashionable for some politicians to call for increased expenditure on education. While this is a laudable objective, perhaps a little more emphasis should be placed on teaching good spoken English in schools - and it would not cost one penny more. STEPHEN PETERS (A Proud Brummie) (Activity 1 - continued) a. Analyse Mr Peters' distinction between "how one speaks" and "what one says and how it is said". Despite the slightly crude form of expression, does the distinction stand up? b. Given that we accept his distinction (we may not - see discussion later), do we think that his examples of phrases which are an "affront to our language" are good ones, and in what sense might they be an "affront"? In his last paragraph, Mr Peters suggests that more emphasis should be placed on "good spoken English". We can take it that this does not include "how one speaks", since he has already said that this does not matter a jot, but that it does include "what one says and how it is said". Do you agree, and how easy is this for teachers to implement?

Speech Communities

It is absolutely standard, to coin a phrase, for linguists to distinguish between these two types of variation. Accent is pronunciation; sound. It is not any old pronunciation. If, for example, I pronounce the name Penelope to rhyme with envelope, you would not say that I was pronouncing it in a strange accent, but rather that I was mispronouncing it. So accent is pronunciation regularly used by a community of speakers, not idiosyncratic.

These notions of 'regularity' and 'community' need a little further comment. People often say of others that they have a "strong" accent or a "slight" accent. So it is clear that whatever it is that characterises an accent is in itself variable; we can detect greater or lesser amounts of it. So although accent is 'regular', it is also 'variable' within itself. Then there is the problem of things like French accents. These are instantly detectable by native speakers of English, and good actors can imitate them. Is there then a 'community' of people who use French accents? In a sense there is, as long as we understand 'community' in a slightly different sense to the one we first think of when discussing language. French speakers of English all have something in common, and therefore share features of pronunciation. What they have in common is obviously not the same sort of thing as, say, Scots speakers of English, but we can nonetheless see why the term accent can be applied to both these cases.

Dialect is a broader term, which linguists use to include accent, but also other features such as vocabulary and grammar. See further below.

Attitudes to Accents

Don't French speakers of English actually mispronounce English, and isn't their sort of accent really quite different from, say, a Scots accent? In short, should we not distinguish in principle between native and non-native accents? Most reasonable people, like our correspondent Mr Peters, would not say that the Scots mispronounce English, but they might very well agree that the French do (even if it is not their fault). Notice how people give credit to French speakers who approximate to native English, or make fewer mispronunciations as they see it. They say things like: "He's got a very good accent" i.e. although he has a French accent, it sounds tolerably like an English one. We would never say this about a speaker with a Scots accent, or if we did, we could expect to be severely thumped. Of course, we may say that the reason for all this is that French speakers have had to triumph over adversity (being speakers of French) whereas the Scots have not (being speakers of English from the start).

It would be comforting to believe that tolerance of accents different from our own is due to this "triumph over adversity" factor, but it seems not be entirely so. To see this, consider the following case. A woman who prides herself on her own pronunciation of the Queen's English has two sets of grandchildren. One lot live in Birmingham, and are constantly at risk of sliding into a Brummie accent, from which they must at all costs be protected. The other lot live in Australia and speak with an Australian accent. This she considers slightly regrettable, but inevitable and ultimately acceptable. This can be generalised. Those who dislike other accents are likely to tolerate American or Australian accents far better than those from Glasgow or Birmingham. That is because they are, as it were, "excused", on the grounds of being American or Australian. Rather like the French, they really can't help it, can they? What this means is that they are not in the social system by which the accent critic references her/his scale of dislike. This woman's views might seem to be irrational, but they are also entirely predictable given the relationship between accent and society. The same could be said for people who dislike "posh" accents. Their views are no more or less rational than those of the woman with two sets of grandchildren. Moreover, it is common to find overt dislike and covert admiration, or overt admiration and covert dislike, mixed up in the same individual. It is insufficient to dismiss these behaviours as irrational. They are an integral to the relationship between accent and society. One caveat: these remarks have been written in the context of British English. Many of them apply further afield, but would doubtless need adjusting.

