Why don’t we all speak standard English?
Grammatical variation in the 21st century
Jenny Cheshire
Queen Mary, University of London
What is standard English?
It is not an ACCENT
It’s easier to say what it isn’t than what it is:
we ain’t amused
we aren’t amused
I don’t want nothing
I don’t want anything
Everyone speaks standard English: but some people use
some regional and/or nonstandard forms too
Standard English is the dialect of English
• normally used in writing
• normally spoken by educated native speakers
• taught to non-native speakers studying English
Peter Trudgill (1992) Introducing Language and Society. Harmondsworth:
Penguin
standard English?
she sang a song
or
she sung a song
?
he was stood in the corner
or
he was standing in the corner
?
never in English grammar
(i) Sally’s a vegetarian .. she never eats meat
(ii) She’s never eaten even a rasher of bacon
(iii) Joe never went to the office today
(iv) -- Someone knocked that vase over
-- well I never did it
Cheshire, J. (1998) English negation from an interactional perspective In I. Tieken-Boon
van Ostade, G. Tottie and W. van der Wurff (eds.) Negation in the history of English.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (Topics in English Linguistics series), pp. 29-54
English dialects in the 21st century
• traditional dialects (rural dialects)
• urban dialects
• new urban dialects (multiethnolects; contemporary urban
vernaculars)
• global dialects
Traditional dialects in the 21st century
south-west England
I do go there every day
I goes there tomorrow
I did go there every day
I went there last week
standard English until the end of the 18th century
e.g. John Ward (1758), Four Essays on the English Language: ‘The
action denoted as now doing: I write, do write, or am
writing a letter…the past imperfect tense: I did write or
was writing a letter’
Now used only to add emphasis
Northern England
thir
tho
‘these’
‘those’
thon
thon ones
thonder
‘that over there’
‘those over there’
‘that far away’
The verb TO BE, present tense
I am
I is
I are
I be
EPED
Alexander Ellis. 1889. The existing phonology of English
dialects, compared with that of West Saxon speech. New York:
Greenwood Press.
SED
Harold Orton, John Widdowson and Clive Upton. The Linguistic
Atlas of England. 1978. London: Croom Helm
Forms of ‘I am’ etc in EPED and SED
These two
figures
suggest great
continuity
over 70 years
1880–1950
9
Why are rural regional forms receding?
the kind of people who live in the
countryside are changing
Population change in England
Movement to the country:
10% of the UK population moves each year. Between
1994 and 2011, at least 30 million households moved (72
million people)
Mainly, people move from large towns to the countryside,
especially to the remoter rural areas
Professional and managerial classes move the most;
manual workers move the least
David Britain (2011) The heterogeneous homogenisation of dialects in England.
Taal & Tongval 63 (1): 43-60.
Movement away from the countryside, and within
the countryside
students: young people beginning Higher Education
courses rose by over 300% between 1970 and 2007);
people living in the country commute to work more than
they used to;
people living in the country have to travel to towns for
shopping and basic services
So, speakers of rural dialects come into contact with a
wider range of other dialects now (including standard
English and supra-local forms)
Why don’t we all speak standard English?
Population movement and increased mobility
means many more people speak standard English today
than in the past
and many people use dialect forms typical of the big
cities in their local area (supra-local forms)
Urban dialects: variation in the towns
Alive and well:
Geordie, Scouse, Brummie, Cockney
Chris Montgomery 2012 The effect of proximity on perceptual dialectology.
Journal of Sociolinguistics 16: 638-668.
• regional forms
• widespread vernacular forms
• the impact of migration from other countries
Regional urban forms
many of these are alive and well
• youse
• DAR (definite article reduction)
• right dislocated tags
• intensifiers
Regional grammar in the towns
(i) youse
a feature of English in the North west?
A sensible form
How else do you distinguish between you (singular)
and you (plural)?
are you enjoying this lecture?
other second person plural pronouns in English
yinz (Pittsburgh, USA
you all (Texas, USA)
you uns (Zimbabwe)
you lot
and, among young people (but where, exactly?)
you guys
Susan Wright (a.k.a.Fizmaurice) (1997) ‘Ah’m going for to give youse a story today’:
remarks on second person plural pronouns in Englishes. In J. Cheshire and D. Stein (eds.)
Taming the Vernacular. Harlow: Longman, pp. 170-184.
Why don’t we all speak standard English?
some people use a form that fills a gap in standard English
Regional grammar in the towns
(ii) definite article reduction (DAR)
the is pronounced as [t] or a glottal stop
e.g. they had a baby and as soon as t’baby arrived he
got jealous
zero article
that’s me and him when we was at seaside
In 1985 in West Yorkshire 29-54% of definite article forms
were the;
in 1997, 80% of the definite article forms in York were the.
