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Prescriptivism(e) & Patriotism(e):
Normes linguistiques et identitaires du nationalisme à la mondialisation
Language norms and identities from nationalism to globalization
August 17th – August 19th 2009 Le 17 août – le 19 août 2009
Wilson Hall, New College 40, rue Willcocks street University of Toronto
Canada
P & P 2009
2
Table of Contents / Table des matières Conference Sponsors / Commanditaires du colloque 3 Conference Organizers and Staff / Organisateurs et responsables du colloque 4 Program / Programme 6 Plenary Abstracts / Résumés des séances plénières 15 Abstracts / Résumés 20 Panel Abstracts / Résumés des panels 66 Education event: Language Rules and Pedagogy / Événement destiné aux éducateurs: les règles langagières et la pédagogie 74
P & P 2009
3
Conference Sponsors / Commanditaires du colloque Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)/ Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines (CRSH) University of Toronto: Centre d'Etudes de la France et du Monde Francophone (CEFMF) Jackman Humanities Institute New College (& Principal's Innovation Fund) Faculty of Arts and Science (Office of the Dean Caribbean Studies Program Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies Department of Anthropology Department of English Department of French / Département d'études françaises Department of History Department of Italian Studies Department of Linguistics Department of Political Science University of Toronto at Mississauga: Department of English & Drama University of Toronto Bookstore
Glendon, Université York / York University (Office of the Principal)
Eye Weekly
Nelson Education Ltd.
P & P 2009
4
Conference Organizers and Staff
Organisateurs et responsables du colloque
Comité / Committee Yves Bourque* Département d’Études françaises Professor Anne-Marie Brousseau*+
Département d’Études françaises Professor David Clandfield Département d’Études françaises Professor Paul Cohen Department of History Emanuel da Silva* Département d’Études françaises Professor Mary Catherine Davidson$ Department of English, Glendon, York University George Lamont* Centre for Medieval Studies Professor Carol Percy*$+ Department of English Professor Massimo Sturiale Dipartmento di Filologia Moderna, University of Catania Professor Lionel Wee Department of English Language and Literature, University of Singapore
+ Co-Chairs / Co-Présidentes *Organizers / Organisateurs et organisatrices $Fundraisers / Collectrices de fonds
P & P 2009
5
Student assistants
Assistant(e)s étudiant(e)s Golnesa Amani Beau Brock Geneva Fong Jan Michael Griffiths Christianna Guy Scott Kelly Jocelyne S. Kilpatrick Valerie Le Gemma Lee Alina Lemak Michael Conrad Little Mei-Lan Mamode Christina Miller Marie Nutter Maggie Reid Marissa Sinclair Emily Sugerman Pranav Syal Khadija Vora Christine Yao
Thanks!
Merci! Department of English Administrative Staff (Cristina Henrique, Sangeeta Panjwani, Marguerite Perry), Department of English Research Committee (Heather Murray), New College Administrative Staff (Kathy Carriere, Denise Duhaime), New College Alumni (Brenda Registe, Kerry) and Development (Krishan Mehta) Offices, New College Computer Lab (Sharine Leung), New College Summer Residence (Aldo Sdao, Sagebelle Wu), Aramark (Otilia Kiss, Sandra Amaral), University of Toronto Research Services (Sarah Scott, Fred Zhu), Campus Beverage Services (Clayton Hillis), Holiday Inn Midtown (Sonia Waite), 89 Chestnut Residence (Andrea Nelson), Multi-Faith Centre (Nadir Shirazi), Scotiabank Information Commons Digital Studio (Amanda Wagner), Toronto Convention and Visitor Association (Joseph O’Neill), Toronto Heritage (Nancy Luno), Ian Lancashire, John Percy, Yannick Portebois, Kimberley Yates.
6
Program / Programme The conference will take place at Wilson Hall of New College, University of Toronto. Concurrent sessions will be held in the following rooms: Session A: Wilson 1016 Session B: Wilson 1017
Session C: Wilson 524
Sunday 16th August
• afternoon walking tours (included in conference fee): 2:30 PM & 4:30 PM Monday 17th August
• opening reception (included in conference fee) • Sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Science and New College
o Multi-Faith Centre, 569 Spadina Avenue: 5:15 PM – 7:15 PM o Music: F-Zero (Department of Linguistics House Band)
Wednesday 19th August
• conference banquet (not included in conference fee; optional) o The Eating Garden, 43 Baldwin Street at Beverley: 7:00 PM
Le colloque aura lieu au Wilson Hall de New College à l’Université de Toronto. Les sessions simultanées auront lieu dans les salles suivantes: Session A: Wilson 1016 Session B: Wilson 1017
Session C: Wilson 524
le dimanche 16 août
• visite guidée de la ville, à pied, en après-midi (compris dans le frais d’inscription): 14h30 & 16h30
le lundi 17 août
• réception d’ouverture (comprise dans le frais d’inscription) • Commanditée par: Faculty of Arts and Science and New College
o Multi-Faith Centre, 569, avenue Spadina: 17h15 - 19h15 o Musique: F-Zero (Department of Linguistics House Band)
le mercredi 19 août
• banquet en soirée (non compris dans le frais d’inscription) • The Eating Garden, 43 rue Baldwin: 19h00
P & P 2009
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Musical Programme (F-Zero, U of T Department of Linguistics Band) Programme musical du groupe F-Zero du département de linguistique de l'Université de
Toronto:
Set 1: British Isles 1. Per Oslef/ Hyd y Frwynen 2. Dafydd y Garreg Wen/Autumn Leaves/Morfa’r Frenhinnes 3. Meillionen 4. Three Around Three/Gallopede 5. Greensleeves 6. Star of the County Down 7. Sheebeg Sheemore 8. Huntingtone Castle 9. Scollay’s Reel/Nyth y Gog Set 2: Canada 1. Kelligrew's Soiree/ Arriving to St. John's 2. Hurlin' Down the Pine/Lark in the Morning 3. Farewell to Nova Scotia 4. La Bastringue/ Saint Anne's Reel 5. Reel des voyageurs/Le diable parmi les tailleurs 6. Reel de St. Blandin/Reel de St. Jean 7. The Gallowglass/Growling Old Man and Woman 8. First of May/Fisher’s Reel 9. Red River Jig Set 3: Finnish/Klezmer 1. Maistjaman/Säästöpankki Valssi 2. Finnish Schottische: Jack in the Green 3. Der Trisker Rebn's Chosid 4. Tumbalalaika/Pizni Vesilni Zvuky 5. Terk in Amerika 6. Drohibitser Khosidl 7. A Nakht in Gan Eydn/Fun Der Chupe 8. Devotedly Buoyant at Abos 9. Frejlex 147
Sarah Clarke, violin Elizabeth Cowper, keyboard
Elan Dresher, recorder, harmonica, guitar Daniel Currie Hall, cello, bass
Manami Hirayama, flute Christina Kramer, clarinet
Michael Szamosi, percussion
P & P 2009
9
Banquet (The Eating Garden, 43, rue Baldwin St)
The Appetizer Course:
1. Chicken Wonton Soup
2. Hot and Sour Soup
3. Seafood and vegetable soup
4. Vegetable spring rolls
The Main Course:
5. Salty baked squid
6. General Tao Chicken on a bed of broccoli
7. Beef w/ black pepper
8. Mixed Vegetables
9. Satay seafood with shrimp and other seafood
10. Bean curd with mushroom and vegetables (vegetarian)
11. Baby bok choi
12 . Chicken and Beef Chow Mein (noodles - crispy style).
13. Chicken Fried Rice
14. A large bowl of plain, steamed white rice at every table.
Room
101
6Ro
om 1
017
40 W
illcoc
ks
St. E
ntra
nce
Entra
nce t
o th
e New
Co
llege
Qua
d
Alte
rnat
e En
tranc
e
Stai
rs u
p to
W
ilson
Loun
ge
Stai
rs a
nd E
leva
tor:
Room
s 523
, 524
and
W
ashr
oom
s dow
n on
e flo
or.
Wils
on H
all,
New
Col
lege
(40
Willc
ocks
St.)
PRE
SCR
IPTI
VISM
(E) &
PA
TRIO
TISM
(E) 2
009
- PR
OG
RA
MM
E
11
M
ON
DAY
17
AU
GU
ST –
LU
ND
I 17
AOÛ
T 8:
30 –
16:
00
Reg
istr
atio
n/In
scrip
tion
– W
ilson
Hal
l Lod
ge, N
ew C
olle
ge (4
0 W
illcoc
ks S
treet
) 9:
30 –
9:4
5 O
uver
ture
du
collo
que
par/W
elco
me
by N
ew C
olle
ge, t
he F
acul
ty o
f Arts
and
Sci
ence
, CEF
MF
– W
ilson
Hal
l 101
6
9:45
– 1
0:30
PL
ENA
RY
spon
sore
d by
the
Dep
artm
ent o
f Eng
lish
Wils
on H
all 1
016
Ia
n La
ncas
hire
(Uni
vers
ity o
f Tor
onto
) W
illiam
Cec
il an
d th
e re
ctifi
catio
n of
Eng
lish
10:3
0 –
11:0
0 Pa
use/
Bre
ak –
Wils
on H
all L
oung
e
1A –
Rob
ert P
apen
, pré
side
nt
1B –
Mas
sim
o St
uria
le, p
resi
dent
11:0
0 –
11:3
0 M
atth
ew L
auzo
n, “O
reille
s fra
nçai
ses”
et “
lang
ues
sauv
ages
” : l’
éner
gie
com
me
critè
re li
ngui
stiq
ue à
l'âg
e cl
assi
que
Rob
in S
traa
ijer,
Jose
ph P
riest
ley
and
the
Foun
ding
Fat
hers
: So
cial
net
wor
ks, n
orm
ativ
e in
fluen
ce, a
nd th
e “m
etro
polit
an
stan
dard
”
11:3
0 –
12:0
0 D
rew
Des
ai, C
anad
ian
cons
titut
ion,
mul
tilin
gual
ism
, and
tra
nsla
tion
as a
par
adig
m o
f ago
nist
ic p
lura
lism
Erin
Rey
nold
s, “B
ecau
se h
e co
uld
not s
peak
Eng
lish
in th
e na
tive
garb
”: Fa
shio
ning
Eng
lish
as e
nglis
hnes
s in
Sh
akes
pear
e’s
Hen
ry V
12:0
0 –
12:3
0 D
avy
Big
ot, Y
a-t-
il ou
i ou
non
un fr
ança
is s
tand
ard
québ
écoi
s ?
Mar
ina
Dos
sena
, “A
high
ly p
oetic
al la
ngua
ge”?
Sco
ts, B
urns
, pa
triot
ism
, and
eva
luat
ive
lang
uage
in n
inet
eent
h-ce
ntur
y bo
ok re
view
s
12:3
0 –
14:0
0 LU
NC
H
Sand
wic
hes
et b
oiss
ons
offe
rtes
dans
le lo
unge
. San
dwic
hes
and
beve
rage
s av
aila
ble
in th
e lo
unge
.
2A –
Rus
son
Woo
ldrid
ge, p
rési
dent
2B
– S
usan
Fitz
mau
rice,
pre
side
nt
14:0
0 –
14:3
0 Sa
ndrin
e H
allio
n B
res,
Typ
olog
ie d
es v
arié
tés
du
franç
ais
au M
anito
ba
Lind
a C
. Mitc
hell,
Gua
rdin
g th
e m
othe
r ton
gue:
Pro
tect
ing
Engl
and
in th
e se
vent
eent
h an
d ei
ghte
enth
cen
turie
s
14:3
0 –
15:0
0 R
ober
t Pap
en, L
es c
onsé
quen
ces
néfa
stes
du
pres
crip
tivis
me
et d
u pa
triot
ism
e : l
e ca
s de
s M
itchi
fs d
e l’O
uest
can
adie
n
Ails
a K
ay, “
To s
erve
or g
race
the
coun
ter o
r the
thro
ne”:
Patri
otic
pen
s an
d w
ritin
g su
bjec
ts in
eig
htee
nth-
cent
ury
Brita
in
15:0
0 –
15:3
0 Lo
uis
Stel
ling,
Lin
guis
tic p
rosc
riptio
n an
d (re
sist
ance
to)
chan
ge in
Fra
nco-
Amer
ican
Fre
nch
Joan
C. B
eal,
“À la
mod
e de
Par
is”:
Ling
uist
ic p
atrio
tism
and
fra
ncop
hobi
a in
eig
htee
nth-
cent
ury
Brita
in
15:3
0 –
16:0
0 Pa
use/
Bre
ak –
Wils
on H
all L
oung
e
16:0
0 –
17:0
0 PL
ÉNIÈ
RE
com
man
dité
e pa
r le
Cen
tre d
’étu
des
de
la F
ranc
e et
du
mon
de fr
anco
phon
e
Wils
on H
all 1
016
Hél
ène
Caj
olet
-Lag
aniè
re (U
nive
rsité
de
Sher
broo
ke)
Le fr
ança
is d
u Q
uébe
c: d
es 8
5 ca
nadi
anis
mes
de
bon
aloi
pr
escr
its p
ar l'
OQ
LF à
une
des
crip
tion
com
plèt
e
17:1
5 –
19:3
0 R
ECEP
TIO
N/R
ÉCEP
TIO
N -
Com
man
dité
e pa
r/Spo
nsor
ed b
y th
e Fa
culty
of A
rts a
nd S
cien
ce a
nd N
ew C
olle
ge
Mul
ti-fa
ith C
entr
e (5
69 S
padi
na A
venu
e, K
offle
r Ins
titut
e Bu
ildin
g)
Mus
ic/M
usiq
ue :
F-Ze
ro (H
ouse
ban
d of
the
Dep
artm
ent o
f Lin
guis
tics,
Uof
T)
PRE
SCR
IPTI
VISM
(E) &
PA
TRIO
TISM
(E) 2
009
- PR
OG
RA
MM
E
12
TU
ESD
AY
18 A
UG
UST
– M
ARD
I 18
AOÛ
T 8:
30 –
16:
00
Reg
istr
atio
n/In
scrip
tion
– W
ilson
Hal
l Lod
ge, N
ew C
olle
ge (4
0 W
illcoc
ks S
treet
)
Wils
on 1
016
Wils
on 1
017
Wils
on 5
24 (b
asem
ent)
3A
– D
avid
Cla
ndfie
ld, p
rési
dent
3B
– M
artin
Gill,
pre
side
nt
3C –
Don
Cha
pman
, pre
side
nt
9:00
– 9
:30
Jo
hn P
hilli
ps, M
utua
l pre
serv
atio
n of
st
anda
rd la
ngua
ge a
nd n
atio
nal
iden
tity
in e
arly
-mod
ern
Wal
es
Kev
in K
enja
r, Pi
dgin
s C
omin
g H
ome
to R
oost
: The
Jan
us-F
aced
Nat
ure
of
Pres
crip
tivis
m a
nd P
atrio
tism
9:30
– 1
0:00
A
ndre
a St
erzu
k, W
hite
set
tler
educ
ator
s' p
resc
riptiv
e at
titud
es
tow
ards
Indi
geno
us E
nglis
h in
set
tler
post
colo
nial
Sas
katc
hew
an
Pete
r Ive
s, P
resc
ribin
g M
ultil
ingu
alis
m?
Lang
uage
and
La
ngua
ge P
olic
y in
the
Euro
pean
U
nion
Václ
av C
vrče
k, In
trodu
ctio
n to
The
ory
of In
terv
entio
ns
10:0
0 –
10:3
0
Mar
ie-P
asca
le H
amez
, Pre
scrip
tions
in
stitu
tionn
elle
s et
ens
eign
emen
t de
l’écr
iture
aux
élè
ves
nouv
elle
men
t-ar
rivés
en
Fran
ce :
Que
ls im
plic
ites
polit
ique
s et
idéo
logi
ques
? Q
uels
en
jeux
did
actiq
ues
?
