Standard and identity: two case studies. John B. Trumper, Marta Maddalon (UNICAL). 0. Introduction.

Fear is running throughout modern society that languages are loosing their specificity, their nationally local pertinence and richness, under the pressures of international English. Amongst possible counter-reactions to a similar fear two seem to be the most relevant. On the one hand, we note a chauvinistic, aggressive attitude that rejects all and any extraneous borrowings, as in the French case, where indigenous creation is encouraged1, on the other, a pedantic appeal to an idealized purism with no grounding in modern everyday existence, as in the Italian case. Taking into account the real (linguistic) nature of language, neither of these solutions seems primed to succeed. The most successful examples of language survival illustrate the principle that in typical contact situations the more contaminated a code becomes the greater its success. From the past when Latin became the least Italic among other Italic languages, accepting influences from all the languages Latin was in contact with, Greek being in the van, to the present when English, devouring and digesting influences near and far, becomes the least Germanic among Germanic languages. However, in conclusion we are obliged to state that there is no general recipe for language survival, as there is no sure diagnostic for gradual or immediate language death, notwithstanding Dressler and Wodak-Leodelters remarks on Breton (1977) or Dressler 1981 in a similar vein, given the complexity of all the factors involved in language history, decline and survival2. Thus each case needs in-depth studying on its own merits and within its own particular historical and social circumstances. 1. 0. Repertoires and standard. How do repertoires adjust in the situations outlined above? The most logical result would seem to be the gradual disappearance of local varieties, replaced by other types of variety, chiefly social wherever a strong standardized pole has been created historically. They represent the social dialects of a rigorously standardized language, as for example in Britain where they are now called accents, but certainly not in Italy. However, such trends are not mutually exclusive: globalizing trends do not exclude the survival, even revival, of local situations. The description of what actually seems to be happening in Britain and Italy, the two case studies we are proposing, needs observing in some detail: the main pressures on repertoires that we observe and study are by nature both internal and external and need be carefully separated analytically. In countries with a strong, long-existing standard, such as Britain or France, drastic modifications have been seen to operate. External pressures may become internal, immigrants desire to give their languages autonomous dignity
For example computer is automatically refused and a new creation ordinateur is coined. Many such examples occur in French, too many to be quoted. 2 The complexity of the Breton situation and the fact that on a sample population, using methods developped in similar work on Wales, the percentage of people who could use Breton in Lower Brittany was 20%, are problems dealt with in Humphreys chapter (13) of Ball & Fife 1993 (see discussion around the subparts of table 13) and later in Jones 1998.
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brings new pressures to bear in creating anti-standards; this is compounded with new attitudes towards standard formation and standard negation. Erstwhile unacceptable or non-prestige social dialects can and sometimes do create anti-standard pressures in the modern situation. 1.1 The birth of the Nation, National Language and Dialect concepts. Concepts such as nation and region, national standard, dialect, regional varieties often called accent over the last years, need to be clarified, given some recent terminological and historical confusions. We might first discuss the origin of the nation-state concept, whence national language and standard speech. Up to the end of the Middle Ages Latin natio is clearly polysemic, meaning 1. Birth, or roughly genetic characteristics; 2. Race of animals, genetic grouping of animals and humans; 3. Ethnic groups; 4. Non-Jews and non-Christians; 5. A social order or class3. After 1200 two meanings are added, 6. Merchant leagues or confraternities, representing loose ethnic groupings, with approximate geographical reference, 7. vaguely geographically organized units of Faculty members and student groups, used also for voting purposes, in the newly established Universities 4. Fundamental differences between loosely defined NATIONES before Konstanz and NATIONES during and after it come to the fore: it is no longer a question of lumping together ethnic groups to form large voting blocks to outwit massive Italian participation in international Councils, as in Loomis 1932: 191-2, though her note 23 is much more to the point5. We are reminded that this emergent 15-16th century nation and nationhood concept is vital to any discussion of national language, standard, dialect and accent. Against this background of change and local nationalism the nation concept was being used by other groups not just to offset massive Italian Papal and Cardinals influence but to assert ones own particular status. It leads, moreover, to further internal bickering as to what constituted a nation. The English and French use similar counter-arguments against each other to insist on what theoretically they considered to be their respective nations, the French lucklessly pulling out the stops on ethnic homogeneity, common history and a vague diversity vs. sameness of language, in addition to rough geographical contiguity and unity6: The French Protestatio Regis Franci pro justitia elucidanda read in session had, rebutting English arguments, two

