Review for final exam, English 403

You may have seen a version of the bumper sticker shown above. While it was devised as one of many "support our troops" displays, its message, a mixture of support for literacy, linguistic patriotism, and linguistic imperialism, is also an provocative comment on the position of the English language in the modern world. You may find it useful to refer to this display in one of your essays.

The final examination will consist three essays covering the material we have covered since the midterm (there will be no ID’s). You will be given three questions to write on. One will focus on English past; one on English present; and one on English future. The questions will be broadly framed and all expect you to demonstrate your mastery of both the facts of the history of English and your reasoned analysis of what these facts mean.

To prepare for the exam, I ask you to reread the materials from the textbook and the online links, together with your in-class notes, and then go over the items below – all drawn from the post-midterm readings. The essays will essentially cover the modern history of English: from the Renaissance to the present; English as a linguistic force in the world since 1800; and the future of English. In your responses, you should refer clearly to the reading. However, I will be looking not simply for opinions or for a rehash of the reading. Instead I ask you to synthesize the readings as you develop an argument and support it with specific linguistic examples illustrating each of your claims. The more specific, the better, in most cases.

The essays on the final cover four major areas of concern:

• The period of the 16th – 18th centuries, during which English grows into a modern European language.

• The period of the 19th and 20th centuries, during which English English goes global.

• Issues of linguistic diversity in England and the U.S., including language laws and linguistic rights.

• Issues of the present and future of English, including the questions of who owns English, and how are they treating their property?

1. Why is variation in language often viewed as dangerous or harmful?

2. What factors contribute to the emergence of English linguistic standards in the Early Modern period?

3. How are correctness rules applied to writing? to speech?

4. What is the connection between the spread of printing in England and the rise of a linguistic standard? Why did it take several centuries for a written standard to emerge?

5. Describe the concern for spelling reform, and explain why it is so difficult to impose on the users of a language.

6. The EmnE period is a time of great linguistic awareness. What did people become aware of? What was going on with the language? What were the major changes to the sound system and the vocabulary during this time?

7. What happens to the second person pronoun during EmnE? Describe the survival of forms like thou, thee, thy, and thine. Where does the form ’em come from (as in, Give ’em hell, Harry, the slogan for Harry Truman's presidential campaign)?

8. Discuss the rise of a prescriptive approach to written language; the codification of English through dictionaries, grammars, and usage guides.

9. Discuss some of the prescriptive rules that were promulgated, and the rationale behind each.

10. The prescriptive grammarians often commit the very mistakes they rail against. What does this tell us about language reform?

11. Noah Webster’s name became synonymous with the dictionary, but during his lifetime his most successful publications were his spelling books. What does that indicate about language attitudes in the United States?

12. The 19th century also saw English establish footholds around the globe as the British Empire extended its reach beyond the British Isles, the U.S., and Canada. Discuss the role of English as a colonial – and now, a postcolonial – language.

13. Consider the case of y’all (or, as it is sometimes spelled by purists, ya’ll). How has it functioned? Compare it to other second person plurals: youse and you’uns, or yins. Is its role changing now that the informal second person plural seems to be shifting to you guys?

14. Some scholars associate the rise in the popularity of usage guides with the rise of the middle class in the 19th century. Explain the correlation between language and social class. Every bookstore today has a large section of English usage books, and new publications appear monthly. How can we account for today’s concern for correctness in language?

15. What is the relationship of the regional varieties of English to the supraregional notion of English as a language of wider communication?

16. There are 1.5 billion speakers of English around the globe. What is likely to happen in the future?

17. Describe some of the current attempts to render the English language more tolerant, more inclusive, more correct.

18. Discuss the impact of Spanish on the American Southwest, both in the 19th century and today.

19. What’s happening to Spanish in the US in general? It’s a highly visible language, since immigration of Spanish speakers continues at a high rate; but there’s significant evidence that even in border areas, Spanish speakers don’t hold on to their Spanish over time – much the same thing happened with earlier immigrants. Explain the forces that lie behind language maintenance and language loss.

20. The concentration of speakers of Spanish, and of Asian languages, has prompted a backlash in many states to make English “official.” What does making a language official do to the mix of languages on the ground?

21. Governments often try to regulate the languages used by citizens. Discuss initiatives to ban or to promote the use of certain languages in the US. How successful are they likely to be?

22. English has always been a majority language in the United States, but the U.S. has always been home to multiple languages. Until the later 20th century, German was the most commonly spoken non-English language. What contributed to the decline of German? What other languages have maintained a presence in the US? What factors affect their success? Their decline? Consider in particular: Native American languages and French.

23. New immigration patterns have resulted in new language patterns. Describe some of these and discuss their impact on the linguistic make-up of the United States in the past 50 years.

24. One variety of English that has garnered a lot of attention in the past half-century is called variously African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), African-American Language (AAL), and Ebonics, or Black English. When the Oakland School Board declared Ebonics to be a separate language, there was a strong backlash. Discuss what happened in Oakland and assess the claim that some of today’s linguists advance that the nonstandard varieties of English are diverging rather than converging.

25. The 2000 Census reports on the linguistic diversity of the United States. What are some of the things we learn from the Census? How reliable are the data reported? Why do some people greet the language data with alarm that English is in danger, while others see the data as confirming monolingual status of most Americans?

26. Kachru has described the spread of English around the globe in terms of expanding concentric circles. Svartvik and Leech add to this model a cone-shaped depiction of English with World Standard English at the summit and inner-circle Englishes around the periphery. What is their rationale for this newer vision of English?

27. French, Spanish, English, and Russian, to name just a few, have been colonial and imperial languages – as have Latin, Arabic, and Swahili. What dynamics support the spread of these languages of wider communicaton? What dynamics undercut that spread?

28. There will soon be more native speakers of Mandarin Chinese (and possibly of Hindi), than native speakers of English. Will that impact the position of English as the language of world politics and trade? As the language of the World Wide Web?

29. The controversy over translating the Star-Spangled Banner into Spanish is rooted partly in calls for stricter controls on immigration and partly on a sense that English has become what Nunberg has called a “truth language.” Watch the video “José can you see?” on the web site, and discuss the public reaction in terms of what you have learned about the history of English in England, in the U.S., and in the world.

30. In what ways do the examples of Latin and Chinese explain the development of English in a global context? In what ways does global English differ from the model of Latin and Chinese?