Introdungcing English language part 20 potx

100 DEVELOPMENT: ASPECTS OF ENGLISH Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the United States, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago. The corpus design is identical and therefore full comparability can be achieved across the different data sets. Each individual country’s corpus consists of 500 data samples. Three hundred instances should be of speech and 200 instances should be of writing. A wide range of samples should be collected by research teams from a range of different contexts to give good coverage of language usage in a variety of situations. Each corpus should be composed of private and public dialogue as well as scripted and non-scripted monologues. In terms of written material, this should consist of the following: q non-printed, non-professional writing, including student work q printed materials, including academic writing q non-academic writing q reportage (news reports) q instructional writing (including administrative writing and writing on skills and hobbies) q persuasive writing Several sets of corpora which have already been completed are freely available online for research and teaching purposes (see this book’s website for further details). A range of different levels of linguistic detail can be described and compared across the corpora, due to the systematic manner in which the data have been collected: researchers can examine and compare morphology, lexis, grammar, syntax, discourse and pragmatics. The results that emerge from this project will represent a big step forward to improve our knowledge of World Englishes varieties and thus improve our abilities to describe, compare and codify varieties of world Englishes. This could eventually lead to outcomes such as a suite of new teaching materials being developed using authentic language data. Alongside these highly effective attempts at data uniformity, it is important also to bear in mind that data collection needs to be viewed in the light of the particular historical time period in which it has been recorded. For example, the Hong Kong English samples were taken both before and after the British handover to China, thus recording a particularly prominent time in the history of Hong Kong, where corpus compilers accurately predicted that the status of English would change, with Chinese becoming more prominent post-handover. Another example of a more recent collection is the VOICE corpus, based in Europe. VOICE stands for the Vienna and Oxford International Corpus of English, collected by a research team at the University of Vienna, with initial funding from Oxford University Press, headed by Barbara Seidlhofer. The corpus is the first of its kind devoted to English as a lingua franca. It currently stands at one million words and is com- prised of naturally occurring face-to-face spoken language interactions. Within the corpus, native speakers from all of the major first languages in Europe are represented. There are approximately 50 different first languages spoken in total, including some non-European languages. The contexts where data have been recorded include educational contexts, informal leisure settings and various professional environments, including spoken communication within businesses and organisations. CODIFICATION 101 Early findings from the corpus analysis of VOICE include the following list of initial patterns of typical ELF ‘errors’. Seidlhofer (2004) reports that language teachers will often spend considerable periods of time trying to redress these ‘errors’ in the classroom. However, the corpus data analysis from VOICE has demonstrated that the ‘error’ features listed below do not provide any obstacle at all to communicating successfully: q dropping the third person present tense -s q confusing the relative pronouns who and which q omitting the definite and indefinite articles when they are obligatory in ENL (English as a native language), and inserting them where they do not occur in ENL q failing to use correct forms in tag questions (e.g., isn’t it? or no? instead of shouldn’t they? q inserting redundant prepositions, as in We have to study about q overusing certain verbs of high semantic generality, such as do, have, make, put, take q replacing infinitive-constructions with that-clauses as in I want that q overdoing explicitness (e.g. black colour rather than just black) (Seidlhofer 2004: 220) In contrast, the corpus has provided evidence that certain metaphors, idioms, phrasal verbs and fixed expressions from native English varieties do cause communicative problems and can result in miscommunication. Typical examples of this include sequences such as ‘this drink is on the house’ or ‘can we give you a hand?’ These findings provide vital information in terms of intelligibility and question the communicative effectiveness of how the English language is currently being taught. As a future direction for World Englishes, Seidlhofer argues that the deference which is shown to teaching native varieties of language needs to be seriously re- evaluated in the light of emergent findings from descriptive lingua franca work. The majority of English language interactions globally are now taking place between non-native speakers, where English is being used as a lingua franca. This raises the crucial question: why should native-speaker models of English from the inner circle still dominate classrooms? Seidlhofer draws attention to the fact that surely intelligibility should be prior- itised by English language teaching instead of an insistence on ‘correctness’, while still developing competence in terms of reading and writing skills. She argues that the aim of trying to get learners to speak perfectly like ‘natives’ is a completely unrealistic, un- obtainable and questionable goal that should be abandoned. It is the intention that evidence from corpus studies can help to reinforce these points and that the wealth of description produced by such work can, in turn, influence codification processes so that a much more accurate portrayal of real-life World Englishes usage emerges. Dictionaries and World Englishes In order to consider the issue of codification and World Englishes further, one good place to explore is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). We have already made ref- erence to ‘Oxford’ dictionary titles in A10. The OED bills itself and is arguably widely accepted as ‘the world’s leading publisher’ of reference works, providing ‘The 102 DEVELOPMENT: ASPECTS OF ENGLISH definitive record of the English language’ (OED 2009). Oxford University Press, the publishing house that owns all Oxford English dictionaries, has, since the 1980s, pro- duced what it has termed ‘World English’ dictionaries. At present there are Oxford University Press World Englishes dictionary publications for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and a dictionary of English usage for the Caribbean. A key part of the publicity material for these ‘World English’ dictionaries on the commercial web pages of the Oxford University Press site is a quotation from the Chief Editor of the OED, John Simpson. This operates as a manifesto and rationale for the publication of the OED’s World English dictionaries. He states: ‘A nation needs a dictionary for much more than finding the meaning and pronunciation of words. The best dictionaries are a record of a nation’s history and culture.’ This quotation draws upon the unity of an individual ‘nation’, which often is not the case in multilingual situations where World Englishes varieties are currently thriving, particularly when varieties of Englishes are used as lingua francas, where individuals from different nation- alities come together and use English as a strategic communicative method. Oxford University Press is keen to highlight that the development of World Englishes is not a new phenomenon. It draws attention to the fact that its 1884–1928 multi- volume version of the OED was not just restricted to British English but also included lexis from varieties of English in North America, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Australasia. They argue that it was not until towards the end of the twentieth century that enough information was finally available to publish stand-alone publica- tions/versions of the OED for Australia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, South Africa and the Caribbean, hence the publication of their own, independent volumes. The overall number and different types of dictionaries/reference works which Oxford University Press publishes for ‘World English’ vary from country to country: q The largest number of versions is in American English (there are currently seven different publications available, including thesauruses, desk editions, paperback editions and mini/pocket versions). American English has had a major global impact and significant numbers of language learners of English worldwide are taught American English. q Australia currently has five varieties of publication. q Canada, New Zealand and South Africa have three different publications, all includ- ing one official ‘national’ Oxford dictionary. q In the Caribbean, so far there has only been one Oxford title – not a fully fledged ‘Oxford Dictionary’ but instead the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, com- piled and edited by Richard Allsopp, a scholar at the University of the West Indies. The process by which the only Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage was compiled gives an interesting insight into the painstaking production of the codification pro- cess in general and of this variety of World Englishes in particular. Robert Allsopp had studied at UCL in the 1960s