A loosely knit social class unit as in Ciceros Pro P. Sestio 44, i.e. Nimirum hoc illud est quod me potissimum in accusatione qusisti, qu esset nostra natio optimatum (Without doubt the most relevant question you posed me in your accusation was what was the nature of our aristocratic class [or order]). 4 See for these definitions Du Cange Latin V. 573 col. C Nationes2. 5 The differences between the nation at Constance and the nation at a thirteenth century university is the difference between an almost modern notion of nationality and a vague regionalism that classified men indiscriminately by provinces, districts or kingdoms. But the significance of the concept at Constance is a topic that needs further discussion. 6 Loomis 1939: 514 sumatur natio ut gens secundum cognationem, et collectionem ab alia distincta, siue secundum diuersitatem linguarum, qu maximam et uerissimam probant nationem et ipsius essentiam, jure diuino pariter et humano siue etiam sumatur natio pro prouincia quali etiam nationi Gallican sicut sumi deberet.
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references to the Welsh nation, two to the Scottish nation and one to the Irish nation 7 as nationes particulares, special nations. Nationalism is to the fore, as Loomis 1932: 210 wrote, the more we find national feeling obtruding itself at every turn. This feeling, with all its consequences, including those social and linguistic, created at Konstanz the watershed between the medieval and the modern world, as some have commented, with the effect that the nation (meaning 7 of natio revised) as a semantic extension created less than two centuries earlier takes on a more modern sense and is moving slowly towards the nation-state as concept and reality. Once established as a reality, it creates new necessities: national languages and standards become the sine qu non of 15th-16th century Europe, while the discussion of standard language vis--vis dialect, once humanists have uncovered classical Greek categories and debates, becomes a natural development. As Sestan 1952 has pointed out, and as Chabods last collected essays on similar themes underscored (in Sestan and Saittas 1961 edition), the nation concept is highly ambiguous in all Italian writing from the 15th century up to 1861 Unification. Even Machiavelli often equates nazione with provincia rather than with stato (the Princes sovereignty and indivisible territory), thus it still refers to birth-place, common history and local language, a micro-society where it is difficult to talk of a politically national language with precise written and oral standards. Nothing of a higher level than the provincia or a generic regionalism existed in earlier Italian thought. Obviously it took a long time in Europe to develop a complex idea such as the tatnation (Frances 3rd Republic, post-1870), the nation-state (Britain in the 1st World War), or stato nazione (Italy between 1960 and 1980). However, the first two cases have a clear idea of nation and national standard, which, as many French historians argue, inhibits any real reflection on, or appraisal of, diversity, thus creating a modern identity crisis. Similar considerations might well be made in the case of Britain. In the third case (Italy) even the nation concept is unclear and constitutes a weak polar category, inhibiting any in-depth reflection on standardization and standard language at the oral level. Dialect vis--vis national language is not a concept Ronsard in his 1550 Suravertissement, or 1565 Abrg de lArt Potique, together with Du Bellay 1549s La Deffence et Illustration de la Langue Franoyse, introduce from classical sources into Europe in the 1549-1565 period via Italian writers such as Benedetto Varchi (in his Ercolano, 1560-1565, e.g. 1730 edition reprinted in 1881 pgs. 425-426), but is a concept promulgated by Italian humanists, whether in Latin in Francesco Filelfos famous letter to Lorenzo De Medici (1473), or vi the original Greek by Aldo Manunzio (1496 edition of Gregory of Corinths ), in the Calepino multilingual Dictionary of 1502 (Dialectos. Graeci uocant loquendi genera ), later in vernacular in Nicol Liburnios Premise to his Occorrenze Umane (1540), there transcribed as dialett in the critical edition pg. 25 lines 20-25. It is a significant
Mansi XXVII. 1023, documents for January 1417: aut quod non habent [sc. Angli] uocem magn nobilitatis & auctoritatis, cum hoc etiam concedant de quolibet alio Rege, immo etiam de quibusdam particularibus nationibus non habentem regem appropriatum.
7