Sali Tagliamonte and Rebecca V. Roeder (2009) Variation in the English definite
article: sociohistorical linguistics in t’speech community. Journal of Sociolinguistics
13: 435-471.
25
20
15
DAR
zero
10
5
0
< 30
31-50
51-74
75 +
DAR in the city of York: male and
female speakers
30
young
25
male
speakers
outstrip
20
the oldest
male
15
speakers
male
female
10
5
0
< 30
31-50
51-74
75 +
why do young men use DAR so often?
• they have positive attitudes towards a local
identity
• they want to show their identity as
northerners
• northern Englishes have increasing prestige
Why don’t we all speak standard English?
some people are proud of being ‘local’ and show this in the
forms they use
Regional grammar in the towns
(iii) right dislocated tags
Interviewer: right what about a favourite singer then?
Kay:
Peter André me
Ruth:
Peter André’s all right but
Kay:
he’s got a real nice hairy chest him
Interviewer: has he? is it hairy?
Kay:
no it’s real brown and greasy
Ruth:
cos he has baby oil smothered on him
• used in informal spoken English generally
• but especially frequent in parts of the North of England
Hull
Bolton
(Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill and Ann 2005)
(Emma Moore and Julia Snell 2011)
What is their function?
Interviewer: right what about a favourite singer
then?
Kay:
Peter André me
Ruth:
Peter André’s all right but
Kay:
he’s got a real nice hairy chest him
Interviewer: has he? is it hairy?
Kay:
no it’s real brown and greasy
Ruth:
cos he has baby oil smothered on
him
The tags
her
friend
may
disagree
she
does!
Kay contrasts
Peter André
with other
singers?
Kay
proposes
a topic
• allow Kay to be polite to her friend, who may disagree
• allow Kay to express her stance towards what she is
saying
• show that she is proposing a topic
Why don’t we all speak standard English?
some people use forms that are very useful in conversation
Regional grammar in the towns
(iv) intensifiers
Intensifiers are adverbs that scale up the meaning of
the following word
Which word comes most naturally to you in the gap in
these sentences?
(1) His mum looks _ _ _ _ _ young
(2) And that is _ _ _ _ _ boring
(3) This is _ _ _ _ _ weird
Young people intensify more than older people
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
66+
35-64
17-34
Younger speakers intensify twice as often as older speakers in
York; also in Newcastle and in London.
(Barnfield, K. and Buchstaller, I. (2010) Intensifiers in Tyneside: Longitudinal
developments and new trends. English World-Wide 31 (3): 252-287).
your choice probably depends on your age
16
14
12
10
really
8
so
very
6
4
2
0
66 +
35-65
17-34
Percentage use of the main intensifiers in York
Ito, R. and Tagliamonte, S. (2003) Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering
and recycling in English intensifiers. Language in Society 32: 257-279)
“Using very marks you out as being over 35 years old;
frequent use of really is a mark of being younger”
and where you’re from
Your mum looks geet young
This is geet weird
The weather’s canny crap
Pearce, M. 2011. ‘It isn’t geet good, like, but it’s canny’: a new(ish) dialect feature in
North East England. English Today 27/3: 3-9.
Tyneside
your mum looks dead young
Dead was the most frequent intensifier in 1994 for
speakers aged 18-40
But dead was never used in 1960
And dead is the least frequent intensifier in 2007; young
people prefer really, but pure is becoming popular (and
geet)
Barnfield, Kate and Buchstaller, Isabelle 2010 Intensifiers in Tyneside:
Longitudinal developments and new trends. English World-Wide 31 (3):
252-287.
Intensifiers in London
speakers
aged 70+
speakers
aged 16-19
really
21.1 (19)
42.2 (147)
very
78.8 (71)
0.01 (4)
all
3.4 (12)
bare
4.9 (17)
proper
10.1 (35)
well
13.2 (46)
Linguistic recycling
He was a well good wight, a carpenter (Chaucer,
Prologue, Canterbury Tales, c. 1390)
dead (OED 1589)
Why do intensifiers change so often?
We use intensifiers to boost the force of the following word
this is good
this is really good
Intensifiers lose their pragmatic force through frequent use,
so younger people need to choose different forms from the
ones used by the previous generation.
Intensifiers also seem to acquire social meanings, marking
membership of different social groups.
Why don’t we all speak standard English?
• some of us like to show we’re ‘local’
• some of us like to fill a gap in standard English
• some of us like to use forms with useful functions
• language changes all the time; our idea of what
counts as ‘standard English’ don’t always keep up
widespread vernacular forms
widespread dialect grammar
she walked ten mile
this costs three pound
he’s six foot tall
I don’t want nothing
cf. I don’t want anything
who done that?
they come here yesterday
plural marking on the noun
is redundant
a vernacular universal?