under the aforementioned corpus compiler Randolph Quirk. In the 1970s Allsopp was provided with the required funding in order to begin the data collection for his dictionary of usage. Allsopp carefully contemplated naming and identity questions in terms of the book’s title during the data collection STYLISTIC ANALYSIS 103 process. He eventually decided that ‘Caribbean’ was preferable and this replaced ‘West Indian’, his original title, in order to escape the fragmented ‘island’ connota- tions that accompany this term. He adopted the data collection method of setting up workshops with local teach- ers and eventually he and his research team managed to collect data from all of the different Caribbean islands. Allsopp selected a wide range of topics through which to elicit data at these workshops. These topics included, amongst many others: hair- styles, bush medicines, folk remedies, lizards, insect pests, birds, flowers, fishing, trees, superstitions, including legendary figures relating to deaths, births and marriage, house- building styles, religion and belief systems, and coconut, banana and sugar industries. This whole process was incredibly lengthy and continued well into the 1980s. It was then followed by the complex process of compilation. The dictionary eventually appeared in 1996. STYLISTIC ANALYSIS In this unit, we present an extended example of a complete stylistic analysis of a whole literary text. It should be clear from our comments throughout that there are many features of language that could have been explored in what follows that we have not pursued, but the account below is intended to be exemplary and illustrative of a simple sort of stylistic practice. She walks in beauty She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent! George Gordon Byron (1815) B11 104 DEVELOPMENT: ASPECTS OF ENGLISH Context and commentary This poem, written by Byron in June 1814 after a party at which he observed his cousin, Mrs Anne Beatrix Wilmot in a black and sparkling dress, was published the following year as one of several songs to be set to Jewish tunes, in Hebrew Melodies. Almost all the literary criticism of the poem mentions these facts in one form or another. The text is regularly listed amongst the most popular poems in English, and it has been much anthologised. Almost all commentaries on the poem (despite insisting on the historical cir- cumstances of production) declare that it is a poem of praise of an ideal of beauty rather than a description or praise of a particular person. All agree on its poise, balance, elegance and positive outlook. Some commentaries even support these conclusions with stylistic evidence such as the highly regular rhyme scheme (ababab in each stanza, including the last with ‘brow’ close to ‘glow’ and ‘below’ in Byron’s Scottish accent), or the close internal rhymes (‘like the night’, ‘dear their’, ‘win tints’), and the alliterations (‘cloudless climes’, ‘starry skies’, ‘gaudy day denies’). The poem is consistently in iambic tetrameter (four repetitions of an iamb foot comprising an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable), with the sole exception of the fourth line: ‘Meet in her aspect and her eyes’. Here, the first two words form a trochee (a reversed iamb, with ‘Meet’ stressed and ‘in’ unstressed). The phonetic em- phasis on ‘meet’ emphasises the notion of blending and balance, and also hints at the older adjectival meaning of ‘meet’ as just and proper, a sense that was still common in the early nineteenth century, though it was even by then becoming archaic. Sensual phonetic iconicity A more detailed stylistic analysis would set out further the numerous highly wrought poetic effects in the text. The dominant pattern is a sense of calmness and balance, and this is carried iconically in the prosodic features mentioned above. There are further, even more subtle patterns here too. Each stanza might be seen as developing a theme – physical appearance in the first, introspection in the second, moral goodness in the third – and these are accompanied by certain sound-effects. For example, the first stanza details the outward senses of visual description and touch (‘eyes’ and ‘tender’), and the phonoaesthetics of the stanza is dominated by dentals (voiced /d/ and unvoiced /t/, see A1 and B1 for a reminder of phonetic terminology). There is a related emphasis on voiced /g/ and unvoiced /k/. There are lots of sibilants (fricatives with added turbulence), beginning with a single /t/ in ‘She’, then domin- ated by /s/ (with even the voiceless /k/ in ‘skies’ serving to devoice what would other- wise be a voiced final /z/). The sibilants end the stanza being voiced: /z/ in ‘denies’. It could be argued that this tip-of-the-tongue sensation and this combination of sounds encourage a careful enunciation of the first stanza. This delicateness is supported by the careful