Chillemi Fabiana, Magrì Paola Caterina, Nicoletti Giulia

English in the World: History, Diversity, Change ( Seargeant, Philip,

Swann, Joan )
Summary of Chapter V

English has always been a highly mobile language and its spread led to the birth of different varieties across
the globe. This chapter turns to the linguistic characteristic of contemporary varieties of English analysed by
a sociolinguistic approach. The different levels of description include lexis, grammar and phonology. In
England the sociolinguist Trudgill identified sixteen dialect regions that are gathered into two major dialect
groups: Southern and Northern. They are separated by a geographical and imaginary line called Isoglosse.
In Scotland the languages used are Scots, Scottish Standard English and English. Boundaries between them
are fuzzy and they are linked, above all, to a systematic change in the pronunciation of English vowels,
known as the Great Vowel Shift. In Wales there are two broad dialect areas. Dialects in the south are said to
have strong affinities with English, on the contrary, the northern and western varieties are said to be more
influenced by the structure of Welsh. Ireland is divided into two wide sections,the north and the south and
these are largely related to patterns of settlement. We can see how historical events and colonization have
given life to different varieties of English that, even if they have had some changes because of the
trasmission between different generations, has a common linguistic source which is the original form of
English. This similarity can be seen in the American English, born by the first english colonization in XVI
century. Other examples can be the English spoken in Austraria and New Zealand.
In the end, the author describes what could possibly distinguish a Pidgin language and a Creole one thanks
to some comparison between Creole and English focusing on some of their linguistic features under a
sociolinguistic point of view. It has been claimed that pidgins and creoles languages have the same
structural design, although this is still disputed, pointing out with some activities and readings about
studies of Black Country identity and features about the identity of no-English language (such as Wales,
Scott, African, Asian languages).