Lecture 8. Stylistic varieties of english
Issues of the lecture:
1) Phonostylistics as a branch of phonetics.
2) The notion of the phonetic norm.
3) Speech styles and functional styles.
4) Functions of language and functional styles.
· Informational Style
· Academic style (Scientific).
· Publicistic style (Oratorial).
· Declamatory style (Artistic).
· Conversational style (Familiar).
5) Slang and register.
Things to pay special attention:
Classifications of functional styles.
There have been several classifications of speech styles suggested by phoneticians, although no generally accepted one has been worked out and the peculiarities of different styles have not yet been sufficiently investigated.
D.Jones distinguishes as notable among different styles of pronunciation the rapid familiar style, the slower colloquial style, the natural style used in addressing a fair-sized audience, the acquired style of the stage, and the acquired style used in singing.
Academician L.V.Scerba believed there has to be distinguished a great variety of speech styles, in accordance with the great variety of different social occasions and situations, but for the sake of simplicity he suggested that only two styles of pronunciation should be distinguished:
1) colloquial style characteristic of people’s quite talk;
2) full style, which we use when we want to make our speech especially distinct and, for this purpose, clearly articulate all the syllables of a word.
The full style of pronunciation should not be identified with spelling pronunciation. The full formal style is NOT completely free from the weak forms of structural words (e.g. auxiliary verbs, etc.) or from all kinds of assimilations characteristic of both the careful colloquial and rapid familiar styles of pronunciation.
Style is depth, deviations, choice, context style restricted linguistic variation, style is the man himself (Buffon).
According to Galperin the term ‘style’ refers to the following spheres:
1) the aesthetic function of language (it may be seen in works of art- poetry, imaginative prose, fiction).
2) synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea (possibility of using different words in similar situations is connected with the question of style).
3) expressive means in language (employed mainly in the following spheres – poetry, fiction, colloquial speech).
4) emotional coloring in language (e.g. declaration of love, funeral oration, poems (verses)).
5) a system of special devices called stylistic devices (e.g. She wears ‘fashion’ = what she wears is fashionable or is just the fashion (methonimy)).
6) the individual manner of an author in making use the individual style of speaking, writing must be investigated with the help of common rules and generalization.
Galperindistinguishes five styles in present-day English:
I. Belles Lettres ( беллетристика)
1. Poetry
2. Emotive prose
3. The Drama
III. Publicistic Style
1. Oratory and Speeches
2. The Essay
3. Articles
IV. Newspapers
1. Brief News Items (короткие новости)
2. Headlines
3. Advertisements and Announcements (объявления)
4. The Editorial (редакторская статья)
V. Scientific Prose
VI. Official Documents
Arnold’s classification consists of four styles:
1. Poetic style
2. Scientific style
3. Newspaper style
4. Colloquial style
Arnold insists on the validity of the ‘newspaper style’ theory. She says that the specificity of mass media make acknowledgement of newspaper style, as one of functional style.
In the handbook by Morokhovsky, Vorobyova, Likhosherst, they give following classification of style:
1. official business style
2. scientific – professional style
3. publicistic style
4. literary colloquial style
5. familiar colloquial style
Kozhina lists type-forming and socially significant spheres of communication as follows:
1) official
2)scientific
3) artistic
4) publicistic
5) of daily intercourse (=colloquial).
Just as in some of the above classification we can doubt the validity of treating separately (and thus opposing) the artistic (belles-lettres) and the publicistic spheres. Not only writers of poetry or fiction, but publicists and orators as well make abundant use of ornament and expressive means of language - tropes and figures first and foremost.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Literature:
1) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Кантер Л.А., Крылова Н.И. Практическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. –М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2003.- С.239-280.
2) Васильев В.А. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. - М: «Высшая школа», 1969.- С. 60-62; 68-69.
3) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Кантер Л.А., Крылова Н.И. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. –М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2004.- с.18-31, 100-111.
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LECTURE 9. TERRITORIAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
Issues of the lecture:
1) The notion of the language standard.
2) Traditional and mainstream dialects.
