26.2524, Review: Historical Ling; Socioling: Hoffmann, Buschfeld, Kautzsch, Huber (2014)

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Subject: 26.2524, Review: Historical Ling; Socioling: Hoffmann, Buschfeld, Kautzsch, Huber (2014)

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Date: Mon, 18 May 2015 15:49:08
From: Melanie Röthlisberger [melanie.rothlisberger at kuleuven.be]
Subject: The Evolution of Englishes

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3860.html

EDITOR: Sarah  Buschfeld
EDITOR: Thomas  Hoffmann
EDITOR: Magnus  Huber
EDITOR: Alexander  Kautzsch
TITLE: The Evolution of Englishes
SUBTITLE: The Dynamic Model and beyond
SERIES TITLE: Varieties of English Around the World G49
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Melanie Röthlisberger, Université Catholique de Louvain

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The edited volume “The Evolution of Englishes: The Dynamic Model and beyond”
is a “birthday present” dedicated to the scholarly contribution of Edgar W.
Schneider, specifically his Dynamic Model (Schneider 2007). It is comprised of
27 chapters, each concerned with an aspect of the English language that pays
tribute to Edgar W. Schneider’s extensive body of research.

The volume starts with two prefaces, one from the series editor and one from
the editors themselves, to honour the commitment and achievements of this
distinguished scholar as a teacher, supervisor, scholar, globetrotter, and a
local ‘Regensburger’. In the introductory section, the editors of the volume
highlight the usefulness of Schneider’s Model in contrast with previous
models, and offer a detailed summary of the model. 

Part I – called The Dynamic Model – situates various sociolinguistic realities
within the Dynamic Model, discusses implications and adaptations, and proposes
addendums and potential modifications to the model.

Bertus van Rooy in his study “Convergence and endonormativity at Phase 4 of
the Dynamic Model” argues that multiple contact settings as exemplified by
English in South Africa and America may not necessarily lead to one homogenous
variety as posited in Schneider’s Model, but could result in different
Postcolonial Englishes (PCE) within the same country. He thus calls for a
separation of the processes that lead to endonormativity and those that lead
to homogeneity in Phase 4 of the Model.

Also focusing on South African English, Susan Coetzee-Van Rooy’s contribution
“The identity issue in bi- and multilingual repertoires in South Africa:
Implications for Schneider’s Dynamic Model” adds to the discussion of
situating South African English in Schneider’s Model. Using findings from
questionnaires and interviews she mainly argues that South African English
will probably never progress beyond Phase 3 of the Model since English is not
the major identity carrier for identity construction. Rather, multilingualism
seems to become a marker of South African identity.

With a similar perspective, Rajend Mesthrie’s paper “The sociophonetic effects
of ‘Event X’: Post-apartheid Black South African English in multicultural
contact with other South African Englishes” explores the sociophonetic effects
of multicultural contact between Black South Africans and Coloured and Indian
speakers in South Africa.  He argues that, as evidenced by two case studies,
some Black South African speakers seem to adopt Indian South African and/or
Coloured South African phonetic variants. While his findings thus show that
increased post-apartheid contact (after 1994) between the previously
segregated sociolinguistic groups might increase diffusion, it will not
eventually give rise to a single unified model since the distinctive five
varieties of English spoken in South Africa seem to remain largely unaffected
by the changes in the sociolinguistic landscape of the past 20 years.

Moving eastwards, Isabel Pefianco Martin’s study “Beyond Nativization?
Philippine English in Schneider’s Dynamic Model” elaborates on the linguistic
and sociopolitical development of this variety from the phase of Foundation
and Stabilization, to Nativization. She demonstrates that despite the fact
that Philippine English shows signs of Endonormative Stabilization (Phase 4) –
in the creation of dictionaries and grammars and increasing literary
creativity – there is still a strong orientation towards American English. 

Focusing on Educated Ghanaian English in his paper “Stylistic and
sociolinguistic variation in Schneider’s Nativization Phase: T-affrication and
relativization in Ghanaian English”, Magnus Huber provides evidence for
stylistic and gender-related differentiation in Ghanaian English, despite the
fact that such differentiation is theoretically only expected in Phase 5 of
the Model. Investigating t-affrication and relativizer choice in data from
sociolinguistic interviews and from the Ghanaian and British component of the
International Corpus of English (ICE), he proposes that such sociolinguistic
variation may be present from very early on in the development of new English
varieties. 

