Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
Chapter
  • Print publication year: 2020
  • Online publication date: December 2019

25 - Norms and Standards in World Englishes

from Part IV - Current Challenges
Export citation

Summary

The chapter discusses the notions of norms and standards in conceptualizing the evolutionary status of World Englishes. While “standard language” is the product of its functional and formal development in Haugen’s (1972) model, in Schneider’s (2007) model it is the status attained by a regional variety that has become endonormative. From the sociolinguistic perspective, the standard may be seen by its users either inclusively, as a uniting medium for the speech community, or exclusively, as an elevated reference style of English associated with correctness and an ideology of the standard. The norms of a variety can be induced from corpus data, showing how it has differentiated itself from the source variety. Two case studies illustrate the interplay between standards and norms. In both, there is grammatical evidence of the norms shifting away from their exonormative standards yet discomfort expressed in some quarters about the popular regional forms (Singlish, Taglish). Corpus evidence suggests that metalinguistic awareness of tension between Singlish and “good English” is stronger in Singapore than the equivalents in the Philippines, correlating with their evolutionary status.

Keywords:

Related content

Powered by UNSILO
Ansaldo, Umberto. 2004. The evolution of Singapore English: Finding the matrix. In Lim, Lisa, ed. Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 129–52.
Bautista, , Maria (Ma.), Lourdes S. and Bolton, Kingsley. 2008. Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary Perspectives. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Bautista, , Maria (Ma.), Lourdes S. 2001. Attitudes of selected Luzon university students and faculty towards Philippine English. In Maria, (Ma.) Tayao, Lourdes G. et al., eds. Rosario E Maminta in Focus: Selected Writings in Applied Linguistics. Quezon City: Philippine Association for Language Teaching, 236–73.
Bautista, , Maria (Ma.), Lourdes S. 2004 Taglish-English code-switching as a mode of discourse. Asia Pacific Education Review 5(2): 226–233. doi:10.1007/BF03024960
Bernaisch, Tobias and Koch, Christopher. 2016. Attitudes towards Englishes in India. World Englishes 35(1): 118–132.
Biber, Douglas, Finegan, Edward and Atkinson, Dawn. 1994. ARCHER and its challenges. In Fries, Udo, Tottie, Gunnel and Schneider, Peter, eds. Creating and Using English Language Corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 255–272.
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Biewer, Carolin. 2015. South Pacific Englishes: A Sociolinguistic and Morphosyntactic Profile of Fiji English, Samoan English and Cook Islands English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Borlongan, Ariane. 2009. A survey on language use, attitudes and identity in relation to Philippine English among young generation Filipinos. Philippine ESL Journal 3: 74–107.
Bowerman, Sean. 2012. Standard South African English. In Hickey, Raymond, ed. Standards of English. Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198–212.
Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge.
Chand, Vineeta. 2014. Review of Hickey Standards of English: Codified Varieties around the World (2012). Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(5): 708–719.
Collins, Peter. 2009. Modals and quasimodals in World Englishes. World Englishes 28: 281–292.
Collins, Peter. 2015. Recent diachronic change in the progressive in Philippine English. In Collins, Peter, ed. Grammatical Change in English World-Wide. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 271–296.
Devonish, Hubert and Ewart, A.C. Thomas, . 2012. Standards of English in the Caribbean. In Hickey, Raymond, ed. Standards of English. Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 179–197.
Ferguson, Charles A. 1972. Diglossia. In Giglioli, Pier Paolo, ed. Language and Social Context: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 232–251.
Garner, Bryan. 2009. Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gill, Martin. 2017. “Goodbye, Sweet England”: Language, nation and normativity in popular British news media. In Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid and Percy, Carol, eds. Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Space and Time. Berlin: de Gruyter, 255–272.
Gjurkova, Aleksandra. 2017. Prescription and language management in Macedonia. In Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid and Percy, Carol, eds. Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Space and Time. Berlin: de Gruyter, 318–330.
Gonzalez, Andrew. 1983. When does an error become a distinctive feature of Philippine English? In Noss, Richard B., ed. Varieties of English in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 150–172.
Gupta, Anthea Fraser. 2010. Singapore Standard English revisited. In Lim, Lisa, Pakir, Anne and Wee, Lionel, eds. English in Singapore: Unity and Utility. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 57–89.
Gut, Ulrike. 2012. Standards of English in West Africa. In Hickey, Raymond, ed. Standards of English. Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 213–229.
Guy, Gregory and Hinskens, Frans. 2016. Introduction to special issue. Linguistic coherence: Systems, repertoires and speech communities. Lingua 172(3): 1–9.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. Spoken and Written Language. Deakin University Press.
Haugen, Einar. 1972. Dialect, language, nation. In Pride, J.B. and Holmes, Janet, eds. Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 97–111.
