World Englishes: riassunto

WORLD ENGLISHES: RIASSUNTO

Native varieties: BrEng; AmEng; AusEng
Nativised varieties: ‘Newer ’ varieties developed in places where English was not originally spoken and which have been influenced by local languages and cultures (native or non-native speakers?)
Native or Nativised? Classification Criteria
The native variety:
– has been around for a long time (AmEng?)
– has influenced younger varities (AmEng?)
– is spoken by a white native speaker
– is superior (the older, the better)
‘Proper’ English?
Varieties of English are all nativised , i.e.

influenced by the local cultures and languages of the people who have developed the particular variety.
In the ELT context: BrEng a better model than Malaysian English because it represents ‘proper’ English? Both nativised in the sense that they reflect their own cultures!
Lingua francas
The common language used by people of different language backgrounds to communicate with each other…
… within countries (Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin Chinese, Ki-Swahili , etc.)
… internationally
Native Speaker vs Non-Native Speaker

Grammatica inglese: esercizi svolti

Mother tongue speaker; first language speaker vs foreign language speaker; second language speaker.
Bloomfield: ‘The first language a human being learns to speak is his native language he is a native speaker of this language’ (1933: 46).
‘One learns to understand and speak a language by hearing and imitating native speakers.’Shifting L1 multilingual societies
* Native Speaker vs Non-Native Speaker
Terms coined by linguists who grew up in monolingual societies and assumed these societies represented the norm.
Native Speaker?
A native-speaking speaker of English from England may lack communicative competence in Australia (but also south/north).
- Better ‘L1’ meant as the language the speaker is most proficient in.

Or ‘expert user’ (Rampton 1990).
The functions of language
People are normally able to speak more than one variety of a language and will choose the variety they speak depending on…
– the context in which they find themselves
– the functions they want the variety to perform
The three major functions of language
1. Communication;
2. Identity;
3. Culture.