3
General introduction
This paper aims to give a modest contribution to the „World Englishes‟ debate, focussing on the
issue of national standard in South Africa and Australia and non-standard varieties of English,
respectively, Black South African English (BSAE) – i.e. the variety of English spoken by native
speakers of South African indigenous languages – and Aboriginal English (AbE) – i.e. the variety
of English spoken by Australian Aboriginal people. Two field studies have been conducted, in both
countries, in order to collect empirical data on: what is the most widely used English standard in the
two nations; the informants‟ opinion on Australian and South African English international
intelligibility; lastly, and more importantly, what are the English native speakers‟ attitudes towards,
respectively, BSAE in South Africa and AbE in Australia, in order to shed light on the social and
power structures of both countries. The study of attitudes in these two countries carries with it
important extra-linguistic issues which will be later described in Part 2, 3 and 4 of the present work.
The latter will be divided in four separate parts, plus a final section with a comparative
conclusion of the main findings. Part 1 is intended to offer a broad historical overview of how
English has reached, through its historical expansion, its present-day status of most widespread
language on Earth as well as a summary of the present-day „World Englishes‟ debate, presenting the
theories of the most important scholars on the subject. Part 3 and 4 will focus, respectively, on
South Africa and Australia, and will be organized with a similar structure. An introductory part will
describe the language and society of both countries, as well as giving a short history of how English
was established there and the different roles it plays at present. After that, the field studies will be
presented and discussed in the respective sections, analysing the data collected through
questionnaires, in order to shed light on the participants‟ opinions about the English standard and on
BSAE and AbE. The reasons which led to the choice of the countries for the analysis will be
explained in much greater details, in conjunction with the necessary background theoretical
information on the field studies, in Part 2. The latter functions as a general introduction to both the
field studies.
The reasons for my interest in South Africa and Australia are to be found in the year I spent
abroad, from July 2008 to July 2009, as a post-graduate exchange student in Sydney. During my
stay in Australia I took a month-long trip to South Africa in December 2008. In South Africa I
discovered a very complex and stratified society, where racial division, though not official anymore,
is still evident in both cities and schools. The different ethnic groups, even in the post-Apartheid
era, seem to conduct parallel existences, with African people still relegated in rural or industrial
areas whereas the white population reside in the green residential ones. Even though, in recent
years, the black upper-middle class has started moving in these areas, so far there is no parallel
4
movement of white people towards the black areas. The best schools are still situated in the
formerly white-only areas, and poor masses are still automatically excluded from them, not
anymore on racial grounds, but because of their unaffordable prices.
As a European with no previous experience of the reality of an African country, and knowing that
South Africa is one of the English-speaking countries, I was expecting everyone to speak English;
but I found this to be very far from the truth. Indeed, English is only one of the eleven official
languages, spoken as a first language (L1) by a very small minority of the population; indeed, the
majority of its speakers (Afrikaans and Black people) have learnt it through formal schooling as a
second language (L2) or third language. Upon my return in Sydney I became more and more
interested in a sociolinguistic analysis of English in South Africa. That is, what are the speakers‟
and learners‟ attitudes towards it; the changes it has undergone under the influence of so many non-
native speakers; what is their role in these changes and on the latter‟s acceptance? Is there the
possibility of the development of an independent South African English norm? So I started a
research for a „World Englishes‟ course I was enrolled in at the University of Sydney, and I found
out that all these questions had already been asked by many South African linguistics scholars.
More and more among the latter shared a claim for the creation of a South African English (SAfE)
Standard which should acknowledge the variety of English spoken by black people (Black South
African English) – which is, given the black people‟s overwhelming numerical majority, the most
widespread variety of English spoken in South Africa – as a dialect of English in its own right, in
order to truly deracialise the country. The one study I have replicated and expanded in the present
research is the one described in van der Walt, J. & van Rooy, B. (2002). „Towards a norm in SAfEs‟
(see Bibliography). The authors handed out questionnaires to both black teachers and learners of
English in order to assess the diffusion and acceptance of Black South African English.
The study was carried out in 2002, so my intention was to conduct a similar one, seven years
afterward, but with a different set of participants. Van der Walt & van Rooy (2002) proved that
BSAE is scoring increasing acceptance among black people and thus concluded that it will
influence the creation of a SAfE standard, especially in account of the fact that white people make
up to a little minority in South Africa. On the other hand, my research focuses precisely on this
white minority, who still holds the upper hand in the economic sphere, in order to find out whether
the spreading of BSAE in more fields of South African society – after the 1994 Democratic shift
and the black leaders taking over the government – has led to its acceptance even among Standard
English speakers from the non-black upper-middle class.
