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РефератыЯзыковедение (153)Canadian English
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Скачан: 218 Добавлен: 23.12.2006 English is the second most widely spoken language in the world. It is the official language of The United Kingdom, Ireland, The United States, Herbert Agar wrote in his article in 1931: “The English should try to cope with their philological ignorance. Another American linguist – John Algeo states in his essay “A “Useful” is the key term in Algeo’s argument, but unfortunately he fails to adequately define in what way these fictions are useful. The only definition of usefulness he offers is this: “without such fictions there can be no linguistics, nor any science. To describe, to explain, and to predict requires that we suppose there are stable things behind our discourse”. This explanation hardly seems to clarify the situation. The claim that the fictions of national Englishes are useful because they are the foundation for linguistics is a tautology that serves more to undermine linguistics than to justify those fictions. Further, Algeo’s point that all science is based on certain necessary fictions is perhaps true, though usually science attempt to resolve known fictions into more stable, at least less fictional truths. Finally, the role of predicting language change hardly seems an essential component of linguistics. Algeo returns to the term “useful” in his conclusion. He suggests that the common practice of equating “English” with UK English, and the English of England in particular, is one of these useful fictions. How or in what way he never makes clear. The suggestion that national boundaries are convenient regional groupings for studying a linguistic community is valid, and perhaps there is some “usefulness” in studying that linguistic community as such provided there is indeed a unique or binding set of linguistic features shared by that group. But by emphasizing Algeo’s remark that “all linguistic varieties are fictions”, we may argue that in certain circumstances, Unique nation, unique language? The fundamental political problem is that a language, or a variety of a language, is too often equated with a nation. Lйandre Bergeron emphasizes this in his Charte de la Langue Quйbйcoise by selecting as an epigraph this sentence by Michelet: “La langue es le signe principal d’une nationalitй” Thus, the desire to create a term such as “Canadian English” is born from a reversing of the process. There is a nation Canada. Therefore there must be a unique language to complement it. The assertion of a national language is an assertion of political existence, as Lйandre Bergeron makes very clear in his introduction to The Quebecois Dictionary (1982). And while many writers on the subject are clear to point out that they are not discussing a Canadian Language, but a “variety of English”, emphasis is placed on the uniqueness of that variety and its geographical integrity, essentially using, or allowing the terms to be used interchangeably. The role of dictionaries and lexicography in this assertion of a national language and thus nationhood is interesting, and as old as Johnson and his desire to enter into “contest with united academies” of France and English in Canada The term “Canadian English” has a pedigree dating back to 1857, at which time the Reverend A. C. Geikie referred to it as “a corrupt dialect growing up amongst our population”. Geikie’s preference was obviously for the British English spoken ‘at home’. In the 1950s and 1960s an awareness of, and a concomitant amount of scholarship, developed that was dedicated to the subject. In 1962 Gage Publishing of Canada began its Dictionary of M. H. Scargill, writing a decade later, structures his book, A Short It is impossible to object to most of the words Scargill presents as According to McDavid, this tendency to over-exaggerate difference vis- а-vis Americans is evident in Scargill’s discussion of pronunciation as well. To cite only one example: he argues that “the phonemic coalescence of such pairs as ‘cot’ and ‘caught’ is not a peculiarly Canadian phenomenon: it occurs in northeastern New England, the Pittsburgh area, much of the Language, nation, and dictionary There have been a great number of accounts recently which question exactly what or whose history is reflected in language change. Literacy was the province of the few, and historical texts represent the writing of a certain exclusive segment of the society. Yet each of the Canadian dictionaries preface their work with a history of the settlement of English . “Foreword”, DCHP, 1967: By its history a people is set apart, differentiated from the rest of humanity… That separateness of experience, in the bludgeoning of the Atlantic waves, the forest overburden of the St. Lawrence valley, the long waterways to the West, the silence of the Arctic wastes, the lonesome horizons of the prairie, the vast imprisonment of the Cordilleras, the trade and commerce with the original Canadians – all this is recorded in our language. . “Introduction”, Gage Canadian Dictionary, 1983,1997: The Gage Canadian Dictionary is thus a catalogue if the things relevant to the lives of Canadians at a certain point in history. It contains, therefore, some clues to the true nature of our Canadian Identity. . J. K. Chambers, “Canadian English: 250 Years in the Making”, Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 1998: In the living language there is a reflection of where we have been and where we are likely to go next, and what we have considered important on the way. It is the codification of our common understanding. These accounts conflate political history and the history of the language, and in doing so leave out significant events and aspects of Separate from this more philosophical problem encountered with the historical implications and assumptions of these Canadian dictionaries, there are other reasons to question their intention and use value. The first is the circumstance of their