• child language
• most of the world’s
languages
a past tense schema?
I sang a song
or
I sung a song?
[ʌ]+ nasal and/or [k] or [g]
I sing a song
I sang a song
I’ve sung a song
I swim a mile
I swam a mile
I’ve swum a mile
Under experimental stress:
SING I sung a song
BRING I brung a cake
DID I done a mile
(Bybee and Moder 1983)
SWIM I swum a mile
EAT I ut a cake
COME I come here yesterday
why don’t we all speak standard English?
there are some cognitive patterns that keep surfacing
• in children’s language
• in the world’s languages
• under experimental stress
• and in dialects
was/were variation
BE is a very mixed up verb
I was
you were
she/he/ it was
we were
you were
they were
Why 2 forms? (was and were)
The only verb in the modern English Language that
has different singular and plural forms in the past
tense
everywhere in England except perhaps the Northwest
I was
you was
she/he/it was
I weren’t
you weren’t
she/he/it weren’t
we was
you was
they was
we weren’t
you weren’t
they weren’t
I will go
you will go
she/he/it will go
I won’t go
you won’t go
she/he/it won’t go
once frequent in England; now mainly in Lancashire and
other northern dialects:
I were
you were
he/she/it were
we were
you were
they were
In Bolton, young people use were more often than was if
• at least one parent was born in Bolton
• they were working class
• they self-identified as a ‘Townie”
• they took part in ‘wild’ things
Moore, Emma (2010) “The Interaction between Social Category and Social Practice:
Explaining was/were Variation”. Language Variation and Change 22: 347-371.
Why don’t we all speak standard English?
• we like to make our language more regular
• we use language to show where we think we belong
migration
Linguistic innovators: the English of
adolescents in London (2004–7)
Multicultural London English: the emergence,
acquisition and diffusion of a new variety
(2007–10)
Investigators
Jenny Cheshire
Paul Kerswill
(Queen Mary, University
of London)
(University of York)
Research Associates
Sue Fox, Arfaan Khan (Queen Mary, University
of London)
Eivind Torgersen
(Sør-Trøndelag University
College, Trondheim
E· S· R· C
ECONOMIC
& SOCIAL
RESEARCH
C O UNCIL
City of London
Percentage of different ethnic groups in Hackney and
Havering
(2005 estimates, from Data Management and Analysis Group, Greater London
Authority, Demography Update, October 2007)
Hackney
White British
47.1
White Irish
2.6
Other White
11.2
Mixed race White/ Black Caribbean
1.6
Mixed race White/Black African
0.8
Mixed race White/Asian
0.8
Other Mixed race
1.2
Indian
4.1
Pakistani
1.4
Bangladeshi
2.8
Other Asian
1.0
Black Caribbean
9.2
Black African
10.8
Other Black
2.2
Chinese
1.4
Havering
88.2
1.4
2.4
0.5
0.2
0.4
0.4
1.5
0.6
0.5
0.6
0.9
1.5
0.2
0.5
MLE project: ethnicities of young speakers, 5-17
Anglo
19
Bangladeshi
2
AfroCaribbean
12
Ghanaian
2
Mixed race
10
Moroccan
2
Turkish
8
Kurdish
2
Nigerian
6
Portuguese
2
Bengali
3
Somali
2
‘Black African’
3
Albanian
1
Turkish
3
Filipino
1
The only language young children have in common is
English, but their English is very varied:
• Englishes of the Indian subcontinent and Africa
• many different learner varieties of English
• Caribbean Creoles and their indigenised London
versions
• African English Creoles (e.g. Sierra Leone, Nigeria)
• traditional ‘Cockney’ features from ‘Anglos’
• standard English from various sources
All children, bilingual and monolingual alike, are exposed
to all these varieties of English from a very young age
52
• Some bilingual children have to communicate with their
friends in English before they are fully proficient
• Lack of a focused target model for the acquisition of
English
• Flexible language norms
By age 16, variation has become more stable, with some
variable features remaining as the distinctive features of
Multicultural London English
example of a new form
pronoun man
I don't really mind how . how my girl looks if she looks decent yeah
and there's one bit of her face that just looks mashed yeah I don't
care it's her personality man's looking at . I'm not even looking at
the girl proper like (Cheshire 2013)
a new quotative
this is me “don’t be funny”
(Cheshire et al 2011, Fox 2010)
English quotatives
•
•
•
•
•
SAY
BE LIKE
GO
THINK
ZERO
I said “what’s going on?”