While I was working on this research on South Africa, I started thinking that it would have been
interesting to conduct a similar study in Australia. In fact, the same disparities which can be seen
5
between black and white people in South Africa are observable between white and Aboriginal
people in Australia as well. Further, if BSAE is the most well social-marked dialect in South Africa,
Aboriginal English (AbE) is Australia‟s one, and I thought that a research on the white majority‟s
attitudes towards the latter was needed, also because I could not find a study which surveyed the
mainstream white Australian community‟s attitudes towards Aboriginal English. This issue is of
great importance at present, as the Australian government has only in recent years recognised its
past mistreatment of the Indigenous people and apologised for it. However, this is not enough as I
firmly believe that true integration, both for Aboriginal people in Australia and for black people in
South Africa, has to pass through the recognition of their linguistic code by the job market‟s
gatekeepers and through the end of social stigmatisation based on linguistic grounds. A discussion
on both South Africa‟s and Australia‟s present-day situation as well as greater details on the reasons
which led to the choice of these two countries as case studies will follow in the general introduction
to the field studies, in Part 2 of the present work.
During the time spent in both countries I had the possibility of creating a network of
acquaintances who have been fundamental for their help with the data collection which will
presented and discussed in the field studies. The articles and books quoted in the bibliography,
which will form the theoretical background of this thesis, have been looked up in the University of
Sydney Library and through the latter website, which gave me access to an invaluable number of
electronic journals, especially World Englishes.
6
Part 1. The English language: from historical diffusion to present-day World Englishes
1.1 A Short History of the Diffusion of English
About 400 years ago Richard Mulcaster, a British schoolmaster and linguist, stated, with regard to
the diffusion of English: „The English tongue is of small reache, stretching no further than this
island of ours, nay not there over all‟ (Melchers & Shaw, 2003: 6). Nowadays, the situation could
not be more different; English enjoys a paramount international position, certainly unparalleled in
the history of the world, having attained the status of an international (universal) language,
essentially for cross-cultural communication (Kachru, 1992: 67). It has become the most
widespread language on the planet, the language of international communication as well as being
often considered a “ticket for success” on the job market. It is the language of world business and
commerce, the chief instrument of knowledge in many countries and the language of science and
technology, a major language in the global political debate, the language of the international media
and of the Western world entertainment (de Klerk, 1996: 176). With around 375 million first-
language speakers, 375 million second-language speakers and 750 million foreign-language
speakers, it is the only language in the world the non-native speakers of which outnumber the native
speakers. Even though other worldwide spread languages, such as Chinese and Spanish, have more
native speakers than English, the number of people using the latter as a second or foreign language
is incredibly higher than any other language (see table in Appendix 5). As de Klerk (2006: 4) points
out, this amazing fact is obviously going to have a dramatic effect on the forms English takes on,
i.e. numerous varieties of English around the globe have already been and will be created. Those
non-standard varieties thus result, in language-contact situations, from cross-linguistic influence in
the speech of bilinguals, through the transfer of morphological, syntactic, phonetic and pragmatic
norms from the native (donor) language into a host language (in this case, English). As a
consequence, a new variety of the host language emerges through what Kachru (1992, see following
section) called the process of „nativisation‟ (Kasanga, 2006: 65). These “new” varieties of English
are usually referred to as „World Englishes‟ (or „New Englishes‟), and two schools of thought –
prescriptivists (or purists) vs. descriptivists – are still debating as to whether consider them just
„broken‟ English or to acknowledge them as dialects of English. The former consider them
unacceptable or illegitimate, whereas the latter argue that the structures stigmatised in these
varieties of English are systematic differences rather than mere correctable errors (Kasanga, 2006:
77). However, it would be a reductive assumption to consider this debate in purely linguistic terms;
in fact, as the present study will show, the recognition of the New Englishes as varieties of English
in their own right would carry with it profound social and political consequences.
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Where are the roots of today‟s global diffusion of English to be found? In purely linguistic terms,
the flexibility of the language, with its few grammatical endings, and its cosmopolitan vocabulary –
as ever since its earliest beginnings the English language has incorporated ideas, concepts and
expressions from other societies – may have helped its diffusion (Kachru, 1992: 31). However, it
rests assured that its present-day status as the most influential world language is not due to
linguistic reasons, but to the political/economical power of the English speaking countries
(especially of the USA) as well as to the activities of its speakers over the centuries. The creation of
overseas colonies have allowed the British to export their language on a global scale and, when
these colonies became independent and gained more and more economic power, they have brought
English to the dominant international position it currently enjoys. Important historical events for the
diffusion of English have been
the explorations of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, the establishment of trading posts in Africa and
the Orient, the colonial and penal settlements in North America and Australasia, the profit-dominated grip on
India, the infamous triangular slaves-for-molasses-for-manufactured-goods traffic between Britain, West
Africa, and the Caribbean, the early stages of the Industrial Revolution – all these and others since were
happenings dominated by people who spoke English.