publishing. Many of the Canadian dictionaries embrace the fact that they are overtly political acts. The firs wave of dictionary publishing came in the late 1960’s, with a push for the DCHP and the Gage Senior Dictionary to be published in time for the The second wave of dictionary publishing comes in the early 1980’s, with Gage refurbishing its Senior Dictionary as the Gage Canadian The current period of the late 1990’s, in which we are witnessing a renewed outburst of dictionary production, is also a period of supposed national identity crisis. Canada narrowly survived politically intact from yet another Quebec referendum in 1995 and increasingly the “Aboriginal question” has risen to the political forefront. Does the inclusion of Consistently inconsistent Speaking reductively, though not necessarily erroneously, the primary use of dictionaries is for consultation in a question of the definition or spelling of a word. It is obvious, from the special mention given in the prefatory material to the dictionaries, that the more famous thorns of The following descriptions are given in the Gage Canadian Dictionary This example illustrates two things. The first is that in a desire for clarification on usage the Canadian dictionaries provide no overt guidance; only through the suggestion of definition placement do they advocate one spelling over another. Thus either version is “correct”. Further it reveals that there is not even consistency between the dictionaries on which spelling is stressed. So is there in fact any pragmatic value in a Canadian Dictionary? The result of the realization of the highly variant nature of Canadian slang Canadian slang as a variation of substandard speech is obvious nowadays. The lexical constituent of Anglo-Canadian slang is very dissimilar. There can be singled out the following units: . Units that are common for American and Canadian Languages, North- Americanisms; . Units, that appeared and are used in USA, but that gradually get into Canadian language; . Units that appeared and are used in Canada, but can be met in American language; . Units that appeared and are used exceptionally in Canada. 1. North-Americanisms: These units appeared in the slang in XIX-XX centuries. They are different in their origin but are gut assimilated by Canadian and American languages. 1.1. Units that were registered first in USA and then in Canada: - Nouns denoting living beings: buff (enthusiast) AE 1930; CdnE 1940; floozie (prostitute) AE 1935, - Nouns denoting inanimate objects: jitney (a cheap taxi) AE 1915, CdnE 1924; beanie (a freshman's cloth cap) AE 1945, CdnE 1946; dump (a pub, a bar) AE 1903, CdnE 1904. - Nouns denoting process: bend (outdoor party, feast) AE 1903, CdnE 1904; shellacking (defeat) - Nouns of material: lightning (cheap whisky) AE 1858, CdnE 1959; weeno (wine). - Collective Nouns: bull (idle talk) AE 1915, CndE 1916; guff (nonsense, lies) AE 1888, 1.2. Units that were first registered in Canada and then in USA: - Nouns denoting living beings: boomer (seasonal worker) CndE 1910, AE 1926; flannel-mouth (smb who is fond of backbiting) CdnE 1910, AE 1912. - Nouns denoting inanimate objects: bug (a small automobile) CdnE 1919, AE 1920; jolt (a mouthful of alcohol drink) CdnE 1900, AE 1920. - Nouns denoting process: hush-hush (confidential talk) CdnE 1940, AE 1950; fakery(insincere behavior) CdnE 1912, AE 1925. - Collective Nouns: bushwa(h) (nonsense, rubbish) CdnE 1916, AE 1924. It should be mentioned that the nouns with expressive meaning are easier borrowed from American into Canadian and vice versa: gunsel (murderer) CdnE 1950, AE 1951; split (sharing of the profit) AE 2. Units that appeared and are used in USA, but that gradually get into Canadian language: - Nouns denoting living beings: eager-beaver (boarder) AE, the beginning of the XX cent; CdnE 1950; fink (unpleasant person) AE 1925; CdnE 1965. - Nouns denoting inanimate objects: Doodad (a thing for reminding about smth) AE 1900; CdnE 1931. 3. Units that appeared and are used in Canada, but can be met in These units were not well spread, because: a) there were American equivalents for the Canadian words: noodle, CdnE: nut, AE (head); b) this word appeared in the language later, than its equivalent: fink (strike-breaker, blackleg) AE, CdnE 1925. In this part of lexis a great influence of American on Canadian language, but not vice versa, is evident. Canadian units are often of the regional nature, so they are twice called in question before getting into the American variant. 4. Units that appeared and are used exceptionally in Canada. The common Canadian slang can be subdivided into two groups: the common slang that is described in the previous points and the professional slang of the following professions: - railway men’s slang: pig (locomotive), plug(a small train); - musicians' slang: canary (a female singer), to blow(to play); - military slang: Joe boy (a recruit) , moldy(torpedo); - sport slang: rink-rat (a boy, cleaning the rink),arena rat(fan, supporter); - criminal argot: pod (cigarette with narcotic), skokum house So, we can say that Canadian slang is a very complicated system that unites chronologically different layers of the American and Canadian slang. And in the whole it is a new and quite original system that doesn't copy either American or British system. This system appeared due to the co- operation of all these systems and the national tendencies. In conclusion we could mention with the statement of Walter Avis who wrote in his essay “Canadian English” which introduces the Gage dictionaries, that “unfortunately, a great deal of nonsense is taken for granted by many 1. Putiatina E, Bystrova P. English on Linguistics and crosscultural communication. Surgut, 2001, 334pp. 2. John Agleo. The myth of Canadian English. English Today 62, Volume 16, Number 2, April 2000, pp.3-9. 3. М.В. Бондаренко. Системные характеристики вокабуляра англоканадского сленга (на материале имен существительных). ocially, or politically. |
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