Nic
ola
McL
ella
nd, P
resc
riptio
ns o
f G
erm
an fo
r for
eign
lang
uage
lear
ners
in
the
UK,
185
0-20
00
Ann
e C
urza
n, R
eeva
luat
ing
the
Effe
cts
of P
resc
riptiv
ism
in th
e H
isto
ry
of E
nglis
h
10:3
0 –
11:0
0 Pa
use/
Bre
ak –
Wils
on H
all L
oung
e
11:0
0 –
12:0
0 PL
ENA
RY
spon
sore
d by
New
Col
lege
W
ilson
Hal
l 101
6 Ly
nda
Mug
gles
tone
(Oxf
ord
Uni
vers
ity)
Pat
riotis
m, e
mpi
re, a
nd c
ultu
ral p
resc
riptiv
ism
: Im
ages
of a
nglic
ity in
the
OED
12
:00
– 14
:00
LUN
CH
4A –
Geo
rge
J.M
. Lam
ont,
orga
nize
r 4B
– P
eter
Ives
, pre
side
nt
4C –
Joa
n C
. Bea
l, pr
esid
ent
14:0
0 –
14:3
0 A
spe
cial
ses
sion
for e
duca
tors
U
n sé
ance
des
tinée
aux
édu
cate
urs
Susa
n Fi
tzm
auric
e, P
oliti
cs, e
xile
, an
d di
aspo
ra: E
nglis
h an
d Zi
mba
bwe
Rus
son
Woo
ldrid
ge, D
ictio
nary
pr
escr
iptiv
ism
14:3
0 –
15:0
0 La
ngua
ge ru
les
and
peda
gogy
in th
e C
anad
ian
lang
uage
cla
ssro
om
Les
règl
es la
ngag
ière
s et
la p
édag
ogie
da
ns la
sal
le d
e cl
asse
can
adie
nne
Lion
el W
ee, P
resc
riptiv
ism
, pat
riotis
m,
and
prag
mat
ism
: Cha
lleng
es fo
r la
ngua
ge p
olic
y an
d pl
anni
ng
Mas
sim
o St
uria
le, P
rono
unci
ng
dict
iona
ries
betw
een
patri
otis
m a
nd
pres
crip
tivis
m
15:0
0 –
15:3
0
Ken
neth
Huy
nh, D
escr
ibin
g m
ore
than
the
valu
e of
a la
ngua
ge: a
clo
ser
look
at S
inga
pore
's S
peak
Goo
d En
glis
h ca
mpa
igns
from
200
0-20
01 to
20
07-2
008
Nur
ia Y
áñez
-Bou
za, I
f Sco
tsm
en a
nd
Irish
men
wer
e to
“fix
a s
tand
ard”
…
Attit
udes
to “c
orre
ct” E
nglis
h in
18th
-ce
ntur
y gr
amm
ar-w
riter
s
15:3
0 –
16:0
0 Pa
use/
Bre
ak –
Wils
on H
all L
oung
e
PRE
SCR
IPTI
VISM
(E) &
PA
TRIO
TISM
(E) 2
009
- PR
OG
RA
MM
E
13
TU
ESD
AY
18 A
UG
UST
Con
t. –
MA
RD
I 18
AOÛ
T su
ite
5A
– P
anel
: Dou
glas
Kib
bee,
org
aniz
er
5B –
Nic
ola
McL
ella
nd, p
rési
dent
e 5C
– L
ise
Win
er, p
resi
dent
16:0
0 –
16:3
0 D
ougl
as K
ibbe
e, P
atrio
tic ro
ots
of
pres
crip
tivis
m
Jean
-Guy
Mbo
udje
ke, L
angu
es
offic
ielle
s et
dis
cour
s sé
para
tiste
s au
C
amer
oun
Mar
tin G
ill, N
ativ
enes
s, a
utho
rity,
au
then
ticity
16:3
0 –
17:0
0 Sy
lvie
Arc
haim
baul
t, N
ew R
ussi
an
patri
otis
m a
nd th
e R
ussi
an L
angu
age
Law
of 2
005
Oliv
ier M
olin
er, P
atrio
tism
e et
di
vers
ité li
ngui
stiq
ue e
n Fr
ance
apr
ès
la S
econ
de G
uerr
e m
ondi
ale
: Les
co
mm
unis
tes
franç
ais
et la
pol
itiqu
e en
fa
veur
des
lang
ues
régi
onal
es d
ans
l'imm
édia
t apr
ès-g
uerre
(194
5-19
51)
Rob
erta
Fac
chin
etti
& C
ristia
na
Chi
arin
i, Th
e ro
le o
f med
ia in
sha
ping
Is
raE
nglis
h be
twee
n va
riatio
n an
d pa
triot
ism
17:0
0 –
17:3
0 In
grid
Tie
ken-
Boo
n va
n O
stad
e,
Usa
ge g
uide
s an
d us
age
prob
lem
s
Mou
rad
Bou
kra,
Le
dile
mm
e de
la
prom
otio
n de
l'ar
abe
dial
ecta
l en
Algé
rie
Bey
azit
Akm
an, L
ingu
istic
Orie
ntal
ism
in
Tur
key:
the
Lang
uage
Ref
orm
of
1928
17:3
0 –
18:0
0 D
anie
lle C
ande
l, Th
e ro
les
of E
nglis
h in
Fre
nch
offic
ial t
erm
inol
ogy
Aza
d H
amad
Sha
rif &
Ism
ael
Moh
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trat
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all L
odge
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Col
lege
(40
Willc
ocks
Stre
et)
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– A
.-M. B
rous
seau
, pré
side
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kman
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el o
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ngua
ge in
Can
ada:
C
arol
Per
cy, o
rgan
izer
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– 9
:30
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ard
S. M
itche
ll &
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na U
rsul
in, S
aint
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ian
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in S
aint
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stu
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and
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he “s
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and
in p
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ghts
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Engl
ish
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0:00
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se W
iner
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rival
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mm
unic
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pro
fess
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mig
rant
s in
Can
adia
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bour
mar
kets
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iana
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ulin
, Mar
gina
lized
peo
ples
and
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ole
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sis
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ocié
tés
de c
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itatio
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nd th
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unde
r prin
cipl
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y C
athe
rine
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idso
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ille
McL
augh
lin,
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uage
nor
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in th
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edia
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olly
woo
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Ac
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– 11
:00
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12:0
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man
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r le
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ndon
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abel
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erge
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et d
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roce
ssus
soc
iaux
et l
ingu
istiq
ues
en c
ours
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:00
– 14
:00
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CH
7A
– A
nne
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zan,
pré
side
nte
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pers
/ Su
bstit
uts:
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an-G
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side
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on C
hapm
an, Y
ou s
ay N
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lar,
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rstu
pid:
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litic
s of
pre
scrip
tivis
m in
the
Uni
ted
Stat
es
Abd
el-A
ziz
Ber
kaï,
La ré
surr
ectio
n de
l’hé
breu
: un
e le
çon
de p
atrio
tism
e lin
guis
tique
et p
oliti
que
14:3
0 –
15:0
0 Jo
hn E
dwar
ds, L
angu
age
puris
m a
nd p
resc
riptiv
ism
: N
atio
nalis
m in
the
acad
emy
and
in th
e st
reet
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tand
Kaw
e, U
sage
s m
ilitan
ts d
u «
pidg
in-e
nglis
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au
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erou
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glop
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: fo
rces
et f
aibl
esse
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un
pres
crip
tivis
me
iden
titai
re
15:0
0 –
15:3
0 B
ronw
en E
lizab
eth
Low
, Mel
a Sa
rkar
& L
ise
Win
er, “
I’m
my
own
gram
mar
boo
k”: H
ip-H
op ly
rics
as a
n at
tack
on
Que
bec
lingu
istic
pre
scrip
tivis
m a
nd c
once
ptio
ns o
f na
tionh
ood
Jean
-Pau
l Kou
ega,
Eng
lish
and
Pidg
in in
Cam
eroo
n:
Peac
eful
or c
onfli
ctin
g co
exis
tenc
e
15:3
0 –
16:0
0 Pa
use/
Bre
ak –
Wils
on H
all L
oung
e 16
:00
– 17
:15
FOR
UM
– A
nne-
Mar
ie B
rous
seau
, mod
érat
rice
& D
avid
Cla
ndfie
ld, m
oder
ator
17:1
5 –
17:3
0 C
lôtu
re d
u co
lloqu
e/C
losi
ng re
mar
ks
Info
rmat
ion
sur l
es a
ctes
du
collo
que
/Info
rmat
ion
on th
e pr
ocee
ding
s
19:0
0 B
AN
QU
ET
The
Eatin
g G
arde
n –
43 B
aldw
in S
t. / 4
3, ru
e B
aldw
in
P & P 2009
15
Plenary Abstracts
Résumés des séances plénières
P & P 2009 Plenary Abstracts Résumés des séances plénières
16
Des 85 canadianismes de bon aloi prescrits par l’OLF à une description complète du français en usage au Québec
Hélène Cajolet-Laganière, Université de Sherbrooke
En 1961, dans le but de renforcer le caractère français du Québec, le gouvernement du Québec créé le 1er Office de la langue française, dont le mandat est de veiller à la correction et à l’enrichissement de la langue parlée et écrite au Québec. Conformément à son ouvrage Norme du français écrit et parlé au Québec, outre une courte liste de 85 canadianismes de bon aloi, l’Office préconise un alignement sur le français international et rejette tout écart par rapport à la norme française. Or, comme toute langue vivante qui a connu une large diffusion dans le monde, le français est soumis à la variation géographique. Il est normal que le français porte dans son lexique la trace de sa transplantation en Amérique du Nord, au 17e siècle, et de l'histoire de la communauté francophone nord-américaine. Tout en permettant l'élargissement de ses ressources lexicales, cette diffusion géographique du français a favorisé le développement d'un bon nombre d'usages différents de part et d'autre de l'Atlantique, et donc de variantes géographiques. L’objet de la présente communication est d’expliciter cette description complète du français en usage au Québec. Cette description des spécificités linguistiques québécoises et nord-américaines, en lien avec les usages en France, est primordiale pour la modernisation du français et l’enrichissement de toute la francophonie.
P & P 2009 Plenary Abstracts Résumés des séances plénières
17
William Cecil and the Rectification of English
Ian Lancashire, University of Toronto Jürgen Schäfer describes the period leading up to Shakespeare's first plays "as a period of agonizing linguistic uncertainty" for English. The hard-word invasion, which is a distinctively English phenomenon, had begun. Yet in 1569, after ten years as Elizabeth's secretary, William Cecil, in "A short Memoryall of the State of the Realme", while recognizing that "The Perills ar many, great, and imminent", nowhere alludes to the English language as one of them. Another of Cecil's papers of that date, "A Declaration of the Queenes Proceedings since her Reigne,” also ignores English as a concern. Although we know that Cecil, royal secretary to both Edward VI and Elizabeth, was keen on languages, he "never read any Books or Praiers, but in Lattin, French, or Italian: very seldome in English." His early private study included a signed, annotated copy of Thomas Cooper's re-edition of the Latin-English Bibliotheca Eliotae as Eliotis Librarie (1548). A parchment-wrapped paper book of Cecil’s in 185 folios has a fragmentary legal glossary. He later used the patronage system to promote the borrowing of foreign-language vocabulary. Although by no means the only force in lexical publishing, Cecil led all other patrons of major language reference works in the second half of the sixteenth century. His principles and tastes were well known, and he may have paid for them when Shakespeare created the character of Polonius.
P & P 2009 Plenary Abstracts Résumés des séances plénières
18
Émergence et diffusion de nouvelles variétés de Créoles en Guyane: processus sociaux et linguistiques en cours
Isabelle Léglise, CNRS
Cette communication abordera l’une des questions centrales du colloque : « Quel est le rôle que jouent la politique domestique, la mondialisation et les migrations transnationales dans l’émergence ou l’évolution des variétés de l’anglais ou du français ? » en l’appliquant au terrain ouest guyanais où l’on observe l'émergence de nouvelles variétés de créoles à base anglaise (easter maroon creoles, businenge tongo & sranan tongo). L’émergence de ces variétés est liée d’une part à des migrations internationales, et des mouvements récents d’urbanisation, d’autre part à la véhicularisation de certaines variétés « ethniques ». Elle est par ailleurs associée à des réorganisations sociales et identitaires dont le matériau linguistique porte à la fois la trace et en constitue l’emblème.
Emergence and spread of new creole varieties in Guyana: current social and linguistic processes
This presentation will address one of the central questions of this conference: “What role do domestic politics, globalization and transnational migration patterns play in the emergence of linguistic varieties of English and French?” by applying it to West Guyana where the emergence of new English-based creoles has been observed (Easter Maroon creoles, Businenge Tongo & Sranan Tongo). The emergence of these varieties is linked on the one hand to international migrations and recent movements of urbanization, and on the other hand to the vehicularization of certain “ethnic” varieties. Moreover, it is associated to a social and identity reorganizing of which the linguistic material bears both the trace and serves as the symbol.
P & P 2009 Plenary Abstracts Résumés des séances plénières
19
Patriotism, Empire, and Cultural Prescriptivism: Images of Anglicity in the Oxford English Dictionary
Lynda Mugglestone, Oxford University
The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1884-1928) was a great patriotic endeavour in which the ‘national honour’ of England was engaged, and both its reception and its making highlighted international rivalries with the dictionaries of Grimm, Littre, and the United States. This paper will focus chiefly on the tensions which emerge between its early and inclusive commitment to ‘English-speaking and English-reading peoples’ (the addressees of James Murray's 1879 Appeal) and the discourses of cultural prescriptivism which, conversely, come to establish certain images of English—or ‘Anglicity’ in Murray's terms—as more legitimate than others. While on one hand this can reveal a self-evident parochialism, the use of discourses of civilisation (which, by extension, serve to construct certain meanings or usages as ‘uncivilised’) is more disturbing in the cultural hierarchies which can thereby be established. ‘Anglicity’, a word on which Murray was notably expansive, emerges as a complex cultural ideal which can be used to define English in ways which are particularly telling for this period of English history.
P & P 2009
20
Abstracts
Résumés
P & P 2009 Abstracts / Résumés
21
Linguistic Orientalism in Turkey: The Language Reform of 1928 Beyazit H. Akman
Department of English, Illinois State University
In the year 1928, the field of linguistics experienced a one-time phenomenal event with the Language Reform in Turkey. Overnight, the alphabet of the nation was changed from Arabic to Latin, making a total nation illiterate, which was then followed by the language purification movement aiming at stripping away thousands of Arabic and Persian words in Turkish. The consequences of this unusual and unique movement were far-reaching not only synchronically but also diachronically. Edward Said states that Orientalism is a discourse where the East is depicted as the illogical, exotic, intuitional, irrational and sensual, whereas its counterpart the West is depicted as all things logical, rational, and mathematical. While Said was writing his monumental book, however, he didn’t have in my mind the domestic discourses of the colonized or other third world countries under the dominant influence of Westernization movements. Rather he was exclusively referring to the European discourse; the British, French and finally American literary texts, which reduced the myriad nations of the Orient into its most stereotypical and cliché features with the desire to dominate, restructure and have authority over the Middle East. However, at the turn of the century when the Ottoman Empire was coming to an end after ruling over three continents for six centuries, some of the members of the army and of the ruling class had their own share of the orientalist discourse. These were usually the ‘intellectuals’ or soldiers who were in their younger days visited Europe and get influenced by what they have seen abroad. They believed that the solution to the problems of the Ottoman lied in a large scale Westernization movement, which thus led to the so-called Language Reform of 1928. It is ‘so called,’ because a ‘reform’ is something positive, which is expected to lead to desirable outcomes, however, whether the methods of the nationalist purifiers were scientific, or their results desirable is a big question. Even in modern Turkey, although the ramifications of the movement are visible in every aspect of the culture, the question is still unanswered. In short, in this paper, after a brief overview of the historico-social background of the Language Reform, I will analyze the ways of purifiers, their logic behind such a movement and see whether it has brought Turkey any closer to the West. I will also argue that at the heart of such a movement lies a most orientalist approach. Although one would expect many papers on the issue so far, the sensitivity of the issue discourages many Turkish scholars to pursue the topic any further.
P & P 2009 Abstracts / Résumés
22
‘à la mode de Paris’: Linguistic Patriotism and Francophobia in 18th-century Britain Joan C. Beal
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield
The 18th century was a period during which relationships between Britain and France were often fraught. The century began with the two nations on opposite sides in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) and ended with them again in conflict in the French Revolutionary War (1793-1802). Attitudes to French, and to the influence of French on English during this period are ambivalent. On the one hand, the Académie Française is cited as an example in the early part of the century, and its achievements provide a spur to the production of normative works in Britain, but on the other hand, the use of French loan words and pronunciations is condemned as ‘affected’. I have discussed elsewhere (Beal & Grant 2006) the antipathy to French loanwords expressed in 18th-century reviews and the lack of correspondence between perceived and actual rates of borrowing. In this paper, I examine a wider range of sources from ECCO to determine the extent to which British attitudes to the French language and its influence reflect the animosity between the two nations during much of this century.
Beal, J. C. & Grant, A. (2006) ‘Make do and mend: an online investigation into processes of neologisation and the dearth of borrowing in newer English wartime vocabulary’, in Dalton-Puffer, Christiane, Nikolaus Ritt, Herbert Schendl, Dieter Kastovsky (eds.) 2006. Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms: English from 1500-2000 (Linguistic Insights. Series editor: Maurizio Gotti) Frankfurt, Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 55-72.
Reference
P & P 2009 Abstracts / Résumés
23
La résurrection de l’hébreu : une leçon de patriotisme linguistique et politique Abdel-Aziz Berkaï
Département de langue et culture amazighes l’Université de Béjaïa (Algérie)
L’hébreu, qui est une langue sémitique, était la langue parlée dans le pays de Canâan dès le XIIIe siècle avant J.-C. L’hébreu biblique est attesté depuis le IXe siècle avant J.-C. Il sera parlé sans discontinuité jusqu’au IIe siècle, époque à laquelle il cèdera la place à l’araméen. Il ne sera plus utilisé qu’à des fins liturgiques ou, pour les plus instruits, littéraires, jusqu’à la fin du XIXe
siècle, date à laquelle des conditions particulières ont permis à un groupe de militants sionistes de lancer puis de concrétiser l’idée de sa résurrection. Du IIe siècle après J.-C. jusqu’à la fin du XIXe, l’hébreu n’était vivant qu’à l’écrit, une « langue écrite vivante », selon la formule de Moshé Nahir, et n’était la langue maternelle de personne pendant toute cette période, car « les juifs avaient pris l’habitude d’adopter la langue du pays où ils se trouvaient » (M. Masson, Langue et idéologie, 1986 : 12) ; et ce jusqu’au moment où ils seront acculés à se retrouver ensemble dans le pays de leurs ancêtres et être ainsi confrontés au problème du choix d’une langue d’intercompréhension. C’est un cas unique de résurrection linguistique et est de ce fait « exemplaire pour tous ceux qui croient à l’action humaine sur les langues », écrivait Claude Hagège dans la conclusion de sa longue introduction à La réforme des langue (1983 : 67). Un véritable hymne au patriotisme linguistique ; un encouragement incomparable aux aménageurs, en particulier des langues menacées de disparition. Nous allons essayer d’aborder ici les circonstances ayant favorisé la conception de cette idée de résurrection pour la première fois par celui qu’on appellera par la suite le « prophète » de la renaissance de l’hébreu, en l’occurrence Eliezer Ben Yahouda, et bien entendu les moyens ayant permis un tel exploit absolument unique dans l’histoire des langues. Nous terminerons notre exposé en essayant de savoir si une telle œuvre est possible aujourd’hui où les moyens de conservation, de transmission et de circulation des langues ont fondamentalement changé.
P & P 2009 Abstracts / Résumés
24
Y a-t-il oui ou non un français standard québécois? Davy Bigot
Département d’Études françaises Université Concordia
Depuis le milieu des années soixante, de nombreux documents ont traité de la question du français standard au Québec. Plusieurs définitions de ce que devait (ou doit) être ce français standard ont été formulées. Par exemple, en 1965, l’Office de la langue française faisait directement la promotion du français international (OLF, 1965). Suite à la Révolution tranquille, l’Association québécoise des professeurs de français proposait que « Le français standard d'ici [soit] la variété de français socialement valorisée que la majorité des Québécois francophones tendent à utiliser dans les situations de communication formelle. » (AQPF, 1977, p. 11) laissant ainsi apparaître en filigrane de sa définition un caractère relativement patriotique. Bien que cette définition soit encore en vigueur, il n’existe toujours pas de consensus autour de la nature de la norme du français québécois.
Selon Forget (1979) et Cajolet-Laganière et Martel (1995), il existerait un modèle de français standard au Québec qui se différencierait du modèle hexagonal. Cette norme québécoise ne serait toutefois pas encore décrite. À l’inverse, Nemni (1998), et le Conseil supérieur de la langue française (CSLF, 2007) appuient l’idée que les Québécois emploient, en situation de communication formelle, le français international. Néanmoins, ces derniers n’apportent aucune preuve venant réellement étayer leur position. À cela faut-il également ajouter que selon Dor (1996), Barbaud (1998) et Lamonde (2004), les élites québécoises ne sont plus détentrices du bon parler français au Québec, ce que l’étude de Bigot (2008) vient littéralement contredire. Le débat sur le français standard au Québec soulève donc de nombreux problèmes et semble encore loin d’être clos.
