- Email: [email protected]
An Introduction to American English
Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Book review
An Introduction to American English By Gunnel Tottie. Malden, Massachussetts and Oxford: Blackwell, 2001; 293 pp., ISBN 0-631-19791-5 (HB), £55/$64.95; 0-631-19792-3 (PB), £15.99/$29.95 The vast majority of native speakers of English speak English with American pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, and due to the dominant position of the US in business, science, computing and the cultural industry, American English is the most widely used and heard variety of English in the world. Yet the ‘‘majority of books on the English language take British English as their starting point’’, Gunnel Tottie, Swedish-born Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Zurich, observes at the beginning of the book under review. And she continues: ‘‘There are many reasons for this: British English is the older variety, and traditionally British English has enjoyed more prestige, at least in Europe and in former British colonies, than American English. Until not so long ago, American English was considered less educated, less cultured, less beautiful than British English. Teachers in many European countries were not allowed to have an American accent, and high-school students who returned from a year in the United States were sometimes punished with low grades by conservative teachers. This attitude seems mostly to have disappeared even if there are still traces of it’’. From my own experience in teaching socio-linguistics to mostly non-native speakers of English, I can tell that there is a huge interest in American varieties of English, particularly as more and more students have spent some time in the US and thus have first-hand experience. Indeed, differences between British and American English are among the most popular choices for presentations and end-of-year projects. However, so far students had to revert for this to chapters in books on varieties of English or, more recently, the internet with all the associated implications regarding the reliability of sources. Quite often, the outcomes of the projects are longish but mostly unsystematic lists of such topics as differences in vocabulary, the use of the simple past vs present perfect, or regular and irregular verb forms, leaving an unsatisfied feeling with the students that there must be ‘‘more to it’’. What was missing so far was a systematic overview of differences between the standard varieties of British and American English that comprises not only the areas of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar but also takes account of the diverse influences that have contributed to American English, the ways in which it has evolved in a multicultural setting and the historical and societal developments it reflects and which are in turn reflected in culturally specific communication and discourse patterns.
646
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
This is the gap that ‘‘An Introduction to American English’’ has set out to fill. The book, which uses American spelling throughout, is aimed at the learner of English as a foreign language. It is divided into ten chapters which approach the subject from different angles. Chapter 1 deals with spelling and pronunciation. It lists the systematic spelling differences between American and British English, alongside some unpredictable spelling differences, then moves on to pronunciation where differences are more evident but also more difficult to describe. This is partly due to the necessity to revert to idealized standard varieties of American and British English which, in fact, are hardly found in reality. The other reason is that there are different traditions in transcribing spoken English, and though the IPA is now widely accepted, pronunciation dictionaries and phonetics books tend to use modified versions for their specific purposes. After a comparison of vowel and consonant sounds transcribed according to different systems and a short description of some general characteristics of American English, the chapter discusses individual sounds and systematic and non-systematic differences between British and American English pronunciation, and stress assignment. Chapters 2 and 3 provide some basic background knowledge about the USA for the non-specialist student. Chapter 2 gives a short overview of American history, from pre-colonial times via colonization, the war of independence and the civil war to 19th century immigration, social movements, the role of religion and foreign and domestic politics. Chapter 3 describes the system of government and its institutions, the party and electoral systems and the education system. Both chapters make a point of emphasizing and explaining in detail vocabulary that refers to specifically American phenomena. It is inevitable that in the restricted space devoted to these two chapters, some aspects may have to be treated in a somewhat cursory way, and the choice of topics dealt with has to be arbitrary to a certain degree. For instance, it is questionable whether US 20th century foreign policy can be dealt with satisfactorily in little over a page, and in my view, the role of Hollywood, Coca Cola and MacDonalds, among others, in shaping global tastes would have been worth a mention. However, it may be argued that