A Cultural History of the Language:Variety and Uniformity——A Probe into the Unique Originality of American English
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After a brief introduction to the formation and proposal of American English, this paper discusses the archaism, innovation and uniformity of American English from the angle of comparison with British English to reveal this special variety's general view.Keywords:
American English
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This chapter presents the first analysis of past be regularization in St Helenian English (StHE), the oldest variety of Southern Hemisphere English, with a complex history of dialect and language contact and possible admixture of creolized and restructured second-language varieties. StHE offers new insights into a variable widely documented in English varieties around the world, in a high-contact situation with constraints in a variety that underwent creolization. Based on 16 speakers born between 1916 and 1935, a quantitative sociolinguistic analysis assesses variation and change of levelled was in early twentieth-century StHE. The analysis provides insight into internal constraints, levelling frequency, and external criteria, such as regional origins and gender, and reveals robust individual variation, retracing the origins and evolution of past be levelling in StHE and situating it within a World English context.
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This study is intended to unveil whether the culinary vocabulary of British English and American English are likely to converge or diverge in the future, as a way of contributing to understanding the evolution of the English language and its varieties. The topic itself was founded in travels to America which were paired with nearly fifteen years of interaction with British English, leading to understanding that some (food) words come to have different meanings even in similar languages, and possibly also within the same language. Understanding this led to the thesis question: Are the culinary vocabularies of British English and American English likely to converge or diverge?This is an area of study which has seemingly been left untreated so far under the umbrella of Linguistics. As such, the research in this essay focuses on determining a future convergence or divergence between the language varieties from a language historical aspect as well as taking sociolinguistic aspects of language change into account. These aspects are fashion, foreign influence and social need. In addition to the research, a survey involving 15 British and 15 American students between the ages of 18 and 30 which helps determining the current interaction between the two language varieties. Through the research and analysis of these areas of interest, it is found that the culinary vocabularies of the two language varieties are unlikely to converge completely, but are in a state both of constant partial convergence and divergence.
Divergence (linguistics)
American English
British English
Varieties of English
English-based creole languages
Modern English
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One of the aftermaths of colonial rule in India has been the legacy of English language and literature. Even in this postcolonial phase of renewed interest in national literature, English continues to be the lingua franca in this multi-lingual and multi-racial nation. Yet, this paper argues, there is perceptible change sweeping the English curriculum in Indian universities.
The change in the content of ELT has been effected with a view to introduce Indian cultural values in the place of heavy alien western content. The General English course which is common to all the undergraduate students now includes value-based culture-centered essays and speeches by Indian cultural exponents like Vivekananda, Dr. Radhakrishnan, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Nehru .The English major paper, too includes works of well- known Indian English writers and translations of regional writings.
The paper addresses the continued need for English in the national and international arena, but demonstrates that the content of the English curriculum is increasingly becoming national which is in tune with the postcolonial fighting phase outlined by Franz Fanon. It argues, with illustrations, that ELT with native cultural content would make English more acceptable to the Indian psyche and promote a changed vista of aesthetic-semantic nature and texture of language against the background of native experience and imagination.
Psyche
Content (measure theory)
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The English language in its development course embraces every aspect of social life and it reflects the unique cultural tradition of the western society. The bible has had a huge impact on western culture. There are a lot of English words from the bible. This paper from derived words, euphemism, idiom, proverb and British and American literature perspectives discusses the linguistic artistic characteristics of the bible and its influence on the English language.
Euphemism
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This paper discusses how American English reflects American national character. It emphasizes that language plays a crucial role in conveying national character. Then it analyzes the typical cases selected from many aspects of American life, including lexicons, slangs, proverbs, slogans, quotations, advertising and news English. From these familiar cases, we can see American English reveals that Americans love liberty and equality, pioneering and inventive traits, and worship materialism and money. In the end, the paper concludes that language is the best tool to recognize national culture, especially national character, which forms in the course of the development of a nation. There is no doubt that national character enables us to understand the background of language and master a language better.
Materialism
National language
American English
Worship
Character traits
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Code-switching has been a frequent feature of literary texts from the beginning of English literary tradition to the present time. The medieval period, in particular, with its complex multilingual situation, has provided a fruitful background for multilingual texts, and will be the focus of the present article. After looking at the linguistic background of the period and some specifics of medieval literature and of historical code-switching, the article discusses the main functions of code-switching in medieval poetry and drama, especially in regard to the different but changing status of the three main languages of literacy: Latin, French and English. This functional-pragmatic approach is complemented by a section on syntactic aspects of medieval literary code-switching, which also contains a brief comparison with modern spoken code-switching and shows some important similarities and differences between the two sets of data.
Code (set theory)
Section (typography)
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<p>The creators of British and American literature will integrate certain cultural background into their literary works, and the author's thoughts and views are also deeply influenced by British and American culture. Therefore, when translating British and American literature, the translator must take into account the differences between Chinese and western cultures and accurately translate the contents with cultural differences so that people can have a deeper understanding of the original works. By analyzing the influence of cultural differences in the translation of British and American literature, this paper discusses the translation methods of literary works under different cultural backgrounds, so as to provide reference for the translation of British and American literary works in the future.</p>
Literary Translation
American Literature
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Because of its geography and colonial culture,Singapore owns a distinctive language variety—Singapore English,whose characteristic pronunciation,vocabulary and grammar,has attracted the attention of many linguists.This paper will make a brief introduction to it from the perspective of historical background,historical development,and linguistic features.
Pronunciation
Linguistic Landscape
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The 20 th century has posed to us a challenge we have never met before, that is, we were living in a world in tremendous changes. English language, as a growing organism, from the point of historical linguistics, is a witness to these changes. English language presents us with a lot of new features in the 20 th century, echoing with the changes of people’s material and spiritual life reflected in daily happenings. English newspapers are a good place to observe these new features. With English newspapers as exemplars, the article conducts a survey on the linguistic features of English language in the 20 th century from the perspective of historical linguistics. The investigation has been conducted in three aspects: the lexical level, the grammatical level and rhetorical level. Besides, another thing is noticeable during investigation. That is to say, linguistic features of English language should be examined in relation to scientific, political, religious and other factors in a broad social context. It is social reality that has shaped most of these features, and the features are a mirror of the social reality.
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In this paper, we provide a brief historical, linguistic, and literary guide to Hiberno-English, or Irish English, for teachers of English as a Foreign Language who use literature in their classes. We discuss the historical and social development of this dialect and relate it to the works of such authors as Joyce, Synge and Kennelly. Then we describe certain linguistic and cultural features of it which appear in literary texts and could lead to misinterpretations if they are not taken into account. Finally, we discuss how to use works written in non-standard varieties of English, like Hiberno-English, in the classroom, basing our discussion on an early twentieth century play, The Tinker's Wedding by Synge, and a current novel and film, The Snapper, by Doyle.
Tinker
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