I was like “what’s going on?”
I went “what’s going on?”
I thought “what’s going on?”
“what’s going on?”
Alex, aged 17
I mean I literally walked past two thugs that I didn't
not knew but they just grabbed me by the hood
swang me in a alley and had me at knifepoint. and
I couldn't do nothing but I said . and they said
"where you from?“ I said "east london that's where
I'm from“ this is them "don't be funny" cos they're
. I was right in a bit of east London so they said
"don't be funny with me like that cos I'll stab you"
and I said “I'm not trying to be funny” this is them
"what area are you from . what part?” this is me
“I'm from Haggerston . Fields" and then like they
just said "oh yeh I don't like that area where area"
and then like some hero. thank god there is some
typical heros who. and it's like if you're short don't
even bother come over because you're just gonna
get stabbed yourself like .
discourse markers
allow blud it ain’t worth it
got the right moves innit but I ain't telling you though still
we’re safe like you get me (Torgersen et al 2011)
general extenders
I had to pay them a score and reh teh teh
he gets all of James Bond's money and ra
you ready to hear my new rand still
proper London thing (ting) right
goes like this
yo
man’s cat got stuck up in a tree
so man went to rescue man’s cat from a tree
but
man got stung by a bumble bee
oh
man says “whagwan” I say “yo”
oh
I got arrested by the feds
accused of jacking bags from garden sheds
but they had no evidence
so they had to let man go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtB1W8zkY5A&feature=plcp
multiethnolect
• a new kind of dialect arising in multilingual cities
worldwide
• characterised by much variation, much innovation and
rapid language change
• the features are used by young people from immigrant
families and also by their non-immigrants friends
Youth
style
Vernacular
dialect
60
Urban vernaculars in other European cities
Rinkebysvenska, Stockholm (Kotsinas 1988)
Straat taal, Netherlands (Nortier 2000)
Kiezdeutsch, Berlin (Wiese et al 2009)
Jallanorsk, Oslo (Svendsen and Røyneland 2008))
Københavnsk multietnolekt, Copenhagen (Quist 2008)
All have innovative features used by young people of recent immigrant
origin and also by young people from non-immigrant backgrounds
Why don’t we all speak standard English?
population movement on a large scale introduces new
language forms into our language
these new forms can then carry social meanings
global linguistic forms
21st century communication is global
Second person plural pronouns in Friends 1994-2004
‘other forms’ include all of you, you all
you guys: gender of addressee
BE LIKE as an English quotative
•
•
•
•
•
SAY
BE LIKE
GO
THINK
ZERO
I said “what’s going on?”
I was like “what’s going on?”
I went “what’s going on?”
I thought “what’s going on?”
“what’s going on?”
Percentage frequency of BE like, UK research
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
COLT (1983) York (1996)
Glasgow
(1997)
York (2003) outer London inner London
(2006)
(2006)
Queen Mary students’ percentage use of BE
like, 2001-2004
50
45
40
35
30
25
2001
20
2004
15
10
5
0
say
be like
go
think
zero
where does BE LIKE come from?
?
you're just gonna get stabbed yourself like .
People often don’t like innovations
Like is
“ a meaningless word used in teenage
American speech which may indicate,
among other things, a gap in thinking or
brain functioning”.
It is used in the UK “randomly by irritating
teenagers and people who dropped out of
school or have never read a book above the
literary standard of Guns ‘n’ Ammo”
(http://urbandictionary.com/define.php?termlike)
What kind of person speaks like this?
• we got umming and aahing like . I had to leave
unfortunately
• and when I done it one day . like I popped my head
under a light and somebody called “oy snowy”
• we used to see like an Indian man
• there’s a couple of young people like on my landing
• this is how dozy I was I like let people take liberties
frequency of like as a discourse
marker
speakers aged 70 + in Hackney
1.78 per 1000 words
(165/ 92, 858)
speakers aged 16-19 in Hackney
14.78 per 1000 words
(4574/309,378)
a global phenomenon
French
je me suis tournée style “non non j’écoute pas je regarde la
lune”
I turned round like “no no I’m not listening I’m looking at the
moon”
Finnish
ja sit mä olin niinku “että herrajjumala et voi olla totta”
and then I was like “oh my God I don’t believe it”
more….
Turkish
pisman oldum gibi birseyler söyledi
she was like “ I’m sorry”
Norwegian
bare “e’ det nokke i veien ned deg?”
I was just “is there something the matter with you?
etc.
why don’t we all speak standard English?
social reasons
• population movement
• showing where you belong
• changing patterns of communication
linguistic reasons
• avoid redundancy
• make language more regular
• use cognitive schemas