Les objectifs de notre présentation sont les suivants : 1) revenir sur le rôle des instances officielles et publiques telles que l’OLF, l’AQPF, le CSLF ou encore la SRC dans le processus de standardisation du français au Québec, 2) passer en revue les différentes définitions qui ont été présentées jusqu’à maintenant au sujet de la norme du français au Québec, et 3) répondre à la question : « Y a-t-il oui ou non un français standard québécois? » RéférencesAssociation québécoise des professeurs de français. 1977. « Le congrès du dixième anniversaire. Les
résolutions de l’assemblée générale. ». Québec français, no. 28, p.10-12.
:
Barbaud, P. 1998. « Dissidence du français québécois et évolution dialectale ». Revue québécoise de linguistique, vol. 26, no. 2, p. 107-128.
Bigot, D. 2008. « « Le Point » sur la norme grammaticale du français québécois oral », thèse de doctorat en linguistique, Université du Québec à Montréal.
Cajolet-Laganière, H. et P. Martel. 1995. La qualité de la langue au Québec. Collection « Diagnostic », no. 18, Québec : IQRC.
Conseil supérieur de la langue française. 2007. Bulletin, vol. 23, no. 1, juin. Dor, G. 1996. Anna braillé ène shot (Elle a beaucoup pleuré), Montréal : Lanctôt. Forget, Danielle. 1979. « Quel est le français standard au Québec? ». In Le français parlé : études
sociolinguistiques, sous la dir. de P. Thibault, p. 153-161, Edmonton : Linguistic Research inc. Lamonde, D. 2004. Anatomie d’un joual de parade. Le bon français d’ici par l’exemple, Montréal : Varia. Nemni, M. 1998. « Le français au Québec : représentation et conséquences pédagogiques ». Revue québécois de
linguistique, vol. 26, no. 2, p. 151-175. Office de la langue française. 1965. Norme du français parlé et écrit au Québec, Office de la langue française, no.
1, Québec : Gouvernement du Québec.
P & P 2009 Abstracts / Résumés
25
Le dilemme de la promotion de l’arabe dialectal en Algérie Mourad Boukra
Département de français Université Abderahmane Mira de Bejaia (Algérie)
Nous comptons interroger l’un des questionnements que soulève la problématique
linguistique et identitaire en Algérie. Notre attention sera donc focalisée sur les différentes assertions qui gravitent autour du verso de la dualité inhérente à la langue arabe, en l’occurrence l’arabe dialectal qui est la langue maternelle de la majorité des algériens. Il s’agit, dans le contexte algérien, de la variété qui renvoie à la langue exclusivement parlée, à ce “ parler ordinaire ” des gens, à la variété qui se manifeste dans les situations informelles du quotidien, c’est-à-dire celle que les locuteurs utilisent dans leur vie de tous les jours.
En effet, au plan de la réflexion érigée autour de la question de l’arabe dialectal, la polémique ne cesse d’être énoncée à propos de la conduite à envisager, quant à façon de le promouvoir. Par conséquent, la question de sa catégorisation comme langue ou non est de ce fait posée. De ce point de vue, le débat linguistique et identitaire pose la question de l’arabe dialectal en direction de deux réflexions, lesquelles peuvent être cernées en fonction de deux approches distinctes.
D’une part, l’approche sociolinguistique qui, pour plaider en faveur de la reconnaissance de l’arabe dialectal an tant que langue, se place au carrefour d’une réflexion qui traite cette question d’un point de vue linguistique aux suites historique, politique et idéologique. Cette réflexion s’inscrit dans une optique qui aborde la question linguistique et identitaire dans le cadre d’une remise en question de la politique d’arabisation (At-Taârib)- initiée officiellement à la veille de l’accession du pays à l’indépendance nationale en 1962- dont le sens gravite toujours autour de l’idée de restauration de l’identité nationale.
D’autre part, l’approche socio-didactique qui, pour entériner la thèse de l’unicité de la langue arabe, articule prioritairement sa réflexion sur l’idée d’une diglossie intra lingual. Pour cela, elle convoque conjointement deux regards complémentaires, l’un sociolinguistique et l’autre didactique. Cette vision revoie, le plus souvent, à la parenté génétique qui lie l’arabe dialectal à la langue arabe littérale, en l’occurrence la langue de l’arabisation qu’on appelle communément arabe littéraire, arabe moderne, arabe standard ou arabe classique. Par conséquent, les variétés orales, connues sous l’appellation arabe dialectale seraient, tout au moins selon cette approche, une version simplifiée, ou le registre satellisé autour d’un noyau globalisant et considéré comme plus prestigieux.
L’objet de notre communication vise, d’un côté, l’identification et l’explication des différents arguments invoqués par chacune des deux approches citées. D’un autre côté, il s’agit également de d’analyser, à la lumière d’une enquête sociolinguistique réalisée auprès de locuteurs arabophones (lycéens), les paramètres les plus prégnants qui sous-tendent les positions émises par les deux approches, sociolinguistique et socio-didactique.
P & P 2009 Abstracts / Résumés
26
You say Nukyular, I say Yourstupid: Politics of Prescriptivism in the United States
Don Chapman Linguistics and English Language
Brigham Young University One of the great puzzles of prescriptivism is why the divide over it has largely remained between linguists vs. everybody else. You would expect that something with such strong connections to society would divide, at least a little, along the same lines as other issues in the culture wars. Indeed, a few linguists have detailed the ‘conservative’ side of prescriptivism: it is championed by the same people championing other conservative values (Cameron 1995: 78-115). That is an understandable position, and some conservative writers have taken the same position, as they have criticized anti-prescriptivists (mainly linguists) for being part of the permissive coalition that hasn’t shown enough respect for anything else in society (Milroy and Milroy 1999: 134-35). But political leftists haven’t taken the other side on this issue (Cameron 1995: xi-xii), at least not very often or very publicly. Those with left-wing political opinions seem to be as accepting of prescriptive rules as those on the right. Their support for prescriptivism is shown less in slippery-slope arguments about decaying standards, and more in an enthusiastic participation in the complaint tradition. At least since Dan Quayle, left-wing discourse has delighted in ad linguam attacks to discredit right-wing politicians and supporters. It is the left-wing that has made the ridicule of Bushisms, especially the pronunciation of nuclear, into a cottage industry. For this aspect of left-wing discourse, the fundamental assumptions of the complaint tradition are readily accepted, namely that a person who commits “errors” deserves to be criticized, and that the errors reveal flaws in intelligence and character. My paper will discuss the reasons for the bi-partisan support of prescriptivism. The place of prescriptivism on the conservative side of the cultural wars is easy enough to see; the harder question is why there would be such strong support on the liberal side. Why isn’t there the same critical examination of traditional prescriptions as there has been of other traditional assumptions? Why don’t the champions of minorities champion minority dialects? Undoubtedly there are several reasons, but I believe a chief reason may well be that many on the left are deeply invested in the meritocracy of America, especially those holding their employment and influence because of their education. As I write this abstract, a mere three weeks before the U. S. presidential election, the division between educated and less educated—between elites on the left and anti-intellectuals on the right—has become stark and real and raw. The educated have a stake in maintaining the assumptions of prescriptivism, since “educated” English is one more way that defines them against the less educated. In this paper, I will examine the complaint tradition and the support of meritocracy within left-wing discourse. After all, not only does George Bush say nukyular, but so does Sarah Palin, which, of course, is clear evidence that she is not smart enough for high office.
Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge. References
Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy. 1999. Authority in Language. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
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Re-evaluating the Effects of Prescriptivism in the History of English Anne Curzan
Department of English University of Michigan
Historians of English have often been too quick to dismiss modern prescriptive efforts as a hopeless battle against the natural forces of language change, doomed to “failure.” It is true that if success is defined as stopping language change, then prescriptivism fails. But it is a more complicated question the extent to which prescriptive efforts have shaped the development of English, both written and spoken, particularly if prescriptivism is understood to be part of the codification involved in the standardization of English (see Milroy and Milroy 1991). Most histories of the English language simultaneously describe developments such as the inkhorn controversy and the dramatic rise in prescriptivism beginning in the eighteenth century and relegate them to the “outer history” of English. A handful of very interesting studies have examined the relationship of prescriptive grammar to usage (cf. Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1982, 2002), but prescriptivism as a sociolinguistic phenomenon has yet to be effectively integrated into the study of the broader phenomenon of “language change” in the history of English.
The history of “the English language” needs to be seen to encompass the development of both the written and spoken language; to encompass linguistic developments occurring both below the level of consciousness—or what some would call “naturally”—and above the level of consciousness; and to encompass metalinguistic discussions about language, which potentially have real effects on language use. As Cameron (1995) reminds us, prescriptivism—as part of the more general phenomenon of “verbal hygiene”—is arguably a natural part of all language communities, rather than an unnatural—and inherently ineffectual—imposition upon a language. This paper takes as its focus two case studies to examine the effects of prescriptive efforts, both institution- and community-based, on the development of English. The first explores the history of English dictionaries and speakers’ relationship with this descriptive/prescriptive resource, arguing that the pervasive success of English dictionaries (both British and American), which has engendered discussions such as whether a word “is really a word,” has facilitated the divergence of many registers of spoken and written English. The second case study examines the reappropriation of specific stigmatized terms in the United States—a form of verbal hygiene that has both fundamentally changed patterns of usage and challenged established notions of which institutions have the power to prescribe as well as traditional sources of language authority such as dictionaries. These case studies demonstrate the artificiality of studying the history of particular linguistic features in English without analyzing the discourses surrounding them. (Presented in English)
Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London; New York: Routledge. References
Milroy, James, and Lesley Milroy. 1991. Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation, 2nd ed. London; New York: Routledge.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 1982. Double Negation and Eighteenth-Century English Grammars. Neophilologus 66.2: 278-285.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2002. Robert Lowth and the Strong Verb System. Language Sciences 24.3-4: 459-469.
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Introduction to Theory of Interventions Václav Cvrček
Institute of the Czech National Corpus Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague
Theory of Interventions was elaborated as a general methodological and sociolinguistic theory describing 1) influences which can change the (immanent) language development (types of intervention, their effect and their classification) and 2) classification of the possible ways how to design relationship between linguists, speakers and language (e.g. puristic concept or the concept of the cultivation of language developed in 1930s by Prague linguistic school etc.). According to this theory, language is an object which is exposed to interventions. Among other possible divisions, interventions can be of two types: individual and institutionalized. Individual interventions include processes of (self-)censorship, proofreading or language management in media etc. These interventions create a spontaneous order, they are plural and variable. Therefore they mutually interfere and their impact is very small or none. On the other hand, institutionalized interventions include processes leading to standardization of language, language education or language policy. Impact of institutionalized interventions can influence development of language, because they are monopoly and because of their authority. According to these findings we can think about possible ways how to construct the relationship between linguists, speakers and language. Theory of Interventions developed for this purpose a classificatory system, which is based on five binary oppositions. This classification can be used to measure the “rate of interventionalism” in the language community (the more +’s the situation gets, the more interventional is):
1. How speakers perceive interventions of linguists: as imperative (+) or indicative (-). 2. What is the intention of linguists when they intervene into the language development
(e.g. by creating codification): proscriptive/prescriptive (+) or descriptive (-). 3. Is there a description of the language which is available to the speakers: description
exists (+) or description does not exist (-). 4. Is there a plurality of codification: monopoly codification (+) or pluralism of
codifications (-). 5. From what kind of source the authority of intervention arises: given by law (+) or given
by tradition (-). Theory of Interventions, as a framework for concepts of linguistic regulatory activities, suggests also the system of demands on these concepts. These requirements (formal and content) have to be met by the concepts in order to be applicable. Formal demands on concepts of linguistic regulatory activities are in agreement with general demands on scientific theories (they arise from the Popper's notion of non-contradictority). Content demands consist of three contentual areas, which constitute the basic points of regulation: Linguistic regulatory activities consist of dividing language phenomena into groups of acceptable means (according to a concept) and unacceptable means. Thus the concepts have to specify A) the authority which is possible to make this decision, B) the way of evaluation of language means and C) the practical question of implementing the regulation.
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Canadian Constitution, Multilingualism and Translation as a Paradigm of Agonistic Pluralism
Drew Desai Department of Philosophy
Concordia University
When the Canadian constitution affirms, as a document in a natural language, that it is exactly the same in the French and English incarnations, it both presumes and establishes the universal translatability of language—the notion that any language can be translated into any other. The presumptive establishment of a common metalinguistic community with simultaneous French and English horizons installs universal translatability as an a priori of Canadian constitution. That is to say, Canada is constituted on the condition of universal translatability and the idea of Canada does not make sense outside of its intertwined linguisticality. The imperative could be stated: it is always possible, within the geopolitical horizon of Canada, and in the boundedness of Canadian institutions, to say the same thing in English and French. This notion of sameness expresses a rather thorny aporia that can be decomposed into two separate but related directions [sens]: sameness as identical [latin idem], sameness as equal [isonomia]. In the first sense, that of identity, sameness would mean that Canadian constitution decrees that there are identical translations from one language to the other. This “difference-blind” approach will be shown to be difficult to maintain to the point of being rendered confused if not meaningless. The other sense, that of equivalence implies that the institution of Canada is simultaneous with the institution of the aim of affirming the equality of the applicability of the document in a linguistic universe that is English at the same time as French. This project of equivalence is an interesting one, one that is played out rather curiously in the efforts at bilingualism and biculturalism in Canada. It serves to structure not only the linguistic but also the moral and political translatability of all successive attempts at universalization in the form of multiculturalism or interculturalism. Rather than criticizing this project as yet another species of difference-blind liberalism with its putative colonial and imperial historicities, we would like to view this project as a reduction of difference, not in favor of one linguistic community over another, but one which asserts their a priori equality in the common world of Canadian institutions.
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“A highly poetical language”? Scots, Burns, Patriotism and Evaluative Language in Nineteenth-century Book
Reviews Marina Dossena
Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Comparate Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy
This paper relies on a specially-compiled collection of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century book reviews published in journals, newspapers and magazines both in Britain and in the USA. In these reviews, the works of Scottish authors are assessed, and their use of language is evaluated in very clear and unambiguous terms. However, this lack of ambiguity does not exclude the expression of diametrically divergent views. On the one hand, such reviews display an outspokenly proscribing attitude, the origins of which can be traced in the tradition of 18th-century prescriptivism (Dossena 2005). On the other, the poetic qualities of Scots may be emphasized, even to the point of defensiveness: an attitude that is also rooted in the 18th-century, but which mainly relies on a changing view of Scotland that was gaining momentum at the turn of the century (Dossena forthcoming). Almost paradoxically, this re-evaluation of Scotland was originally due to the Ossian controversy, and while the Highlands became the centre of new interest, readers also romanticized Lowland Scotland thanks to the success of authors like Burns, Scott and – later – Robert Louis Stevenson.
In this study I intend to discuss the repertoire of evaluative expressions recorded in reviews of such literary works, in order to outline the main strategies that were employed to persuade the reader of the validity of the reviewer’s arguments concerning the authors’ stylistic choices, especially their greater or lesser use of Scots features. In addition to evaluative phrases, adjectives and adverbs, special attention will be given to uses of epistemic modality and (un)hedged statements. Finally, I intend to discuss the extent to which such arguments appear to take on additional overtones, which may in fact concern broader cultural issues than language. In this sense, it would not just be literary works that were assessed, but world views and life styles, for which language functioned as a convenient metonymy.
Dossena, Marina 2005. Scotticisms in Grammar and Vocabulary. Edinburgh: Birlinn. References
Dossena, Marina forthcoming. Speaking Scots and Writing English. Print and Scotticisms. In Brown, Stephen / McDougall, Warren (eds), The History of the Book in Scotland, vol. 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Language Purism and Prescriptivism: Nationalism in the Academy and in the Street John Edwards
Department of Psychology Saint Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia)
An important aspect of the language-nationalism linkage involves linguistic protectionism. This typically takes the form of purist and prescriptivist impulses and actions – but it is important always to bear in mind that linguistic activity here is essentially in the service of identity protection. The clearest examples are found in the existence and the works of academies, councils and similar bodies. Although the efforts of the Académie française and its many counterparts have not always been very successful – either in their grammatical and lexicographical productions or, more specifically, in their attempts to intervene in the dynamics of language use – this does not detract from their importance as manifestations of will and intent, nor does it vitiate their symbolic role. While their very lack of success can indirectly tell us much about the power of language to resist formal direction, their pronouncements continue to mark anxieties that have been important, for both nationalists and more ‘ordinary’ citizens, for a very long time indeed. The letters pages of newspapers have always been full of feverish reactions to alleged linguistic barbarisms. An insightful illustration was provided by Russell Smith last year in the Globe & Mail. His observation that American pronunciations, like ‘nooz’ for news or ‘zee’ for zed, were variants, and not necessarily inferior to British versions or to Canadian usage, prompted a flurry of response. Readers made stout assertions that pronunciations like ‘nooz’ reveal laziness, or perhaps too much exposure to American television and ‘slang’. But the deeper message, Smith felt, was that British and/or Canadian usage represented something rather more central: lurking behind the anguished complaints about falling standards and linguistic decay, there were deeper worries about moral and social decline, about unwanted foreign influences – and, therefore, about group identity. We know that interest in linguistic protection predates the modern wave of nationalism by at least a century or so, and that it reflects an earlier historical wave, one in which the power of Latin waned and that of the major European languages began to wax. As the latter began to flex their muscles, they naturally felt the need for standardisation of various sorts – and there were identity functions to be served from the beginning, too, even if they were initially more focussed upon the unification of the literate than upon a broader nationalistic ‘groupness’. It is certainly possible, however, to see early efforts here as providing an important base for the nationalist impulses that were to come. It is my contention in this paper that a closer examination here, one that more specifically illuminates linkages between scholarly and ‘popular’ impulses, will provide useful information about both language and nationalism. And this, in turn, can provide a better base for understanding contemporary tensions between nationalism and the sort of ‘super-nationalism’ that globalisation is sometime said to represent.
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The role of Media in shaping IsraEnglish between variation and patriotism Roberta Facchinetti, English Studies & Psychology and Cultural Anthropology,
Cristiana Chiarini, English Studies, University of Verona
Israel is a young nation, created in 1948 on a strong ideological, nationalist basis after 30 years of British control. However, its social, economic and cultural development has gone through continuous negotiations of identity, mainly due to (a) contacts and conflicts with Arabs within and outside national borders, (b) waves of transnational migrations, (c) close relationships with the USA, and (d) influence of the international political arena.
Language policies have also been crucial in the shaping of this state. Although English is no longer an official language in Israel, a local English variety has developed over the last few decades, thanks to the connections and contacts with the two official idioms (Hebrew and Arabic) and the other minor languages spoken in the country. IsraEnglish is now used above all for international communication, both for private and public purposes. The language of Israeli media in English, in particular, mirrors the new multicultural Israeli society and introduces it to the international audience.