information on the latter is widely available and forms part of common knowledge, and it is hardly the task of an introduction to a language variety to provide insights into current political issues. The remaining chapters all deal with language in a narrower sense. Chapters 4 and 5 both focus on American English vocabulary but from different starting points. Chapter 4 treats American English vocabulary in its socio-cultural context, thus continuing the regional studies approach of chapters 2 and 3. In covering areas such as holidays, shopping and eating habits, accommodation, transport, and naming practices, it develops and explains the respective terminology. Chapter 5, on the other hand, approaches American English vocabulary in a linguistically systematic way. This may be the one chapter in which Tottie benefits most from her work with computerized corpora. It presents a typology of differences between American and British English vocabulary, using both form-based and semantic approaches, and provides a comprehensive analysis of means a language can use to create new words to refer to new phenomena, ranging from compound formation and affixation to loanwords, examples of which are plentiful in a multicultural society. Particularly
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
647
helpful in this context is the comprehensive explanation of acronyms and alphabetisms which all too often baffle even the proficient speaker of a foreign language. Chapter 6 deals with culture-specific metaphors thus taking account of the fact that the areas from which figures of speech are derived are indicative of a society’s shared experience, values, priorities, or common knowledge. It provides a wealth of examples of metaphors from the areas of business (e.g. ‘to buy something’ in the sense of ‘believing something’), food (‘as American as apple pie’), sports (in particular baseball: ‘to hit a home run’), transportation (e.g. ‘to be in top gear’, ‘to go into overdrive’), guns (e.g. ‘the shotgun wedding’ for a wedding under parental pressure because the bride is pregnant), politics (‘to take the fifth’, meaning to claim the right to be silent in order not to incriminate oneself), and metaphors based on spatial notions. In doing so, the chapter quite successfully demonstrates the extent to which metaphorical thinking is influenced by everyday life and culture. Chapter 7 provides a systematic and in-depth treatment of grammatical differences between American and British English. These differences are attributed to both original dialect differences among the settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland who came to America in different waves, and also the influences from other immigrant languages. The chapter is organized along word classes, whereby first the morphology and then the syntax and grammatical processes that affect this word class in particular are discussed. To cite just a few examples, differences between American and British English in the use of the article, the genitive, number, and noun-verb and noun-pronoun agreement are presented under the sub-heading ‘nouns and articles’. ‘Verbs and auxiliaries’ covers, among other things, morphological differences in past tense formation, the use of modal verbs, do-support in questions and negation, the choice between infinitive or -ing complements, in the use of aspect and tense, the use of transitive verbs as intransitives (e.g. ‘The book sells well’), phrasal verbs, the mandative subject, and tag questions. Pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and adverbials, prepositions and conjunctions are also covered in depth. Chapter 8 deals with pragmatics, i.e. what makes for successful communication in real-life situations in a specific cultural context. Areas discussed in this chapter under the heading of ‘spoken interaction’ range from what forms a legitimate topic of conversation (according to anecdotal evidence, personal topics and questions are likely to be introduced at an earlier stage of acquaintance by Americans than British people) via openings and closings, the use of marginal words, backchannels, to discourse markers and hedges, quotatives and culture-specific ways of making telephone calls. The subchapter on politeness covers thanking, excuses, apologies, forms of address, compliments, self-assertiveness and expressions of emotions, including swearing and cursing, whereby it is noted that the distribution of swearwords in the US and Britain is different and that this probably related to the different strengths of the associated taboos in the two countries. Finally, the chapter describes and discusses the efforts to replace words and phrases that express racial, sexual or gender bias by neutral terms, including so-called ‘political correctness’ in its most exaggerated and often satirized form. Chapter 9 deals with regional, social and ethnic variation in American English. Starting with an explanation of how the disciplines of dialectolgy and socio-linguistics
648
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
