Standardization of English in the Eighteenth Century - Essay Example

History of English Standardisation has both advantages and disadvantages for the language and its users. Discuss these, starting with the first period of standardisation in English in the Wessex of King Alfred. Why and how was the standardisation of English achieved in the eighteenth century? What historical events promote standardisation? (You may include here material on standardisation of other languages, e.g. Tok Pisin, or even French...if this material illuminates the last question) Standardisation is a broad term and in language its connotations are vast. Standardisation is possible when something is static or in the case of manufacturing standards it has to reach a certain level of attainment. Standardisation of language is also only possible when the language in question stops growing or evolving to form newer words or sounds and stabilises into a form that all can understand in a given area. However this is not possible as the language of law, of science, of debate, of medicine of speaking is different. Standardisation therefore just refers to the language that is used in one nation, for delivering a speech in that language to an audience that may or may not understand it, for purpose of the courts, for law making and most importantly for writing and documentation. Standardisation therefore could mean the language that was used for specific purposes mainly official or as spoken in the court of the rulers of England and not how it was spoken by a standard number of people during the time when the standard was made. According to Peter Trudgill standardisation consists of the processes of language determination, codification and stabilisation where language determination is the language used for a particular purpose, codification occurs when it is publicly recognised in a particular form and stabilisation occurs when the forms are fixed” (1) When Alfred King of Wessex first coined the word English it was so to make it a distinct from the other languages that abounded at that time in England. It had its advantages as for the first England emerged as a nation and the term meant all the people who speak the same language in the area that was ruled by King Alfred Wessex. As the revival for learning took place Bede’s History of The English Language was translated from Latin. Could this then be termed as the first step towards standardisation of the language? Definitely it was a step towards a political unification of a country that comprised of people who spoke various West German dialects. All written languages are in a continuous state of change and development and the 5th and 12th century Old English was no different so we could say that OE was a stage in the development in a generalised way. However for the purpose of writing the West Saxon dialect of the 10th and 11th century was used which became the standard form for the written language till the Norman Conquest. Now the West Saxon system of spelling and punctuation was no longer used (2). In fact the effect of the arrival of the Danes changed only the spoken language and no the written one and therefore no traces of Norse can be found in the Standard English even today. The date 1066 is one that is a date in the history of England that can be easily remembered. It is the date when the Normans conquered England and the influences lasted for over three centuries. Anglo Norman now became the Standard English used by the rulers, the court, the administration and anyone who wanted a relationship with the upper echelons of society. Perhaps it is from this that the derivation of Standard English as a language of privilege came to be sustained. Middle English changed and took on a simpler form. Latin was used in the churches and in schools and English was relegated to the position of a non-written language. Thousands of words were borrowed from Latin and French and infused into the English of the time. The vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar all had a profound change which seemed then evolved into the Middle English and hence to the modern English with which we are familiar. Between the late 14th and 16th centuries, the English language began increasingly to take on more functions. These changes in function had, it is argued here, a major effect on the form of English: so major, indeed, that the old distinction between 'Middle' and 'modern' retains considerable validity, although the boundary between these two linguistic epochs was obviously a fuzzy one." (3) Standardisation is shown not to be linear, unidirectional or ‘natural’ development, but a set of processes which occur in a set of social spaces, developing at different rates in different registers in different idiolects (4). The West Saxon standard texts were the first to see the change in spelling and punctuation. Writers began to use spellings that were close to the pronunciation of their dialect and scribes changed it according to their own and texts were edited according to the ‘best witness’. This shows that the language was again at a development stage and this influence would totally change the spelling of the West Saxon English to one more similar to Modern English. Less writing was done and was eventually abandoned as a result of the impact of Latin in the 12th Century (5). The Anglo Norman gave way to the Anglo French and this became the language of administration. The civil services developed which was responsible for copying the various charters, statuettes, and other government documentation and since these were sent through out the country they contributed to the standardisation of linguistic forms. (6) The Chancery standard became acceptable by the 15th Century and since they followed the stricter Latin and French grammar it influenced the standard. ‘They’ ‘them’ and ‘their’ were used rather than the London dialect ‘hir’ and ‘hem’ in the 1300 hundreds Oxford and Cambridge were established as centres of learning and the towns were close enough to influence the language particularly in setting the spelling standard. The London standard began to permeate and that is why perhaps these two significant events can be said to be the forerunners in setting standards. In1362 the Statute of Pleading makes English the official language in England. Parliament is opened with its first speech delivered in English. At his coronation in 1399, King Henry IV becomes the first English monarch to deliver a speech in English. Later on the Hundred Years War was influential in changing the way the language was re- standardised from the French to the English. The peculiarities of the war that was forced to employ mercenaries paved the way for one language that could be understood by all. William Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and William Caxton’s press are other significant developments that saw a resurgence of English. According to Suzanne Kemmer in ‘A Brief History of English’ printing marks the point where standardisation of English as a national language began to take root. Since printing demanded a standard font and spelling recognisable to all it quickly set the standard like nothing before it. Also with the printing of books education became widespread. The printers were outside the church and they could now set the rules which enabled them to quickly use a norm that suited them to print faster and they soon set the rules that standardised English faster (7) The printing press, the reading habit, and all forms of communication…..actively worked towards a promotion and maintenance of a standard, especially grammar and usage.”