The Development of American English

(The video ‘Pioneers, O Pioneers!’, from the series The Story of English, will be screened: here is a guide sheet. You should try to fill in the right-hand column whilst viewing the video.)

The spread of English to other parts of the world can be seen as a very important first step towards globalisation. In general, the spread has been through settlement and colonisation. Salikoko Mufwene considers both of these falling under the label colonisation, so he talks of settlement colonies and exploitation colonies. English was spread through both kinds of colonies, producing different resultant varieties. In settlement colonies, large numbers of English speakers moved to places like North America (the USA and Canada), Australia, New Zealand and (to a certain extent) South Africa. (Some might also want to consider the case of Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well.) In exploitation colonies, English use filtered down slowly as education in the English language began to be introduced, initially to train a portion of the local population to be clerks in the colonial administration where the working language was English – this is true of the nations in the former British Empire, including Asian (Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Burma, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), African (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe) and Central American (Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Guyana) nations. We also need to include the Philippines which was a former colony not of Britain but of the USA.

The imperialist enterprise from around the 16th century signals the beginning of a whole new economy where the aim wasn’t self-sufficiency but surplus and profit. Goods and labour were sought from all over the globe and all the Western European nations were involved in this. We have already mentioned Britain; the Spanish took over almost all of South America (which accounts for the spread of the Spanish language); the Portuguese controlled Brazil (which is why Portuguese is spoken there), and were in India, Sri Lanka and Malacca for a time; the French were in Indo-china, Africa and North America (which is why French continues to be spoken in Quebec and a few other places in North America); the Dutch were in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malacca; and the Belgians were in parts of Africa.

Here, though, we will focus on North America (particularly the USA) as our case study for English spread through settlement colonies.

The first expedition of the British to North America in 1584 proved to be a failure, given that they were ill prepared for the new environment. In 1607 the first colony was established in Jamestown in Virginia (the state was named after Elizabeth I, the virgin queen). (It might also be useful to remember that this is around the time of Shakespeare’s writing, so the English that the settlers would have used then would be a kind of Shakespearian English.) Others followed, notably the group on board the Mayflower, who became known as the ‘pilgrim fathers’ of America, and settled in Plymouth in Massachusetts in 1620. New colonies were being added until there were 13 colonies in 1733 – all on the east coast of the continent.

Many of the early English settlers were trying to escape various forms of religious persecution in Europe as a result of the Reformation, so that there were many Puritans and Catholics.

The English were not the only Europeans there at that time. The French were already there in the north and north-west and the Dutch were in the west. Subsequently, other groups began to enter North America:

· black slaves were brought in by force to work the plantations in the South

· the Irish moved to America, particularly after the potato famine (1846–50) – photo on the right

· the Scots

· the Germans, Italians and Scandinavians

· the Jews (from Russia and Central Europe, particularly when they faced persecution)

· the Hispanics (Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc. who were escaping bad economic conditions)

And of course it must be remembered that when America was ‘discovered’ and ‘settled’, the continent was not completely devoid of people – the so-called (Red) ‘Indians’ (the proper term these days is ‘Native Americans’) were already there.

We must, however, remember that before the 19th century, the majority of immigrants to North America were English-speakers. This was the pattern to be repeated in Australia where British immigration continued under the ‘White Australia’ policy, despite the obvious proximity of Asian nations.

For a fuller account of the patterns of immigration to the US, go to this webpage: http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0699/ijse/portrait.htm. (This is, of course, a celebratory account from the USIS perspective.)

Given the various influences on and inputs into English in America, we might be forgiven in thinking that English America would become very divergent. There were so many different social groups with their own distinct cultures and languages (French, German, Dutch, Italian, Yiddish, African languages, Native American languages). In addition, as a result of American English (AmE) becoming different from British English (BrE), it would also become distinct. There were differences in the landscape, in the make-up of the population, in the political systems, in the economic activities.

But these do not seem to have been the case. Why not?