Standard English, Dialect and RP

Linguistics books mainly say that Standard English is just one dialect among many, although they often qualify this by saying that it is a special kind of dialect because it is non-regional. Politicians mainly say that it isn't, although they sometimes qualify this by saying that even if it is, technically speaking, this is a point of no significance, likely to mislead, and best not mentioned. Some linguists, when they become tremendously important, get into a lather and lash out in the correspondence columns of newspapers, rather like Mr Peters in fact:

Activity 2 Read this letter from Professors Quirk and Stein. Are they saying basically the same thing as Mr Peters, albeit in a more elevated tone? And are they right? (Activity 2 - continued) English 'hijacked' in the classroom From Sir Professor Randolph Quirk, FBA, and Professor G. Stein Sir, The national curriculum was widely and warmly greeted as addressing the need to improve the nation's educational standards. So far as the teaching of English was concerned, the Kingman committee gave a well-argued lead in 1988. Now (and not only from what the responsible minister is saying (report, June 29)), it seems that, three years on, elements of the old teacher-training establishment, so roundly criticised by Kingman, are trying to hijack the controls. Still revelling in 1960s' sociological jargon, they are busy with "secondary agendas" that reassert just about everything that the Kingman report rejected. In schools feeble enough to permit it, the English lesson can still serve as a subversive exercise in once-trendy social engineering. This is not of course what parents want; but what do they know of the weasel-worded text-books pressed on their children's teacher? Nor is it what the impressionable and haplessly vulnerable children so badly need. Nor yet is it what the large majority of conscientious teachers want to give them. The key to sound education, to satisfying careers, and to mobility - social as well as geographical - is proficiency in the wide vocabulary and clear syntax of standard English. It is sheer trahison des clercs for teacher-trainers and text-book writers, themselves secure in having such proficiency (more or less), to disparage standard English as merely one "dialect" among many, and to stigmatise it as a "privileged" instrument of "class oppression". As we say in a recent book, it is hypocritically false (or at best professionally incompetent) to create further prejudice, as some BBC programmes for teachers have been doing, by identifying standard English with "a posh accent". Standard English is neutral in this as in other respects, and it is spoken in the accents of Liverpool and Bradford, Glasgow and Dublin alike; not to mention places further afield like Boston and Brisbane. It is the English of both The Sun and The Times, of Channel Four and Radio One. It is the English that families of recent immigrants need to master as well as the families of the rest of us. Indeed, it is the families of the least advantaged whose future is most put at risk by those who would evade their duty (as the Kingman report puts it) "to enable children to acquire standard English, which is their right". Yours faithfully, RANDOLPH QUIRK, G. STEIN, Department of English, University College London, Gower Street, WC1. July 1.

Activity 3 Now read this passage from Quirk et al 1972. Do you think his views remained consistent over twenty years? You will find more discussion of this topic under the heading "Is there a Language Trap" in Freeborn 1993:20. NB. "BrE" = British English (as opposed, for example, to American English) "Pronunciation is a special case for several reasons. In the first place, it is a type of linguistic organization which distinguishes one national standard from another most immediately and completely and which links in a most obvious way the national standards to the regional varieties. Secondly, (with an important exception to be noted), it is the least institutionalized aspect of Standard English, in the sense that, provided our grammar and lexical items conform to the appropriate national standard, it matters less that our pronunciation follows closely our individual regional pattern. This is doubtless because pronunciation is essentially gradient, a matter of 'more or less' rather than discrete 'this or that' features of grammar and lexicon. Thirdly, norms of pronunciation are subject less to educational and national constraints than to social ones: this means, in effect, that some regional accents are less acceptable for 'network use' than others. "Connected with this is the exception referred to above. In BrE, one type of pronunciation comes close to enjoying the status of 'standard': it is the accent associated with the English public schools, 'Received Pronunciation' or 'RP'. Because this has traditionally been transmitted through a private education system based upon boarding schools insulated from the locality in which they happen to be situated, it is importantly non-regional, and this - together with the obvious prestige that the social importance of its speakers has conferred on it - has been one of its strengths as a lingua franca. But RP no longer has the unique authority it had in the first half of the twentieth century. It is now only one of the accents commonly used on the BBC and takes its place along with others which carry the unmistakable mark of regional origin - not least, an Australian or North American or Caribbean origin. Thus the rule that a specific type of pronunciation is relatively unimportant seems to be in the process of losing the notable exception that RP has constituted."

References:

Crystal, D. 1995. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of The English Language. CUP

Freeborn, D. P. French and D. Langford 1993. Varieties of English. Macmillan.

Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G, Leech and J. Svartvik 1972. A Grammar of Contemporary English. Longman.