Tutorial No. 7: Standardisation and Language Planning

1. Say whether you agree or disagree with the following statements and give your reasons.

Language change equates with language decay and so it must be curbed.
The purest and grammatically most correct dialect is usually selected as the standard form.
The use of RP is an example of prescriptivism.
Non-standard usage are illiteracies and barbarisms.
Standard English is spoken with different non-RP accents in different parts of the world.

2. What do you understand by the following statements?

A standard language is characterised by ‘minimal variation of form but maximal variation of function’.
A standard variety is just another dialect.

· Codification acts as a check on the forces of instability that characterise non-standard forms.

The publication of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class to positions of social and economic dominance.
Standardisation involves the cultivation by the elite of a variety that can be regarded as exclusive.

3. A. How might a ‘prescriptive’ grammarian have attempted to ‘correct’ each of the following sentences?

It’s me who gets the blame for everything.
Don’t do it like he does.
Who was that person you were talking to?

She didn’t tell me nothing about it.

Jane and Ellen blamed one another.
None of the guests have arrived.
If I was you I would resign.

B. Provide examples of your own of usage that would be quite acceptable to you as forms of Singapore English but would be frowned upon by prescriptivists.

4. Briefly, what do you understand by the terms: selection, elaboration, codification and acceptance?

5. Read the following passage on standard English by John Honey and answer the questions given below.

The fact is that Leith, the Milroys and Haugen have all exaggerated the degree of intolerance of variation which is involved in the evolution of a standard language. The tendency at work is not the suppression or elimination of optional variation, but its reduction. There are at least four reasons for that tendency. First, communicational efficiency (even the Milroys recognise this): standardisation is essential for communication outside a local area. Secondly, ordinary people – as opposed to the most learned specialists in English – feel more comfortable with the idea that one particular variant is ‘correct’. Thirdly, the reduction of options in grammar and pronunciation which standardisation tends to produce is accompanied by a vast expansion in the range of meanings of words – what linguists call ‘polysemy’. Look in any good dictionary, at the proliferation of different senses of common words. My dictionary lists at least 17 senses for settle and 20 for bolt, touch has more than 40. How many difference senses can one think of for words like appreciate (‘his investment has appreciated’, I appreciated your kind act’, etc.)? Most dictionaries list at least five senses of surgery: a branch of medical science, a medical procedure usually involving cutting, a place where a doctor sees patients, a session for doctors to see patients, and nowadays also – a fairly new use – a session for an MP to see constituents. In many instances (as with ‘appreciate’ and ‘surgery’) these different senses can only be distinguished by the context in which the word appears. It is as if the standardisation of English worked on the principle that the reduction of variation in grammar and pronunciation operated as a kind of trade-off for the expansion of variation in the meanings of words. Leith appears to be referring to this possibility when he claims, quoting Haughen, that a standard language has minimal variation of form, but maximal variation of meaning. When we actually inspect the amount of variation which persists – indeed flourishes – in standard English, the first part of that definition is exposed as a gross exaggeration, but if we re-define it as a reduction of variation in form, and an expansion in the meanings available, we can accept that the first tendency may help to make it easier for the second to occur. So much for what the Milroys describe as “the total uniformity that is required by the ideology of standardisation”.

A very significant fourth factor seems to be at work, but is in danger of being overlooked in the analysis of standardisation – though the Milroys do finally confront it at a late stage of their analysis. Those who find ‘incorrectness’ in I seen or in (another Milroy example) them houses is nice are not merely acting on an impulse to reduce the number of options available to a speaker of acceptable English in the interests of communicative efficiency. Their judgment is the result of the social symbolism carried by these particular non-standard forms, which appear to announce that the speaker, or writer is uneducated or lacking in awareness of the contexts in which such forms might be appropriate. There is, after all, a demonstrable tendency for such non-standard forms to be used by people of least education. And because educatedness is, in many contexts, a highly valued variable, its absence makes the users of its characteristic forms of speech – as well as those forms themselves – open to disparagement.

John Honey, Language is Power:The Story of Standard English and its Enemies. 1997: 125-6

What are some of the established notions about standard English that John Honey disputes?
Writing in the same vein, elsewhere Honey maintains that standard English is not just another variety but a specially important variety which performs certain functions that non-standard dialects do not. Can you suggest what these functions might be?
What is meant by the term ‘social symbolism’ that Honey suggests is the function of particular forms of language?
In arguing that standard English has not totally eliminated variation, Honey elsewhere gives as examples forms such as dreamed and dreamt, among and amongst, learned and learnt, though and although, toward and towards to prove his point. Provide similar examples of words that have variant pronunciations in English. E.g. the word ideology (ide- or id -).