moment, from the conceptual point of view, for all Europe. The Italian discussion was certainly prodromic with respect to others, though the difficulty was that two differing definitions became current stock and were propagated, sometimes in a confusing manner, in European debates on the history of ideas, in the ways in which various communities judged themselves and created their own ideological evaluative categories. The first makes dialect mixing the sine qu non for the creation of standards8, the second supposes that the disintegration of an erstwhile perfect, markedly purist standard is the condition that creates dialects, which are thus brokenoff, non-standard splinters of this original perfection9. Italians inherit this duality in the early 1400s. Such dualism, perhaps theoretical confusion, is what Italians transmitted to other Europeans in the 15th-16th centuries, and still leads to modern debate on whether dialect is superordinated or subordinated to the language concept, this latter to be understood as a national, standardized language. On their part the French and English were busy putting the Italians theoretical positions into linguistic - political practice. Shortly before 1380 Charles V is ordering the translation into his Francien of Royal Chronicles, theological works, Paris University querelles, some 30 years before Konstanz Conciliarism and the emergence of the new nation concept. Though Higdens Polychronicon in the late 14th century searches for a kings standard in Middle England, as did Trevisas English translation of Higden towards the end of the century, we have to wait until Henry VIIs reign, after Konstanz and Basle, for a standard to emerge slowly but steadily, a common standard which later Henry VIII will insist on10. 1.2. Homogenization and the creation of a strong standard: English in the British Isles. An overview of the British English situation necessarily takes off from modern classical definitions of the standard, whether at the spoken or written level which are usually quite distinct. What characterizes, or rather characterized, the British situation, is, or not long ago was, the presence of a spoken as well as written prestige model. Behind such a model lay a social group or groups capable of expressing a prestige variety and with wide social recognition as a model. In the English situation some geo- and socio-linguistic criteria underlying the formation of prestige varieties were explicated in Ellis 1869s definition of RP11, a definition limited in Jones 1917 to Public School Pronunciation, even more explicitly in the 1926 third edition where PSP = RP12. Though widened to cover non-Southerners educated at the public
In ancient and Hellenistic Greek: dialect is NOT a subordinate category, but comes to form part of the theory of style. 9 In Byzantine grammarians: dialects are derived, non-standard and subordinate. 10 In other words, there is insistence on unity of law, administration, rite and language in his Preface to the translation of the Mass, published posthumously in the 1549 Prayer Book. 11 A received pronunciation all over the country, not widely differing in any locality, and admitting a certain degree of variety. It may be considered as the educated pronunciation of the metropolis, of the court, the pulpit, and the bar. (Ellis 1869 Part 1 pg. 23). The families of Southern English persons whose men-folk have been educated at the great public boarding schools. (Jones 1917: viii). This is reiterated in Jones (1918) ch. 2 61, 62, i.e. 61 It is that generally used by those who have been educated at preparatory boarding schools and the Public Schools., 62 The term Received Pronunciation (abbreviation RP) is often used to designate this type of pronunciation.
8
12

