At the liberal arts college I attended, The History of Western Civilization was a required course for all freshmen. Our professor was Italian and spoke English with a strong Northern Italy accent. His bearing was aristocratic and aloof. He rarely smiled maintained a kind of emotional monotone. His speech was slow and replete with rolled R's and extended flourishes on vowel sounds. When he gave one of his long tortuous lectures, requiring students to take copious and quickly scribbled notes, our unflinching attention and concentration were crucial, if we were to understand his words. It was the final semester and Monday morning of the last week of his class. The professor was launching into the last half of his morning lecture. A crucial lecture that would no doubt comprise a substantial portion of our final exams. I was slightly hangover, having celebrated with friends, the end of classes that previous Sunday. I could not concentrate and soon I was nodding, trying hard to keep my eyelids open.
As our professor droned on about what I dozily surmised was The Normandy Invasion’s and Anglo Saxon Germanic influences on early English; someone interrupted his monologue by asking a question. This was a rare occurrence indeed! No student had ever posed a question while he was lecturing. I was suddenly alert and scanning the room trying to locate the transgressor.
It was Chokpra. A studious young man from India. He spoke perfect English with a soft-spoken, British Received Pronunciation.
In a clear and moderate tone of voice, he asked;
”…Why is it accepted…there are over 30 different dialects of Chinese…throw in 3 or 4 different dialects of English and people get bent out of shape?”
All heads turned toward the professor. He folded his arms. Stared at the speaker for several seconds and then walked over to his desk, opened a draw and took out his laminated seating chart. Running his finger slowly down the listings, he stopped, looked up, coughed twice, and said:
"Mr. Chokpra, English is a language. English is not a dialect. To speak proper English, is to speak Standard English. Thus, there is no such thing as an English dialect. Chinese is not standardized."
Then he walked back to his desk, opened the draw, replaced the chart, and resumed his lecture.
Mr. Chokpra may have responded. I do not remember.
However, I have never forgotten Chokpra’s question:
It's challenge; source; phrasing and use of the colloquialisms "bent out of shape"; and the fact it was never promptly answered all contributed to the significance Chokpras inquiry continues to have for me.
It still resonates with an innate demand for a thoughtful response.
I thought I'd try and answer Chokpra. I began by examing the literature provided by linguists regarding the subject and a comparison contrast of those other self appointed "language authorities"; word mavens, authors, editors and William Safire's adherents.
Most native speakers of English comfortably accept the assertion that Standard English is the language spoken in Britain, Australia, United States, and Canada.
Like millions of other Americans, I received my early education by-way of public schools. My high school classes included Social Studies, American History, and English. Competent and dedicated educators taught each of those subjects, and each instructor, would at some point during the course; state in so many words, the dictums:
English is a language.
English is not a dialect.
To speak proper English, is to speak Standard English.
(Thus, there was no such thing as an English dialect.)
The same classes would inform us that of course there were French, Spanish, Chinese, Greek, and African dialects. It never occurred to me, an academically challenged high school student, to question the assumed elevated language exclusivity of English and the denigration-by-dialect of other tongues.
"Why is it accepted…there are over 30 different dialects of Chinese…but throw in 3 or 4 different dialects of English and people get bent out of shape?”
Ok…I think the shape shifting is a localized phenomenon. I cannot think of a single linguist producing work within this decade that bends or even slightly leans at the accepted fact that there are tens of different English (and english) dialects. The same does not apply to a relatively small select group of native speakers of English posturing as self-proclaimed authorities/guardians of the world’s present power/privilege/prestige lingua franca.
Personally, I maintain my manly contours regardless of authoritative declarations denying the existence of the English dialect or Chinese languages.
I guess my lack of indignation at the suggestion English is plural-centric stems from my socialistic/liberal/global-ownership linguistic idealism.
That still does not quite answer question. Ok, let us try these subjective musings:
Answer 1.) Maybe the people who twist themselves into indignant exclamation marks at the idea of English being a dialect are just being themselves; “dialectical materialists”, so to speak. This is to say, the majority of modern linguists view the “traditional” definitions of language and dialect as immaterial. Some native-speakers cherish the assumed differences in the prestige of a language or dialect as absolutely material to their definitions of a superior national identity.
Answer 2.) Perhaps others bend themselves into convincing imitations of closed doors at the very idea of The English Dialect because de Nile ain't just a river in Egypt. Denial is also a prerequisite mind set for devotees of linguistic chauvinism and the politics of linguistics.
Really short answer 3.) Politics.
Tore Janson, earlier Professor of Latin, now Professor of African Languages, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden might have had in mind, certain “ English language benders” bending “others” into desired shapes when he wrote:
“The written forms of today's languages in Europe displaced and replaced other ways of writing. In most cases, a written form came first and a name for the language only afterwards. One or some of the dialects were chosen as the basis for the written form, and the choice was obviously made by those or to benefit those who "needed" the written form in the first place: the élites, the state builders, the church representatives. These choices were also decisive for inclusion and exclusion: the rulers decided where the borders would be placed in the dialect continua between what was called one language and what another language.
Thus, the main criterion for whether something is a dialect of another language or a separate language (and what is being standardized, what not) is the relative political power of the speakers of that language-dialect. The decisions about what are "languages" and what are not, are thus political decisions. Those with enough power can claim that what they speak is a language and what less powerful groups speak are dialects…”
As an attribute of culture, the qualitative difference between a language and a dialect ain't definitions, but rather the subjective socio-politics of the "linguist", earnestly doing the defining.