balance between the regular rhythm (which encourages pauses at the end of lines) and the enjambed syntax (which encourages the running-on from one line to the next). So most readers like to pause after ‘like the night’, but in fact the next line is an essential continuation of the sense. Similarly, even the two lines that are not enjambed begin with connectors (‘And’ and ‘Thus’). The overall effect, encouraged by the lexical semantic content in the stanza, is of a tactile and sensual experience of reading. Remember, too, that the poem was STYLISTIC ANALYSIS 105 published as a song (iambic tetrameter is the common form of English song), and also that all poetry before the mass literacy of the twentieth century was primarily there to be read aloud. The second stanza offers a frame of the woman’s hair, then face, then interior thoughts. The sense of delicacy here is even greater, with explicit syntactic balance given to ‘one shade the more, one ray the less’, combined with the balanced semantic binaries ‘shade/ray’, ‘more/less’. There is a sense of diminishment and quietness: ‘half ’, ‘softly’, ‘serenely’. The stanza is phonetically dominated by sibilants; in context, this stanza whispers. In order not to disrupt this gentle quietness, the other main sounds are not noisy dentals or other types of stops but the approximants or ‘liquids’ (an aesthetic term for approximants) /w/, /r/ and /l/: ‘which waves in every raven tress’, and so on. Even where dentals occur, they are placed in phonetic positions which diminish, devoice, destress and de-emphasise them, and where sibilants overwhelm them: ‘shade the’, ‘impaired’, ‘-less grace’, ‘sweet express’. By the time the voiced dentals of the last line appear, the cumulative effect, plus the pause and breathy repetition of ‘how pure, how dear’ has reduced the line to a whisper. The third stanza blends outward physical experience and interior contemplation in a combined theme that claims an inward moral centre is indicated by the outward appearance. Appropriately, the sound-effects that have been established by the first stanza on the one hand and the second stanza on the other are all combined too in this final stanza. Voiced and unvoiced consonants, sibilants and stops, liquids and den- tals all appear. In parallel, where the first and second stanzas are filled with empha- sised verbs (‘walks’, ‘meet’, ‘mellowed’, ‘denies’, ‘had . . . impaired’, ‘waves’, ‘lightens’, ‘express’), the final stanza seems to be almost verbless. In fact, there is only one main verb (‘tell’) and even that is lost after the negational ‘But’, and is preceded by two ‘false’ verbs (‘win’ and ‘glow’) embedded as qualifiers of the nouns ‘smiles’ and ‘tints’. ‘Spent’ is a similar qualifier. The final line presents what looks in isolation like a main assertive verb ‘is’, but this whole line is in fact in apposition, parallel with the previous two lines. The phrasal syntax of the stanza, with lines broken up by commas piling up verbless noun-phrases, also aligns with this verbless sense of stasis. It is finally as if qualities and virtuous properties are more significant than actions and assertions. Semantic complications All of this account matches quite well with the standard literary critical and popular view of the poem as a balanced work of art in praise of idealised beauty and good- ness. However, further stylistic exploration reveals other possibilities that are difficult to reconcile with this view. Another way of looking at the balance of semantic con- traries (‘dark and bright’, ‘heaven’ and ‘gaudy day’) is as an admission and invoca- tion of negativity rather than positivity. The poem even encourages this in the surprising number and types of negations it contains. For example, the lexical choice ‘cloudless’ (rather than ‘clear’, say) brings to mind – however fleetingly – the obscur- ing gloom of clouds; ‘heaven’ could have simply denied a ‘tender light’ to ‘day’, but instead the day is brash and ‘gaudy’; even some of the verb choices that dominate the first two stanzas (‘denies’, ‘impaired’) are unnecessarily negatively oriented. Where presenting the two sides of a balanced view necessarily invokes the nega- tive (‘dark’ as well as ‘bright’, ‘less’ as well as ‘more’), the effect when only one side . ‘The 102 DEVELOPMENT: ASPECTS OF ENGLISH definitive record of the English language (OED 200 9). Oxford University Press, the publishing house that owns all Oxford English dictionaries, has, since. real-life World Englishes usage emerges. Dictionaries and World Englishes In order to consider the issue of codification and World Englishes further, one good place to explore is the Oxford English Dictionary. of how the English language is currently being taught. As a future direction for World Englishes, Seidlhofer argues that the deference which is shown to teaching native varieties of language needs