Pam Peters’ study “Differentiation in Australian English” shows that
sociolectal differences in that variety exceed regional ones despite the fact
that Australian English can be situated in Phase 5 of Schneider’s Model.
Immigrant adstrates seem to contribute little to internal differentiation and
are generally assimilated. Aboriginal English, however, is a widely recognized
ethnolect, increasingly a carrier of Aboriginal identity, and displays
relative homogeneity across the whole country. According to Peters, the
greatest degree of differentiation exists thus between the former settler
variety and the indigenous strand.

Going beyond Phase 5, Lionel Wee’s contribution “The evolution of Singlish in
late modernity: Beyond Phase 5?” explores the sociolinguistic status of
Singlish in today’s globalizing world and argues for the inclusion of
additional linguistic factors in the last phase of Schneider’s Model, namely
linguistic sophistication, migration and commodification. Additionally, the
sociolinguistic precepts underlying the model (i.e. our understanding of
‘identity’, ‘community’, etc.) might need to be reconsidered in the light of
recent theoretical changes of these concepts in late modernity.

Taking a more theoretical perspective, William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., in his
paper “Emergence of “new varieties” in speech as a complex system”, aims to
explain the coexistence of different linguistic systems and linguistic
variability in regional and social groups by drawing on complex system models.
Taking lexical evidence from the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South
Atlantic States (LAMSAS) survey, he illustrates that speakers of any
linguistic system have an extensive variable feature pool at their disposal at
all times, ranking the variants according to the success they have in
interactions. Kretzschmar thus postulates that linguists should not derive
their descriptions based on the top-ranked feature variants when describing
new varieties, but instead take the whole complex system into account.

In a similar theoretical spirit, Thomas Hoffmann makes a case for a
Construction Grammar approach when analyzing postcolonial varieties. His
contribution “The cognitive evolution of Englishes: The role of constructions
in the Dynamic Model” provides a cognitive explanation for the emergence of
structural innovations in the lexicon-syntax interface in the phase of
Nativization. He illustrates that these innovations take place on the
meso-constructional level, i.e. in partly schematic, partly substantive (one
form-one meaning) structures, whereby new syntagmatic combinations emerge.
Analyzing comparative correlatives in 12 ICE-corpora, Hoffmann demonstrates
that less-advanced varieties exhibit far more meso-constructions, whereas more
advanced varieties, such as British English, have a greater share of
macro-constructions (completely schematic). Thus, the evolutionary status of
postcolonial varieties of English can be correlated with the abstractness of
constructional representations (p. 176).

Moving on to “learner Englishes”, Sarah Buschfeld in her study entitled
“English in Cyprus and Namibia: A critical approach to taxonomies and models
of World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition research” sketches the
political and sociolinguistic background of English in Cyprus and in Namibia.
She shows how these varieties can be identified as evolutionary in Schneider’s
Model despite the lack of a colonizing power, and proposes some necessary
modifications to the model in order to account for the missing settler strand.
Hence, it is not necessary for a full-fledged variety to have come from a
colonial past since extra-territorial (e.g. Internet) and intra-territorial
(e.g. language policy) forces trigger mechanisms comparable to those in 
postcolonial varieties.

Similarly, Alexander Kautzsch’s contribution “English in Germany: Spreading
bilingualism, retreating exonormative orientation and incipient nativization?”
demonstrates the usefulness of the model for the categorization of Englishes
spoken in non-postcolonial settings. Drawing on the checklist from Buschfeld
(2013) and adopting the same modifications to Schneider’s Model as proposed in
her contribution to the volume, he assesses the status of this particular
variety of English with regard to bilingualism, exonormative orientation, and
nativization, and argues that despite its non-postcolonial past, English in
Germany is moving beyond its status of “learner English” due to intra- and
extra-territorial forces.

Part II of the volume – “Beyond the Dynamic Model: Empirical and theoretical
perspectives on World Englishes” looks beyond the Dynamic Model and
contributes to the discussion by considering various other theoretical
approaches. It is divided into five focus sections, namely 1) Contributions
with a theoretical focus, 2) Cross-varietal contributions, 3) United States,
4) Asia and Africa, and 5) Old varieties, new perspectives.

The first focus section contains theoretical contributions. Daniel Schreier’s
study “On cafeterias and new dialects: The role of primary transmitters” calls
for a revision and refinement of the feature pool during the process of new
dialect formation in PCEs. Based on data from Tristan da Cunha English, he
argues for the importance of adult speakers (called primary transmitters) in
new-dialect formation processes. Some members of the community are shown to be
more influential than others, not because their linguistic features are more
widespread but because they spend the most time with the first generation of
native speakers (the children).

Christian Mair’s paper “Does money talk, and do languages have price tags?
Economic perspectives on English as a global language” offers a fresh
perspective on the research on World Englishes. Reviewing several
(non-linguistic) publications concerned with English as a global language,
Mair illustrates how we could gain important insights into World Englishes if
we consider the political-economic nature of language.