Remember Peter Trudgill's divisions and criteria for a language or dialect?
“Only dialects, which have been reduced to writing (a prerequisite for standardization) and been, standardized are languages.”
By his measure, it seems to follow that everything else is something else (dialect, vernacular, patois, Creole, pidgin).
Trudgill informed us; "Languages" were "independent, standardized varieties ...” with, as it was “…a life of their own".
I guess that would demote most of the long established sign languages, to “sign dialects”. That criterion also implies that several hundred indigenous languages would be neither languages nor dialects. By that definition more then two thirds of the worlds’ presently recognized languages would not be languages. Then so what? The most “important” languages would make the grade, and ain't that the whole point of standardization?
Ok, maybe not. In all fairness, the cited definition by Trudgill is an old one, circa 1983. Despite its present uselessness and implied cultural assumptions, the definition is still viewed as part of the western linguistics canon by some.
A Yiddish linguist, Max Weinreich, supplied this familiar language-dialect aphorism:
1. "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy (and an air force)... and I will add; its speakers have political and economic power and control of social and education policies.”
Variations:
2. A language is a dialect with state borders
3. A language is a dialect promoted by the elite.
4. A dialect is a language spoken by "others".
5. A dialect is a language without an army, navy, and air force.
6. A dialect is a language denied the assumed and illusionary prestige of being a language by the illogical extra-linguistic criteria (standardization) subjectively applied by certain linguists "located" in a particular and readily identifiable political, cultural, and socially defined context. (That is my donation to the idea of mutual unintelligibility. Of course, my insignificant offering is nothing compared to the singularly unintelligibility of much linguistic jargon.
As a term, “Standard English”, strictly speaking and in all honesty, is meaningless. What and whose standards are we referring to? We can no more supply a comprehensive definition for “standard English”, then we can for “British English”, or the word, “meaning”, for that matter. Standards indeed. That would be the standards of the winning team, of course. Now economic privilege and political power is overwhelmingly in the possession of native speakers of English. In accordance with the thinking of some, native speakers have the unwritten right to make authoritative statements about what you can and cannot say in English and, therefore, to apply their culturally preferred criterion in arbitrarily defining what is a language or dialect.
Native speakers mostly wrote the authors of prescriptive English dictionaries and grammar books. Their contemporary and descriptive counter parts are still put together using data exclusively from native speakers. Recently though, word is, several progressive university funded linguistic projects are compiling a database of International English.
As we know, several languages have a politically appointed governing body for the maintenance of the standards of that language. Those I can call to mind now are French, Dutch, Beijing Mandarin, Haitian Kreole and Ethiopian Amharic. Their statuses as standardized languages are more the results of historical and political developments, rather then the application of our linguistic criteria of structural similarity, mutual intelligibility, and standardization. Governing bodies for language standards have never been very successful in their efforts. More often then not the language standards are imposed by a body comprised of the society’s political or religious elite, with little if any input from the general population. Though the ruling classes readily understand that “language is the perfect instrument of empire”, there is little understanding of the limitless ways in which language and dialects are used as perfect instruments for the political self-empowerment of a citizenry.
It may be safely said that politics make languages and dialects, and in turn languages and dialects make politics. Political and historical examples may be found in the following instances:
--The Third Reich invented the myth of an Aryan language and race---a belief that was false to its core. Aryan was neither a race nor language.
--The royal “Immortals” of Académie française were given their walking papers during the French Revolution. That august language governing body was suppressed for more then ten years by the people of France and then resurrected by Napoleon Bonaparte as a prop for his political agenda. Of course, Bonaparte shrewdly structured a more politically correct post revolution version of the French Academy.
--In what was once the Union of South Africa, the Afrikaner ruling minority, made language the servant of their political philosophy---apartheid. Taking admixtures of Dutch, African, and Malayan they created the “dialect” known as “Afrikaans”, and by governmental decree, designated it the official “language” of South Africa. Simultaneously this political act officially delegated all the country’s indigenous languages spoken for millenniums to the status of “tribal dialects”. There were any number of factors that contributed to the end of apartheid and the establishment of majority rule in South Africa. But those who understand the politics of language agree it was the standardization of Afrikaans as the national language and its government enforcement as the only language to be taught in schools, that provided the speak that lit the fire.
--After the American Revolution it was proposed by patriots that the new nation switch from English to Latin or even to some newly invented language. However Noah Webster settled for distancing American English as far as possible from British English.
Standard English is ungovernable, so to speak. Not only does Madame English lack an external disciplinary, her claims to be of elite parentage and highborn ancestral lineage is suspect. However, she sho ain’t lacking in those social pretensions and the privileges and prestige derived in part from the present political and economic power of her native speakers.
Standard English is no more and no less a dialect then American, British, or Nigeria English are languages. What they all are, in respect to their present status as either languages or dialects, is defined by the political dynamics within the nations where spoken. You do not have to be a trained linguist to know that by our cultural standards; any speech designated language is socially superior to speech labeled dialect. The political is personal. Moreover, so are the social functions of designating one’s speech the status of a language or dialect. That might well be a shape distorting causation.
A significant number of linguists who are native speakers of these languages and educated within the cultures and countries reflected, do not accept, and even dismiss the criterion for a language and dialect supplied by western-trained linguists.
Tags: language, linguists, Safire, English, dialects, Chinese
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