Hickey, Raymond, ed. 2012. Areal Features of the Anglophone World. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Honey, John. 1997. Language and Power: The Story of Standard English and Its Enemies. London: Faber & Faber.
Hundt, Marianne, Zipp, Lena and Huber, André. 2015. Attitudes towards varieties of English in Fiji. A shift to endonormativity? World Englishes 34(4): 688–707.
Kirkpatrick, Andy. 2012. English in ASEAN: Implications for regional multilingualism. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 33(4): 331–344.
Kretzschmar, William and Meyer, Charles. 2012. The idea of Standard American English. In Hickey, Raymond, ed. Standards of English. Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 139–158.
Lee, J. 2004. A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English. www.Singlishdictionary.com
Lim, Lisa. 2012. Standards of English in South-East Asia. In Hickey, Raymond, ed. Standards of English. Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 274–293.
Lim, Lisa, ed. 2004 Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Lising, Loy, Peters, Pam and Smith, Adam. 2016. Language use and language attitudes in multilingual habitats. Paper presented at the Australian Linguistic Society Conference, December 2016.
Mair, Christian. 2006. Twentieth Century English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mair, Christian. 2013. The world system of Englishes: Accounting for the transnational importance of mobile and mediated vernaculars. English World-Wide 34(3): 253–278.
Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McArthur, Tom. 1998. The English Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McArthur, Tom. 2001. Review: World English and world Englishes: Trends, tensions, varieties, and standards. Language Teaching 34(1): 1–20.
Milroy, James and Milroy, Lesley. 1985. Authority in Language: Investigating Prescription and Language Standardization. London: Routledge.
Mitchell, Alexander G. and Delbridge, Arthur. 1966. The Speech of Australian Adolescents. Angus and Robertson.
Övergaard, Gert. 1995. The Mandative Subjunctive in American and British English in the 20th Century. Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksell.
Pakir, Anne. 1993. The English Language in Singapore: Standards and Norms. Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.
Pefianco Martin, Isabel. 2014a. Philippine English revisited. World Englishes 33(1): 50–59.
Pefianco Martin, Isabel. 2014b. Philippine English: Beyond nativization? In Buschfeld, Sarah, Hoffmann, Thomas, Huber, Magnus and Kautzsch, Alexander, eds. The Evolution of Englishes: The Dynamic Model and Beyond. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 70–85.
Peters, Pam. 2009. The mandative subjunctive in spoken English. In Peters, Pam, Collins, Peter and Smith, Adam, eds. Comparative Studies of Australian and New Zealand English. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 125–137.
Peters, Pam. 2012. Varieties of English: Standard British English. In Bergs, Alexander and Brinton, Laurel, eds. HSK English Historical Linguistics HSK 34.2. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1879–1899.
Peters, Pam. 2014. Differentiation in Australian English. In Buschfeld, Sarah, Hoffmann, Thomas, Huber, Magnus and Kautzsch, Alexander, eds. The Evolution of Englishes: The Dynamic Model and Beyond. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 107–125.
Peters, Pam. 2018. The lexicography of usage. In Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid, ed. English Usage Guides: History, Advice, Attitudes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 31–50.
Peters, Pam and Young, Wendy. 1997. English grammar and the lexicography of usage. Journal of English Linguistics 25(4): 315–331.
Platt, John T. and Weber, Heidi. 1980. English in Singapore and Malaysia – Status, Features, Functions. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Preston, Dennis. 1996. Where the worst English is spoken. In Schneider, Edgar W., ed. Focus on the USA. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 279–360.
Romaine, Suzanne. 1995. Bilingualism (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Post-Colonial English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schreier, Daniel. 2012. Varieties resistant to standardization. In Hickey, Raymond, ed. Standards of English: Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 354–368.
Siemund, Peter, Schulz, Monkia and Schweinberger, Martin. 2014. Studying the linguistic ecology of Singapore: A comparison of college and university students. World Englishes 33(3): 340–362.
Smakman, Dirk. 2012. The definition of the standard language: A survey of seven countries. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 218: 25–58.
Tan, Peter K. W. and Tan, Daniel K. H.. 2008. Attitudes towards non-standard English in Singapore. World Englishes 27(3–4): 465–479.
Tan, Siew Imm. 2016. Charting the endonormative stabilization of Singapore English. In Leitner, Gerhard, Hashim, Azirah and Wolf, Hans-Georg, eds. Communicating with Asia: The Future of English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 69–84.
Thompson, Roger M. 2003 Filipino English and Taglish: Language Switching from Multiple Perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Truss, Lynne. 2003. Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Profile Books
Wales, Katie. 2006. Northern English: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wee, Lionel. 2011. Metadiscursive convergence in the Singlish debate. Language and Communication 31: 75–85.
Yao, Xinyue and Collins, Peter. 2012. The present perfect in world Englishes. World Englishes 31(3): 386–403.