English in the world – norms and standards

Already in the 1980s Kachru (1985, 12) presented a model in which he described the speakers of English in the world in the form of the so-called inner, outer and expanding circles. The inner circle embodies those speakers who speak English as their mother tongue, in other words native speakers. The outer circle comprises those countries in which English is spoken as a second language, mainly countries that are historically or politically bound to English via colonization, for example. Often in these countries English has acquired a rather important role in the nation’s language policies. The expanding circle covers countries in which English is taught as a foreign language, such as Finland. Crystal’s (2003) adaptation of the circles is presented in Figure 1 on the following page. As can be observed, the amount of the outer circle speakers was already quite high at the time and since English continues to reinforce its relevance as a global language, the number of the outer circle speakers can be expected to be a lot higher by now. Moreover, the amount of native speakers who live in different regions is also quite high, resulting in a vast number of standard and equally accurate ‘Englishes’. The development of regional varieties of any language is inevitable but even more so with English, which is widely spoken in many countries by both native and non-native speakers. As Carter and Nunan (2001, 3) point out, these varieties are not marked in the written language but more so in speech. Moreover, the speakers of these varieties often identify with ‘their own’ variety and do not need to learn other ‘Englishes’, since their variety most likely does not result in communication difficulties in international settings. In written language the differences are only minimal. Besides the ‘official’

Figure 1. The ‘three’ circles of English. (Crystal 2003, 60)

regional varieties, non- native speaker varieties have also developed, especially in former colonial areas. Often such varieties exist on the side of an official standard variety, which is, for example, taught at schools. (ibid.). There are many reasons for why people choose to use a specific variety. For some it might be a way of identifying oneself with the larger population, whereas some might choose the standard variety, which often reflects the socio-economic power of the language. In international contexts, aside from purely personal reasons, the political and ideological baggage of a given variety might affect whether or not a speaker chooses it. (Carter and Nunan 2001, 3-4.)

Through the worldwide expansion of the English language criticism towards the idealized native speaker model has increased. It is true that over the years the native speaker has been portrayed as a model for language learning. In Chomsky’s words:

Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. (Chomsky 1965, 3.)

In other words this ‘ideal speaker-listener’ can be called a native or at least a native-like speaker. Native-like speech can have many descriptions, as can so many other concepts that have to do with spoken fluency. Pawley and Hodgetts Syder (1983, 191), for example, discuss the terms native-like selection and native-like fluency as the two components that describe native speech. The first one, according to them, is ‘the ability of the native speaker routinely to convey meaning by an expression that is not only grammatical but also nativelike’ (p. 191). They also report a problem with this view, however, which is how to choose a natural and idiomatic sentence from all the possible range of grammatically correct phrases, since only a small amount of all grammatically correct sentences sound natural or idiomatic to native speakers (ibid, 193). Native-like fluency, on the other hand, means ‘the native speaker’s ability to produce fluent stretches of spontaneous connected discourse’ (ibid, 191).

This view is, however, becoming old fashioned. Firstly, a native speaker can hardly be considered a perfect model and as Raupach (1983) points out, native speakers rarely manage to perform in a fluent manner at least in the ideal sense. Even those native speakers, who seem apparently fluent and grammatical, exhibit syntactical mistakes, false starts and incomplete utterances. Secondly, as Kuo (2006, 213-214) reports, there has been a growing tendency that ‘native speakers and their Englishes’ have become more irrelevant in the context of English as the language for international communication. She reports that today English is more often used by non-native speakers than native speakers, reducing the native speakers’ so called ‘ownership’ of the language. This realization has led to the thinking that ‘any personal or regional, linguistic or socio-cultural attachment to inner circle countries and their Englishes would appear highly politically incorrect’ (ibid. 214, see also Carter and Nunan 2001).

Matsuda (2003, 719) also addresses this issue by stating that instead of teaching English according to the inner circle standards, the international agenda of the learners should be taken into account in the teaching. She suggests that rather than concentrating on the inner circle norms, teaching professionals should integrate the ‘World Englishes perspective’ in to their teaching, which would then transfer to the general public as well, making the English as an international language [EIL] perspective more known and accepted (ibid, 725-726). Cook (1999, 185) agrees with this point by suggesting that language teaching should concentrate more on the L2 speaker instead of the native speaker and that an L2 user model should be applied to teaching.

