A history of the English Language

256.
American English and World English.
In bringing the history of the English language to a conclusion with a chapter on 
American English, it is clear that the United States and the United Kingdom are countries 
whose national varieties of the language (each with varieties within it) serve as major 
points of reference and contrast. As regards the formal written language, the differences 
between British English and American English are so minor that often a para- 
73 
Among the hundreds of books, articles, and papers on syntactic theory during the past three 
decades, the advanced student will find important developments in John R.Ross, “Constraints on 
Variables in Syntax” (Dissertation, MIT, 1967), published as 
Infinite Syntax
(Norwood, NJ, 1985); 
Noam Chomsky’s 
Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use
(New York, 1986) and 
The 
Minimalist Program
(Cambridge, MA, 1995); James D.McCawley, 
The Syntactic Phenonmena of 
English
(2 vols., Chicago, 1988); and Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer, 
Semantics in Generative 
Grammar
(Malden, MA, 1998). 
74 
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(2nd ed., Chicago, 1970). 
75 
See Carl Pollard and Ivan A.Sag, 
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
(Chicago, 1994); and 
Joan Bresnan, 
Lexical-Functional Syntax
(Malden, MA, 2001). 
The english language in america 381

---

graph of a whole essay will not reveal the nationality of the author. A century ago 
American commentators often felt called upon to defend their national variety, though it 
is hard to find anyone much concerned about the matter now. There is nothing at present 
like the sustained controversy over Americanisms of the nineteenth and early twentieth 
centuries (see § 251), and a judgment such as Basil De Selincourt’s would be taken as 
facetious exaggeration on either side of the Atlantic: “Only when we hear English on the 
lips of Americans do we fear for its integrity.” To be sure, during most of the twentieth 
century Europeans preferred British English, and European instruction in English as a 
foreign language followed the norms of British English in pronunciation (specifically 
RP), lexical choice, and spelling. This was a result of proximity, the effective methods of 
language teaching developed by British institutions such as the British Council, and the 
perceived “prestige” of the British variety. As American English grew more influential in 
the world, it became an option alongside British English in mainland Europe and 
elsewhere. For a while, especially during the second half of the twentieth century, a 
prominent attitude was that either variety was acceptable for a learner of English as long 
as each variety was kept distinct. The idea was that one could speak British English or 
American English but not a random mix of the two. 
The global context of English described in Chapter 10 has made the traditional 
categories more problematic and the choices more complex than they were previously 
perceived to be. It is worth distinguishing again between English as a second language 
(especially in multilingual countries where English has an official status) and English as a 
foreign language. Where English is widely used as a second language, as in India, Africa, 
and Singapore, national varieties have developed that are neither British nor American, 
whatever the historical, political, and cultural interactions had been. Where English is 
mainly a foreign language, as in France, Japan, or China, the language often has a mix of 
British features and American features, Americanization being especially prominent in 
business and technology. As we have seen, there is linguistic variation among groups of 
native speakers within both Britain and American. Some of these varieties are more 
comprehensible than others, and some can be understood in international settings only 
with great difftculty. Indeed, many Scandinavian speakers of English can communicate 
more effectively in these settings than many British or American speakers with a strong 
regional dialect and accent. It has been argued that English as an international language is 
being shaped as much by non-native speakers as by native speakers, and the variety that 
is emerging will not be rooted in the culture, geography, and national sense of any 
country. The term “Mid-Atlantic English” has been used to describe this cosmopolitan 
variety.
76
David Crystal, one of the leading scholars in reconceptualizing the categories of an 
expanding global English points to his own three dialects: his original Welsh/Liverpool 
mix functioning as a marker of local identity; his educated (Standard) British English 
functioning both as a means of national communication within Britian and as a marker of 
national identity outside; and what he foresees as an international standard of spoken 
English, to be used as a means of international communication.
77
A form of this last 
variety can be seen in “Euro-English,” in which politicians, diplomats, and civil servants 
from Britain working in Brussels accommodate their use of English to speakers of other 
languages. This result is not “foreigner talk” or anything resembling pidgin, but 
A history of the english language 382

---

something more subtle: the accommodation of an increasingly syllable-timed rhythm (as 
in French), the avoidance of idioms and colloquial vocabulary, a slower rate of speech, 
and the avoidance of some of the assimilations and elisions that would be natural in a 
first-language setting (p. 15). 
American English may be the most prominent source of emerging global English, and 
yet it will be American English deracinated and adapted in a utilitarian way to the needs 
of speakers whose geography and culture are quite different. To the extent that 
Americans think about the global use of English at all, it is often as a possession that is 
lent on sufferance to foreigners, who often fail to get it right. Such a parochial attitude 
will change as more Americans become involved in the global economy and as they 
become more familiar with the high quality of literature being produced in post-colonial 
settings. Many earlier attacks on American English were prompted by the slang, 
colloquialisms, and linguistic novelties of popular fiction and journalism, just as recent 
criticism has been directed at jargon in the speech and writings of American government 
officials, journalists, and social scientists. Along with the good use of English there is 
always much that is indifferent or frankly bad, but the language of a whole country 
should not be judged by its least graceful examples. Generalizations about the use of 
English throughout a region or a culture are more likely to mislead than to inform, and 
questions that lead to such generalizations are among the least helpful to ask. In the 
United States, as in Britain, India, Ghana, and the Philippines, in Australia and
76 
See Marko Modiano, “Rethinking ELT,”