Lack of diversity

Randolph Quirk states: ‘the image of a uniform American English sharply contrasting as a whole with any part of the extremely heterogeneous English of Britain is one that has seemed soundly based for more than two centuries by observers in both communities’ (The English Language and Images of Matter)

And here is Baugh & Cable: ‘It has repeatedly been observed, in the past as well as at the present day, especially by travellers from abroad, that the English spoken in America shows a high degree of uniformity. Those who are familiar with the pronounced dialectal differences that mark the popular speech of different parts of England will know that there is nothing comparable to these differences in the United States’ (A History of the English Language, 1993, p. 350).

There are three broad varieties corresponding with 3 broad areas:

• East - ‘clipped’ (whatever that means)
• West - ‘broader’ (whatever that means)
• South - influenced by Black speech

(If you’d like to explore American dialects, go to: http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialhome.html, or for a more technical site, try http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/.

If you’d like to listen to different accents of American English, try http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US8/REF/samples.html.)

Given that the initial Puritan settlers from England were mainly middle class people, who aspired:

(a) to rid themselves of the controls of the old order of society, with its aristocracy based on birth, inherited privilege, etc.

(b) to have free rein to pursue their economic goals, self-advancement, etc.
they had anti-élitist and individualistic attitudes, and could be expected not to want to conform to the ways of the old country.

Lack of divergence

Here is Quick again: ‘extraordinary unanimity . . . exists over the bulk of the language (p. 30). And Marckwardt: AmE shows great similarities with British English in ‘grammatical structure and syntax – essentially the operational machinery of the language’ (A.H. Marckwardt, American English).

The divergences are minor. ‘[T]here has been little divergence of British and American English. Many of the indubitable linguistic differences between a given American and a given Briton are individual differences, social differences, or differences that reflect dialectal variation within one or other community: they often do not, in other words, reflect differences between British and American English as such’ (Quirk, p. 26).

Compare this also to the differences in the various Chinese dialects that are not mutually intelligible. We might, arguably, also claim that the divergence between Malaysian Malay and Indonesian Malay are greater than that between BrE and AmE. And the communities who speak these varieties of Malay and varieties of Chinese are not a geographically separated as Britatin and North America!

Try the following websites devoted to detailing the differences between British and American English. Some are really quite comprehensive!

• http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict.html
• http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/american.html
• http://www.effingpot.com/

We can look at some of the usual lists of vocabulary differences between AmE (bottom) and BrE (top).

anticlockwise	anywhere	aubergine	autumn	bath	beige	bill
counter-clockwise	anyplace	eggplant	fall	bathtub	tan	check

biscuits	bookshop	boot	Bowler hat	braces	car	caretaker
cookies	bookstore	trunk	Derby hat	suspenders	automobile	janitor

chemists, pharmacy	chips	crisps	dustbin	ground floor	hire out
drugstore	French fries	chips	trash can	ground floor, first floor	rent out

lift	luggage	note	petrol	post	postcode	pram
elevator	baggage	bill	gas(oline)	mail	zip code	baby carriage

rubber	railway line	spanner	suspenders	towards
eraser	railroad tracks	wrench	garters	toward

But note that many of the items are ‘transparent’ to the other users (eg towards v. toward; bookshop v. bookstore). In some others, the distinctions are not that clear cut – for example, in the UK, there are the Automobile Association (AA) and the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), and the general word in America is still ‘car’. Americans use ‘biscuit’ for a kind of savoury bread (a more buttery version of scone), and the British use ‘cookies’ to refer to soft, sweet biscuits. Americans use ‘aubergine’ to refer to the colour purple in clothes. Americans talk about the parcel post and the British talk about airmail letters.

Some of the differences in tendencies are to do with changes over time – it is not true to say that BrE is always more conservative than AmE. The OED states that fall is ‘In N. Amer. the ordinary name for autumn; in England now rare in literary use, though found in some dialect’; the term was certainly available in Shakespeare’s time, but has in general been replaced by the French loan-word autumn in the UK. And of course, in North America, autumn is available as an alternative for fall. In the UK ‘bathtub’ is a little old fashioned; this never went out of fashion in North America. Other items of AmE that are now considered old fashioned or dialectal in Britain include deck (‘pack’) of cards, mad (‘angry’), pitcher (‘jug’), platter (‘dish’).