3) The British variants of English pronunciation.
a) The Southern British type of English pronunciation.
b) Northern English
c) Standard English of Scotland
4) American variants of English pronunciation.
a) The Eastern type
b) The Southern type
c) Western (General) American pronunciation (GA).
5) Canadian, Australian & New Zealand Pronunciation.
Things to pay special attention:
DEFINING DIALECT
(Wolfram, Dialects and American English, p. 2-4)
Professional students of language typically use the term dialect as a neutral label to refer to any variety of a language which is shared by a group of speakers. Languages are invariably manifested through their dialects, and to speak a language is to speak some dialect of that language. In this technical usage, there are no particular social or attitudinal evaluations of the term (no "good" or "bad"); it is simply how we refer to any language variety that typifies a group of speakers within a language.
While linguists accept this technical definition of the term, happily arguing about what forms belong to a particular dialect or how two dialects differ, non-specialists tend to use dialect in a somewhat different sense.
One popular use of the term dialect refers to those who simply speak differently from the local, native community of speakers. Another common use of the term refers to those varieties of English whose features have, for one reason or another, become recognized throughout our society. The society at large recognizes a "southern drawl" or a "Boston accent." In other words, if the variety contains features that are generally acknowledged and commented about by the society as a whole, then it may be recognized as a dialect even by the speakers themselves. If someone keeps telling you that you speak a dialect, after a while, you start to believe that you do.
In the most extreme case, dialect is used to refer to a kind of deficient or "broken" English. In this case, dialect is perceived as an imperfect attempt to speak "correct" or "proper" English. If, for example, members of a socially disfavored group produce a structure such as His ears be itching instead of His ears are itching, it is assumed that they have attempted to produce the Standard English form but failed. The result is incorrectly perceived as a "deviant" or "deficient" form of English. Based on the careful examination of such forms, dialectologists take the position that dialects are not deviant forms of language, but simply different systems, with distinct subsets of language patterns.
This particular use of dialect has strong negative connotations, as many of the popular uses of dialect do. Without qualification, the popular use of the term dialect carries connotations ranging from mildly to strongly negative.
Finally, the term dialect often serves as an indirect label for a particular socially disfavored variety of English. A person speaking a recognized, socially stigmatized variety of English may be said to speak "the dialect". Such designations have, for example, been used to refer to the speech of low-income Afro-Americans, as a kind of euphemistic label for this variety. In this sense, with the definite article, "the dialect" behaves more like a proper noun. Notice that people would not refer to a socially acceptable variety as the dialect.
DIALECT MYTHS AND REALITY
(Wolfram, Dialects and American English, pp. 4-5)
Following are some of myths contrasting with linguistic reality:
MYTH: A dialect is something that someone else speaks.
REALITY: Everyone who speaks a language speaks some dialect of the language; it is not possible to speak a language without speaking a dialect of the language.
MYTH: Dialects always have highly noticeable features that set them apart.
REALITY: Some dialects get much more attention than others; the status of speaking a dialect, however, is unrelated to public commentary about its special characteristics.
MYTH: Only varieties of a language spoken by socially disfavored groups are dialects.
REALITY: The notion of dialect exists apart from the social status of the language variety; there are socially favored as well as socially disfavored dialects.
MYTH: Dialects result from unsuccessful attempts to speak the "correct" form of a language.
REALITY: Dialect speakers learn their language by mimicking members of their speech community who speak the same variety, not by failing in their attempts to mimic speakers of the standard variety.
MYTH: Dialects inherently carry negative social connotations.
REALITY: Dialects are not necessarily positively or negatively valued; their social values are derived strictly from the social position of their community of speakers.
!!!!!!!As we see, the popular uses of the term dialect strongly reflect the attitudes about dialect differences which have developed in the United States over the centuries. Whether or not we choose to use a currently neutral term as a euphemism for dialect, such as language difference, language variety, or language variation, we still have to confront the mismatch between the public perception of linguistic diversity and the linguistic reality. In fact, given the popular attitudes about dialect diversity, there is a good chance that whatever euphemism we use for the term dialect will eventually take on the kinds of connotations that dialect currently holds.