(8) During the early modern English changes in syntax and sound began to emerge this period is also know for its ‘Great Vowel Shift’ where the phonetic values of all the long vowels came into being and the subject word order became fixed and the auxiliary system set in (9) Shakespeare wrote his plays and the translation of The King James Bible into English standardised English into a form that is visible today. One element of the Great Vowel Shift was that the vowel in ‘stone’, ‘home’, and ‘road’ is, in Old English, ‘stan’, ‘ham’, ‘rad’. In Middle English, this vowel had moved up to the position now present in Standard Modern English. The words were variously spelled in Middle English as stoon, hoom, rod, stane, hame. Inflection and syntactical developments in this early Modern English are important if somewhat less spectacular than phonological ones. They continue the trend started established during the Middle English times that changed our grammar from a synthetic to an analytical system (10) The 17th and 18th century is replete with events that were taking standardisation of English towards Modern English as we see it today. Aims at 'regularizing grammar' became more and more pronounced in the latter part of the seventeenth century and completly dominated grammatical thinking in the 18th Century The laying down of rules about acceptable usage was now, and especially in the latter half of the eighteenth century, extended to all components of Standard English. In his Essay ‘Upon Projects’ Daniel Defoe calls for the creation of an Academy of authoritative writers “gentlemen” who would set the rules for formal English usage universally. A similar proposal, later in 1712, by Jonathan Swift for the creation of an English Academy to regulate English usage and "ascertain" the language were events that marked the Standardisation of Modern English. By the 18th century dictionary-writing was becoming a recognized activity and scholars such as Nathaniel Bailey publishes his Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, a pioneer study in English lexicography and Elisabeth Elstob published the first Grammar of Old English. However the turning point was the Samuel Johnson’s two volume Dictionary of the English Language. James I was also King of Scotland and the thrones were officially united in 1701 and the expansion of the British Empire abroad took English to America and the West Indies in the 1600s, India in the 1700s and 1800s, Australia in the 1800s, and Africa in the 1800s and 1900s. The Industrial Revolution at home and England’s role as a major economic power became a force of imperialism and so the standard written English took on new words adopted from the countries that were added to the crown. The need for labour to man its many enterprises abroad like plantations forced the native to learn English as the labour class went from continent to continent so did their they mixed their own language into their understanding of English that had no etymology or grammar. Trade that took place all over the world brought in other changes and the English spoken in England took on sounds; grammar and spelling that the native dwellers were able to understand. One such language developed in the Melanesian islands where labour was imported from for the Queensland plantations. Once their contacts ended they returned home with a smattering of languages they had heard in the English speaking world. ‘Tok Pisin’ is different from the other dialects because most of the returned labourers worked in Samoa and all of the New Guinea labourers were from areas where German was more predominant as German plantations were located there. So ‘Tok Pisin’ was adapted from Samoan and German. “After Tok Pisin stabilized, it began to be used for new functions, such as religion, newspapers and radio broadcasting. As its use was extended into these new areas, it changed linguistically to become more complex -- e.g., acquiring more vocabulary and more grammatical rules and inflections. The same thing occurred with Bislama and Pijin. So today Tok Pisin (and Melanesian Pidgin as a whole) is an expanded pidgin. When Papua New Guinea (PNG) was born in 1975, Tok Pisin was recognized in the constitution as an important language of the new country” (11) (Jeff Siegel). The Standard English that we read today has not changed for the last 200 years. Written texts are understood no matter what the accent, there is neutral pronunciation. Spellings that don’t follow standard form look wrong.”(12) (Dennis Freeborn) Notes 1. Peter Trudgill: “Standard English: what it isn’t, Published” 117 in Tony Bex & Richard J. Watts eds. Standard English: the widening debate London: Routledge, 1999, 117-128. 2. Dennis Freeborn, “From Old to Standard English : A Course in Language Variation”, 76.Macmillan Press Limited Great Britain 1998 3. Jeremy J. Smith, "From Middle to Early Modern English." The Oxford History of English, ed. by Lynda Mugglestone. Oxford Univ. Press, 2006 4. Laura Wright, (Editor) “The Development of Standard English 1300-1800 Theories, Description, Conflicts”, 6. Published Cambridge University Press 2000 5. Normal Blake (Editor) in “Introduction” to A Cambridge History of the English Language 1066-1476” by Roger Lass, 10. Cambridge University Press 1992 6. Ibid: 5 7. Suzanne Kemmer, “Spelling and Standardization in English: Historical Overview” published in The History of English, Linguistics/English 395, Spring 2009 http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html 8. Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, “A History of the English Language”. Prentice-Hall, 1978) 9. ibid Kemmer 10. Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, “The origins of the English language”, Harcourt, 1982) 11. Jeff Segel ‘Tok Pisin’ Language Varieties http://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/definitions/tokpisin.html 12. Ibid Freeborn, 77 Read More