Global English

• Mark Sebba (1990) - Catford Girl’s Posse

  • interviewed British born teenaged with Jamaican parents
  • found code switching, alternate between Caribbean Creole, Cockney, and RP
  • found that London Jamaican evolved due to the language needs of immigrants communities that have settled in England
• Sue Fox (2000) - MEYD

  working class, young people in London don’t speak cockney like their parents but adopt MLE ways of speaking, eg. ‘blud’ = mate
• Sue Fox (2018) attitudes towards MLE

  • conducted an online survey among 800 Londoners
  • MLE speakers favoured MLE in ratings, compared to non-MLE speakers
• Kachru (1992) - 3 circle model

  1. inner circle, English as a first language
  2. outer circle, English as a second language due to colonisation
  3. expanding circle, English is not an official language but is used as lingua franca for trade
• Hockett (1958) - Random Fluctuation Theory

  language changes due to its own instability
• David Crystal (2003) - English as the world‘s leading language

  • English was distributed globally as the language of the British Empire
  • it was the language of the industrial revolution
  • it’s the language of the USA, the world’s remaining super-power
• Schneider (2007) - Dynamic model of post-colonial English

  1. Foundation, English is newly distributed to a geographical area
  2. Exonormative stabilisation, English begins to be used
  3. Nativisation, old and new languages become more closely linked and neologisms occur
  4. Endonormative, the local variety of English is accepted as the norm
  5. Differentiation, new variety reflects local identity and culture
• Rampton (2010)

  • creole seen as cool, tough, and good to use
  • even used by those without a black peer group
  • associated with assertiveness, verbal resourcefulness, competence in sexual relationships, and opposition of authority
• Widdowson (1998)

  • English distributed globally due to colonisation, in a controlled manner with Standard Forms preserved
  • Today, English spreads more naturally and is no longer controlled allowing it to mix with other languages
• creole

  a mother tongue/native language
• pidgin

  a simplified language used for communication between people not sharing a common language
• lingua franca

  a common language used in foreign trade
• Code switching

  switching between languages
• David Starkey

  • 'whites become black...sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion'
  • 'Jamaican patois...that has been intruded in England', he calls it false and by implication foreign (links language, race, class, and behaviour)
• Paul Kerswill

  • Hackney was found to be the poorest Borough in England
  • formation of a close-knit family
  • everyone has a network together
  • interviewed 200 Londoners
  • inner city found to be the 'variety pool'
  • leads to innovation of MLE
• pidgin

  bridging language