Peculiarities of regional varieties of the English language in newspapers in English-speaking countries

English language: history and dialects. Specified language phenomena and their un\importance. Differences between the "varieties" of the English language and "dialects". Differences and the stylistic devices in in newspapers articles, them evaluation.
Краткое сожержание материала:

Размещено на

Размещено на

Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation

North Caucasus State Technical University

Linguistics, Intercultural Communication and Tourism Department

Course Project on Lexicology:

Peculiarities of regional varieties of the English language in newspapers in English-speaking countries

Written by Bogdan Selenginskiy

Supervised by D.K. Novikova

Stavropol, 2011

Contents

Introduction

1. English language: history and dialects

1.1 Language Variant or Dialect

1.2 Standard English

2. Analyzes of English-speaking countries' newspapers

Conclusion

References

Introduction

Despite all investigations in the sphere of regional differences of English language and all the scientists' works, devoted to the problem, the question about regional varieties is still open and demands further investigation. But it seems that it's time to dot the i`s and cross the t`s. In the written work we are intended to give a brief characteristic of some varieties of the English language.

Scientists divide the language into tens of different segments according to social strata of a speaker, gender and many others. In the written work the only division which is valuable for the research is the areal one. Almost all the learners of the English language are acknowledged with the phenomenon. Some of them can even enumerate some of these differences in vocabulary and spelling. But our research is based on the point of view, according to which this division is useless for translators and interpreters as leaners of foreign language.

Facing new and new differences one must just learn them by heart like areal-bound synonyms, variants, and no other way. Thus having no possibility to deny this areal division we've taken an attempt to divide the “varieties” from the other point of view. It is not a secret that a translator and especially an interpreter must be short-spoken informative and easy to understand. These are general features that client demands. So before one becomes an interpreter they study a lot and they need good example of speech patterns to gain experience of good speech-producing. We believe of course that high-brows' speeches and masterpieces of literature are immortal and flawless, but this patterns are too far from the aim of being easy understood.

Well considering the all above we believe that the material for building of the language skills must be wide-spread and actual, it leads us to the newspapers. And here we are to face with the stereotypes: the American are too expressive, the English are too strait-laced and so on. And to find the most informative and easy-to-understand language variant in our research we've compared pieces of articles in order to find out the percentage of non-informative in business communication units they are stylistics devices such as metaphor and euphemisms. They are acceptable for this genre but as our work is intended to help learners, whose dominate preferences is tempo and clarity we consider them as rubbish in the context. But slang expressions are useful and it stands to reason because the one who is not master of metaphor easily can be professional in Brookline slang.

Thus we can formulate the object of the work which is the vocabularies of the English language varieties in newspapers' articles.

The subject is specified language phenomena and their un\importance.

The aim of the work is to demonstrate the areal newspaper among English-speaking countries which is the most valuable example according our arguments.

The aim of the work has determined following tasks:

1. Find out differences between the “varieties” of the English language and “dialects”.

2. Find out the “start point”, what is the Standard English.

3. Find the differences and the stylistic devices in the newspapers.

4. Give them evaluation and decide are they significant enough to consider them a criterion for making the “areal” choice.

Thus we have introduced the problem, its object and subject, the way of its investigation.

I. English language: history and dialects

1.1 Language Variant or Dialect

In fact the English-speaking area is unbelievable vast: it is the first spoken language of such countries as The United States of America, The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa. Such a range of territories and peoples leads to creating several big dialects, which were isolated. As the Internet came into our life the etymological differences began being erased via communication and be united into one big essential and actual vocabulary, which is used. Traditionally the RP was such a container for the rules and “the best” words. Probably it still remains for some proud highbrows and members of Royal family. Nevertheless the division between the “varieties” exists and to describe it we must provide different definitions of the term and compare them.

First of all we decided to present the Russian point of view. According to Ginzburg: “variants of a language are regional varieties of a standard literary language characterised by some minor peculiarities in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms” [12:200]. The definition is lack of logic, because with such way of considering the things we need to outline almost so many varieties of Russian language as many cities the RF has : “regional varieties of a standard literary language characterised by some minor peculiarities in the sound system” they are Stavropol “Гэ”, Moscow “A”, Vologda “O” and so on. Furthermore saying “their own literary norms” the scientist it seems did not realize that almost every country has more than one literary school with its preferences and the result of following the Ginzburg's definition is shown above. We should also say that there is a definition of another phenomenon, it says: “dialects are varieties of a language used as a means of oral communication in small localities, they are set off (more or less sharply) from other varieties by some distinctive features of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary” [12:201]. So it proves our idea: the varieties of the English language can be denied and be considered as dialects, another disadvantage of the definition is the term “small localities” because in this case the UK is small locality while the USA and India big ones.

Another Russian scientist, who tried to shed some light upon the problem, was Arnold. The opinion of the scientist is as follows: “local dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalised literary form” [11:262]. It means if a district has literary norm its total sum of peculiarities can be considered as “variety”, we can prove the idea through the next definition by Arnold: “regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants” [11:262]. Taking into account the globalization and level of the education we can suppose a scenario where more and more authors from different countries can create their works in English creating the kind of literary norm and new and new variants of English what can really overload the lexicology and so on.

Now having acquainted with the Russian scientists' points of view and found them as improbable we can analyze some foreign works.

The way of defining the differences in foreign works is more “smooth” and more accurate. Among all the scientists the most successful definition was introduced by Schneider, who says: “the neutral term that has come to be used normally for such group specific language forms is “a variety.” Any set of language habits that is shared by a certain group of speakers for use in certain contexts constitutes such a variety” [7: 15]. His definition was not careless but just the opposite, he uses such qualities as “neutral term”, and he doesn't point out what are the specified different features: “set of language habits”, such a way is not very accurate and defined but at least error-free one.

The authors point of view is “shrewd” in a way and moreover almost correlates with our position because: “the term is closely related to that of a “dialect,” which also denotes a language form associated with a certain group of people but is usually associated with a given region (hence a “regional dialect”) or a social class or group (a “social dialect”)” [7: 15]. It means that the authors still divides two terms “dialect” and “variety” but the thin boundary between them allows us as we think consider for example American English as dialect but not as variety from the point of view. Another achievement of the definition is binding the areal dialect or variety not to an area but to the people: “a certain group of people”. It is important because a British servant even living in the USA can save up his domestic peculiarities. And even more, the author make a remark, a very notional one: “but is usually associated with a given region”.

Thus we can see the usage of the point of view, presented by foreign scientists: it is not rush and narrow one as definitions presented by our scholars. So having presented several points of view we can say th...