ENG3344 World Englishes

Strand III: The ‘Standard English’ debate

I. Read Sir Randolph Quirk’s claims on Jenkins 2015: 65-67. Do you agree with him? Express your
opinions.

II. Study the list of grammatical differences between BrE and AmE (pp. 73-74).

1. Which set of standards do you normally follow, BrE or AmE?

2. Do you mix them up sometimes, or does it matter?
3. How do you decide when to use which?

III. Compare Standard English with the following features of non-standard working class speech
(Stubbs, 1986 in Jenkins, 2009, p. 82). Discuss the following questions with your groupmates and
report your discussion results to the rest of the class:

i. I was, he was, you were, we were, they were

ii. I was, he was, you was, we was, they was (Regularisation of be)

iii. He writes real quickly.

iv. He writes real quick. (Optional -ly on adverbs)

v. twenty years, ten pounds.

vi. twenty year, ten pound. (Unmarked plurality on nouns of measurement after numerals)

1. Does the non-standard working class speech sound less logical or more logical than
Standard English?
2. Do we need to worry about possible misunderstanding or communication
breakdown?
3. Do you envisage that some of the non-standard usage of English will no longer be
considered a dialect marker when sufficient numbers of educated speakers of
English start using them?

IV. Read the ten commandments of texting. Do you agree with the rules? Why or why not?

A teenager submitted an essay entirely written in textspeak to his teacher. Below is an extract of her
essay. Can you make sense of it? If you were the teacher, how many scores would you give the
student for her linguistic creativity, and how many scores would you give her for her sense of
appropriateness?

My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :-@ kids FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8
plc.
Text abbreviations in English, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese

English

btdt been there, done that

c%l cool

cya see ya

CWOT complete waste of time

FTF face to face

jk just kidding

sit stay in touch

thr their, through

yyssw yeah, yeah, sure, sure – whatever

wr were

:-) smile

;-) wink

:-@ screaming

Japanese

39 – san kyu Thank you. 0840 – ohayoo Good morning

*o* surprised

^_^ cute

Mandarin Chinese

3Q – san Q Thank you.

bc – baichi idiot

b4 – bishi despise

mpj – mapijing flatterer

7456 – qi si wo le It was really annoying. (You pissed me off.) 8807701314520 Hug hug
you, kiss kiss you, whole life whole life I

love you.