Unfortunately, so far IsraEnglish has not been deeply investigated and several questions about the aspects influencing and shaping it are still unanswered. For example, which authorities are establishing its norms? Do media play a great role in shaping the language? Which linguistic policies are in act in the country to support/undermine this English variety? Moreover, is political patriotism involved in the diffusion of IsraEnglish, e.g. by divulgating an image of the country where a particular identity prevails? Is the “melting pot idea” still valid?
This paper aims first of all at highlighting the main features of IsraEnglish through the analysis of a corpus of written texts; secondly, we will focus on the interchange between several English varieties and the contact languages lying at the basis of IsraEnglish, like Hebrew, Arabic and Yiddish.
Special attention will be paid to the role of the agents determining its norms (government policies and media in particular, but also dictionaries and grammar books) and to the ideologies which might be hidden behind this process. Finally, we will analyse the role of inter-ethnic relations and patriotism, by considering both the internal challenges of the contemporary multicultural Israeli society and the struggles involving it at international level.
Bar-On D., The Others Within Us. Constructing Jewish-Israeli Identity, 2007, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
References
Ben Rafael E., Language Identity and Social Division: The Case of Israel, 1994, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Johnson S., Ensslin A., Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies, 2007, London, Continuum. Lefkowitz D., Words and Stones. The Politics of Language and Identity in Israel, 2004, Oxford, Oxford University
Press. Pappe I., A History of Modern Palestine. One Land, two Peoples, 2007, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Shafir G., Peled Y., Being Israeli. The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship, 2002, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press. Shohamy E., Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches, 2006, London, Routledge. Suleiman Y., Language and Society in the Middle East and North Africa, 1999, London, Routledge. Suleiman Y., A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East, 2004, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
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Politics, Exile and Diaspora: English and Zimbabwe Susan M. Fitzmaurice
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics University of Sheffield (UK)
Since 2000, there has been continuous massive migration to of Zimbabweans to
Britain, South Africa and the US as well as to neighbouring states in order to escape political turmoil and economic crisis and to seek a living wage. More than 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora maintain strong links with home through a variety of activities. These include remitting money to family members at home, the extensive use of social networking websites, and consuming and responding to news media online. Paper news media opposed to the ruling ZANU-PF party government have been banned in Zimbabwe and journalists forced into exile. However, the internet facilitates the maintenance of a thriving political press in the diaspora, providing a virtual discussion forum for Zimbabweans all over the world. This press takes the form of internet newspapers which include conventional news articles and letters to the editor as well as web genres such as blogs by columnists and web comments on such opinion pieces by readers. Accordingly, it is arguable that standard editorial norms shape internet publication as they do conventional print publications. At the same time, it is possible that the writing of readers who respond through internet or email commentary to internet media is not regulated in the same way.
This paper explores the use of English by Zimbabweans of all ethnicities living all over the world in the diaspora. The data for analysis consist of internet commentary produced by individuals in response to op-ed articles posted on the internet in web-based newspapers such as The Zimbabwe Times and the Zimbabwe Independent. The principal question for consideration is the extent to which the readers’ posts reveal evidence that they observe conventionally prescribed or more local vernacular language norms. The content of these posts is explicitly political in nature and commentators conventionally state their patriotic interest in matters they regard as directly salient to their own diasporic identities on the one hand and to the lives of their families in Zimbabwe on the other. Preliminary linguistic analysis of these materials indicates that readers adhere to conventional discourse practices that are appropriate to public genres such as the ‘letter to the editor’ but that they also adopt more idiosyncratic strategies such as code-switching. These strategies appear to serve several functions. The choice of specifically Zimbabwean cultural and linguistic reference points might be taken to assert the writer’s familiarity with and proximity to the interests and concerns of a specific national and patriotic group. However, the choice of languages such as chiShona or isiNdebele within an English language context could be construed as marking the commentator not only as an interested party, but as an authentic member of the Zimbabwe nation on which the news focuses. This paper situates the description of English used by Zimbabweans in the diaspora in the Zimbabwean political and historical context.
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Nativeness, authority, authenticity Martin Gill
Department of English Åbo Akademi University (Finland)
In many contexts, the ‘native speaker’ – ideally fluent, accurate, communicative and monolingual – remains the norm against which the language of less proficient ‘non-natives’ is measured. The ‘native speaker’ is clearly a top-down, establishment norm, deriving its authority both from its ‘authenticity’ as representative or indexical of the language and culture in question and from the prestige of the standard written language, in which it is most fully realized. As such, this norm is the one generally adopted by policy-makers and language teachers, and most often taken for granted by learners and first language speakers themselves. However, in relation to English, at least, the authority of the ‘native speaker’ has increasingly been challenged by local, ‘vernacular’ (hence equally ‘authentic’) norms. In an international context, the rise of English as a Lingua Franca (see, for example, Seidlhofer 2001; Rubdy and Saraceni 2006) has revalued ‘non-native’ learner varieties, whose speakers are represented as resourceful, co-operative, willing to accommodate, in contrast to which the ‘native speaker’ norm now appears inflexible, monolithic and unnecessarily prescriptive. This paper will examine the tensions and contradictions between these competing norms, each with their associated ideas of nativeness, and their relation to authority and authenticity, in particular as these notions serve to legitimize certain speakers and identities and exclude others. Among other things. it will argue that the emergence of ‘vernacular’ norms has accompanied the return to prominence of a Romantic view of authenticity and nativeness, one that has long played a central role in shaping assumptions and research agendas in (socio)linguistics: at odds with establishment norms but hardly less committed to the view that some types of language and language user are the ones that really count. Drawing on data gathered from a BBC discussion board on English and its role for immigrants in Britain, the paper will then attempt to show how such normative linguistic expectations may align themselves in everyday discourse with political and ethnic attitudes and become a focal point for conflict between mainstream and marginal groups.
Rubdy, R. and Saraceni, M. 2006. English in the World: Global Rules, Global Roles. Continuum. References:
Seidlhofer, B. 2001. ‘Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca.’ International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11(2): 133–158.
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Typologie des variétés du français au Manitoba Sandrine Hallion Bres
Département de français Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface, Winnipeg (Manitoba)
Au Manitoba, comme dans les autres milieux de la francophonie minoritaire au Canada, la question de la coexistence de différentes variétés de français alimente les débats au sein de la communauté francophone. La variation du français, perçue et réelle, est d’ordre diatopique – on opposera, par exemple, le « franco-manitobain » au « français parisien » – diastratique ou diaphasique. Il est toutefois souvent difficile de définir les caractéristiques linguistiques de chacune des variétés identifiées. Un trait qualifié de « populaire », comme l’emploi de la variante je vas, première personne du singulier du verbe ou de l’auxiliaire du futur aller à l’indicatif présent, peut également revêtir un caractère « régional » et trouver sa justification dans l’histoire de la langue en plus de relever d’une motivation intrasys-témique – c’est une forme régularisée que l’on retrouve notamment chez l’enfant en phase d’acquisition linguistique. En outre, l’omniprésence de l’anglais, langue majoritaire dans la province, vient compliquer le tableau. On a alors affaire à des variétés « franglicisées1 », ces variétés pouvant se positionner sur un continuum allant du « français correct » à l’anglais. Il s’agira ici de faire l’inventaire de la terminologie employée au Manitoba francophone pour désigner ces diverses variétés du français et de les caractériser afin de mieux cerner leurs particularités et les rapports de force qu’elles entretiennent. Ce faisant, il sera possible de les classer sur une échelle de valeur qui identifie une, ou des, variétés valorisées et d’autres stigmatisées ainsi que de mettre au jour les raisons de cette hiérarchisation. Cette typologie s’établira essentiellement à partir de l’analyse de discours recueillis dans les écrits de l’élite culturelle locale (essais, fictions poétiques, romanesques, théâtrales), dans les ouvrages ou articles à visée didactique ou vulgarisatrice et dans les propos des simples usagers de la langue, comme ceux des jeunes (entrevues semi-dirigées auprès d’élèves inscrits dans une école française secondaire à Winnipeg, sites Internet). Elle tiendra également compte, dans la mesure du possible, de la dimension évolutive des perceptions de la variation linguistique en contexte franco-manitobain.
1 Ce néologisme est emprunté à Roger Léveillé, 2005 : « Rapport des écrivains franco-manitobains à la langue française », dans Parade ou les autres, Winnipeg, Les Éditions du Blé, p. 91.
Note :
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Prescriptions institutionnelles et enseignement de l’écriture aux élèves nouvellement-arrivés en France : quels implicites politiques et idéologiques ? Quels
enjeux didactiques ? Marie-Pascale Hamez
Sciences de l’éducation Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3, Equipe Théodile – CIREL 4354.
Elèves étrangers, immigrés, primo-arrivants, non-francophones, allophones, nouvellement-arrivés en France et enfin plurilingues nouvellement-scolarisés… Autant de dénominations institutionnelles, de glissements terminologiques qui ont accompagné dans les textes officiels, l’émergence récente (1996) d’un nouvel objet d’enseignement « le français langue seconde » ou français langue de communication et de scolarisation (Verdelhan, 2002), langue des apprentissages enseignée dans un contexte scolaire complexe, plurilingue et pluriculturel.
Comme tout travail, celui du professeur enseignant le français en tant que langue seconde aux élèves nouvellement-arrivés en France est fortement déterminé par cet ensemble de normes et d’injonctions institutionnelles qui depuis 1970 jusqu’à nos jours (Lepez, Hamez, Bigot de Préaméneu, 2008), constituent autant de strates auxquelles peuvent s’alimenter les pratiques d’enseignement effectives.
Cette contribution s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une recherche de troisième cycle qui tente d’apporter une contribution à la connaissance de l’enseignement de l’écriture (Reuter, 1996) dans ce contexte sociolinguistique et didactique complexe. Elle étudie la manière dont les textes officiels ont traité, dans leurs configurations successives, de la question de l’entrée dans l’écrit de la langue-culture cible et de l’accès à la littéracie pendant ces quarante dernières années. Les préconisations institutionnelles portant sur la manière d’organiser les activités d’écriture, le choix des tâches à accomplir, la manière d’évaluer les textes des élèves, de proposer des temps de correction et de remédiation, véhiculent des valeurs, des choix théoriques et politiques, explicites et implicites, en d’autres termes, une vision évolutive de la société.
Les textes réglementaires cadrant ainsi la manière d’aider les élèves allophones à entrer dans la culture écrite, fondamentale pour tout sujet de l’institution scolaire, je tenterai d’apporter des éléments de réponses aux questions suivantes : Quel statut est conféré à la diversité linguistique et culturelle de la classe ? Comment est pris en compte le répertoire langagier et culturel des élèves ? Sur quels postulats théoriques les préconisations se sont-elles appuyées ? Quelles propositions didactiques et pédagogiques livrent-elles en matière d’enseignement de l’écriture ?
Le corpus étudié est constitué de six circulaires publiées de 1970 à 1990, des Programmes de français au collège publiés de 1996 à 1998, du document d’accompagnement Le français langue seconde paru en 2001, qui a pour vocation première de déterminer les pratiques d’enseignement en classe d’accueil et d’une circulaire parue en 2002. Ces textes seront mis en relation avec les outils élaborés par le Conseil de l’Europe, visant à créer des espaces plurilingues : le Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues et le Portfolio européen. Comment l’aide au développement des compétences scripturales des élèves est-elle envisagée dans ces deux ensembles de textes ? Comment les préconisations nationales s’articulent-elles à la perspective européenne globale d’enseignement des langues à l’heure actuelle ?
L’analyse de ces données témoignera ainsi de la variabilité des perspectives adoptées, par les décideurs en matière de politique linguistique scolaire et de didactique du français langue de scolarisation, en contexte homoglotte.
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RéférencesConseil de l’Europe, 2001, Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues, Didier.
Conseil de l’Europe, Portfolio européen des langues, Didier. LEPEZ Brigitte, HAMEZ Marie-Pascale, BIGOT de PREAMENEU Sophie, 2008, « Le FLS : un domaine
didactique en émergence avec la politique d’accueil des flux migratoires », dans Spirale, n°42, Lille, Arred.
REUTER Yves, 1996, Enseigner et apprendre à écrire, Paris, ESF. VERDELHAN-BOURGADE Michèle, 2002, Le Français de scolarisation. Pour une didactique réaliste, Paris, PUF.
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Describing More than the Value of a Language: A Closer Look of Singapore’s Speak Good English Campaigns from 2000/2001 to 2007/2008
Kenneth Huynh Sociology and Equity Studies in Education
OISE/University of Toronto
Why should Singaporeans speak “good” English? Blommaert defines a language ideology as the “socioculturally motivated ideas, perceptions and expectations of a language, manifested in all sorts of language use and in themselves objects of discursive elaboration” (1999:1). Singapore’s Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) is a campaign orchestrated by the Singaporean government to promote the use of “good” English among Singaporeans that has existed since the year 2000. (“Good” English meaning Singaporean Standard English, as opposed to the informal local variety of “Singlish”, or Singaporean Colloquial English.) The SGEM is therefore a prescriptive measure that provides a wealth of information about the Singaporean state’s “perceptions and expectations” concerning the role of English for Singaporean society. According to the state’s discourses, speaking good English primarily serves to ensure communication among its multiple ethnic groups, and to ensure that its citizens are able participants in the global economy. However, via an analysis of the speeches that have launched the SGEM campaigns from 2000/2001 to 2007/2008, this paper aims to show that the role of English in Singapore is much more complex and contradictory. The SGEM launch speeches throughout the last decade reveal that, when speaking about the role of English in Singapore, the Singaporean state is speaking about and reproducing multiple domestic/international social hierarchies. The speeches seem to ultimately reveal much more about the Singaporean government’s perceptions and expectations than it would intend.
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Prescribing Multilingualism? Language and Language Policy in the European Union
Peter Ives Department of Politics, University of Winnipeg
Most scholars agree that language standardization was an integral aspect of the formation of the European nation-state which then spread as a model across the globe. This yielded a model of ‘one state, one language’ that was never ubiquitous given the number of multilingual nation-states, but exerted a powerful ideal. Many view language as a one of the key manifestation of national culture from the 18th century onwards. The European Union has been taken as a key site to investigate the demise or transformation of the nation-state model in the face of globalization. And yet, in the vast literature on ‘European integration’ and the EU, only very recently has language and language policy received significant attention. Moreover, the three book-length studies of language in the European Union all emphasize the lack of attention given to the complexity and importance of questions of language and language policy by politicians and scholars (Phillipson 2003; Creech 2005; Kraus 2008). Each of these books calls attention, in different ways from different perspectives (applied linguists, law and political theory, respectively) to the contradictions, problems and superficiality of the current 23 ‘official and working language’ regime of the EU institutions themselves. And yet they also each reject the general cosmopolitan implicit or explicit embrace of English as a ‘lingua franca’ (see also Ives 2009forthcoming). This paper argues that since Maastricht and especially since 2001, The European Year of Languages, earlier distinctions between the multilingual regime governing the EU institutions themselves and more general language policy as being solely the purview of Member governments are no longer tenable. The increasingly important education policies and programmes, cultural programmes, acceptance of language within fundamental human rights as well as trade regulation constitute a multilingual policy explicitly aimed at integrating the diversity of the EU. It evaluates this multilingualism as an attempt to address to some degree problems of legitimation and the so-called democracy deficit in the EU. I draw on my previous work on Antonio Gramsci, his training in linguistics (within the debates around the neo-grammarians and the rise of Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralism) and his life-long focus on Italian language politics (see Ives 2004). From Gramsci, I mobilize the concepts of ‘normative grammar’ as a ‘political choice’ of the governing forces and the ‘spontaneous grammars’ to show how the EU’s multilingualism, however ambitious, is a language policy ‘from above’ and explains, at least in part, the obstacles it is facing. It is not that multilingualism per se cannot become a powerful framework for a new European identity (or response to globalization more generally), but rather that the specifics of this particular ‘official and working language’ framework is irredeemably mired in the failures of one state, one language origins of the nation-state model. The implications of this go well beyond Europe extending to more general questions of globalization, so-called ‘global English,’ and language (Ives 2006). References Creech, Richard L. (2005) Law and Language in the European Union: The Paradox of a Babel “United in
Diversity.” Groningen: Europa Law Publ. Ives, Peter (2009forthcoming). ‘Cosmopolitanism & Global English: Language Politics in Globalisation Debates.’ Political Studies. Ives, Peter (2006). ‘“Global English”: Linguistic Imperialism or Practical Lingua Franca?’ Studies in Language &
Capitalism 1, pp.121-41. To be reprinted in Language and Politics, Jonathan Joseph, ed. London: Routledge, 2009.
Ives, Peter (2004). Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kraus, Peter A. (2008) A Union of Diversity: Language, Identity and Polity-Building in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Phillipson, Robert (2003) English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge.
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Usages militants du « pidgin-english » au Cameroun anglophone : forces et faiblesses
d’un prescriptivisme identitaire Rostand Kawe
Université de Ngaoundéré, Cameroun
Les difficultés inhérentes aux différents types de prescriptivisme semblent plus accentuées au sein des Etats et des communautés bilingues. Les Etats africains dans leur grande majorité ont tenté de trouver une sorte de compromis entre les usages linguistiques officiels, français, anglais, portugais, selon les cas, et des langues autochtones, méprisées de façon plus ou moins consciente sous la période coloniale. Des Etats comme le Nigeria sont l’exemple type de cette compromission réussie. On observe une tendance tenace consistant à mêler des expressions idiomatiques locales aux expressions purement anglaise sans que ça fasse sourciller. Dans d’autres contrées en revanche, cette compromission s’est révélée impossible. Les collisions entre différents idiomes, académiques ou non, ont renforcé les clivages tribaux et donné lieu, à l’échelle nationale à des revendications basées sur des langues nouvelles. Le Cameroun est l’archétype de ce second cas de prescriptivisme d’opposition. Cette communication se propose d’examiner comment dans ce pays riche de deux langues officielles (le français et l’anglais) et de plus de 250 dialectes locaux, l’émergence du « pidgin-english », ignorée ou combattue par les différentes administrations coloniales et post-coloniales a vu le jour. Nous voudrons remonter aux premiers usages du « pidgin-english » au cours de la période coloniale, en examiner les formes et les constructions empruntées aux différentes puissances ayant occupé le Cameroun, et nous attarder sur l’usage que certains milieux politiques camerounais ont fait de cet idiome, particulièrement au cours des « années de braise » (1990-1993). Les régions anglophones du Cameroun serviront de cadre spécifique d’étude, au vu des réclamations identitaires et nationales qui les ont opposées au pouvoir central. Les usages du « pidgin-english » sont encore vivaces au sein de la société camerounaise contemporaine, et les modes de transmission à travers les médias dits « d’opposition » dans ce pays sont un autre aspect sur lequel nous allons nous pencher.