have evolved and how their research aims and methods differ, the chapter moves on to describe phonological, grammatical and lexical features of some regional dialects. The fact that under the heading of ‘Social Varieties’ William Labov’s seminal work of some 30–40 years ago is treated in some depth may be an indication that the study of speech variables has exhausted itself and that no further proof is needed that the choice of variant forms depends on non-linguistic factors such as sex, age, social background and the formality of the situation. The subchapter on ethnic varieties is mostly devoted to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), in particular its grammar, and it also touches on the theoretical debates surrounding its origins. Of the other ethnic varieties, only Chicano English is given some systematic treatment. However, the imbalance in this chapter is obviously a reflection of the predominant position of AAVE as a subject of research. Chapter 10 discusses language politics in the United States. Although 90% of US Americans speak only English, overall more than three hundred languages are spoken; a linguistic diversity from which political and educational issues are bound to arise. Of the languages still spoken by Native Americans, only three still have a basis of more than 50,000 speakers each. Among the immigrant minority languages, quite obviously Spanish, with over 17 million speakers, plays the most prominent role, however, French, German, Italian and Chinese also boast over a million speakers each. The view on the use of other languages in education has moved historically from a situation where, at the beginning of the twentieth century, teaching minority languages was forbidden and students with limited English proficiency were often put in classes for the mentally retarded, to the issuing of guidelines for bilingual education in 1970. Debates as to whether English should legally be declared the official language of the United States still rage on, with one side claiming that multilingualism is a threat to national unity, the American culture, education and the economy, while their opponents consider cultural diversity as a national resource and bilingualism as an enhancement of children’s cognitive abilities and thus worth preserving. All attempts at a national level to make English the official language have been unsuccessful, however. More than twenty states have English language laws, and only two, New Mexico and Hawaii, are officially bilingual, and on state level, bilingual education is often heavily contested. The chapter ends with the observations that, while American English still has to fight a battle on its home ground, it is increasing its linguistic influence in the world on the back of US American dominance in the fields of finance, science, culture and technology. Overall, this book is organized in a very systematic way that is geared towards the needs of its main target group, i.e. learners of English as a foreign language. Each chapter is preceded by an introduction which sets out the aims of and approach to the subject in question and ends with a list of recommended, and in some cases annotated, reading. Some chapters provide additional source material, e.g. lists of dictionaries, grammar handbooks, websites and/or corpora, and with a bibliography of some 150 titles, a linguistic glossary, an index of alphabetisms and acronyms, an index of Zip Codes for the member states of the US, a subject index and a word index. The book is an excellent reference source. Sporting an impressive number of pictures, caricatures, figures and tables, maps, excerpts from primary sources etc., it
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
649
has been illustrated in a way that is both appealing and meaningful. Moreover, in its meticulous discussion of the sources that have been evaluated for the purpose of the individual chapters and the explanation of the respective approaches and methodologies applied, the book is an excellent example with regard to academic practice and writing, and not just for the foreign learner of English. On the whole, the book has been carefully edited, and there are very few typographical errors. My criticisms are few and minor ones, and mainly cannot be blamed on the author. An ambitious task such as writing a systematic introduction to a language variety is inevitably faced with the fact that not all areas to be presented come with a comparable amount of available research literature. This is particularly notable in the chapter on varieties of American English. Equally, while quantitative data are available in some areas, e.g. grammatical and lexical differences between American and British English, claims made in others, e.g. spoken discourse and pragmatics, will have to rely to certain measures on anecdotal evidence—a fact of which the author is well aware (cf. e.g. p. 180). Very rarely, there is also a tendency to tailor more general findings to the purposes of the book, e.g. the acquisition of the majority language by immigrant families (p. 235) follows similar patterns all over the world and is not particularly typical for the US. These minor points, however, do not diminish the achievement of the book in providing an excellent and comprehensive introduction to American English. It is highly recommended as a teaching aid. Ulla Spittler is a Senior Lecturer in German and Linguistics at the University of Brighton (UK) and a visiting lecturer in English Sociolinguistics at the Universite´ de Rouen (F). She has previously taught at the Universities of Marburg (FRG), Bradford and Portsmouth and published on European politics and cultural memory.