(Kachru, 1992: 29)
The spread of English started in the fifteenth century, when it first arrived in many areas of Africa
and, later, reached India in 1600, when the British East India Company was formed. The seeds of
today‟s global diffusion of English were sown between 1650 and 1700, when settlements and
colonies overseas were begun by explorers, merchant adventurers, buccaneers, traders, settlers,
soldiers and administrators. The seventeenth century saw the colonization of North America, which
is today the country with the biggest number of English native speakers (240 million people). The
history of English in Canada started a little later, in the eighteenth century; in 1763, indeed, Canada
became a British possession and has, nowadays, 20 million speakers of English as a first language
(L1). Towards the end of the same century the history of English in Australia and New Zealand
started out, with around 130,000 prisoners transported “down under”. After a few years, thousands
of free settlers started to head out to Australia, which is now a country of over 15 million L1
speakers of English; New Zealand is home of 3.5 million English native speakers. English was
established in South Africa in 1806 and is nowadays the first language for around 3 million people
(Melchers & Shaw, 2003: 6). The history of English in South Africa and Australia will be dealt with
in greater details, respectively, in Part 3 and 4 of this paper. A major difference between the types
of colonies that has to be underlined is between exploitation colonies, such as India and Malaysia,
8
and settlement colonies, such as Australia, New Zealand and North America. In the former, a great
influence of local languages and cultures is noticeable in the formation of the local English
varieties, whereas in the latter the same influence was seen to a lesser extent. This can be explained
bearing in mind that, while in exploitation colonies some form of communication between the
exploiters and the exploited was needed, due to the fact that they were working “together”, in
settlement colonies the contact between the settlers and the local people was limited (Kirkpatrick,
2007: 29).
One thing worth highlighting is that before about 1750 all these settlers spread around the world
considered themselves only as British people living overseas. However, after 1750 and until 1950,
four major changes took place in the overseas British colonies: first of all, the population of the
overseas English-speaking communities significantly increased in size and a sense of separate
identity began to spread out. Second, in the United States first and in Australia and elsewhere later,
the colonies began to take their independence from Britain, and the degree of linguistic difference
was reinforced. In the third place, as the possessions stabilised and prospered, great numbers of
non-native speakers of English had to learn to use the language of the newly independent country.
Lastly, between 1900 and 1950, the former colonies began to offer education, in English, to a small
but growing section of the indigenous population. In the US, Canada and Australia, English
language classes for immigrants were instituted (Kachru, 1992: 29-30), and the English model
taught was the local variety.
The most recent changes go from 1945 (end of the Second World War) to present, when nearly
all the remaining colonies of Britain – aside from a scattering of islands and outposts – became
independent states. English came to be seen not anymore as an instrument of subservience but as a
„window on the world of science and technology‟. Furthermore, being nobody‟s mother tongue, it
started to be seen as a „unifying‟ language for the numerous different population groups, as it was
the only language above internal ethnic tensions (e.g. in India, South Africa, etc.). Furthermore, in
the latter half of the twentieth century, English became the chosen language for a number of
international activities, movements and subjects, e.g. the international agreement to adopt English
for air-traffic control and it started to be used in the numerous bodies providing international aid.
English became dominant in the international media, radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, music and,
last but not least, computing technology. It is precisely in this last phase of its global spread that
English stopped being associated with Britain‟s colonial past and became an internationally used
neutral language (Kachru, 1992: 31).
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1.2 Native and Nativised Varieties of English
The previous paragraph has shown how centuries of expansion and colonization by the British have
led to English being used nowadays as an official or co-official language in many countries of the
world, and as a globally spread lingua franca. A lingua franca is the common language used by
people who speak different languages to communicate with each other, within a country‟s borders
or internationally (Kirkpatrick, 2007: 9). English functions as an internal lingua franca in countries
such as South Africa and India – where the choice of one of the numerous native languages over the
other ones would cause internal ethnic tensions – as well as an international medium of
communication used all over the world. The global sociolinguistic profile of English has been
outlined by Kachru (1985), whose model divides the English-using countries in an Inner, Outer and
Expanding Circle:
The Inner Circle refers to the traditional cultural and linguistic bases of English (English as a Native
Language, ENL). The Outer Circle represents the institutionalised non-native varieties (English as a Second
Language, ESL) in the regions that have passed through extended periods of colonization […]. The
Expanding Circle includes the regions where the performance varieties of the language are used essentially
in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts.
(Kachru,1985: 366-7)
According to this model, the Inner Circle includes countries such as the United Kingdom, the
United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where English is historically the
first language to be spoken and is the mother tongue of those born and raised there (ENL) (de
Klerk: 2006: 4). In the Outer Circle, English is learnt by the majority of the population as a second
language (ESL), it is an important and usually official language, though it is not spoken by the
majority of the population. Typically, these countries are former colonies of the UK or the USA,
such as South Africa, India, the Philippines, etc. The Expanding Circle encompasses all those
countries where English is learnt at school as a foreign language (EFL), but students do not have
many opportunities to use it outside the classroom. The motivation to learn English will of course
be greater in those countries where English plays an institutional role rather than in those where it is
seldom, if ever, heard outside school (Kirkpatrick, 2007: 27). This distinction between countries is
not clear-cut: in fact, in some Outer Circle countries such as South Africa, though English plays an
official role, some people – especially in rural areas – might not need it at all for daily life, thus
becoming, to them, a foreign language learnt in classroom rather than a second language.
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