- Displacement
In this section, three types of colonization will be elaborated step by step. Meanwhile, examples will be given according to specific colonial type. First, in the field of displacement, North America is the most suitable example to demonstrate it. In early 17th century there was the first wave of settlement in which the settlers are English speakers. In 1607 the colony of Jamestown was established with a small number of settlers. Then settlers expanded their expedition to settle in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. In calculation, there were approximately 25,000 Europeans who had migrated to North America within twenty years. This substantial settlement contributes to the characteristic of displacement. The new variety of English, inevitably, was said to be implanted in North America named as American English. In fact, although American and British English still share lots of common features, divergences between these two varieties of English kept increasing. Marckwardt (1958) suggested that this phenomenon could be explained by colonial lag, which means that the language of colonial settlers is, to a certain extent, more ‘conservation’ than that of the country they departed. One example is the pronunciation of /r/ as the feature of American English like dark and cart. It can be explained by the fact that /r/ was usually pronounced in Elizabethan English. Though the speech of Londoners then became /r/-less, there was no influence to those who had already left.
Another aspect which may affect the English of American colony is dialect leveling. For those English-speaking settlers who migrated to North America mainly came from lower social positions in England. The group consisted of people from rural area or people who were political or religious refugees. It implied that the varieties of English brought to the colonies were somehow diverse or not standard. This circumstance gave rise to dialect leveling, i.e., a more uniform variety emerges since the divergences among speakers become eroded over time.
In addition, due to the intense contact between the settlers and the pre-colonial population, there were various words generated known as American English. Numerous words existed which were borrowed from indigenous language (see Cassidy and Hall 2001) like tamarack, cayuse, chipmunk, lodgepole and hogan. Loanwords emerged as well which reflect the original culture of the immigrant group. Examples are thickmilk (clabber) from Germany, check from Zeche and hamburger. Besides, some compounding words can be found like pasta and don from Italian, taco and canyon from Polish. In addition, the coining of other Americanisms like know how and the most typical one: OK.
In fact, American English is said to be very creative in the word formations and lexical creations and it emerged for quite a long time.
- Subjection
In this part, the colonial type of subjection will be discussed. To begin with, subjection exists when there is a small number of colonial settlers inhabit in the pre-colonial population. The colonial situation of subjection can be traced in the Sierra Leone, which is a country of West Africa. In the 16th century, the first European slaving expedition emerged in this country. After that, Sierra Leone was filled up with escaped and freed slaves. On the other hand, Liberia was established for ex-slaves. These factors create the association of slaves and African. Following this, English performed as an aid of Africa citizens since it was the shared language of New British colonies established after 1880. Though Africa was the British colony, there was no enormous settlement from British Isles. Meanwhile, merely negligible proportion of African had the opportunity to learn English from missionaries. Therefore, Standard English was used by small elite. For the rest of the Africans, they tended to use West African Pidgin English (WAPE) to communicate. WAPE can be deemed as the consequence of long-term trading between Africans and Europeans. The continuum of Standard English and WAPE included the combination of local varieties, like Wolof and Hausa. The Standard English, practically, became the communicative device of administrators and academic subjects, whereas various Pidgins served the needs of the majority to communicate.
Furthermore, a great deal of creative writers and publishers have contributed to literary English which contained WAPE. For instance, the late Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa contributed to the first person novel Sozaboy in 1985. In his preface, there is a hybridization of Nigerian Pidgin English, broken English and even idiomatic English. Besides, there are substantial vocabulary innovated as the WAPE.
During the colonial process, a great deal of coinage words existed, regard the words barb (to cut hair) from barber, invitee (guest) from invite and go-slow (traffic jam). Loanwords, meanwhile, are generally related to the culture and kinship, like akara balls (bean cakes), juju music (a type of dance music) and bush meat (a game). Some of the words are from English, but the meanings have enriched and have generated new meaning. To cite the examples, consider wet (to water flowers), globe (electric bulb), buk (from ‘book’, meaning ‘anything written’), savi buk (from ‘know book’, meaning educated), environment (neighborhood) and bluff (to give an air of importance). A number of lexical items retain the old meaning but are no longer prevailing in Native English. One example is Dress (move at the end of a row for the sake of creating room for extra people) is the reserved meaning recorded by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ‘to form in proper alignment’.
- Replacement:
Last but not lease, the final type of English colonial activity – replacement – will be identified in the forthcoming part. As mentioned, replacement is characterized by the phenomenon that a pre-colonial population is replaced by new labor from elsewhere, especially the slaves from West Africa (Leith 1996:181-2). In fact, there were so many pidgins and creoles thanks to the colonial activity.
To make the picture clearer, the history of slave trade should be described firstly. Slave trade was originated in the mid sixteenth century when a man called Sir John Hawkins sold the captured slaves to Caribbean. After that, English started to send Africa slaves to south part of America, including Jamaica, in order to provide workforce or labors. The varieties therefore emerged as the consequence of connection amidst British and West African people attributed to colonization of America and Atlantic slave trade. In generality, majority of the English-based Creole were formed by the vocabulary of English-speaking sailors and settlers, together with many loanwords, loan transitions, grammatical patterns and so forth.
According to Ligon, shipments of slaves were ‘fetch’d from several parts of Africa, who speak severall languages, and by that means, one of them understands not another’ (Ligon, 1647, p.46). This statement implies the tactic that ‘policy of the slave trader was to bring people of different language backgrounds together in the ships, to make it difficult to plot rebellion’ (Crystal, 1988, p.235). If Crystal is correct, pidgin would be the only available communication among the slaves. As the time goes by, pidgin will develop as Creole and become a thoroughly functioning language.
In fact, Jamaican Creole enjoys the highest status among various Creoles in the sense that it has the longest-standing literature and the media and artistic use. The Dictionary of Jamaican English (1967, 1980) was written to help standardize the spelling. It was in turn encouraged a fuller use of Creole by Jamaican writers (McArthur, T 2002).
Here the citations of the vocabulary of Jamaican Creole will be listed. First, it has many words from other languages like pikni (small child) from Portuguese and ho senny ho (how’s business?) from Chinese. Moreover, there is reduplication in Jamaican Creole like poto-poto (very slimy or muddy) and fenky-fenky (very puny cowardly, fussy). Furthermore, in 18th century there was the presence of nautical terms in Jamaican speech. To cite the examples, berth (office), store (warehouse) and jacket (waistcoat).
Conclusion:
To conclude, there are many varieties of English around the world but they are commonly regarded as ‘English’ since that is how their speakers firstly identify them, due to historical reasons (McAuthur, T 2002). In fact, the most significant factor contributing to these varieties is colonization. Three types of colonization, as mentioned above, generate different linguistic consequence and, at the end of the day, the ‘New Englishes’. Following this, scholar like David Graddol tries to estimate the future of English. Yet, the most crucial point is, English undoubtedly experiences the highest status in the world right now.
References:
Edgar W. Schneider (2007) ‘Postcolonial English: varieties around the world’, The emergence of American English, New York: Cambridge University Press, 278-289.
McArthur, T. (2002) The Oxford Guide to World English, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Leith, D and Jackson, L (2007) Chapter 2 – The origins of English in Changing English, London: Routledge, The Open University.
Leith, D, Graddol, D and Jackson, L (2007) Chapter 3 - Modernity and English as a national language in Changing English, London: Routledge, The Open University.
Leith, D, (2007) Chapter 4 – English – colonial to postcolonial in Changing English, London: Routledge, The Open University.
Jenkins, J (2009) World Englishes – A resource book for students, London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