Ulla Spittler School of Languages University of Brighton Falmer, Brighton East Sussex BN1 9PH, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
PII: S0378-2166(02)00116-9
Book review
An Introduction to American English By Gunnel Tottie. Malden, Massachussetts and Oxford: Blackwell, 2001; 293 pp., ISBN 0-631-19791-5 (HB), £55/$64.95; 0-631-19792-3 (PB), £15.99/$29.95 The vast majority of native speakers of English speak English with American pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, and due to the dominant position of the US in business, science, computing and the cultural industry, American English is the most widely used and heard variety of English in the world. Yet the ‘‘majority of books on the English language take British English as their starting point’’, Gunnel Tottie, Swedish-born Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Zurich, observes at the beginning of the book under review. And she continues: ‘‘There are many reasons for this: British English is the older variety, and traditionally British English has enjoyed more prestige, at least in Europe and in former British colonies, than American English. Until not so long ago, American English was considered less educated, less cultured, less beautiful than British English. Teachers in many European countries were not allowed to have an American accent, and high-school students who returned from a year in the United States were sometimes punished with low grades by conservative teachers. This attitude seems mostly to have disappeared even if there are still traces of it’’. From my own experience in teaching socio-linguistics to mostly non-native speakers of English, I can tell that there is a huge interest in American varieties of English, particularly as more and more students have spent some time in the US and thus have first-hand experience. Indeed, differences between British and American English are among the most popular choices for presentations and end-of-year projects. However, so far students had to revert for this to chapters in books on varieties of English or, more recently, the internet with all the associated implications regarding the reliability of sources. Quite often, the outcomes of the projects are longish but mostly unsystematic lists of such topics as differences in vocabulary, the use of the simple past vs present perfect, or regular and irregular verb forms, leaving an unsatisfied feeling with the students that there must be ‘‘more to it’’. What was missing so far was a systematic overview of differences between the standard varieties of British and American English that comprises not only the areas of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar but also takes account of the diverse influences that have contributed to American English, the ways in which it has evolved in a multicultural setting and the historical and societal developments it reflects and which are in turn reflected in culturally specific communication and discourse patterns.
646
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
This is the gap that ‘‘An Introduction to American English’’ has set out to fill. The book, which uses American spelling throughout, is aimed at the learner of English as a foreign language. It is divided into ten chapters which approach the subject from different angles. Chapter 1 deals with spelling and pronunciation. It lists the systematic spelling differences between American and British English, alongside some unpredictable spelling differences, then moves on to pronunciation where differences are more evident but also more difficult to describe. This is partly due to the necessity to revert to idealized standard varieties of American and British English which, in fact, are hardly found in reality. The other reason is that there are different traditions in transcribing spoken English, and though the IPA is now widely accepted, pronunciation dictionaries and phonetics books tend to use modified versions for their specific purposes. After a comparison of vowel and consonant sounds transcribed according to different systems and a short description of some general characteristics of American English, the chapter discusses individual sounds and systematic and non-systematic differences between British and American English pronunciation, and stress assignment. Chapters 2 and 3 provide some basic background knowledge about the USA for the non-specialist student. Chapter 2 gives a short overview of American history, from pre-colonial times via colonization, the war of independence and the civil war to 19th century immigration, social movements, the role of religion and foreign and domestic politics. Chapter 3 describes the system of government and its institutions, the party and electoral systems and the education system. Both chapters make a point of emphasizing and explaining in detail vocabulary that refers to specifically American phenomena. It is inevitable that in the restricted space devoted to these two chapters, some aspects may have to be treated in a somewhat cursory way, and the choice of topics dealt with has to be arbitrary to a certain degree. For instance, it is questionable whether US 20th century foreign policy can be dealt with satisfactorily in little over a page, and in my view, the role of Hollywood, Coca Cola and MacDonalds, among others, in shaping global tastes would have been worth a mention. However, it may be argued that information on the latter