Page 33 - ELG2309 Sep Issue 486
P. 33
FEATURE
Owing to the international prominence
of AmE, which is used by 70% of all NSs of
English, EFL speakers’ sociolinguistic profile
seems to be shifting. Up until the 1980s, EFL
teaching had a BrE base, which underwent
processes of linguistic Americanisation in the
1990s. As a result, EFL students have tended
to speak a mix of BrE and AmE, labelled as
MAE. This is my research area.
My research has shown that a demand for
consistency can no longer be promoted as
sound pedagogical practice; my informants
clearly speak MAE, a mix of BrE and AmE.
Within the framework of a quantitative
research design, I analyse language use in
the lexical, phonological, grammatical and
orthographic areas of a total of 306 survey
participants. I chose four informant groups:
school pupils at upper secondary level,
students of English studies at university, non-
native English teachers and BrE NSs (UK
residents and expats). In addition, I examined
my informants’ attitudes towards different
varieties of English.
I also played an audio text taken from the
International Dialects of English Archive
(IDEA) to find out school and university
students’ attitudes to six different native and
non-native varieties of English. Furthermore,
their accent recognition ability was researched
with regard to these six varieties of English.
Additionally, the pronunciation of the
school pupils and university students was tested
by having them read out aloud a short self-
penned text. It contained various individual
sounds and stress patterns of English. The
aim was to establish whether or not these two
groups speak a mix of BrE and AmE.
Overall, my research demonstrated that
all the surveyed groups tended strongly
towards mixed forms in all language areas.
However, there were sometimes considerable
differences between the individual groups
with regard to the frequency of the use of
Americanisms in the four language areas,
notably the lexical one.
Charles Carson from ‘Downton Abbey’ so
fittingly said that ‘the nature of life is not
permanence but flux.’ This also holds true
of language, notably English. English has
become public domain, and those who adopt,
it adapt it.
Andy Mering is an
experienced English teacher.
He recently completed his
PhD after numerous years
of extremely rewarding
research. Andy wrote
his doctoral thesis at
the University of Education, in Freiburg,
My research into the linguistic mixing increase in linguistic Americanisation. Germany. The title of his thesis was
of British and American English According to Crystal, ‘the 19th century British “Mid-Atlantic English - An Emerging
Regarding the lingua franca paradigm political imperialism had sent English around Variety in the EFL Context? A
alongside the issue of multiculturality, it is the globe and in the 20th century, the English Sociolinguistic Study of the Role of British
important to recall that the development of world presence was maintained and promoted, English and American English in EFL
an internationally spoken variety of English almost single-handedly, through the economic Teaching.” Email: andy.mering@bluewin.ch
is considerably influenced by the exponential supremacy of the New American superpower.’
editorial@elgazette.com 33