Reasons for the lack of diversity and divergence

Some of the reasons given can be in terms of ‘natural’ tendencies in such circumstances.

· accent levelling could have occurred because of the mixed population; it was less easy to preserve distinctive features

· there was comparative uniformity in the early settlers’ speech, since it had a ‘larger than average proportion of educated use’ and reflected the tendency ‘for educated people to have a concept of standard English transcending regional dialects’ (Quirk, p. 4)

· there was a strong emphasis on education from the start and an institutionalised education system began early – and this discouraged diversity

• AmE developed at a time when there was population mobility, facilitated by the rapid growth of communications (railways, etc.), which made distinctive dialects and accents difficult to maintain.

The ‘Melting Pot’ ideology

In 1783, J Hector St John Crevecoeur asked, ‘What, then, is the American, this new man?’ and then proposed the following answer: ‘He is neither a European nor the descendant of a European… Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.’ Hence, the melting pot ideology. The idea was for immigrants to be assimilated to the dominant culture to give rise to a new resultant culture. Yet, interestingly, American culture and language contain a lot of Anglo-Saxon features. There is therefore an interesting two-sidedness in the development of AmE, where certain ideals are given in the rhetoric which do not quite match the reality.

For instance, we can think of the rhetoric of individual self-realisation, initiative, opportunity, rights, open-endedness, pluralism, democracy, freedom, anti-élitism, in contrast to supposed British and/or European attitudes. Yet in spite of this, differences were ironed out under the pressure of a common enterprise whose nature was essentially determined by the original dominant New England settlers driven by economic goals and interests. The Native American perspective, for example, is not particularly central in general American consciousness; and apart from the inclusion of some items like wigwam and totem pole, Native American languages have not influenced American English and of course it is English that is the de facto national or official language of the US.

From the beginning, there was ‘an experience of struggle and difference’ which needed to be ‘erased’ in pursuit of an image of unity and solidarity for the survival of which ‘certain interests had to be excluded or co-opted’ (David Simpson, The Politics of American English). 

During the 150 years between settlement and Independence, the dominant groups at the helm of the creation of this new society were afflicted by insecurities.

• uncertain environment, challenges, dangers
• difference and diversity were a major problem

These could constitute obstacles to the pursuit and achievement of their economic and political goals. Therefore, they looked for a common language on ‘national’ principles to establish solidarity and unity and to preserve the socio-economic system, within which they had the dominant role.

This represented a move towards homogeneity and uniformity based on the interests of the powerful – the melting pot concept, whereby individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, and this was achieved through assimilation, homogenisation, and also elimination of rivals.

The result then was the establishment of the hegemony of the powerful groups – a new kind of ‘aristocracy’, based now not on birth (as in the case of the old aristocracy they had resisted), but on wealth, power, and individual initiative and enterprise.

Episodes in the history of America that support this perspective include the following.

1. Elimination and marginalisation of pre-existing populations: Many of the Native Indian population were killed and their lands appropriated by force. The other Europeans such as the French and Spanish who were already in some of the territories which America incorporated, were marginalised or pushed out. We might also note the present continuation of this process through the very recent English Only Movement.

2. Political and linguistic independence from Britain: The American Revolution or the War of American Independence (1775–83) was a challenge to the political and economic hegemony of Britain. The dominant groups in America affirmed their political dominance within the country, which showed itself linguistically in the assertion of linguistic independence.

From very early times, there had been negative evaluations of American usage in Britain: word forms such as bluff, lengthy, belittle, placate, antagonise and presidential were ridiculed. Dr Johnson (1756) talks about ‘the American dialect, a tract (= process) of corruption to which every language widely diffused must always be exposed’.

Initially, Americans imported all their books from Europe, and the Old World was seen as the repository of civilisation and greatness. The Declaration of Independence (1776), however, was the culmination of a reaction against that kind of attitude, so that a strong, sometimes belligerent patriotism arose. This was seen clearly in the person of Noah Webster (1756–1843). He began as a lawyer but later turned to teaching, where he quickly became dissatisfied with the materials then available. In 1806, he produced a small Dictionary, and the large American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828.

