Don't teach the 'Queen's English' to foreign language students, linguist urges

  • Mario Saraceni said the English are not the only legitimate users of the language
  • Urged native speakers to 'give up their claims to be guardians of the purest form of the language'

By Emily Allen
UPDATED: 03:30 EST, 2 November 2011


People learning the English language around the world should not adopt the 'Queen's English', a linguist said today.

Dr Mario Saraceni, of the University of Portsmouth, called on native English speakers to 'give up their claim to be the guardians of the purest form of the language'.

He argued that the ways it has been used and changed by millions of people around the world are equally valid.

People learning the English language around the world should not adopt the 'Queen's English', a linguist said

A linguist thinks people learning the English language around the world should not adopt the 'Queen's English'

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Changing English, he suggests the way English is taught to non-native speakers, but whose mother tongue is English, needs a dramatic change.

He said: 'It's important the psychological umbilical cord linking English to its arbitrary centre in England is cut.

'The English are not the only legitimate owners of the language.

 

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'English is the most dominant language on the planet and though it is spoken widely in the western world, westerners are in the minority of English language speakers.

'For many around the world, the ability to speak English has become as important as knowing how to use a computer.

'But the myth of the idealised native speaker needs to be abandoned.

'How it is spoken by others should not be seen as second best.'

The linguist said it was time English language teachers abroad took down posters of double-decker buses and Parliament Square from their classrooms and taught English in a purely local context

Context: The linguist said English language teachers abroad should take down posters of double-decker buses and Parliament Square and teach English in a local context

Dr Saraceni, of the School of Languages and Area Studies, said it was time English language teachers abroad took down posters of double-decker buses and Parliament Square from their classrooms and taught English in a purely local context.

He said: 'Critics might feel uncomfortable with what they see as a laissez-faire attitude but language use is not about getting closer to the 'home' of English, and it is not about bowing deferentially and self-consciously to the so-called superiority of the inner circle of the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.

'Language use is fundamentally about mutual understanding.'

According to Dr Saraceni, the widely-held view that English has spread around the world from its original birthplace in England can be challenged.

He said: 'The idea seems natural and unquestionable, but if you examine it closer it is patently untrue.

'It is impossible to identify any point in history or geography where the English language started - one can talk only of phases of development.

'The origins of English are not to be found in the idea of it spreading from the centre to the periphery, but in multiple, simultaneous origins.

'The concept of a single version of any language is always questionable.'

Dr Saraceni said that English had been 'reincarnated' throughout the world, including in Malaysia, India, China and Nigeria, and therefore England should not be seen as the linguistic 'garden of Eden' where the language was pure and perfect.

The de-Anglicisation of English needs to take place primarily in classrooms and the 'whole mystique of the native speaker and mother tongue should be quietly dropped from the linguist's set of myths about the language', he said.

 

Comments (240)

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Now that is going to be a bit tricky. I do happen to be Italian - sorry, I do happen to be from a backwater country according to one of the commentators. Very kind definition, incidentally. I have been struggling with the English language ever since I was a six-year old child (many and many decades ago). Of course, hardly can I utter some mispronounced words, let alone articulate a sentence, or a subordinate clause, not to mention understand or make myself understood by the hapless English person who happens to be conversing with me. I would like to have my say, yes I would like, but... but what if the kind and proud commentators fall on me like a ton of bricks? Word is silver, but silence is gold, as the old saying goes. I'll keep my mouth- sorry, keyboard- shut. I can't help thanking you for your open-mindedness, exquisite manners, outstanding command of YOUR LANGUAGE and complete lack of parochial prejudices. Oh, such a refreshing experience to read your words!

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I continue. Dr Saraceni, of the School of Languages and Area Studies, said it was time English language teachers abroad took down posters of double-decker buses and Parliament Square from their classrooms and taught English in a purely local context. Whilst I disagree that English should be taught "in a purely local context", it should be taught in the context where the student will need to use it. As one English teacher in Tunisia said to me, how do you explain the concept of traffic lights to a child who lives in a desert village? What is the point of teaching that same child to reply "How do you do?" to someone who, meeting them for the first time, says "How do you do?" Fewer and fewer English people use this when meeting people, so why should I teach it? Because someone somewhere decrees that is "correct"?? Wake up out there, and recognise that teachers are specialists not only in their subject matter, but also in teaching.

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Dear Bernard Lamb, London, England, "The Queen’s English provides an ideal version, renowned for its clarity, which can be understood by English speakers anywhere in the world." This is WRONG. The pronunciation of the "Queen's English" along with some of its structures makes it very difficult for foreigers to understand. Look at these two sentences: 1: This meat has not been properly cooked. 2: I don't think this meat has been properly cooked. Number one is pretty easy to understand, but would probably be considered a bit aggressive by a native English speaker. Number two is considerably more polite and just as easily understood by a native English speaker, but causes considerable difficulty for a non-native speaker. I think a lot of people posting comments have no real idea of how languages are acquired, of what constitutes "proper" English in different circumstances and have very little idea as to the difficulties encountered by students.

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You report (News, November 2) Dr Saraceni’s view that people learning English around the world should not adopt the “Queen’s English”. I disagree strongly because, as he says, language use is about mutual understanding. Without an internationally accepted model version of English, the language used in different countries will diverge towards mutual unintelligibility. The Queen’s English provides an ideal version, renowned for its clarity, which can be understood by English speakers anywhere in the world. It is the standard and most authoritative form of our language, used in fiction, non-fiction, textbooks in almost all subjects, in newspapers, in government and business documents, and in aircraft control. Why settle for less when English is taught at home or abroad?

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There are several false mythologies here. Saraceni is clearly a linguistician, with their standard religious tenet that whatever anybody says is OK, and that there is no right and wrong, although his notion that anybody learning English can speak it how they like is more extreme than the standard line that anything a native speaker of English says is OK (so that English lessons as a subject in schools in the UK, north America and Australasia are a waste of time) --- a view only linguisticians and those who can't be bothered to get properly educated think. But james hudson, stevenage is in his own world: linguistics is right to say nobody designed English as such; it wasn't aristocrats who set the standard we now have, but the likes of the scholars who translated the bible, Milton, Dr Samual Johnson, the poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge, the novelists of the same era and the scholars like D'Arcy Thompson. For 90 years, the BBC. And Reith was latterly a lord but not an aristocrat.

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When in rome do as the romans do! when in England speaks "Queens English" or leave.

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I suggest dear old Mario sods off from Britain. I know I don't speak perfect English, but watching the BBC and ITV on-line and through the TV here the speech has got worse. Anyone remember when we used to have to practice with the "Quick Brown Fox etc.". I can't follow some of the British shows (ps. Jonathan Creek's side kick - what a mess both speech and dress!)

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The British Army has soldiers from all over the UK. Consequently, with so many different accents, it can be very difficult to comprehend what's being said over the radio systems. If you listen to their officers, one group speak the Queen's English, with plums in mouths, and the other group speak a neutral barely-accented English that they are taught during their officer training. It's called "Received English", and it should be made the bench-mark for all English instruction in the UK. Then everybody will understand us.

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Utter nonsense. I've taught English as a second language to many people and they all wanted to speak 'proper' English, English they could use in the UK and anywhere else they needed to use it. This is typical dumbing down by someone with too much time on his hands and a patronising attitude towards those who wish to learn English.

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So called English is the official language of Air Traffic Control because the Americans insisted on it; this is why it is a standardised language throughout the world. The English language was designed by English aristocrats for their own use. It was never intended to be taught ot he British working classes, let alone the world. It cannot develop into a proper modern language because the English academics think that they own it.

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