In “Language variation and education: A focus on Pakistan”, Ahmar Mahboob
presents a three-dimensional model that circumscribes the different strands of
research in language variation and places them in relation to each other. He
argues that language varies according to “user” (local vs. global), “use”
(specialized vs. casual discourse), and “mode” (written vs. spoken), and he
exemplifies his approach by exploring Pakistani English language textbooks. He
thereby highlights the limitations of students’ linguistic abilities in those
educational contexts where the government employs local (here Pakistani
English) instead of global variations in English textbooks. 

The last paper in this focus section, Stephanie Hackert’s “The evolution of
English(es): Notes on the history of an idea” employs a discourse-historical
approach and presents the reader with insights into the historical origins and
fundamental principles on which research in World Englishes is founded. The
reception of evolutionary theory in linguistics has led to classifications of
languages according to the degree of civilization of its speakers and to a
hierarchization that favours English. With her overview, Hackert illustrates
the importance of considering the historical origins to understand
contemporary ideologies of language.

The second focus section – “Cross-varietal contributions” – starts with
Heinrich Ramisch’s study “At the crossroads of variation studies and corpus
linguistics: The analysis of past tense and past participle forms”. Ramisch
explores the relationship between the spelling and writing of past tense and
past participle forms, using examples from dictionaries and dialectological
studies of both British and American English. Based on an additional pilot
study with American students, he concludes that the observed differences
between spoken and written levels of grammar call for the use of more spoken
data to explore variational differences between standard British and American
English.

Thomas Biermeier’s contribution “Compounding and suffixation in World
Englishes” analyses these two word formation processes in 12 Asian and African
varieties of English (ICE-corpora), focusing on frequencies and lexical
creativity. His findings exhibit no clear L1-L2 distinction. However,
intra-regional diversity in word formation exists: African Englishes, as well
as Philippine and Indian Englishes, tend to stick to more conservative types
(of word formation) and display a higher token frequency. On the other hand,
Singapore and Hong Kong English seem to be more creative in constructing new
coinages.

In the third focus section – “United States” – attention is shifted to North
America. In “When did Southern American English really begin? Testing Bailey’s
hypothesis”, Michael Montgomery, Michael Ellis, and Brandon Cooper explore the
development of white Southern American English (SAE) in the 19th century.
Using the new Corpus of American Civil War Letters (CACWL), the authors show
that Guy Bailey’s hypothesis, namely that features of SAE diffused rapidly and
radically in the last decades of the 19th century, was wrongly inferred due to
limitations of his corpus data. Their re-analysis of several grammatical
features shows that some of the features had already existed in earlier
decades and were not always distinctively Southern American.

Paying tribute to Edgar W. Schneider’s contribution to the study of African
American Vernacular English (AAVE), the last two papers of this focus section
take a historical perspective on AAVE.

In “The English origins of African American Vernacular English: What Edgar W.
Schneider has taught us”, Salikoko S. Mufwene finds arguments for the English
origins of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the sociolinguistic
contact scenario between African slaves and European colonists in the American
Southeast. Structural similarities between AAVE and white Southern American
English, and subsequently linguistic inheritance from a common ancestor, as
well as congruent influences from substrate languages, have been repeatedly
highlighted in Edgar W. Schneider’s research (e.g. Schneider 1989; Schneider
and Montgomery 2001). Today’s differences between AAVE and other American
varieties can be attributed to race segregation and the Great Migration, which
– due to the ghettoization of African Americans – has enforced the separation
of AAVE speakers from other immigrants in the North.

Ulrich Miethaner’s paper, “Innovation in pre-World War II African American
Vernacular English: Evidence from BLUR” tests the “divergence hypothesis”
postulated for AAVE, which is said to have diverged significantly from white
varieties after World War II. Analyzing data from transcriptions of blues
recordings produced by singers/speakers born between the period of
Reconstruction and World War II and analyzing the postulated “innovative”
features of AAVE, Miethaner provides evidence for the early existence and
restructuring of these innovative features, thus countering the claim of
“divergence”.

Shifting the focus to Asia and Africa, the next section starts with Andy
Kirkpatrick and Sophiaan Subhan’s study “Non-standard or new standards or
errors? The use of inflectional marking for present and past tenses in English
as an Asian lingua franca”. Taking data from the Asian Corpus of English (ACE)
– a corpus of English used as a ‘lingua franca’ between speakers of different
L1 languages in Asia –, they analyze the influence of L1 tense marking of
Malay speakers on their L2 English variety. The authors demonstrate that the
amount of tense marking in the substrate is not an indicator of the same
feature in the English they speak. Rather, the level of formality (i.e.
register) needs to be considered.