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“To Serve or Grace the Counter or the Throne”: Patriotic Pens and Writing Subjects in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Ailsa Kay Department of English and Cultural Studies
McMaster University Engraver George Bickham dedicates his 1738 penmanship manual, The United Pen-Men
, to the merchants of Great Britain “as, by your extensive Trading, and frequent Use of the Pen, You have increas’d the Wealth of each particular City, and made this Island distinguish’d and honour’d in all the known Parts of the World.” This paper begins with the observation that eighteenth-century attempts to standardize spelling and grammar often accompanied, and were materially facilitated by writing instruction, the prescription of “the hand.” Or, as explained in The art of writing, the pen is assistant to the tongue, “its unerring Interpreter…in its stead the Vehicle of Discourse” (8).
In his seminal work on the social and historic regulation of writing in Renaissance England, Jonathan Goldberg argues that writing instruction was the first part of a humanistic “civilizing process” and shows that the pen, though often figured as the civilized alternate to tools of war (mightier than the sword, for example), still contains its originary violence rendered explicit in the metaphor and illustrations used to teach writing. My study of British penmanship manuals from late-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century extends Goldberg’s work on handwriting into the period of print-capitalism to suggest that it’s during this crucial period after the English civil wars, as writing moves from an “art” mastered by, and contained in, the hands of trained “penmen” to a rationally developed skill required for modernity, that the literate writing subject becomes the very model of the citizen required by Britain’s national identity, that is, of a nation of free, rational individuals. This paper traces the chronological development of handwriting instruction from 1660-1750. In late seventeenth-century manuals, writing requires figure, decorative knots, and mastery of multiple hands (eg. Secretary, mixt Secretary, Italian) and is acquired by imitating the copyset. But by mid-eighteenth century, the manuals are beginning to privilege the plain letter over the ornate, making arguments for efficiency and legibility and “freedom of the hand.” At the same time, the audience (or users) of these manuals expands to include young people, men in various practical trades, governesses and female letter-writers. The most visible shift, though, is in the manuals themselves as they begin to include increasingly detailed print instructions, suggesting that learners no longer learn by imitation, but by applying both body and mind to the task; writing moves from “hand” to “mind.” Significantly, I argue, the shift from copyset to printed instruction coincides with the positioning of writing as a “possession” that denotes national supremacy while at the same time, in the very movement and control of the hand, expresses the “natural freedom” that is the very ideal of Britishness.
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Pidgins Coming Home To Roost: The Janus-Faced Nature of Prescriptivism and Patriotism
Kevin Kenjar Socio-Cultural Anthropology
Columbia University in the City of New York
To begin with, this paper examines the political and historical foundations of language standardization and genealogical classification itself. Johann Gottlieb Herder once posed to his cosmopolitan readership: “Would you greet your mother in French? […] Spew out the ugly slime of the Seine, speak German, O You German!” Several years later, Ernst Moritz Arndt passionately declared that the German fatherland is bounded not by geography or “pirate-princes”, but by the “German” tongue. Like a meteor smashing into the sea, the Jena school’s impact dramatically reshaped the political and scientific world: fortresses fell as ivory towers rose, political boundaries were effaced as languages were demarcated, dictionaries were written as lexicons were purged, and men took to the battlefield as linguists cleared it of the rubble of Babel. When this surge finally reached the Seine itself in demise of the Second French Empire, we see a kind of sea wall erected around France (and Algeria) with the publication of Ernest Renan’s Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (1882), which radically redefined both the “nation” and the role of language within it. This paper subsequently explores the complex relationship between prescriptivism and descriptivism in the linguistic and socio-political spheres, the concept of boundaries, and the implications of this relationship for the field of sociolinguistics. The focus of this paper is on the dialectical relationship between, on the one hand, prescriptivism, standardization, classification, and research addressing language practices of a priori social groups (national, ethnic, class, racial, etc.), and, on the other, linguistic descriptivism, group-based research and language policy addressing a priori linguistic units. Critically examines are the standardization of language and its classification into languages, dialects, creoles, and pidgins, paying particular attention to both the symbolic and communicative function of language. The paper ends by offering a response to the question initially posed by Herder, taking into account the place of English and French in today’s increasingly globalizing world in general, and the situation of French Canada in particular. To be highlighted is the performative nature of the speech act and the contextually specific meta-semantic baggage carried by words themselves. This paper is highly interdisciplinary, informed heavily by recent research and trends in anthropology, linguistic nationalism, sociology, and post-colonial theory.
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English and Pidgin in Cameroon: Peaceful or conflicting coexistence Jean-Paul Kouega
Department of English University of Yaounde I, Cameroon
This paper examines the nature of the co-existence between Pidgin English, Pidgin for short, and Standard English – English for short – in Cameroon. Pidgin preceded English in the country, the former resulting from the Slave Trade and the latter from colonisation. Ever since independence, the two languages have coexisted in the country. To check the nature of this coexistence, we collected data through a questionnaire and participation observation. The informants were some 280 fluent speakers of Pidgin, a few of whom were not literate in English, as they needed assistance to fill in the questionnaire. The analysis of the returns revealed that, in matters of education, Pidgin and English are in conflict, as English has official recognition and high status in the country while Pidgin is despised and discouraged on school campuses. In business transactions, Pidgin is the preferred language, as it enables both literate and illiterate users to communicate freely; in politics, it serves as a marker of identity among Anglophone Cameroonians as it is the appropriate language for discussing common problems. In short, while Pidgin is the preferred language in politics and other such domains where it signals group solidarity and patriotism, its use is proscribed in educational circles where it is held as the main cause of falling academic standards.
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‘Oreilles françaises’ et ‘langues sauvages’ : l’énergie comme critère linguistique à l’âge classique
Matthew Lauzon Department of History
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Cette communication visera l’effet des descriptions de l’éloquence des ‘sauvages’ de Nouvelle France dans l’élaboration de l’énergie comme critère linguistique au dix-huitième siècle. Je commencerai par une analyse des Relations Jésuites pour montrer comment les soucis pour la sincérité des conversions indiennes ont contribué aux représentations de l’éloquence sauvage. Ensuite, je montrerai comment ces représentations missionnaires de l’éloquence sauvage ont contribué à l’élaboration d’un discours linguistique qui a prétendu que les langues primitives sont plus énergiques que les langues civilisées. De par leur caractère énergique, ces langues étaient supposées, entre autre, garantir la sincérité de ceux qui les parlent. Ma communication finira avec quelques réflexions sur le rôle qu’a joué la notion d’énergie linguistique dans l’élaboration des discours sur le génie de la langue française au dix-huitième siècle et surtout durant la révolution française. Ce critère d’énergie linguistique était fondamentalement impliqué dans les projets pour rendre la langue française plus patriotique vers la fin du dix-huitième siècle.
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“I’m my own grammar book”: Hip-Hop lyrics as an attack on Quebec linguistic prescriptivism
and conceptions of nationhood Bronwen E. Low, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University
Mela Sarkar, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University Lise Winer, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University
Official Quebec attitudes to “la qualité de la langue” (quality of language, or linguistic
standards) have been heavily prescriptive in favour of a European-based norm for many decades (Bouchard, 2002). These attitudes have coloured governmental and educational pronouncements even more strongly since the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, which saw the beginning of a resurgence of Quebec nationalisme. Policies designed to promote French were enshrined in a series of legal moves from the late sixties on, culminating, in 1977, in Quebec’s present overtly prescriptive and “patriotic” Charter of the French Language, popularly known as “Bill 101” (“la loi 101”). Speaking the right kind of French is, in Quebec, considered by many to be synonymous with loyalty to a certain conception of what it means to be Québécois (Bertrand, 1999, 2006). While popular attitudes have shifted somewhat to accept a more locally flavoured variety of French where certain aspects of phonology are concerned (Papen, 2006), concern with “good French” and disapproval of non-standard forms of expression are common in most educated circles. Acceptance of Quebec dialect has made some headway in the artistic world (though not without a struggle), for example with respect to the work of Quebec author Michel Tremblay, known for his innovative use of joual. However, openness to other non-standard ways of using French is not widespread. Use of anglicisms, code-mixing and “immigrant” languages is proscribed in educational settings. This paper investigates the language of Quebec rap music as a challenge to the authority of language-in-education and other language planning policies which have ensured that French has become the common public language of an ethnically diverse young adult population in Montreal. Rap lyrics are the poetic branch of Hip-Hop culture, which also includes DJing, graffiti art, and breakdancing. Grounded in Afro-Caribbean and African-American cultural forms, Hip-Hop is now an international voice of resistance for marginalized youth. The development of Quebec Hip-Hop over the last two decades coincides with a new demographic reality which is largely nonwhite, multilingual, and with origins outside Canada. Standard and non-standard Quebec and European Frenches, standard English, AAVE and Hip-Hop slang, French-based Haitian Creole, Jamaican English Creole, and Spanish are mixed creatively in the lyrics of Quebec Hip-Hop. Like Hip-Hop elsewhere, this richly metaphoric art form draws directly from the language of war. This language of conflict has roots in verbal duelling traditions and ritualized forms of verbal aggression, which are found not only in Afrodiasporic cultures, but in oral traditions worldwide. In Quebec, use of such metaphors in Hip-Hop can be read as an attack on the monolingual mindset and the linguistic prescriptivism and standardization that are both implicitly and explicitly stated as primary goals of language policy. We draw on a database which includes interviews with and lyrics from rappers of Haitian, Latin-American, African-American and Québécois origin to argue that this imaginative code-switching enacts a conflict with mainstream linguistic identity categories (“francophone, anglophone, allophone”) and normative views of French usage.
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Langues officielles et discours séparatistes au Cameroun
Jean-Guy Mboudjeke Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
University of Windsor Après la réunification du Cameroun occidental (anglophone) et du Cameroun oriental (francophone) en 1972, le français et l’anglais furent adoptés comme les langues officielles de la nouvelle entité étatique. La Constitution amendée de 1996 va non seulement réitérer la dualité linguistique de l’État camerounais, mais aussi consacrer le statut égalitaire des deux langues. Cependant, la politique linguistique en matière de langues officielles énoncée au lendemain des indépendances des deux Cameroun et encore en vigueur vise non pas la bilinguisation systématique de toutes les institutions gouvernementales, mais plutôt la promotion du bilinguisme individuel. En d’autres termes et contrairement à ce qu’on observe dans les autres pays bilingues comme le Canada, la Suisse ou la Belgique, au Cameroun, c’est l’individu, et non l’État seul, qui doit porter le fardeau du bilinguisme. La situation sociolinguistique aidant (les francophones sont plus nombreux, les grandes villes sont situées dans la partie francophone du pays, l’administration, calquée sur le modèle français, fonctionne surtout en français, y compris dans les provinces anglophones), les Camerounais anglophones se verront plus contraints, que leurs compatriotes francophones, d’apprendre l’autre langue officielle. Mais depuis quelques années, de plus en plus de voix s’élèvent dans la partie anglophone pour dénoncer ce que d’aucuns considèrent comme une « francophonisation forcée », donc une colonisation de la minorité anglophone. L’une de ces voix, sans doute la plus forte, la plus virulente et la plus dure, est celle du Southern Cameroon National Conference (désormais SCNC), mouvement séparatiste qui, se réclamant de la langue anglaise, souhaite purement et simplement détacher le Southern Cameroon de ce que ses membres appellent ironiquement « La République » pour former un État anglophone indépendant. Cette ambition politique ne manque pourtant pas de susciter un certain nombre d’interrogations : l’anglais, langue importée, peut-il servir de creuset identitaire à un ou plusieurs groupes ethniques au Cameroun ? Cette question appelle une autre : qui est anglophone au Cameroun ? Par ailleurs, la forte présence et la grande véhicularité du Pidgin English (au détriment de l’anglais) dans la partie anglophone et même dans certaines zones francophones du Cameroun ne constituent-elles pas de sérieux arguments contre les prétentions de ceux qui veulent s’appuyer sur la langue anglaise pour faire valoir leur différence linguistico-culturelle ? Les auteurs des discours sécessionnistes se soucient-ils de la qualité de la langue anglaise ? Quelles mesures concrètes, si tant est qu’elles existent, ont-ils prises pour préserver la langue anglaise ? Et qu’est-ce que la présence ou l’absence de ces mesures nous apprend sur le degré de loyauté linguistique (language loyalty selon Weinreich (1974)) des Camerounais-anglophones en général et des responsables du SCNC en particulier ?
Notre article permettra d’apporter des éléments de réponses à ces questions grâce à une analyse des discours des sécessionnistes du SCNC tels qu’on les retrouve dans les divers médias.
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Prescriptions of German for foreign language learners in the UK, 1850-2000 Nicola McLelland
Department of German University of Nottingham
The history of German grammatography is well-researched for the period up to 1856 (Jellinek 1913-14, though, dated, is still useful for developments up to late eighteenth century; Padley 1985 and 1988 covers the period to 1700 in the European context; Naumann 1986 covers the period of 1781 to 1856.) In contrast, the history of grammars of German since 1856 remains to be written. German had been (largely) standardized, but more than one revolution took place in grammatical theory in the period. So too definitions of the ‘object language’ German changed. Equally under-researched is the role of prescriptive grammars aimed at non-native speakers in promulgating a particular ideal of the target language, compared to that presented by the ‘mainstream’ grammatical tradition aimed at native speakers. This paper is the first step in a project which aims to redress both these imbalances – and at the same time to offer a counterpoint to the monolithic presence of the history of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the history of linguistics (cf. Smith 2003, 2005). The project will examining the language ideal promoted in grammars of German intended for foreign learners, specifically for learners in the UK from the mid-nineteenth century to 2000. The paper will report on a pilot study of the materials used for teaching the German language in the UK since 1856, relying on a corpus of materials used in a major ‘public school’ (i.e. private school!) for the teaching of German since the late nineteenth century. What grammatical models are promulgated, and how do they compare with contemporary native-speaker grammatical traditions? What is implied about the ideal target language to be acquired? What place is given to Austrian, Swiss and regional-German varieties in such texts? What effect do the political upheavals of two World Wars, the Cold War, and Reunification have on how the German language is presented to English learners over this period?
Jellinek, Max. 1913-1914. Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Grammatik von den Anfängen bis auf Adelung. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
References
Naumann, Bernd. 1986. Grammatik der deutschen Sprache zwischen 1781 und 1856. Die Kategorien der deutschen Grammatik in der Tradition von Johann Werner Meiner und Johann Christoph Adelung. Berlin: Schmidt.
Padley, George Arthur. 1985, 1988. Grammatical Theory in Western Europe 1500-1700: trends in vernacular grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Richard. 2003. English as a Foreign Language Teaching, 1912-1936: Pioneers of ELT.: Taylor & Francis. Smith, Richard ed. 2005. Teaching English as a Foreign Language, 1936–1961: Foundations of ELT, six volumes,
with General Introduction (pp. xv–cxx). Abingdon: Routledge.
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Saint Lucian Kwéyòl in Saint Croix: A Study of Language Choice and Attitudes Edward S. Mitchell and Diana Ursulin
Departamento de Inglés Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
In this paper, we report on the findings from a study in which we interviewed speakers of
St. Lucian Creole (Kwéyòl) in St. Croix on their use of and attitudes towards both Kwéyòl and English.
St. Lucia, like many of the islands of the lesser Antilles, has a long and complex colonial history which has resulted in a bilingual society. Kwéyòl stands out among Caribbean Creoles due to the historical fact that it is lexically unrelated to the official language of St. Lucia. Like Dominica to the north, early colonization by France led to the emergence of a French-lexifier Creole which has persisted despite close to two centuries which have passed since the island became British and more recently, independent. Today, while English remains the official language in St. Lucia, Kwéyòl continues to be widely spoken in both resident and diaspora communities. Fasold (1984) notes that language attitudes must be distinguished from attitudes in general, since language attitudes tend to extend beyond the language to the speakers of the language. Thus, language attitudes are inseparable from attitudes towards the ethnolinguistic identity of the speakers of a given language variety. Our research looks at how attitudes of St. Lucians towards Kwéyòl and English influence language choice.
Some of the questions we asked the Kwéyòl-speakers we interviewed in St. Croix include questions about feelings towards Kwéyòl, consideration of Kwéyòl as a language, language most comfortable speaking now, attitudes towards Crucian Creole English and Spanish, children’s attitudes, attitudes towards speaking Kwéyòl in public, feelings of regret for not speaking the language or teaching it to children, and the perceived status of Kwéyòl in St. Lucia, as seen from the diaspora in St. Croix.
The results of this research will contribute to the understanding of the factors which play a role in language choice and attitudes of a “minority” group whose language and identity are under threat due to globalization and the concomitant penetration of U.S. English.
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Guarding the Mother Tongue; Protecting England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Linda C. Mitchell Department of English and Comparative Literature
San José State University
Grammar, a seemingly boring subject, can be a hotly contested issue. To attack one’s language is to attack education, ethnicity, cultural history, family background, social status, and national identity. Strong feelings about language and identity are not only present today; they go back to late Renaissance England when scholars argued the merits of the English language. Richard Mulcaster brags in the preface of The First Part of the Elementarie (1582) that the English language dominates in usage all over the globe. Scholars even demanded that all tradesmen in all foreign ports learn English and speak it when English traders arrived. On home soil, scholars like Ben Jonson (English Grammar 1640) and Jeremiah Wharton (The English-Grammar 1654) tried to protect the English language from corruption by persuading newly immigrated foreigners not only to learn the English language but to learn it correctly. Lexicographers also argued that foreigners should learn correct pronunciation and usage. In The English Dictionary (1655) Henry Cockeram argues, “strangers of any Nation [should understand] the more difficult Authors already Printed in our Language, and [have] the more speedy attaining of an elegant perfection of the English tongue, both in reading, speaking and writing.” The idea is even more pronounced in the eighteenth century. Charles Marriott specifically states in the Preface of The New Royal English Dictionary (1780) that “To be ignorant of our mother tongue is not only a misfortune, but a disgrace; especially as Grammar is a branch of learning now more cultivated in England than in any other part of the globe; those persons, therefore, who speak or write with impropriety, are even without an excuse to palliate their ignorance.” Thus, language was used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England to protect national identity, to force foreigners to conform, and to regulate social behavior.