schools, the defining feature remained uniquely public school education. However, Windsor Lewis 1985 (ZfAA 33. 3. 249) and Collins and Mees 1999: 166 suggested that Jones himself was under the impression that some form of PSP = RP was used by (1) most London graduates, (2) some Southerners who had not undergone Public School Education. Defining criteria are widened, though still restrictive with reference to Ellis original definition. Jones definition of RP began with a. An extreme restriction of the class who uses a standard speech, anchored to a unique defining feature, socio-economic status that determines access to Public Schools. b. The standard is assumed to be (ideologically) a variety with a minimum of variation such as the famous Grantchester [:] vs. [] question, or even the once much debated in newspapers controvrsy [] vs. contrversy [knv] or other marginalia! Later definitions attempt to expand and increase the defining features in new sociocultural and economic status terms from the sixties on. The whole concept of an opposition RP vs. non-RP, standard vs. non-standard, is being drastically modified; mono-normativity, long dominant, is losing ground. The process began in the sixties, datable to slightly before Gimson 1964 broke up Refined RP into Conservative and Advanced, the former used by ever smaller numbers of speakers of an exclusive upper-crust. The RP concept is obviously in crisis owing to attitudinal and ideological shifts, as noted in Crutenden 1994 and Fabricius 2000. The reasons seem to be: (1) A loss of prestige: non-positive stereotypes become associated with its exclusive use. (2) An imperial ruling class lost its Empire in the post-1948 period. (3) Erstwhile imperial globalization reverts to more recent localization and regionalism (a. Wales; b. Scotland; c. Immigrant Groups, with extremely different modalities in each case). (4) Each group mentioned creates its own version of a prestige model, culturally, attitudinally and linguistically, sometimes in their own languages (the Cymraeg Byw13 attempt to standardize Welsh, a different English standard in Scotland, Immigrants both in their own languages and English14). In English a new imitative standard is developed by and for non-indigenous groups who create their own Public Schools and relevant standard. In the last case we might observe that external pressures may become internal: immigrants desire to give their language(s) autonomous dignity brings new pressures
It might be noted that notwithstanding the 1967 Welsh Language Act local government had not been notably rendered Welsh, except for a few outstanding cases (that of Gwynedd in Betts 1976: 113), while the latest 1993 Welsh Language Act has made few inroads into law practice and the courts, as witnessed in Huws comments in her recent paper Iaith y llysoed a iaith y nefoedd. Such applications necessitate of course a new written normativization, not perhaps in the spoken Cymraeg Byw vein, but neither can it be in the 1600 Bible written norm (nor even in the 1988 updated version). Nor need it be mono-normative, an aspect less discussed in literature than others. 14 For Indian English see Chanda 2009.
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to bear in creating anti-standards. This is compounded with new attitudes towards standard formation and standard negation, i.e. ethnic and social dialects are now seen to be creating anti-standard pressures. As emphasized in Wells 1982, 1994a, and 1997, a clear-cut division RP vs. nonRP is no longer possible and the new situation requires intermediate categories such as Adopted RP (used by adults who did not use it as children) or Near RP, which back-pedals on the historical levelling of regional or minority differences. As can be seen from recent studies15 based on the answers given by informants to samples of speech from different regions, some with more markedly regional accents, some nearer to RP, or even real RP, there still exists a tangible perception of regional origin and accent, though not necessarily with the same modalities and innuendoes as in the past. Most people must possess, then, some sort of internalized model for recognizing and evaluating a coherent set of features for individuating provenance. Their results may be schematized in a sort of Mental Accent Landscape as in figure 1 below (based on results in Kerswill & Williams 2002). The general British English situation is a complex reversal of what a traditional dialectologist such as Martyn Wakelin 1977 described as more or less the RP-ization of dialects in a Southern mould (see also Trudgill 1990), with the resulting disappearance of historical geographical dialects, now replaced by the creation of local non-standard varieties. Gradual shift from the seventies on is, instead, towards the localization of variants of a standard model. Strict RP decreases in terms of speaker numbers, the replacement with so-called Estuary English occurs. Wells had discussed this as the loosening of social stratification. RP is on the way out. In a general way we are facing a drastic regression of the 19th and 20th centuries standard model (RP) and the set of ideologized feelings or values behind it. Wells 1982 and in more recent papers (1994a, 1994b, 1997) had discussed this as the loosening of social stratification rather than the socially negative and widespread encroachment of bastardized Cockney claimed by Education Minister Shepherd at the 1995 Conservative Party Conference. Conclusions are that RP is on the way out; its eventual replacement with popular London English or a more socially acceptable version of it, Estuary English (henceforth EE) as it was first called in Rosewarne 1984, 1994, is ongoing. However, this was and is still a fluid situation, as adumbrated already in Eustace 1967, when changing attitudes were in the air, and discussed much later and in some detail in Ruedi Haenni 1999, Przedlacka 2001. One important result is that RP, no longer a requisite for prestige jobs or positions, is now becoming stigmatized, as noted in P. D. James latest crime novel, in an up-to-date negative evaluation of the former standard, the possession of which would previously have been a requisite for such positions. Now it seems to bar16. A not necessarily negative attitude allows the acceptable use of some regional accents, e.g. a not exaggeratedly Scottish, nevertheless regionally interpretable, accent, is considered by most subjects as being more acceptable, and denoting reliability, than some of the accents
E.g. Kerswill & Williams paper in Long & Preston 2002. An unselfconscious distinctive upper-crust accent which can so irritate those not in possession of it, and would effectively have banned them from any hope of a job at the BBC or even a career in politics. (P.D. James, The private patient, 2008).
15 16