6. A. What is “language planning” generally taken to involve ? What do you understand by the terrms ‘status planning’ and ‘corpus planning’?

B. Taking Singapore as an example, how would you show that status planning reflects certain political and economic interests of the country?

C. Say which of the excerpts below – all taken from The Straits Times – relate to status planning and which are associated with sentiments that underlie corpus planning. Which of the following factors would you say influence these sentiments – aesthetic consideration, ethnic unity, social cohesion, national pride, economic interests, political affiliation, technological progress, dictates of fashion?

TEXT 1

Singapore’s bilingual policy becomes even more important in an age of globalisation, as the nation is still shaped by the values and traditions that go with ethnicity.

Mr Abdullah Tarmugi, Minister for Community Development and Sports, said that this is why he supports the move towards allowing students to study mother-tongue languages to a higher level and for a longer time.

TEXT 2

Singaporeans add Chinese and Malay words into Singlish, and give different meanings to English words like ‘blur’ to mean ‘blank’.

Worse, Singlish uses Chinese sentence structure. In fact, we are creating a different new language. Each family can create its own coded language; nothing wrong with that except that no one outside the family can understand you.

We are learning English so that we can understand the world and the world can understand us. It is therefore important to speak and write standard English. The more the media makes Singlish socially acceptable, by popularising it in TV shows, the more we make people believe that they can get by with Singlish.

… To set the standard, I had our announcers on radio and television and school teachers retrained by teachers from Taiwan who spoken standard Mandarin. We also hired a few announcers for television and radio from Taiwan to set the pace.

Because we used standard Mandarin on television, radio and with teachers in schools, we now have a generation of young Singaporeans able to speak more of a standard Mandarin. The Chinese-speaking world outside Singapore can understand us.

We must take the same approach with English. Get our teachers retrained. Do not popularise Singlish. Do not use Singlish in our television sitcoms, except for humorous bits, and in a way that makes people want to speak standard English.

We will see a difference in another one generation.

TEXT 3

CIVIL SERVANTS: Mind your English

BLOOPERS, blunders and other common errors are featured in a book to be published by the Institute of Public Administration and Management:

Keep it short and snappy: Instead of ‘In the event that’ use ‘if’. And the phrase ‘In view of the fact that’ can be replaced with ‘because’, ‘since’ or ‘as’. Substitute ‘acknowledge receipt of’ with ‘have received’. Instead of saying ‘opine’ use a less pompous word, such as ‘believe’, ‘think’ or ‘feel’.
Giving chop the chop: The word ‘chop’ is fine if you are thinking of karate chops or lamb chop. But, an immigration officer puts a ‘stamp’ in your passport. You do not ‘fill up’ a form but ‘fill in’ a form. You cannot ‘pass up’ an assignment but you have to ‘hand it in’. You pass up opportunities or offers to do something. The word ‘friend’ is a noun, not a verb. So, it is wrong to say ‘I don’t friend you’ for ‘I don’t wish to be your friend anymore’.

TEXT 4

‘We want speakers to not only speak Mandarin but to speak good Mandarin,’ he said.

He added that a variety of movies ranging from family dramas to romances and thrillers were chosen and that there would be something for everyone.

For the third year running, the campaign slogan is again: ‘Speak Mandarin, it’s an asset’.

TEXT 5

Chinese or English – must one choose? Professor Wee Chow Hou, the English-educated professor who chairs the Promote Mandarin Council, believes the challenges of learning and mastering both are not insurmountable. He speaks to Chua Mui Hoong about the declining standards of the Chinese language and discusses the recent Straits Times survey on the subject.

TEXT 6

THAT Singapore’s mother-tongues are well-entrenched is a sign of this country’s security. For Chinese, Malay and Tamil to have been on the retreat would have constituted an unacceptable breach in its cultural defences. Instead, the vitality of those languages – including Chinese, which has benefited immeasurably from the Speak Mandarin Campaign – attests to the resilience of the multi-lingual basis of multi-racial Singapore. This achievement should not be underestimated. But even success comes at a price. The price may well be the lower standards of English that Singapore is witnessing.

TEXT 7

Gurmit: ‘You won’t catch me saying “don’t pray, pray”.’

TEXT 8

In secondary schools, many students had problems with grammar. Although they would speak English to their teachers, they chose to speak Singlish with their friends.

To prevent an erosion of standards, the Education Ministry is putting teachers through English-language courses to help them teach a new English syllabus.

Parents, supervisors, teachers and others in the community must play their role by setting a good example, he said.

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