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Patriotism and Regional Language Diversity: The French Communists’ Support for the French Regional Languages in the
Immediate Aftermath of the Second World War (1945-1951) Olivier Moliner
Department for Romance Language Studies Free University of Berlin
Talk to be given in French
The first step taken towards linguistic prescriptivism in France was an administrative one: Villers-Cotterêts’ Royal Ordinance of 1539, which favoured the langage maternel francoys, the variety of French which had evolved from the Ile de France dialect, over Latin. Following the French Revolution, particularly the 1794 National Convention, which involved politicians such as Bertrand Barère or Abbé Grégoire, the trend for prescriptivism in favour of French went on to reach the classroom. The revolutionaries hoped to utilise the school system in order to advance the position of French within France itself, as its usage internationally was already almost universal. The Third Republic, under the auspices of Jules Ferry, institutionalised free and non-clerical schooling in 1880 whilst cementing the central tenant that French should form the only language of instruction – a position still maintained today.
This presentation seeks to highlight the role and the motives of the French Communists in the linguistic debate that took place in the period immediately following the Second World War, a period in which they were involved in a vehement fight to get several French regional languages introduced into schools. When the 1945 provisional government annulled all laws passed under the Vichy regime, this included the 1941 Arrêté Carcopino, a law which had enabled the regional languages a restricted entrance to the school system for the first time. The supporters of the regional languages were thus not just confronted with a juristic nightmare but also had to field unpleasant questions regarding both political collaboration with the Germans and a problematically cosy relationship with the Vichy regime. It was in this desolate situation for the regional languages that the French Communists, who had often fought in the resistance, took up the cause of promoting regional languages in the education system. It is this sudden political support that I would like to address in a critical manner: What exact lines of argumentation, many of which were highly patriotic, were used by the Communists to reconcile the primary role of French with the “rights” of the linguistic minorities according to the Soviet model? Why were particular languages such as Breton, Catalan and Alsatian / Standard German given preferential treatment while others languages such as Occitan and Basque ignored? How did the Communists’ political opponents react to their renewed interest in French regional language policy? What made the Fourth Republic the most suitable forum for a debate on the regional languages?
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Les conséquences néfastes du prescriptivisme et du patriotisme : le cas des Mitchifs de l’Ouest canadien
Robert A. Papen Département de linguistique
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
L’histoire linguistique de l’Ouest canadien offre un exemple frappant des conséquences néfastes que peuvent avoir le prescriptivisme linguistique et le patriotisme politique. Dans cette communication, nous allons décrire la déplorable situation actuelle de la langue traditionnelle des Mitchifs de l’Ouest canadien (terme que nous préférons à « Métis », car c’est ainsi qu’ils se dénomment eux-mêmes) : le français. Les Mitchifs francophones étaient majoritaires lors de la création du Manitoba en 1870. C’est d’ailleurs grâce à eux et à leur chef, Louis Riel, que le Manitoba est entré dans la confédération canadienne à titre de province officiellement bilingue. Néanmoins, les immigrants anglophones, venant surtout de l’Ontario et de l’Europe, ont rapidement eu le dessus sur la population métisse francophone. Même les colons francophones, d’origine québécoise, franco-américaine et européenne, encouragés par le clergé et les religieuses catholiques – de par leur intransigeance linguistique – ont systématiquement ridiculisé la légitimité même du vernaculaire français qu’avaient développé les Mitchifs. Devant cet état de fait, ceux-ci ont progressivement abandonné la langue française en faveur de l’anglais. Mais un autre aspect langagier est à souligner. Les Mitchifs, ou plutôt certains d’entre eux, avaient développé aussi tôt que le premier tiers du 19e siècle une langue dite « mixte », où le groupe nominal est français et le verbe vient du cri, langue algonquienne. Cette langue, surtout parlée par les plus démunis des Mitchifs, était restée plus ou moins « secrète » et parfaitement incompréhensible à la majorité des gens, y inclus la plupart des Mitchifs eux-mêmes! Néanmoins, le Ralliement national des Métis – organisme national surtout anglophone – qui se dit représenter tous les Mitchifs « historiques », pour des raisons d’ordre politique et « patriotique », a adopté comme langue « officielle » et « nationale » la langue mixte franco-crie. Cette décision politique a eu pour effet que la langue traditionnelle et historique des Mitchifs, le français, est maintenant en voie de disparition car il ne reste que très peu de locuteurs du français mitchif, et qu’en dépit d’énormes efforts de revitalisation, la langue franco-crie est en état avancé de perdition et n’a aucune chance d’être adoptée comme langue de communication quotidienne par qui que ce soit. Le résultat est que c’est l’anglais qui est devenu, et qui restera, la langue « nationale » des Mitchifs.
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Mutual preservation of standard language and national identity in early-modern Wales
John D. Phillips Department of Linguistics, Yamaguchi University
The talk will look at the case of standard Welsh, the existence of which long predates nationalism and the growth of national states, examining particularly one critical period, when the standard language was both preserved by patriotic feeling, and was itself a major enabling factor in the preservation of national identity.
Standard Welsh has a continuous history from ancient times. The large corpus of written Welsh from the mediaeval period covers literary, historical, legal, medical, religious, and other genres. These texts contain few linguistic clues to their geographical origin, though there must have been regional differences in colloquial speech, as comparison of modern dialects and related languages implies a dialect continuum in the middle of the first millenium. The grammar and vocabulary of the standard changed gradually over the centuries, following changes in the vernacular, and until very recent times it was used for most writing and for formal speech.
The Act of the English parliament which annexed Wales to England in 1536 explicitly aimed “utterly to extirpe alle and singular sinister usages and customs” of Wales, including “a speche nothing like ne consonant to the naturall mother tonge used within this Realme”. The Act made English the only official language in Wales, with the result that Welsh was excluded from many of the higher status functions it had previously occupied.
One effect of the Act was that the gentry quickly abandoned Welsh to merge themselves into the English aristocracy. National feeling was however stronger amongst the middle classes, as testified by the introductory matter of several printed books of the period.
It was fortunate for the Welsh language that the English government, after Elizabeth’s accession in 1558, was concerned to propagate the Protestant religion. Wales had remained thoroughly Catholic, and Welsh politicians were able to persuade the government that religious uniformity and loyalty was more important than linguistic uniformity. In 1563 an Act was passed requiring the translation of the Bible and Prayer Book into Welsh. Though Welsh remained illegal in other official uses, the Act made its use mandatory in the religious sphere. The translations, explicitly made for reading aloud in churches, looked to the mediaeval literature for models, and were acclaimed at the time as masterpieces.
The 1563 Act may have seemed a small concession on the part of the government, but its effect over the centuries was immense. Churchgoers — almost everyone — became accustomed to hearing the standard language regularly. Though the church was the only governmental organisation using Welsh, it was extremely influential in that it was anyway the only governmental organisation with which most people had regular contact.
The wide dissemination of standard Welsh was a main enabling factor for the subsequent growth of Welsh book-publishing, for the success of nationwide institutions such as the Eisteddfod, and for a flourishing periodical press later. Thereby Welsh survived in a comparatively healthy state until the double attack of mass immigration and compulsory English-medium education in the late nineteenth century.
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“Because He Could Not Speak English in the Native Garb”: Fashioning English as Englishness in Shakespeare’s Henry V
Erin Reynolds Department of English University of Toronto
An historical analysis of the rise of the English language suggests that the success of the vernacular in the Elizabethan period can be partially attributed to its rhetorical equation with a national character, that is, with a sense of “Englishness” that was becoming increasingly important alongside England’s growing dominion and developing imperialism. Reading Shakespeare’s Henry V in conjunction with excerpts from Manfred Görlach’s Introduction to Early Modern English, this paper explores the use of fashion, especially clothing, as a common Elizabethan metaphor for language. Contrasting Shakespeare with his contemporaries, I argue that Shakespeare’s use of fashion as a metaphor for language allows him to retain scepticism towards the use of the English language as a marker of national identity and, more fundamentally, to question the nature of “Englishness” as something definable. In addition to these early modern texts, I draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic and linguistic capital to highlight the role of political power in a language’s status as “fashionable,” and thus to contextualize the use of English/Englishness in Henry V with respect to the play’s political concerns. Ultimately, I argue that a sociolinguistic approach to Henry V provides insight into the social and political structures that underlie the increasing acceptance of the vernacular as a national language in Shakespeare’s contemporary England.
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Prescriptivism and Nationalism In the Kurdish Linguistic Landscape Azad Hamad Sharif and Ismael Mohammedfahmi Saeed,
Department of English Salahaddin University, Erbil-Northern Iraq (Kurdistan)
[This is an abridged version of the original abstract] This research addresses the race between English, French, and Kurdish to take over the speech community of the elite as well as the well-educated, the better-schooled circles in the self-rule region of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq at present.
Kurdish Nationalism has been the means to survive assimilation policies adopted by Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey (See McDowall: p.4). However, language is not the only criterion to define the national Kurdish identity. It is a rather complicated point in the case of Kurdish, which comprises four major dialects that are mutually intelligible with much difficulty, and all of which suffered linguistic genocide due to the assimilation policies – but managed to survive.
The two major dialects are Northern Kurmanji (known also by the misnomers as Sorani or Central Kurdish). The former has a much larger number of speakers but the latter is spoken and used in the liberated part of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq. Besides, in this age of Globalization and telecommunication revolutions, all the nations of the Earth work hard to gain better mastery of English and French as well as the national language. Kurdistan is part of that world seeking better mastery of English and French.
However, Kurdish media and journalism, writings, publications, officially or otherwise, continue to use all the dialects without designating a particular one as official, formal standard. The national leaders of Kurdistan are fluent in all the major dialects. TV and Radio broadcasts use all the major dialects equally. Dictionaries are available in many varieties of Kurdish and foreign languages. They have played a role, though limited, in standardizing Kurdish, ever since the national poet Ahmedi Khani presented his pioneer Kurdish–Arabic Dictionary of Nubahara Pichukan, (pre-1675) up to Dr. Shafiq Qazzaz’s English–Kurdish Sharezoor’s Dictionary (2000).
The Kurdish dialects, despite their variety, nourished nationalism. But, in practice, they cannot easily compete with well-established languages like English and French (from which Computer technology and Science come) in the profound and highly specialized branches of knowledge. We will explore the different ways in which the Kurdistan Government supports the need for languages like English and French alongside Kurdish.
At present, because of the dialectical situation in Kurdistan (noted from the 16th century by Bedlisi in his Sharafname
as a language with four dialects: Kurmanji, Lur, Kalhur, and Goran) and because of the continuation of this dialectical situation, as noted above, it may be better and wiser to promote the use of a neutral, natural language like English or French or both, alongside Kurdish, much like a number of Anglophone and Francophobe countries in Asia and Africa: i.e. much like the countries that made English/or French official despite the high rate of illiteracy there. In the course of time, it is the task of the National Kurdistan Government to promote literacy, to give equal opportunities of education in Kurdish (i.e. all the major varieties), to promote the teaching of English and French as globally necessary languages. In the course of time also, a sufficient experience will accumulate to find a workable solution for the linguistic situation in Kurdistan.
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Research Plan:This research includes the following sections:
1 Background to Major dialects with examples to similarities and differences in pronunciation, lexical items, morphology, and script.
2 Kurdish Lexicography from the 17th century to the present and how it had a sort of contribution to standardization of Kurdish.
3 English Language gaining a foot-hold in Kurdistan after the British Mandate over Iraq.
4 French Language gaining the respect of the Kurds after the French Mandate over Syria till 1944 and in 1983 onwards by establishing the Institut Kurde de Paris.
5 Prospects of Global languages in Kurdistan in the light of similar conditions in other Asian and African countries.
6 Towards a conclusion.
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Linguistic proscription and (resistance to) change in Franco-American French Louis E. Stelling
French - Department of Modern Languages Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
French is endangered everywhere that it is spoken in the United States. In this communication, we will explore the influence of grammatical proscription on morphosyntactic change (or lack thereof) in two Franco-American communities. Our data was gathered through sociolinguistic interviews with sixty-nine French-English bilinguals in Southbridge, Massachusetts and Woonsocket, Rhode Island between June of 2002 and August of 2003. Southbridge and Woonsocket are two of eight communities targeted in a collaborative research project led by Professors Cynthia A. Fox (University at Albany) and Jane S. Smith (University of Maine, Orono). If Franco-American French were to follow the path of a great many other language varieties in decline, we would expect rapid linguistic change (e.g. structural simplification) to occur as the shift from French to English advances in New England. In the passé composé, the auxiliary verb être represents an unnecessary complication of the verbal system, since only one auxiliary (avoir) is necessary from a functionalist perspective. Accordingly, structural simplification would encourage the spread of avoir to a limited set of intransitive verbs which call for être in the passé composé, thereby making avoir the sole remaining auxiliary. However, our variable rule analysis has shown that unlike Cajun French for example, Franco-American French shows a remarkable degree of resistance to such qualitative changes which would promote the use of linguistically proscribed forms. Furthermore, we will see that unlike what has been documented in many cases of language shift, social factors such as education in French and socioeconomic stratification continue to exercise a significant effect on linguistic variation. We attribute the lack of change in linguistic structure to the effects of conservative language attitudes and to the significant amount of social and economic stratification present in both communities.
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White Settler Educators' Prescriptive Attitudes towards Indigenous English in Settler Postcolonial Saskatchewan
Andrea Sterzuk Language and Literacies Education
Faculty of Education, University of Regina
By drawing on some of my recent school-based research in Saskatchewan, my paper is an exploration of White settler educators' prescriptive attitudes and practices and the social and academic experiences of First Nations and Métis children who speak a variety of English called Indigenous English. In Saskatchewan schools, exclusion of Indigenous English-speaking students is achieved by championing official representations of a subjective standard English (Heit & Blair; 1993, Sterzuk, 2003; 2007). Indeed, a recent study of levels of literacy among First Nations, Métis, and non-Aboriginals in Saskatchewan shows that 70% of First Nations participants and 56% of Métis participants, compared to 37% of non-Aboriginal participants, did not achieve the minimum level of literacy needed to “use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential” (Statistics Canada, 2008). My research is informed by the belief that interactions between settler teachers and Indigenous students are “fully colonial” (Razack, 2005) in the sense that the ideologies of teachers, school practices, educator prescriptive attitudes, and differentiated educational experiences of settler and Indigenous students are situated in a larger historical and social context. The goal of this paper is discuss some school discourses and teaching practices around “proper English” that work to produce this educational inequity and to offer some possibilities for how these practices might be influenced in effective ways.
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Joseph Priestley and the Founding Fathers: Social networks, normative influence and the ‘metropolitan standard’
Robin Straaijer Centre for Linguistics
Leiden University (NL) Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and John Adams (1735–1826), are three of the ‘founding fathers’ of the United States of America, involved in creating America’s national identity. All three spent time in London and were most likely aware of the English ‘metropolitan standard’ of language to which Franklin certainly aspired (Longmore 2005: 296). This English standard was ascertained and propagated by normative grammars published predominantly from London. Language standardisation and prescriptivism have been equated with patriotism and national identity, and the founding fathers had their opinions on an American standard of English (cf. Walker 2006). The influential English grammarian and pro-American radical Joseph Priestley (1733–-1804) can be said to represent and promote this standard in his grammar Rudiments of English Grammar (Priestley 1768) (cf. Bryan 1923, Hodson 2006) and his own usage. Between 1766 and 1803, Priestley corresponded with all three Founding Fathers. In terms of the model of Social Network Analysis (Milroy 1987), Priestley is a weak tie between the several network clusters of which he was a member. According to Milroy this puts him in a position to have had influence on the language of the network of the founding fathers. It seems a historical irony that Priestley, who was not seen as a patriot by the establishments in England or America in his own time, could possibly have had an influence on an American national standard of English. This paper takes a historical-sociolinguistic approach. I will make an assessment of Priestley’s normative linguistic influence on the language of Franklin, Jefferson and Adams. I will use the correspondence of all four players, in particular the letters they wrote to and about each other, in an approach combining Social Network Analysis, text analysis and socio-historical evidence.
Bryan, W. F. (1923). Notes on the Founders of Prescriptive English Grammar. Manly Anniversary Studies. Chicago: Chicago UP. 383-393.
References
Hodson, J. (2006). The Problem of Joseph Priestley’s (1733-1804) Descriptivism. Historiographia Linguistica: International Journal for the History of Linguistics 33: 57-84.
Longmore, P. K. (2005). “They ... Speak Better English Than the English Do”: Colonialism and the Origins of National Linguistic Standardization in America. Early American Literature 40: 279-314.
Milroy, L. (1987). Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Blackwell. Priestley, J. (1768). The Rudiments of English Grammar, Adapted to the Use of Schools; With Notes and
Observations, for the Use of Those Who Have Made Some Proficiency in the Language. London: T. Becket & P.A. De Hondt, J. Johnson.
Walker, J. (2006). Thomas Jefferson and the New American Language. Trans: Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, 16: 3.2.
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Pronouncing Dictionaries between Patriotism and Prescriptivism Massimo Sturiale
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures University of Catania
Starting from the very end of the eighteenth century, a high number of pronouncing dictionaries and guides were extensively published in Great Britain (see Mugglestone 20032, Beal 1999 and 2004). Mainstream authors such as Thomas Sheridan and John Walker, together with less ‘fortunate’ orthoepists such as William Kenrick, John Jones, James Buchanan and William Perry, to name but a few, paved the way to the standardization of a British English accent. In the debate which followed and characterised the proposal of a model for a ‘proper’ and ‘correct’ English pronunciation, the modern question of ‘which English’ (Crystal 1994) also arouse and provincial authors, i.e. Irish and Scottish, were not considered a reliable model. Kenrick (1784), for example, may be used as an example even of the general attitude towards dialects and varieties, which were in clear antithesis with the idea and desire for a standard of ‘proper’ English, when he writes that:
There seems indeed a most ridiculous absurdity in the pretensions of a native of Aberdeen or Tipperary, to teach the natives of London to speak and to read. Various have been nevertheless the modest attempts of the Scots and Irish, to establish a standard of English pronunciation. That they should not have succeeded is no wonder. Men cannot teach others what they do not themselves know (Kenrick 1784: ii).
However, Kenrick proved wrong when one of his contemporary ‘provincial’ colleagues, that is the Scottish William Perry, ended to be extremely successful and influential not only in Great Britain, but especially in the United States (Sturiale 2005 and 2006), which not only imported dictionaries from the other side of the Atlantic, but from the nineteenth century started to print their own dictionaries and spelling books.
John Pickering, in an article which appeared in The American Quarterly Review in 1828, claimed that:
It is often asserted, that the uniform pronunciation throughout New-England, is the true English pronunciation, handed down from past ages. But this we much doubt. We believe it has been brought about, if not entirely, yet principally, by means of the Scotch dictionary of Perry; which, as Mr. Worcester justly observes “has heretofore had a very extensive circulation in this country, and has been of great influence in fixing the prevailing pronunciation, especially in the Northern States (Pickering 1828 qu. in Walker Read, 1973: 71).