exemplified in the Other Groupings of the Schema or the Cockney as a Home Counties variety. It may well function as a sort of hardworking stereotype as opposed to a lazy southerner one. Gradual shift from the seventies on is towards the localization of variants of a standard model; strict RP decreases in terms of speaker numbers, the replacement with EE occurs. On the other hand, those who still continue to use what Gimson labelled Conservative RP, an ever diminishing part of the English-speaking GB population, have negative feelings towards EE and feel this recent substitute to constitute lazy speaking, horrifying language, a sign of the twilight of English (vide Maidement 1994, Wells 1997), though it is not generally characterizable as nonstandard, an epithet thus far not given it. Every century or so British English must grope for a standard. The relationship between standard and non-standard is thus a fitting subject for socio-linguistic research on ongoing change and language ideology. Minority groups create their own models, sometimes in English, sometimes in minority languages: Scotlands Lalland English, Wales in both Cymraeg Byw Welsh and levelled or accommodated Wenglish, Immigrants in various Indo-Iranic languages, e.g. Indian English discussed in Chand 2009. Is Irish English creating its own standard or not? From such evidence as we have it is. In English a new imitative standard may be and is often developed by and for non-indigenous groups who create their own Public Schools and relevant standard. One might even claim with Huntingdon 1997: 62 ff. that de-ethnicized English, once liberated from a British or American USA English model, may favour local identity within a global model, since it is no longer a vehicle for expressly power relations. A further problem has been created in the English situation. The erstwhile standard, fruit of a 17th-18th century long protracted debate, at the beginning between Johnsoncum-Cheshire (Whig linguistic commitment), on one hand, and Swift-cum-Steel (Tories and highly conservative linguistic models based on Shakespeare and his century), on the other, was decided politically in favour of the former group as a dynamic mobile standard rather than a temporally fixed one. This eventually became 19th century RP in a natural, derivative way, helped along by the spread of Public vs. Kings Schools. In the present situation EE could be said to be a Southern historical derivative of RP, bound to a new social situation, but we can not as yet claim that Estuary English is to become the new British English standard of the 21 st century. There are many new models in competition with each other and are associated with different groups which are apparently not concerned about a single Scottish new standard. As emphasized in all Wells contributions to the topic, a clear-cut A. Yorks Tyke division RP vs. non-RP is no longer possible and the new situation requires intermediate categories suchAas Adopted RP or Near RP, which back-pedal on the Geordie B. Scouse levelling of regional or minority differences. Perceived regional origin and accent B C C. Brummie may well be schematized as in Figure 1.
D D. East Anglia: Yokel/ Grokel F Home Counties E. West Country F. Cockney
7

Other groupings Wales E

Figure 1 - Mental Accent Landscape revisited.

