Essay Question: To what extent do you agree that the status of Standard English has changed since the turn of the century?
As the capital of the United Kingdom, London has become one of the major cities in which trade and business is carried out. Many foreign businesses and tradesmen have gravitated to the city because of its lucrative money making potential. However, to do so it was obviously necessary for them to learn English because otherwise communication would be nearly impossible. As a result, students in other countries such as China and India currently study English in school where students here study French, Spanish etc. Why? Because english has already established itself as one of the main languages used across the world so when the children go to look for job opportunities, many more doors will be open to them if they are able to speak fluent english. If you are able to convey your point in such a way that utilises technical jargon, rhetorical questions, imperatives and other such language features, you will suggest both an implicit and explicit knowledge of whatever the subject may be; and with knowledge comes power, wealth and ultimately prosperity.
It must be understood, however, that English is an ever changing language and may (in time) come to be less dominant. I believe that there are two key factors that lead to language change; exposure and readiness to adopt new dialect. If a person is regularly exposed to new dialect (whilst interacting with colleagues at work for example), they are likely to pick up elements from other people’s personal lexicon; because humans are a very social species, we tend to alter our own lexicon to be more in line with that of whoever we might be with at the time, in order to conform socially. However, the person must be willing to accept this new language and make it part of their own vocabulary. For example, in some instances the language encountered may not be suitable for the workplace as it would be considered too colloquial or taboo, whereas in others the language might be technical jargon, specific to their particular workplace, thus its inclusion into the person’s vocabulary would be needed.
Since the turn of the century, ‘Standard English’ has changed fairly frequently. Ultimately, this change was inevitable when you consider all of the influential factors (immigration, technological advances etc). Probably the greatest factor would be the creation of text messaging. In spite of being invented at the end of 1992, text messaging only really became popular in the early to mid 2000’s. Between then and now, a plethora of new words, language features, acronyms etc have been introduced to aid communication through this medium (usually to allow faster or more detailed communication). Now, we even have emojis to help convey emotions, sarcasm etc in text messages. However, I am also quite sure that the majority of the new language features (for example: lol, gr8, innit) are not considered ‘Standard English’; stereotypically, they are present in the dialect of younger generations. The few elements that have become part of ‘Standard English' are almost negligible when compared to the majority of the unchanged features. For example, verbs such as ‘sleep’ have not changed for centuries. Of course there are new slang variations of the word such as ‘kip’ or ‘power nap’ but they obviously would not be considered ‘Standard English’.
I have conducted a separate investigation into the effects of Afro-Caribbean dialect on English language (I used a questionnaire as the data collection method). Elements of that investigation can be applied to this study. Firstly, however, you must understand some facts about the sample. The entirety of the sample I collected data from were between 15 and 18 and were all students. This simple factor could limit the accuracy of any conclusion drawn because the sample is not fully educated and are arguably thus unable to make valid judgement. Also, the majority (90.5%) of the sample described themselves as ‘White - British’. This may also be another limiting factor as the results will mostly only be representative of the views of said people.
As part of my own research, I asked a sample how they would define ‘Standard English’. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is as follows; ‘The form of the English language widely accepted as the usual correct form.’ I found that the sample gave a range of different definitions, the majority of which did not reflect the dictionary definition very accurately. The definitions given, all fell into one of the following categories:
- Using only words in the English Dictionary 16%
- To do with pronunciation or accent 39%
- The language used by most people 11%
- That there is no standard 6%
- Did not know 28%
It was interesting to find that only 11% of the sample gave the definition that was closest to the dictionary definition because I would have presumed that they would know what ‘Standard English’ was seeing as the entirety of the sample were english speakers. I was also surprised to find that an incorrect definition, which stated that ‘Standard English’ is to do with accent and pronunciation, was given by the majority of the sample (39%). It is incorrect because ‘Standard English’ is regarding dialect (ie: the choice of words themselves and whether they be colloquial, slang, proper etc) not to do with accent (dialect can remain constant regardless of accent). I think that the reason so many people gave this definition is that, stereotypically, different dialects naturally come with different accents. For example, welsh speakers put heavy stress on vowels (accent feature) and use fillers such as ‘mind’ and ‘like’ (dialect feature). Personally, I would have given the penultimate answer purely because there is no defined standard (ie:it is not set in stone) and because the English language is ever changing as time continues (which possibly also explains why the final answer was the second most frequently given). This is why I feel that the first three answers were perfectly understandable, even if they were not all technically correct, and the last two answers were the most realistically accurate.
In the same questionnaire I asked another question about Standard English. I asked the sample to what degree would they concur with the following statement; ‘The Queen’s English is the correct English and all other derivations of this are improper and incorrect’. The most common answer was of moderate agreement (from 29% of the sample). All other answers were given only by between 10% and 14% of the sample. I was surprised to find that there was a fairly even spread of answers, with no real tendency to one particular view. I was surprised by this result because I felt sure most would feel that Queen’s English was standard, simply because it is used by the Queen and the rest of the Monarchy, the most powerful figures in Britain, thus if it is used by them must it not be correct? The fact that the modal answer was of moderate agreement, either suggests that the sample feel the Queen’s English is a form of (or derivation from) ‘Standard English’ but that other variations are not incorrect and that they are used because it is easier to do so. Either this or that there is simply no standard of english. If so, this would suggest that ‘Standard English’ is losing status amongst the younger generations and that other derivations are becoming more dominant because there is less need for them to use it.
To conclude, I feel that the status of ‘Standard English’ has changed to a degree since the turn of the century, and will continue to do so as the language itself does for the foreseeable future. It has not been a drastic change however because the trade and business capitals of the word have established themselves, thus the status change of english has stagnated for now.