is widely available and forms part of common knowledge, and it is hardly the task of an introduction to a language variety to provide insights into current political issues. The remaining chapters all deal with language in a narrower sense. Chapters 4 and 5 both focus on American English vocabulary but from different starting points. Chapter 4 treats American English vocabulary in its socio-cultural context, thus continuing the regional studies approach of chapters 2 and 3. In covering areas such as holidays, shopping and eating habits, accommodation, transport, and naming practices, it develops and explains the respective terminology. Chapter 5, on the other hand, approaches American English vocabulary in a linguistically systematic way. This may be the one chapter in which Tottie benefits most from her work with computerized corpora. It presents a typology of differences between American and British English vocabulary, using both form-based and semantic approaches, and provides a comprehensive analysis of means a language can use to create new words to refer to new phenomena, ranging from compound formation and affixation to loanwords, examples of which are plentiful in a multicultural society. Particularly
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
647
helpful in this context is the comprehensive explanation of acronyms and alphabetisms which all too often baffle even the proficient speaker of a foreign language. Chapter 6 deals with culture-specific metaphors thus taking account of the fact that the areas from which figures of speech are derived are indicative of a society’s shared experience, values, priorities, or common knowledge. It provides a wealth of examples of metaphors from the areas of business (e.g. ‘to buy something’ in the sense of ‘believing something’), food (‘as American as apple pie’), sports (in particular baseball: ‘to hit a home run’), transportation (e.g. ‘to be in top gear’, ‘to go into overdrive’), guns (e.g. ‘the shotgun wedding’ for a wedding under parental pressure because the bride is pregnant), politics (‘to take the fifth’, meaning to claim the right to be silent in order not to incriminate oneself), and metaphors based on spatial notions. In doing so, the chapter quite successfully demonstrates the extent to which metaphorical thinking is influenced by everyday life and culture. Chapter 7 provides a systematic and in-depth treatment of grammatical differences between American and British English. These differences are attributed to both original dialect differences among the settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland who came to America in different waves, and also the influences from other immigrant languages. The chapter is organized along word classes, whereby first the morphology and then the syntax and grammatical processes that affect this word class in particular are discussed. To cite just a few examples, differences between American and British English in the use of the article, the genitive, number, and noun-verb and noun-pronoun agreement are presented under the sub-heading ‘nouns and articles’. ‘Verbs and auxiliaries’ covers, among other things, morphological differences in past tense formation, the use of modal verbs, do-support in questions and negation, the choice between infinitive or -ing complements, in the use of aspect and tense, the use of transitive verbs as intransitives (e.g. ‘The book sells well’), phrasal verbs, the mandative subject, and tag questions. Pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and adverbials, prepositions and conjunctions are also covered in depth. Chapter 8 deals with pragmatics, i.e. what makes for successful communication in real-life situations in a specific cultural context. Areas discussed in this chapter under the heading of ‘spoken interaction’ range from what forms a legitimate topic of conversation (according to anecdotal evidence, personal topics and questions are likely to be introduced at an earlier stage of acquaintance by Americans than British people) via openings and closings, the use of marginal words, backchannels, to discourse markers and hedges, quotatives and culture-specific ways of making telephone calls. The subchapter on politeness covers thanking, excuses, apologies, forms of address, compliments, self-assertiveness and expressions of emotions, including swearing and cursing, whereby it is noted that the distribution of swearwords in the US and Britain is different and that this probably related to the different strengths of the associated taboos in the two countries. Finally, the chapter describes and discusses the efforts to replace words and phrases that express racial, sexual or gender bias by neutral terms, including so-called ‘political correctness’ in its most exaggerated and often satirized form. Chapter 9 deals with regional, social and ethnic variation in American English. Starting with an explanation of how the disciplines of dialectolgy and socio-linguistics
648
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