Received Pronunciation (RP)
RP was for many years the accent of British English usually chosen for the purposes of description and teaching, in spite of the fact that it is only spoken by a small minority of the population; it is also known as the "public school" accent, and as "BBC pronunciation". There are clear historical reasons for the adoption of RP as the model accent: in the first half of this century virtually any English person qualified to teach in a university and write textbooks would have been educated at private schools: RP was (and to a considerable extent still is) mainly the accent of the privately educated. It would therefore have been a bizarre decision at that time to choose to teach any other accent to foreign learners. It survived as the model accent for various reasons:
- one was its widespread use in "prestige" broadcasting, such as newsreading;
- secondly, it was claimed to belong to no particular region, being found in all parts of Britain (though in reality it was very much more widespread in London and the south-east of England than anywhere else);
- and thirdly, it became accepted as a common currency - an accent that (it was claimed) everyone in Britain knows and understands. Some detailed descriptions of RP have suggested that it is possible to identify different varieties within RP, such as "advanced", or "conservative". Another suggestion is that there is an exaggerated version that can be called "hyper-RP". But these sub-species do not appear to be easy to identify reliably. There is an opinion is that RP was a convenient fiction, but one which had regrettable associations with class and privilege, so the BBC accent is treated as the best model for the description of English.
BBC pronunciation
The British Broadcasting Corporation is looked up to by many people in Britain and abroad as a custodian of good English; this attitude is normally only in respect of certain broadcasters who represent the "official" voice of the Corporation, such as newsreaders and announcers, and does not apply to the "unofficial" voices of people such as disc-jockeys and chat-show presenters (who may speak as they please). The high status given to the BBC's voices relates both to pronunciation and to grammar, and there are listeners who write angry letters to the BBC or the Radio Times to complain about "incorrect" pronunciations such as "loranorder" for "law and order". Although the attitude that the BBC has a responsibility to preserve some imaginary pure form of English for posterity is extreme, there is much to be said for using the "official" BBC accent as a standard for foreign learners wishing to acquire an English accent. The old standard "RP" is based on a very old-fashioned view of the language; the present-day BBC accent is easily accessible and easy to record and examine. It is relatively free from class-based associations and it is available throughout the world on the Overseas Service of the BBC. The BBC nowadays uses quite a large number of speakers from Celtic countries (particularly Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and the description of "BBC Pronunciation" should not be treated as including such speakers. The Corporation has its own Pronunciation Unit, but contrary to some people's belief its function is more to advise on the pronunciation of foreign words and of obscure British names than to monitor pronunciation standards. Broadcasters are not under any obligation to consult the Unit, and in addition, the BBC now obliges broadcasters to pay for consulting it.
Estuary English
Many learners of English have been given the impression that this is a new accent of English. In reality, there is no such accent, and the term should be used with care. The idea originates from the sociolinguistic observation that some people in public life who would previously have been expected to speak with a BBC (or RP) accent now find it acceptable to speak with some characteristics of the accents of the London area (the Estuary referred to is the Thames estuary), such as glottal stops, which would in earlier times have caused comment or disapproval.
Oxford accent
Some writers on English accents have attempted to subdivide "Received Pronunciation" into different varieties. Although the "Oxford accent" is usually taken to be the same thing as RP, it has been suggested that it may differ from that, particularly in prosody. There seems to be no scientific evidence for this, but the effect is supposed to be one of dramatic tempo variability, with alternation between extremely rapid speech on the one hand and excessive hesitation noises and drawled passages on the other. This is all rather fanciful, however, and should not be taken too seriously; if the notion has any validity, it is probably only in relation to an older generation.
Public school accent
Foreigners often find it difficult to grasp the fact that in Britain, so-called public schools are private schools, and are used almost exclusively to educate the children of the wealthy. They are one of the strongest forces for conservatism and the preservation of privilege in British society, and one of the ways in which they preserve traditional conventions is to encourage in their pupils the use of "Received Pronunciation" (RP). For this reason, RP is sometimes referred to as "public-school accent".
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Literature:
1) Васильев В.А. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. - М: «Высшая школа», 1969.- С. 36-42.
2) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Кантер Л.А., Крылова Н.И. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. –М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2004.- с.247-283.
3) Дикушина О.И. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. – М.: Просвещение, 1965. – С.185-201.
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OUTLINE OF SEMINARS.