Lisa Lim, in her contribution “Yesterday’s founder population, today’s
Englishes: The role of the Peranakans in the (continuing) evolution of
Singapore English”, highlights the significant influence of Peranakan English
speakers in the highly multilingual and multicultural contact situation that
led to the evolution of Singapore English. She thus stresses the importance of
recognizing the complex contact scenarios involved in the emergence of new
varieties of English.

In “The evolution of Brunei English: How it is contributing to the development
of English in the world”, David Deterding situates Brunei English within
Schneider’s Model and discusses its status in today’s globalization. By
describing salient phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical features of
Brunei English, he highlights the similarities between Brunei English and
other emerging new varieties, including idiosyncratic features, thus positing
this variety in Phase 3 (Nativization) of Schneider’s Model.

In the last paper of this section, Aloysius Ngefac traces the sociolinguistic
evolution of Cameroonian Creole based on the different names given to that
contact language. In his paper, titled “The evolutionary trajectory of
Cameroonian Creole and its varying sociolinguistic statuses”, he argues for
the name “Cameroonian Creole” against previous names such as “Pidgin English”,
“Neger Englisch”, “Cameroons Creole”, “Cameroonian”, and “Cameroon Pidgin
English”. This preferred term reflects the creole properties of the language,
highlights the fact that English is not the only lexifier, and emphasizes the
national scope of the language.

In the last focus section – “Old varieties, new perspectives” – we move on to
more current developments of English in a globalized world.

Roswitha Fischer, in “Lexical institutionalization reconsidered: GUI, cyborg,
cred, pay-per-view, techno- and cyber-“, reinvestigates the use of neologisms
in the London Guardian from the 1980s to 2012 to postulate a re-evaluation of
the institutionalization process as developed in Fischer (1998), thus paying
tribute to the complex process of institutionalization, “in which
socio-pragmatic, cognitive and structural factors are closely entwined” (p.
467).

Focusing on a more technical vocabulary, Clive Upton, in “The language of
butchery, the UK’s last public craft”, explores the etymology and
classification of meat terms to show that the use of French- or
English-derived terms are selected on a quality-oriented basis, thus calling
for more fine-grained terminology in the lexicon. What is more, butchers still
employ their own language – back-slang – as a way of interacting and
displaying their affiliation with the trade.

In the last paper, “A new Old English? The chances of an Anglo-Saxon revival
on the Internet”, Christina Neuland and Florian Schleburg look into the
linguistic competence of Old English (OE) article contributors on the
Internet. After introducing the array of OE texts found online, and analyzing
a selection of entries from OE Wikipedia, they come to the conclusion that the
international community of OE users lack the knowledge to revive this
language, and that if they ever do, the new OE will be much different from
what it used to be.

EVALUATION

The book is a substantial contribution to the body of research dealing with
the Dynamic Model. Not only  do the studies provide extensive exemplification
of the potential of Schneider’s Model, they also point out important elements
of the Model in need of modification and stress essential adaptations in order
to take the sociolinguistic reality of specific varieties into account. While
the first part of the volume focuses on different varieties and their
classification within Schneider’s Model and proposes refinements in certain
respects, the second part offers exciting new theoretical approaches and
possible extensions of Schneider’s Model. A great number of the contributions
point towards new avenues for research and emphasize the need to keep in mind
“the big picture”. Researchers should not restrict themselves to one
theory/one model but consider all possible ways of extending their perspective
and gaining new insights into the English language system.

The editors have clearly reached their goal in calling this volume a “birthday
present” for Edgar W. Schneider. The studies highlight Edgar Schneider’s broad
research interests and pay homage to his achievements by touching on issues
raised in his work. The papers of the volume thus fit in with research on
World Englishes, variational linguistics in general, studies in English for
specific purposes, sociolinguistics, the history of English, and/or work on
processes of language contact and change. Happy Birthday.

REFERENCES

Buschfeld, Sarah. 2013. English in Cyprus or Cyprus English: An Empirical
Investigation of Variety Status (Varieties of English around the World G46).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Schneider, Edgar W. 1989. American Early Black English: Morphological and
Syntactic Variables. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schneider, Edgar W. and Montgomery, Michael B. 2001. On the trail of early
nonstandard grammar: An electronic corpus of Southern U.S. antebellum
overseers’ letters. American Speech 76(4). 388-410.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Melanie Röthlisberger is a PhD student at the Linguistics Department,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Her research interests include World
Englishes, syntactic alternations, English in contact settings, dialectology,
morphology and syntax.





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