have evolved and how their research aims and methods differ, the chapter moves on to describe phonological, grammatical and lexical features of some regional dialects. The fact that under the heading of ‘Social Varieties’ William Labov’s seminal work of some 30–40 years ago is treated in some depth may be an indication that the study of speech variables has exhausted itself and that no further proof is needed that the choice of variant forms depends on non-linguistic factors such as sex, age, social background and the formality of the situation. The subchapter on ethnic varieties is mostly devoted to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), in particular its grammar, and it also touches on the theoretical debates surrounding its origins. Of the other ethnic varieties, only Chicano English is given some systematic treatment. However, the imbalance in this chapter is obviously a reflection of the predominant position of AAVE as a subject of research. Chapter 10 discusses language politics in the United States. Although 90% of US Americans speak only English, overall more than three hundred languages are spoken; a linguistic diversity from which political and educational issues are bound to arise. Of the languages still spoken by Native Americans, only three still have a basis of more than 50,000 speakers each. Among the immigrant minority languages, quite obviously Spanish, with over 17 million speakers, plays the most prominent role, however, French, German, Italian and Chinese also boast over a million speakers each. The view on the use of other languages in education has moved historically from a situation where, at the beginning of the twentieth century, teaching minority languages was forbidden and students with limited English proficiency were often put in classes for the mentally retarded, to the issuing of guidelines for bilingual education in 1970. Debates as to whether English should legally be declared the official language of the United States still rage on, with one side claiming that multilingualism is a threat to national unity, the American culture, education and the economy, while their opponents consider cultural diversity as a national resource and bilingualism as an enhancement of children’s cognitive abilities and thus worth preserving. All attempts at a national level to make English the official language have been unsuccessful, however. More than twenty states have English language laws, and only two, New Mexico and Hawaii, are officially bilingual, and on state level, bilingual education is often heavily contested. The chapter ends with the observations that, while American English still has to fight a battle on its home ground, it is increasing its linguistic influence in the world on the back of US American dominance in the fields of finance, science, culture and technology. Overall, this book is organized in a very systematic way that is geared towards the needs of its main target group, i.e. learners of English as a foreign language. Each chapter is preceded by an introduction which sets out the aims of and approach to the subject in question and ends with a list of recommended, and in some cases annotated, reading. Some chapters provide additional source material, e.g. lists of dictionaries, grammar handbooks, websites and/or corpora, and with a bibliography of some 150 titles, a linguistic glossary, an index of alphabetisms and acronyms, an index of Zip Codes for the member states of the US, a subject index and a word index. The book is an excellent reference source. Sporting an impressive number of pictures, caricatures, figures and tables, maps, excerpts from primary sources etc., it
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 645–649
649
has been illustrated in a way that is both appealing and meaningful. Moreover, in its meticulous discussion of the sources that have been evaluated for the purpose of the individual chapters and the explanation of the respective approaches and methodologies applied, the book is an excellent example with regard to academic practice and writing, and not just for the foreign learner of English. On the whole, the book has been carefully edited, and there are very few typographical errors. My criticisms are few and minor ones, and mainly cannot be blamed on the author. An ambitious task such as writing a systematic introduction to a language variety is inevitably faced with the fact that not all areas to be presented come with a comparable amount of available research literature. This is particularly notable in the chapter on varieties of American English. Equally, while quantitative data are available in some areas, e.g. grammatical and lexical differences between American and British English, claims made in others, e.g. spoken discourse and pragmatics, will have to rely to certain measures on anecdotal evidence—a fact of which the author is well aware (cf. e.g. p. 180). Very rarely, there is also a tendency to tailor more general findings to the purposes of the book, e.g. the acquisition of the majority language by immigrant families (p. 235) follows similar patterns all over the world and is not particularly typical for the US. These minor points, however, do not diminish the achievement of the book in providing an excellent and comprehensive introduction to American English. It is highly recommended as a teaching aid. Ulla Spittler is a Senior Lecturer in German and Linguistics at the University of Brighton (UK) and a visiting lecturer in English Sociolinguistics at the Universite´ de Rouen (F). She has previously taught at the Universities of Marburg (FRG), Bradford and Portsmouth and published on European politics and cultural memory.
Ulla Spittler School of Languages University of Brighton Falmer, Brighton East Sussex BN1 9PH, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
PII: S0378-2166(02)00116-9