And Noah Webster in the “Introduction” to An American Dictionary of the English Language pointed out that in Perry’s dictionary (1775):
[the] pronunciation is nearer to the actual usage in England, than that of either of his predecessors before mentioned [i.e. Sheridan and Walker]. His orthography also is more correct, according to the present usage, than that of his predecessors (Webster 1848: lxii).
Those two quotations lead to one of the main aims of my paper that is, moving from the assumption that British pronouncing dictionaries proved to be rather prescriptive in terms of social and regional accent, to analyse to what extent from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, American
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and British norms were also dictated by patriotic prescriptivism. In other words, what I intend to discuss is, once the two varieties were codified, what was accepted and what was left out for being marked as ‘other’?
Beal, Joan C. 1999, English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century. Thomas Spence’s ‘Grand Repository of the References
English Language’. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beal, Joan. C. 2004, English in Modern Times. London: Arnold. Crystal, David 1994, “Which English – or English Which?”, in Mike Hayhoe and Stephen Parker (eds), Who Owns
English, Buckingham / Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1994, 108-114. Kenrick, William 1784, A Rhetorical Grammar of the English Language. Selected and edited by R. C. Alston,
English Linguistics 1500-1800 No. 332. Menston: The Scolar Press, 1972. Mugglestone, Lynda C. 20032, Talking Proper. The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. Perry, William 1775, The Royal Standard English Dictionary. Edinburgh: Willison. Sturiale, Massimo 2005, “Eighteenth-century ‘Proper’ and ‘Correct’ English: Anne Fisher’s and William Perry’s
Descriptions of 'True Pronunciation’” Historical Linguistic Studies of Spoken English. Papers read at the 11th Italian Conference on the History of the English Language (Pisa, 5-7 June 2003) ed. by Antonio Bertacca. 97-109. Pisa: Edizioni Plus Pisa University Press.
Sturiale, Massimo 2006, “William Perry’s The Royal Standard English Dictionary (1775): a provincial's attempt to
ascertain and fix a standard to the pronunciation of the English tongue”, Historiographia Linguistica, XXXIII: 1/2, pp. 139-168.
Webster, Noah 1848, An American Dictionary of the English Language, Springfield (Mass.): Merriam.
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Marginalized Peoples and Creole Genesis: sociétés de cohabitation and the Founder Principle
Rhoda Arrindell, Micah Corum, Cándida González López, Lourdes González,
Pier Angeli LeCompte, Jean Ourdy Pierre, Marta Viada Bellido de Luna, Diana Ursulin, and Nicholas Faraclas
College of Humanities: English Department University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.
The Founder Principle, a concept from evolutionary biology which was reformulated by
Salikoko Mufwene (2001, 2005) to apply to the genesis and development of plantation era Creoles, and Robert Chaudenson’s (2001) extension of the sociohistorical matrix for creolization from sociétés de plantation to sociétés d’habitation, have been used together to support claims that the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean Creoles are dialects of their European lexifier languages. Given that Mufwene’s version of the Founder Principle states that the initial populations involved in the emergence of a new speech variety will have a preponderant influence on its form and that Chaudenson’s scenario for the origin of creole languages begins with European-controlled ‘homesteads’ of modest size, which utilized limited amounts of African slave labor (sociétés d’habitation), European languages would have played the preponderant role in the establishment and earliest stages of development of plantation era Creole languages. The assumption here is that European languages would have constituted the target languages for language learning by non-European descended peoples during the first years of colonial society, because in sociétés d’habitation people of European descent would have been present in sufficient numbers, would have been in a position of sufficient power and prestige, and would have had sufficient day to day contact with non-European descended peoples to act as the principal models for language acquisition.
Setting aside for the moment the controversial nature (among both biologists and creolists) of the Founder Principle and the genetic and evolutionary paradigms that underpin it, this paper demonstrates that the societies which typified the earliest sustained contact between peoples of European, African, and Indigenous descent in the Atlantic and Pacific during the colonial era were relatively egalitarian subsistence communities (which we call sociétés de cohabitation) where European descended people were neither in a position of power or prestige nor were they numerous enough to have been in direct day to day contact with the Indigenous and/or African majority. Therefore, if we accept and apply the same logic employed by Mufwene and Chaudenson, we would be forced to conclude that it was the languages of Indigenous and African descended peoples in these sociétés de cohabitation that must have played a preponderant role in the earliest stages of Creole development which the Founder Principle singles out as key to determining both the basic form and the genetic affiliation of the colonial era Creoles. Based on this evidence, we argue that notions such as the Founder Principle and société d’habitation cannot provide a comprehensive account of the complex and heteroglossic nature of the contact situations that led to the emergence of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean Creoles and that any comprehensive account can neither ignore the role of African and Indigenous descended peoples as agents nor the importance of substrates, universals, monogenetic scenarios, as well as superstrates at every stage in the process of creolization. ReferencesCHAUDENSON, ROBERT (2001): Creolization of Language and Culture. London: Routledge.
MUFWENE, SALIKOKO (2001): The Ecology of Language Evolution. New York: Cambridge University Press.
MUFWENE, SALIKOKO (2005): Créoles, écologie sociale, évolution linguistique. Paris: L’Harmatan.
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Prescriptivism, patriotism and pragmatism: Challenges for language policy and planning
Lionel Wee Department of English Language & Literature
National University of Singapore The language policy of a nation-state is designed to reflect ideological aspirations regarding the relationship between national identity and the management of ethnolinguistic diversity. Where tensions arise, these are usually anticipated to take the form of competing loyalties regarding the relationship between specific languages and specific ethnic or national identities. Less discussed, however, are the challenges posed by various pragmatic or instrumental orientations toward language. In this paper, I focus on the tensions that arise when the pursuit of specific languages is seen as necessary to attaining a vision of ‘the good life’. By examining the constraints and rationales behind specific language policies, I discuss how such pragmatic orientations may create the impetus towards change in language policy. As case studies, I draw on Singapore’s mother tongue policy, South Korea’s debate on whether to accord English official language status, and Malaysia’s policy of according special rights to the Malays.
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“Creole Kyaan Spell”: Post-colonial prescriptivism in a vernacular language
Lise Winer Department of Integrated Studies in Education
McGill University Since the 1970s in Trinidad & Tobago, the development of highly sensitive ethnic group consciousness and racial nationalism, particularly among Trinidadians and Tobagonians of African and Indian descent, has greatly influenced public attitudes towards the traditionally denigrated English Creole vernacular. Under pressure from linguists to use creole languages as “a badge of Antillean identity”, the Ministry of Education officially prescribed the vernacular as a recognized part of the Primary Schools Language Arts Curriculum in 1975. Nonetheless, considerable controversy has continued over the use of “dialect”. Notably, a lack of accessible and reliable reference materials is often cited as a reason for its under-implementation in educational and other contexts. In the past, most native speakers proclaimed that “creole kyaan spell” – that it was impossible to represent adequately this “broken language” (or that creole people could not learn “proper English”). Despite this, there is a long tradition of publishing writing in creole, especially in newspapers. Nowadays, more people are expressing the need to standardize spelling, but disagree on the actual choices. This paper discusses a series of decisions about the spelling of words of non-English origin, in connection with the compiling of the first historical dictionary of the English and English Creole language(s) of the country. Guidelines for standardizing orthographic representations have been developed, recommending the use of a combination of etymological knowledge, historical precedent, and phonetic representation. Where etyma are unknown, where prior representations are highly variable, where pronunciation is variable, and where etyma are from ethnic heritage languages, decisions were not straightforward, and have involved the relative privileging of several principles of prescriptive spelling, including popular (mis)conceptions about word origins and perceptions of relative linguistic status.
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Dictionary prescriptivism Russon Wooldridge
Department of French, University of Toronto
The paper distinguishes between several types of prescriptivism and posits the superiority of the electronic medium over print for the adequate cataloguing and description of the lexicon. In 1539, the year in which François Ier published the edict of Villers-Cotterêts, making French the obligatory language of all public policy documents, the King's Printer, Robert Estienne, brought out the first edition of his French-Latin dictionary. The second edition, published in 1549, makes French the target language instead of being simply a route of access to Latin; the dictionary is conceived as being useful to foreign learners of French. In 1635 Cardinal Richelieu, first minister of Louis XIII, founded the Académie française, whose principal function was to write an authoritative dictionary of French. The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française appeared in 1694, and was dedicated to the King. In their respective prefaces Estienne asked his readers to bring to his attention missing words attested in novels and good writers ("es Rommans & bons autheurs Francois", 1549) while the Academy solicited its readers' opinions in its search for perfection in its inventory and description of proper usage ("bel usage", 1694). Besides the prescriptivism of the content, the Academy's prestige had the effect of imposing the dictionary practice (dictionary economy) of deriving the feminine of adjectives and epicine nouns from the masculine so that, for example, saugrenue is to be reconstructed from "SAUGRENU, UE", corrivale from "Corrival, le"; the artificiality of such a method is shown by both feminine forms disappearing in a straight electronic retroconversion, where headwords are replaced by keywords, linear reading by vertical searching. Estienne and the French Academy were the authoritative dictionary references of their day; today the most widely used reference dictionary for French is the Petit Robert, which widens its content to include the general language as a whole ("dictionnaire général de langue", 1993). All three are governed by the restraints of space (Estienne = 1 volume, Academy = 2, Petit Robert = 1), which today determine the number of words to be included as well as the number and length of definitions, examples and quotations (the present writer was limited to one offset quotation in the writing of the entry for the adjective intestin in the Trésor de la langue française). Printed dictionaries, whatever the language inventoried, have two types of non-register restraint, or prescriptivism: that of space, which is a feature particular to the medium of print, and that of categories of information and the order of their presentation, which is particular to the genre of the work of reference (dictionary, encyclopedia, telephone directory, library catalogue, etc.). Without recursivity a "dictionary" would not be a dictionary. The electronic medium allows for the abolition of considerations of space, realized in the World Wide Web, and in particular in the interactive Web, in products such as Wikipédia (Wikipedia for English) and Wiktionnaire (Wiktionary for the English language). This means that there is no limit on the number of entries [statistics will be provided if needed] or on the length and number of attributes such as definition, example, quotation, note, cross-reference, etc. This type of interactive online dictionary or encyclopedia has the great advantage over the print dictionary of being close to the language or world it inventories and describes: it is dynamic, plural (the number of authors is unlimited) and anonymous. The fact that it is all-embracing is borne out by anecdotal evidence such as the Alexa Top 500 (Wikipedia is only inferior in number of hits to seven other sites including Yahoo!, Google, YouTube and Facebook) and the response of university students (nearly all the students that the present writer has surveyed use a Web search engine or Wikipedia/Wikipédia as the first resource for interrogating a concept or word).
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If Scotsmen and Irishmen were to ‘fix a standard’… Attitudes to ‘correct’ English in 18th-century grammar-writers
Nuria Yáñez-Bouza School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, The University of Manchester (UK)
The 18th century is generally regarded as ‘the age of prescriptivism’ when the English language was codified. It was a time of social change and social mobility in which those who aspired to be respected in (the polite) society would attempt to adhere to the ‘standard’ norms laid down in grammars, dictionaries and elocution treatises. According to Görlach, these prescriptive/ proscriptive works were “very effective in spreading norms among educated people” (1999:10) and particularly so among Irish and Scots (2001:30-32). In fact, he remarks, “[t]he contribution that Irish and Scottish writers made to the definition and implementation of a proper standard for English deserves special attention” (2001:30). Their language usage was fiercely attacked in terms of pronunciation, grammar and lexicon but, interestingly, such comments were often made by Scotsmen and Irishmen themselves; for instance, the Scot James Elphinston (1771) set out to correct ‘Scotticisms’ of his countrymen, while the Irish Thomas Sheridan (1762) longed for ‘an uniformity of pronunciation’. In this context, the aim of this paper is to examine the (co-)relation between national identity of 18th-century grammar-writers and their attitudes to ‘standard’ English, paying special attention to non-English born authors from the British Isles.
The approach is two-fold. In the first place, my study will unearth the origin and whereabouts of 18th-century Scottish and Irish grammar-writers by tracing not only their place of birth but also the place where they lived and/or taught, in the belief that the social networks established in the latter might have played a major role in their attitudes to language, especially if in London. Questions arise such as: did authors tend to stay in the country where they were born? If/when there was geographical mobility, in which direction, e.g. England to Scotland/Ireland or Scotland/Ireland to England? And to what extent? The data will be drawn from the Eighteenth-Century English Grammars database (ECEG), a new electronic resource which contains detailed bibliographic information on grammars written from 1700 to 1800 alongside biographic information about their authors (Rodríguez-Gil & Yáñez-Bouza forthc.). ECEG thus fills an important gap in the literature: the fact that there is hitherto no systematic account for the ratio of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh or American authors of normative works written in the 18th century (cf. Görlach 2001:31.fn20). In the second place, I will present the case study of attitudes towards preposition stranding (e.g. The house which I lived in last year vs. The house in which I lived), this being one of the grammatical features fiercely stigmatised in the 18th century and which ‘still raises its head today’ (Beal 2004:84). The data to this purpose will be based on Yáñez-Bouza (2007), where not only negative but also positive and neutral attitudes have been thoroughly described.
All in all, it is hoped my findings will open the path for future research on other shibboleths and stigmatised features with more than three hundred years of prescriptive tradition behind.
Beal, Joan C. 2004. English in modern times 1700-1945. London: Arnold. References
Elphinston, James. 1771. Animadversions upon [Lord Kames’s] Elements of Criticism. Görlach, Manfred. 1999. English in nineteenth-century England: An introduction. Cambridge: CUP. Görlach, Manfred. 2001. Eighteenth-century English. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Rodríguez-Gil, María Esther & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza. forthcoming. ECEG-database: A bio-bibliographic approach
to the study of eighteenth-century English grammars. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Wim van der Wurff (eds.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Late Modern English (LMEC3), Leiden, 30 August - 1 September 2007. [working title] Bern: Peter Lang.
Sheridan, Thomas. 1762. A course of lectures on elocution. Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria. 2007. Preposition stranding and prescriptivism in English from 1500 to 1900: A corpus-
based approach. PhD thesis, The University of Manchester (UK).
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Panel Abstracts
Résumés des panels
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Jackman Collaborative Panel:
Language in Canada
Organizer / Organisatrice:
Carol Percy
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Accent on Arrival: prescribing the communicability of professional immigrants in Canadian labour markets
Kori Allan & Lyda Fens-de Zeeuw University of Toronto & Leiden University
Language proficiency is often cited as the key to immigrants’ integration into the Canadian labour market. This paper critically examines this assumption, asking: how do ideologies of ‘proper’ language use regulate immigrants’ access to employment? Specifically, this paper analyzes how the language proficiencies of professional immigrants are evaluated in government sponsored Enhanced Language Training (ELT) programs. ELT aims to help professional immigrants gain employment commensurate with their skills by offering advanced language training. Rather than focus primarily on grammar and pronunciation, ELT classes concentrate on how to communicate effectively in the ‘Canadian workplace culture’. Many scholars have examined this privileging of communication skills in knowledge-based economies, when the exchange of information becomes a primary form of production. Communication is conceptualized as a set of measurable skills and it thus becomes legitimate to regulate employees’ talk. This paper contributes to this research by investigating pre-employment instructors’ attempts to teach and prescribe ‘good’ communication skills to job-seeking immigrants. Following Deborah Cameron (1995), we define prescriptivism broadly as the ‘urge to improve’ language use in accordance with particular standards of correctness, deemed appropriate for functional, moral or aesthetic reasons. We also draw on Charles Briggs’ (2005) notion of communicability to explore the productive capacity of ideologies of communication to construct (citizen) subjectivities and to order them hierarchically.
Through the analysis of a few ethnographic examples, culled from 8 months of fieldwork in ELT classrooms, we explore how teaching workplace communication rests on a contradiction between recognizing that communicative background knowledge is inextricably linked to ‘cultural’ experience, and the notion that language is a skill that can be systematically taught. Teaching communicative competence entails attempting to fill in immigrants’ cultural/experiential deficits. Consequently, the line between communication skills training and assimilation becomes blurred. This paper argues that being ‘integrated’ requires becoming a neoliberal worker who is entrepreneurial and self-disciplining. We show how such behavioural attributes and attitudes towards work were promoted through the prescription of communicative norms. However, while emulating an appropriate style of communication, students were also asked to present an ‘authentic self’ who was relatable according to norms glossed as ‘Canadian’ (e.g. politeness norms). There are thus tensions between standardization and individualization that underlie job searching processes: candidates must demonstrate that they are uniquely valuable, but within a narrow set of ‘culturally’ acceptable norms and fairly standardized communicative genres. The value of work experience is, in part, accrued through talk, rather than being merely inscribed in documents, such as diplomas. However, several ELT students questioned the efficacy of talking and behaving appropriately, for they recognized that their interlocutors evaluate them based on other indexes, such as their perceived foreignness. This paper thus also considers how language is often conflated with ‘other’ attributes and how it can become a relatively neutral way of ascribing deficiencies and of disguising other forms of discrimination.
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Language Norms in the Media: from Hollywood to CapAcadie
Mary Catherine Davidson & Mireille McLaughlin Glendon, York University & University of Toronto
In this presentation, we will tackle the question of multilingualism in the media from the perspectives of prescriptivism and variation: we will do this by looking at two different, but linked, nation building projects: the construction of Canadian English speakers in mid-twentieth century Hollywood film and the contemporary portrayals of Acadian identity. In both instances, we analyze how linguistic ideologies are mobilized to construct cultural/national identities. We will pay attention to the ways in which media technologies play a role in the production of linguistic identities and how media simultaneously reproduces and challenges ideologies of language.