Similarly to the views presented by Kuo (2006), Jenkins (2002, 85) also points out that when English is used in an international setting, it no longer belongs to any specific native speaker community. In an EIL context there are no ‘foreign’ speakers of the language but rather international ones for whom the only requirement is that their speech be acceptable and intelligible for the international community. Since the other participants are often other non-native speakers of English as well, the speech should rather be intelligible for them instead of the native speakers. However, Jenkins (ibid, 86) goes on to emphasize that when it comes to accents in the EIL setting, it is not the case that anything would be acceptable. In fact, she cites Trudgill (1998, cited in Jenkins 2002) who points out that especially in the case of English, which is so widely spoken around the world and by so many people (from different backgrounds and mother tongues), the language might break up into multiple different dialects that are mutually unintelligible. Moreover, as pronunciation is already the aspect that appears to have the most divergence in the non-native varieties compared to other linguistic aspects, Trudgill suggests that phonological variations accepted in EIL settings could, in fact, complicate international communication instead of facilitating it. Even though I acknowledge that in many contexts the pronunciation of English is not the most important aspect and sometimes the bare rudiments will suffice, I must agree with Trudgill’s point of view. I find that in the end it is not beneficial for anyone, least for the people who interact in the EIL context, if incomplete and inaccurate language is consistently used in such a wide setting by millions of people, let alone taught in that form intentionally. This view is also supported by Kuo (2006, 215-216), who remarks that in the EIL setting, English has become a mere instrument of communication. In other words this means that when a language is used as a lingua franca some aspects such as ‘literacy, register, style, and various aesthetic concerns’ as well as the language’s social functions, such as politeness factors, will become overlooked making that form of language insufficient in the wider scope.

Even though Cook (1999) and Matsuda (2003) suggested that EIL should be more present in language teaching, I find that due to the reasons presented above, this matter should be approached quite carefully. Even though in some contexts it might be acceptable to use a certain incomplete variety of English, I feel that in teaching all aspects should be considered and English should not be taught as a mere instrument for accomplishing something else. Moreover, even though it is true that native speakers are not perfect examples and do not necessarily know their mother tongue thoroughly, they

do have a wider experience in the language, which is likely to result in them having a better or more ‘idiomatic’ command of it compared to L2 speakers (Huhta 1993, 126, 129) and therefore they present quite a good model to begin with, nonetheless.

However, I do think that it is a valid point that L2 speakers’ goals should be perhaps more accounted for in language teaching and as Kuo (2006, 219) suggests, ‘an appropriate pedagogical model has to be able to satisfy demands ranging from minimum intelligibility, through general accuracy and fluency, up to comparable proficiency to that of a native speaker, rather than drawing exclusively or even primarily on the notion of international intelligibility.’ This view is also partly supported by the CEFR in the quotation below:

The aims and objectives of language learning and teaching should be based on an appreciation of needs of learners and of society, on the tasks, activities and processes that the learners need to carry out in order to satisfy those needs, and on the competences and strategies they need to develop/build up in order to do so. (CEFR 2001, 131)

Since it is extremely difficult to establish a common ground for which variety of English should be used as norm, especially in education, I am going to present Thorne’s (2008, 97) view of what constitutes as a starting point for English that is generally considered ‘good’: the Standard English (SE) form. In order to be able to discuss even to the slightest extent the ‘correctness’ of a language, a common reference point must be established and for that I find that the general notion of SE provides a valid foundation.

In Thorne’s words:

Standard English (SE) is a form of English which has been accepted as a norm. It is the variety with which other forms of English are compared. Sometimes it is called a dialect, although it is not linked to a specific region and has no regionally distinctive words or grammatical structures---Linguists are interested in the varieties of English we use and in order to describe them they use Standard English as a point of comparison. Any variety which does not use the same vocabulary or grammar as Standard English is called non-standard English. By using this term, linguists can avoid value judgements – non-non-standard varieties of English are not wrong, but different. (Thorne 2008, 97.)

Whenever we want to talk about more specific variants used in different English speaking countries or areas, we can talk more specifically about Standard American English, for example (Yule 1996, 227). Different forms of SE exist as well – spoken and written; formal and informal; personal and impersonal – because language is always adapted to fit the audience and the communicative situation in question. Moreover, people often speak ‘either a regional variety of English or a mixture of Standard English and regional forms’ meaning that SE is usually the variant being used on news broadcasts or other official contexts; in writing SE often appears in formal documents.

Due to its formal nature, SE is often considered the ‘good’ or ‘correct’ variant of the English language. (Thorne 2008, 97.) As can be read from the citation above, SE has to

do with the vocabulary and grammar of English but as we know, language is not restricted to those two aspects. Therefore, spoken forms, and in this case more specifically pronunciation, have similar standard forms and in the UK, for example, the standard form is known as ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP) and in the US ‘General American’ etc. These spoken standards do not have regional boundaries but they can be spoken more generally in certain areas of the nation. Traditionally RP has been the widely accepted standard throughout the world but the Finnish upper secondary school curriculum does not define which variety should be the dominant one in education.

According to Saleva (1997, 43), commonly either the RP or General American with their close variants, have been used but in fact, the majority of the provided teaching materials tend to be based on RP.

In this chapter I have discussed the concept of oral competence in more detail by describing different elements and aspects that are generally associated with it.

Moreover, of all the aspects the emphasis has been on fluency and pronunciation specifically. I have also discussed the wide scope English has in the world and the way it affects the way we view it. The issues discussed here are beneficial to bear in mind when we move on to discussing the role of English in education more specifically in the following chapter.