hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2022-03

■ #4709. Strang は ESL の「標準英語」も認めていた [world_englishes][model_of_englishes][esl][standardisation]

　昨日の記事「#4708. 世界英語の静的モデルの形成 --- Strang, Quirk et al, Kachru」 ([2022-03-18-1]) で見たように Quirk et al. や Kachru による有名な3つの同心円モデルの前身として，Strang による3区分モデルがあったという．Strang は構造主義言語学に基づいた英語史の名著の1つであり，私も何度か読んできたが，世界英語の分類に関する記述の箇所はさほどマークしていなかったようで，私にとってなかなか新しい発見だった．
　Quirk et al. のいう ENL, ESL, EFL は，Strang の区分では A, B, C-speakers に対応する．まずは，その説明部分を引用する (Strang 17--18) ．

At the present time, for instance, English is spoken by perhaps 350 to 400m people who have it as their mother tongue. These people are scattered over the earth, in far-ranging communities of divergent status, history, cultural traditions and local affinities. I shall call them A-speakers, because they are the principal kind we think of in trying to choose a variety of English as a basis for description. The principal communities of A-speakers are those of the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. There are many millions more for whom English may not be quite the mother tongue, but who learnt it in early childhood, and who lived in communities in which English has a special status (whether or not as an official national language) as a, or the, language for advanced academic work and for participation in the affairs of men at the international, and possibly even the national level. These are the B-speakers, found extensively in Asia (especially India) and Africa (especially the former colonial territories). Then there are those throughout the world for whom English is a foreign language, its study required, often as the first foreign language, as part of their country's educational curriculum, though the language has no official, or even traditional, standing in that country. These are the C-speakers.

　ここまでは Quirk et al. と比べても，ほとんど同じ記述といってよい．しかし，Strang (18--19) は続く議論において，A-speakers のみならず B-speakers の共同体も，各々の「標準英語」を発展させてきたと明言しているのである（Quirk et al. はこの点に触れていない）．

. . . we know that American English is different from British English and within the two, US English from Canadian, Boston from Brooklyn, Southern, Mid-Western or West Coast, or Edinburgh from Liverpool, Leeds or Newcastle. These examples introduce us to an important principle in the classification of varieties. In fact, in all the communities containing A- and B-speakers a special variety of English has developed, used for all public purposes, Standard English. By and large, with rather trivial exceptions, this kind of English is the same wherever English is used, except in one area of its organisation --- the accent, or mode of pronunciation. Different accents characterise the spoken standards of say, England, Scotland and the USA. In England special status is accorded to an accent characterised by its having no local roots, namely RP. Communities with only C-speakers are characterised by having no fully developed indigenous Standard so that they model themselves largely on the Standard (including accent) of one of the major English-speaking communities.

　Strang は，ENL と ESL を，それぞれ標準変種を発展させたという共通点においてまとめあげたが，Quirk et al. はこの観点をスルーした．そして，Quirk et al. がスルーしたこの観点を，後に Kachru が再び取り上げ，Strang 流の理解へと回帰した．そういうことのようだ．

　・ Strang, Barbara M. H. A History of English. London: Methuen, 1970.
　・ Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman, 1972.
　・ Kachru, B. B. "Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle." English in the World. Ed. R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson. Cambridge: CUP, 1985. 11--30.

[ 固定リンク | 印刷用ページ ]