In 1789, in his Dissertations on the English Language, he declared, ‘As an independent nation our honour requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, should no longer be our standard. . . . . A national language is a band of national union. Every engine should be employed to render the people of this country national; to call their attachment home to their own country; and to inspire them with the pride of national character.’ There was a strong concern on how to pull together the thirteen colonies to form a unified nation.

3. Perception of linguistic diversity as an obstacle to political and cultural unity: After the retreat of the British, attention turned explicitly to the internal problems: that of a lack of unity. Difference, variety were seen as a problem, generating instability, a threat to civil society within which the position of the dominant group was otherwise assured. Language was seen as having a role in all of this. Linguistic discord was seen to lead to social discord, whereas drawing together all the various strands into a dominant strand, a ‘common language’ was seen as a way of achieving internal unity.

Which variety then should serve as this ‘common language’ or standard language? What is interesting is that whereas the early Webster sounded the clarion call for differentiation from English in Britain, this was tempered by 1828 (after residence for a year in England), when he said, ‘It is not only important, but, in a degree necessary, that the people of this country, should have an American Dictionary of the English Language; for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences must exist.’

Whilst he still asserts difference, he also concedes that ‘it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness’, so that the ‘common language’ should not be too divergent from standard British English. Thus, Webster, the nationalist, abandons some of his earlier recommendations for spelling in his Dictionary: bred, tuf, tung, thum, iland, wimmin. He also urged for <k> to be used for character and chorus; for ee to be used in mean, speak, grieve and key. Most of the differences are to do with spelling.

BRITISH	AMERICAN
axe	ax
centre	center
cheque (as in cashing a cheque)	check
colour	color
defence	defense
dialogue	dialog or dialogue
honour	honor
mould	mold
omelette	omelet
plough	plow
programme (except computer programs)	program
theatre	theater or theatre
through	through or (informal) thru

4. The establishment of a standard based on the usage of the educated class: This standard was based on the usage of the ‘well-educated yeomanry’ of New England (yeoman = a farmer who owns and works his land), who ‘speak the most pure English now known in the world’ not the ‘illiterate peasantry’, but ‘substantial independent freeholders, masters of their own persons and lords of their own soil’ are the standard bearers.  The usage selected is the usage, essentially, of the property-owning, educated class of New England and the Virginia groups of settlers, i.e. the most powerful in society. These become the dominant white middle class group, and the usage of this class is taken to define the favoured American English usage.

5. The British orientation of the standard selected: The standardising impulse was expressed around the ‘central (British) tradition’ which was retained far more ‘than is commonly supposed to.’ (G.P. Krapp, The English Language in America). The usage of these dominant groups was predominantly influenced by south-eastern British speech, which formed the basis of Standard British English – ‘Many of the principal immigrants to this country were educated at the English universities’ (Webster 1836). The establishment of the education system in America almost at the very start reinforced this orientation. The widely-held idea that the development of the standard language in America should be in the hands of great writers, an authoritative ‘senatorial class of men of letters’, who by developing the language in the desired manner would guard it against the ravages of populism and the interventions of those who needed to be kept out (Simpson, p. 47). But such a group of writers was not believed to have yet come into being. Therefore, there was no alternative but to go to the established British standard, the further advantage of which was that it was itself the dialect of the dominant middle class in England.

Therefore,

• Webster: ‘The body of the language is the same as in England and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness.’
• John Adams: British and Americans must together ‘force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way’
• Washington Irving (1851): ‘any deviations on our part from the best London usage will be liable to be considered as provincialism’

Have a look at Washington Irving’s well-known tale of Rip Van Winkle (published in 1820 as part of The Sketch Books of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.) and consider the kind of English he used: http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/rvw.htm

When you’re ready to take the quiz based on this topic, go to the IVLE page and click on ‘Assessment’ on the left, and then on ‘American English’.

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