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The “standard” in scholarly research and in public debate: thoughts on present-day Canadian English
Stefan Dollinger & Carol Percy University of British Columbia & University of Toronto
This contribution is an attempt to report on the most prevalent notions of “standard” Canadian English in both scholarly and public perspective for present-day Canadian English. By attempting to do so, we address the rift that has been part of linguistic approaches to language since its foundation as a modern science: a deep misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge transfer between scholarly debates on language and the topics considered of interest to the (North American) public (e.g. Algeo 2006: 501-05, although there appear to be considerable Canadian-American differences, e.g. Chambers 1986). Canadian English represents an especially interesting case, as linguists have been trying to emphasize the “legitimacy” of the variety, not so much within the concert of varieties of English, where its saliency is undisputed, but, on a regular basis, with members of the Canadian public. The notion of “standard” plays an important role in this discussion, which we will use as a spring board towards a – rough – portrayal of the state of affairs in Canadian English linguistics – and the public perception of it. We are in the fortuitous position to report on one of the most publicly visibly projects of Canadian English as of late (e.g. Anderson 2009, Hamilton 2008, Krangle 2007), the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles project (Dollinger 2006) and more abstract projects on Canadian English and how they relate, or are related, to the notion of Canadian patriotism, or the lack thereof. It will be shown, that the early calls of the Canadian Linguistic Association from the mid-1950s for a profound involvement of linguists in Canadian school curricula in all language matters are as pressing today as they were then and that the notion of a “standard” in Canadian English (Chambers 1986), in relation to the two dominant varieties of English, British and American Standard English (e.g. Clyne 1992, Halliday 2006), needs some fine-tuning. What is even more needed is a serious effort at the dissemination of linguistic knowledge in order to go beyond characterizations of CanE as a mere “hybrid” of other varieties. As such, the paper is nationalistic, but is based on profound data. Whether our predictions and recommendations for future developments will be met with agreement, however, is open for discussion and will need to be seen. Algeo, John. 2006. “Grammar Wars: The United States”. In: Kachru, Braj B., Yamuna Kachru and Cecil L. Nelson
(eds). The Handbook of World Englishes. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 496-508. Anderson, Erin. 2009. "And the millionth word is … hardly a word at all", The Globe and Mail , 11 Jun. 2009, A3 Chambers, J. K. 1986. Three kinds of standard in Canadian English. In William C. Lougheed (ed.). In search of
the Standard in Canadian English [Strathy Language Unit Occasional Papers 1]. Kingston, Ont.: Queen’s University, 1-19.
Clyne, Michael (ed.) 1992. Pluricentric languages. Differing norms in different nations. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Dollinger, Stefan. 2006. "Towards a fully revised and extended edition of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (DCHP-2): background, challenges, prospects". Historical Sociolinguistics/Sociohistorical Linguistics (Leiden, NL). 6. http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/DCHP-2/DCHP-2/DCHP-2.htm
Halliday, M.A.K. 2006. “Written language, standard language, global language” In: Kachru, Braj B., Yamuna Kachru and Cecil L. Nelson (eds). The Handbook of World Englishes. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 349-365. Hamilton, Graeme. 2008. "The new code word for black: 'Canadian'; Slur In U.S. South" National Post [National
Edition]. 25 Jan. 2008, A1 . Krangle, Karenn. 2007. "Canadian English, eh", The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, B.C.), 10 March 2007
(weekend, final edition), B1-3, front.
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Usage Manuals and Nationalism
Organizer / Organisateur:
Douglas Kibbee
New Russian Patriotism and the Russian Language Law of 2005 Sylvie Archaimbault
Histoire des théories linguistiques / CNRS UMR 7597 Université Denis Diderot / Paris VII
Following the political turmoil that shook Russia in the 1990s, protecting the integrity of the Russian language and raising Russians’ linguistic culture once again came to preoccupy prescriptive linguistics in that country. Several well-known linguists succeeded in attracting political decision-makers to their cause. The result was the adoption of a law, in May 2005, guaranteeing “the use of Russian as the official language of the Russian Federation throughout its territory”, as well as “the protection and development of linguistic culture”. In this talk we shall study the contributions of linguists to the preparation and adoption of this law. We will examine in particular the importance placed on the ideas of cultural continuity and national identity, as well as the solutions proposed to restore the integrity of what remains largely a fictional construct, the model of the standard modern Russian language.
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The Roles of English in French Official Terminology Danielle Candel
Histoire des théories linguistiques / CNRS UMR 7597 Université Denis Diderot / Paris VII
The study is based on observations of the official process which defines French terminology nowadays, and which is naturally prescriptivist. In the dynamics of this official enrichment framework of the French language, the American-English language assumes at least two functions. On the one hand it is an attractive model, on the other hand, it is what one wishes to avoid. The English word stimulates the search for an equivalent in French, with the general objective of finding a means to avoid it. Quite logically, the process is to take it as a model and analyze American-English contexts, in order to better grasp the notion and find a suitable way to express it in French. But this English model has to be surpassed and overcome. In many cases, a French equivalent already exists, which could simply be declared official; but, if one finds that this word has some English appearance, in its morphology, pronunciation or syntax, this solution is most frequently discarded: American-English traces have to be erased, the term has to be “corrected” to become acceptable. We show the range of attitudes expressed concerning English, through a selected corpus of official recommendations (1997-2007) as well as through reports on discussions inside the official French Terminology committees.
Patriotic roots of prescriptivism Douglas A. Kibbee
Department of French University of Illinois
Patriotism ultimately finds its root in the Latin word for ‘father’; prescriptivism in its most basic form is parental correction of children’s linguistic choices. The linguistic norm is the bond of identity established first across generations, and then, in more complex social groups, across families, across classes, and across regions. One of the dangers of generalizations about prescriptivism is the tendency to choose one of these bonds as exemplary of all prescriptivism: the historical: purism based on etymology (e.g., Thomas 1991); the social: elitism based on a social classification of forms (e.g., Milroy and Milroy 1999); the geographic: norms based on the economic dominance of a region (e.g., Lodge 1994). In order to discern scientifically the balance of the components that make up prescriptivism, in this contribution we shall examine the relative weight given to social, geographical and historical factors in a corpus of French prescriptivist texts from the 19th century. From this emerges a more accurate and more complex picture of prescriptivism, and new insight into how prescriptivism should be considered in a science of language.
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Usage guides and usage problems Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
Centre for Linguistics University of Leiden
“The nation is divided,” Burchfield (1996:106) writes in his revised edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926), in its use of between you and me and between you and I.” He proceeds to declare that the latter form is “the only admissable construction ... in standard use in the 20c.” Fowler himself had merely noted that “B. you & I ... perhaps results from a hazy remembrance of hearing you & me corrected in the subjective” (1926:50). Seventy years earlier, Walton Burgess, in Five Hundred Mistakes of Daily Occurrence in Speaking had written that “The construction requires the objective case in place of I, which is in the nominative” (1856:20). Comment appears to have originated with Sir Horace Walpole, when, in 1774 in a letter addressed to a friend, he criticised Lord Chesterfield for having said “you and me shall not be well together”, adding “and this not once, but on every such occasion”. In the letter, the usage is labelled “a female inaccuracy”. This example illustrates a number of things: that usage problems today may have a long history, with their roots not so much in the first normative grammars in the history of English as in private linguistic prejudice; that Fowler is not necessarily prescriptive; that the third edition of Modern English Usage is less tolerant than the writer of the original version; and that prescriptivism, the final stage in the standardisation process of the English language which gave rise to usage guides like Burgess, Fowler and many others, deserves detailed analysis. Each usage problem has its own little history, with some ceasing to be an issue while others went through a period of incessant debate for well over two hundred years. There are many prejudices concerning the origin of usage problems, and one is that the split infinitive originated with Lowth’s authoritative English grammar of 1762. Criticism, however, is only first found in the mid-nineteenth-century. In order to acquire detailed insight into the precise nature of prescriptivism with respect to the developing English language I propose to set up a database consisting of usage problems and their treatment by usage guides. To this end, all English usage guides that have come down to us should be collected and, when not yet already available in such form, digitised, starting from what Leonard (1929:35) regarded as “the ancestor of the handbook of abuse and correction”, Robert Baker’s Reflections on the English Language (1770). Such a database will also serve as a starting-point for research into the question of the effectiveness, or rather lack of it, of usage guides, despite their immense popularity. The split infinitive, heavily criticised though it is, is currently being used increasingly by all speakers alike, irrespective of style of speech or writing. As a phenomenon, such a development is evidently worth analysing, and an inventory of the various pronouncements on the issue is expected to facilitate such analysis. ReferencesBaker, Robert (1770), Reflections on the English Language, London.
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Education event: Language Rules and Pedagogy
Événement destiné aux éducateurs:
les règles langagières et la pédagogie
Organizer / Organisateur:
George J.M. Lamont
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Education Event Programme:
Tuesday 18th August 1400 hours (2:00pm) to 1530 (3:30 pm)
This exciting and interdisciplinary session invites educators and students to a forum in which we can interrogate and discuss the issues of linguistic prescriptivism in the classroom. How do educators teach and enforce language rules? How can educators incorporate students whose first language isn’t English or French? How important are the rules in the bigger educational picture? Our session will engage with these issues in three ways:
1. Speakers • Leora Freedman
•
: “Language, Culture, and Content: The Influence of the Language Acquisition Process on Our Students’ Written Work” J. Barbara Rose
2. Moderator’s Questions
: “Language Crimes: Like, duh! - The (De) (Re) Evolution of Language in the First-Year Class Room”
3. Audience Questions: we welcome and encourage the audience to offer probing questions on the issues raised in this session.
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Language Rules and Pedagogy in the Canadian Classroom Part I: Abstracts Leora Freedman “Language, Culture, and Content: The Influence of the Language Acquisition Process on Our Students’ Written Work” This talk will give an overview of some of the difficult questions involved in marking students’ papers. Many students, both ELL (ESL) and native speakers, are engaged in the process of English language acquisition. Upon entering university, they are expected to have command of certain areas of vocabulary, particular styles of critical thought, and idiomatic expressions. They must absorb material in and work with a high level of academic English, in a manner congruent with the rules and customs of our university system and the cultures of various disciplines. These expectations together create a “prescriptivism” that inevitably influences the grading and assessment process, and instructors increasingly must reflect upon their own marking practices in this context. The audience will be encouraged to consider these issues and discuss “fair” practices. J. Barbara Rose “Language Crimes: Like, duh! The (De) (Re) Evolution of Language in the First-Year Class Room” Headlines announce the “Death of the Apostrophe”, “Speech Crimes” abound and we are told we need to “fight for the English language” even as the Oxford Junior Dictionary deletes words associated with history, Christianity, and the monarchy. First year students coming into my HUM199Y class bring with them this new language (or lack of traditional language) and provide a Petri dish environment for new speech patterns and new vocabulary at lightening speed. The use of the word “like” as a discourse particle has entered the classroom in discussions and presentations. This advent has forced me, as both an observer and preserver of language, to examine the origins and uses of the word “like”. Drawing on anecdotal evidence garnered from many of my students, as well as a specific case study, together with a nod to formal academic research on the issue (D’Arcy 2007; Siegel 2002), some of the myths associated with this use of “like” will be considered.
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Language Rules and Pedagogy in the Canadian Classroom Part II: Biographies Maria Casas (Panelist) Maria Casas is a lecturer at both the University of Toronto and York University. She has taught a number of English-literature courses including first-year survey courses and second- and third-year specialist courses. Her extensive experience in teaching academic-stream university English has exposed her not only to the complex demands of instructorship, but also to the issues of TA management, since she has guided, supervised and developed the many TAs who have been a part of the process of tutoring students and grading written work in her classes. Dr. Casas’ experience in both instruction and TA development has furnished her with insight on the issues that mediate and inform the inclusion and incorporation of linguistic prescriptivism and language rules, in the larger pedagogical environment of teaching literature and writing. Her current academic interests include Caribbean-English Creole literatures, and more specifically, Caribbean-Canadian and First-Nations poets and the linguistic issues that arise in their unique and vibrant uses of language. Carolyn Coté (Panelist) B.A. UT, CTESL UT, M.Ed Curriculum UT, has been teaching and working in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) since 1986. She taught academic-based EAL in the English Language Program (U of T) and at York University, and academic writing in the Faculty of Engineering (U of T). As Director of the English Language Program (ELP) at the School of Continuing Studies, University of Toronto (1994-2008), she led the development of curriculum guidelines for international English learners. Carolyn has been the Academic Coordinator of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Certificate Program at Woodsworth College, University Toronto since the early 1990s. During that time, she has also taught Methodology and coordinated the Practicum in the program. Carolyn has long been involved in English language testing. She has developed placement and exit tests for writing, talking and reading, and was Chief Reader for the writing component of the University of Toronto’s Certificate of Proficiency in English Test (COPE). She is an active examiner for IELTS (International English Language Testing System). Currently, Carolyn is exploring intercultural communication and is working towards certification with the University of British Columbia. Leora Freedman (Panelist and Speaker) Leora Freedman is the Coordinator of the English Language Learning Project, a new pilot project which serves undergraduate students in the Faculty of Arts and Science at U of T. Within the ELL Project, Leora teaches an 8-day course in August in Intensive Academic English and facilitates the Communication Café and Reading eWriting activities during the academic year to provide students with continuing opportunities to advance their oral and written English. She also provides training workshops and individual consultations for TAs and faculty members. Leora Freedman came to U of T with an extensive background in EFL teaching in the Department of English as a Foreign Language at The Hebrew University of
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Jerusalem and at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing from the University of Arizona and has taught many university level courses in English literature and writing, as well as technical and intercultural communication, in both the US and Canada. For the past four years, Leora has also been intensively involved with several writing centres at U of T, and she is continuing to develop the Health Sciences Writing Centre initiative at the Faculty of Pharmacy. George Lamont (Organizer/Moderator) George Lamont is a Ph.D. candidate in the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He holds a B.A. in English language and literature and a B.Ed. in secondary-school English education, both from the University of British Columbia, as well as his M.A. in English literature from the University of Toronto. George has taught English 8-12 in a public school, and has held six teaching-assistant positions for first-, second- and third-year courses at U of T. George won a Department of English Outstanding TA award in 2008, and a Teaching Assistant Training Program (TATP) Teaching Excellence Award in 2009. George now works with the TATP as a TA trainer at U of T. His pedagogical interests include secondary-school English education, curriculum development of prescriptive vs. descriptive language education at both the secondary and post-secondary levels, and student-centered active learning and language acquisition.. Laura Prelipcean (Panelist) Laura Prelipcean is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. She has a B.A. in English and Italian from the Western University of Timisoara, Romania. Laura taught Italian language courses at the University of Toronto and at the University of Guelph. In 2008 she received the Course Instructor Award in Italian for 2007-08 granted by the Department of Language Studies at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. This academic year Laura has been a winner of the Teaching Excellence Award offered by the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program and the Office of Teaching Advancement at the University of Toronto. Carol Ricker-Wilson (Panelist) Marking papers as a Humanities 101 T.A., Carol Ricker-Wilson wondered: “what’s a pass?” and encouraged her course professors and team to get together to assess student work and determine consistent assessment criteria. She is currently an English/Literacy consultant for the TDSB. She taught at the secondary school level for 15 years and was a seconded to the Faculty of Education, York University, where she simultaneously completed her Ph. D. in Women’s Studies, examining in “Textual Fantasies” the complex manner in which Gr. 11 female students read, analyzed and wrote about Danielle Steel’s romances. For this she was the recipient of the Mary McEwen Memorial Scholarship award. She develops and teaches additional qualification courses for teachers at both York & OISE, and has written for a variety of venues including refereed journals, commercial publishers and the MOE. Her ongoing interests include critical pedagogy, critical literacy, and the teaching and assessment of writing at both secondary and post-secondary levels.
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J. Barbara Rose (Panelist and Speaker) J. Barbara Rose is a Senior Lecturer at Woodsworth College responsible for teaching ENG185Y Introduction to the Study of Literature in the Academic Bridging Program. She also teaches a first year seminar HUM199Y Fatal Attraction: The Lure of the Villain in Literature. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Barbara is the Associate Director of the Academic Writing Centre that serves the academic skills and writing needs of students at Woodsworth College. In 2004, Barbara was the recipient of the Joan E. Foley Student Quality of Experience Award which is a testament to her commitment to students both inside and outside the classroom. In 2006-7, Barbara received an Undergraduate Teaching Award for ENG185Y. She provides additional seminars and workshops as well as individual consultation with special emphasis on the First Year Teaching experience. In conjunction with Margaret Procter, Barbara introduced iWRITE, a website showing annotated examples of student work demonstrating expectations at the university in both her ENG185Y and HUM199Y classes. From 2003 (ongoing), she was the Academic Co-Ordinator in the outreach project, University in the Community, a ten-week humanities course for adults outside of the university who would not otherwise have the opportunity to take university courses. For the 2009-2010 academic year, she will be working with senior Ph.D. students on a new model of instruction in the program as part of the new Graduate Professional Skills Program. Ahmad Zaheen (Panelist) Ahmad Zaheen is a graduate student at The University of Toronto’s Department of Immunology where he studies B cell function and the humoral immune response. He received his Honours Bachelor of Science Degree in Microbiology from the University of Toronto in 2006. Over the last three years, Ahmad has served as a teaching assistant in a number of courses, with experience ranging from practical laboratory training to guest-lecturing. As an educator, Ahmad’s focus is the life sciences, where he primarily teaches courses in the fields of immunology, molecular biology, and laboratory science. In 2009, his efforts were rewarded with a Teaching Excellence Award from the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program at The University of Toronto.
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Internet and printing during the conference
All the conference rooms will have a computer, a projector and internet access. You can bring a USB data storage device or connect your laptop.
If you need access to a computer and the internet, for $2 a day you can use the New College Computing Lab. The lab is in the basement of Wetmore Hall (room 54B) and is open from 9:30am to 5pm.
If you have a laptop, there is free wireless at a nearby branch of the Toronto Public Library, 239 College St at Huron. The Lillian H. Smith branch is open from 9am until 830 pm Monday through Wednesday.
If you need to print documents cheaply, there are many photocopy shops near campus. Quality Control Copy is at 333 Bloor Street West opposite the Holiday Inn Midtown; Three-Cent Copy is at 732 Spadina Avenue south of Bloor Street.
If you need access to a computer or printer in the middle of the night, two nearby branches of Fedex Kinko’s are open 24 hours a day: 459 Bloor Street West (a few blocks west of Spadina) and 505 University Avenue at Dundas.
Accès à l'Internet et aux services de reprographie pendant le colloque
Toutes les salles de conférence auront un ordinateur, un projecteur et accès à Internet. Vous pouvez utiliser une clé USB ou bien connecter votre propre ordinateur portable.
Si vous devez vous servir d'un ordinateur ou avoir accès à l'Internet, vous pouvez utiliser le laboratoire New College Computing à un coût de 2 $ par jour. Ce local est situé au sous-sol de Wetmore Hall (salle 54B) et est ouvert de 9h30 à 17h.
Si vous avez un ordinateur portable, une des bibliothèques publiques de Toronto près de l'Université de Toronto (239, rue College, près de la rue Huron) offre un service internet sans-fil gratuit. La bibliothèque Lillian H. Smith est ouverte du lundi au mercredi de 9h00 à 20h30.
Si vous devez imprimer des documents, il y a plusieurs magasin de reprographie près du campus. Quality Control Copy est situé au 333, rue Bloor Ouest en face du Holiday Inn Midtown; Three-Cent Copy est au 732, avenue Spadina au sud de la rue Bloor.
Enfin, si vous devez vous servir d'un ordinateur ou vous brancher à l'internet tard le soir, il y a deux Fedex Kinko’s près de l'Université qui sont ouvert 24 h par jour : 459, rue Bloor Ouest (à quelques rues ouest de Spadina) et 505, avenue University, près de Dundas.
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