Recent studies deal with a continuous rethinking of the roles played by varieties present in the repertoire. The relationship between the parts is inverted in response to ongoing social change. They also seem to be showing that geographical diffusion is a weaker force than social accommodation. Variation which tends to signal very local and possibly old-fashioned identities is tendentially avoided. Nonetheless, there are new identities and relatively new centrifugal forces to be accounted for and studied. An example of such change is what Williams & Kerswill 1999, Cheshire, Gillett, Kerswill & Williams 1999, and Kerswill 2003 call dialect levelling. In comparison with the specific Italian situation this might be better described as accent levelling. In recent GB case studies southern urban agglomerates give evidence for continuous, ongoing accent levelling, whether due to geographical diffusion (traditional wave theory) or by social accommodation (levelling out of marked variation). Similar trends have occurred in Wenglish in SE Wales. Exemplary trends in the phonetic and phonological variation of pertinent English phenomena identified are as follows: 1. S. English (gradual regression of the local phonological merger of the /f/ vs. // opposition, as of the phonetic fronting and smoothing of back diphthongs): MOUTH [] (>) [] (>) [] (>) [] (Williams & Kerswills paper in Foulkes & Docherty 1999, Kerswill 2003). 2. Traditional Wenglish (gradual merger of the historical opposition between diphthongs and long vowels) : DAYS/ KNOW[S] [], [] vs. DAZE/ NO, NOSE [:], [:] (>) [], [] with merger (in the late seventies in SE Wales [E Glamorgan-W Monmouth ex-industrial Valleys] up to more than 90% graded merger trend headed by approximate Middle Class groupings [90-100%] vs. Working Class groupings [45-75% according to age and sex] and females [75-100%: only males over sixty showed a low 30-40% merger]: our data).
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3. N. English (gradual regression of local phonetic highering of the // diphthong): FACE [] (>) [] (>) [] (Cheshire, Gillett, Kerswill & Williams 1999, Kerswill 2003: resistance implies recognition of a distinct northern identity)17. Northern situations show that sex and social markers combined in blocking or provoking levelling. Processes may be variably blocked owing to (1) the assertion of gender differences, (2) the emergence of, and pride in, new forms of regional identity in contrast with global trends (N. English). Recent studies seem to show that geographical diffusion is a weaker force than social accommodation. Variation which tends to signal very local and possibly old-fashioned identities is avoided. Nonetheless, there are new identities and relatively new centrifugal forces to be accounted for and studied. In Britain accommodation to ongoing change in favour of EE is observed at all social levels, even in the Royal Family (Table 1). An experiment was conducted by us on variable length samples of conversation and interviews carried out by professional interviewers (BBC etc.) with members of the British royal family on different dates, as specified in the table, and concerns sociolinguistically relevant phonological and phonetic variables. Observing the linguistic behaviour, phonetic and phonological patterns, of the Queen, Prince Charles and his son Prince William, over a fifty year period, we note two types of change. The first is that people change noticeably in a linguistic sense within their lifetimes. The second is that even within a family such as the royal family generational change occurs just as in ordinary society. Taking the royal family as our example of change the first thing we note is that over a forty-fifty year period both the Queen and Prince Charles lose some supra-segmental phenomena, e.g. their former clipped speech observed in 1957-196718, but not others such as that plumminess of the voice which one associates with once typical BBC announcers RP19. For fronting of the // diphthong (> [o] etc., as in mouth) there are insufficient data, no comments are possible, while for the well known frontVariable Var. 1. Var. 2. Var. 3. Queen 1. [] 25/25 [] 16/16 [] 31/31 Queen 2. [] 6/11 5/11 [] 8/8 [] 5/5 Prince Charles 1 [] [] 6/6 Prince Charles 2. [] 2/5 [] 3/5 Prince William [] 5/5 [] 4/4 [] 1/3 [] 2/3

[] 4/4 [] 4/4 [] [] 1/1 5/11 [] 6/11

See the plethora of studies on socially motivated local variation in British English from early research in the seventies on, e.g. Trudgill 1974. For local varieties of English see Wells 1970, 1982. 18 This consists in pitch changes occurring with onsets, shortened stressed syllables, speeding-up of enunciation, pre-pausal glottalling: for definitions see Crystal 1969: 153-154, 301-306. 19 This may well be an evaluation of pre-pausal lowering of tone and the phrase-final creaky voice phenomenon associated with male RP speakers, though it is not only a question of tone. It is a more intuitive voice characteristic than those usually dealt with in Phonetics.
17

Var. 4.

[] 41/41

[] 9/9

[] 4/4

[] 5/5

Var. 5. var. 6. Var. 7.

[] 10/10 [] 30/30 [] 4/4

[] 6/6 [] 4/8 [>] 4/8 [] 3/3 (only // is fronted) none 0/5

no cases [] 4/7 [>] 3/7 [] 3/3 none 0/5 Table 1.

[] 2/2 [] 1/5 [>] 4/5

[] 3/10 [] 7/10 [] 2/2 [>] 5/5

Var. 8.

none 0/11

[] 5/5 [>] 2/2 (only // is fronted) none 0/5 glottalling 9/11

Legenda: Queen 1 = Elizabeth IIs 1957 Xmas Speech; Queen 2 = Elizabeth IIs 2007 Xmas Speech; Prince Charles 1 = David Frosts 1967 Interview of the Prince; Prince Charles 2 = Television Ecology Spot (undated, but recent); Prince William = 2009 Television Interview of the Prince. Variable 1 = raising, tensing of word- final /- /(happy). Variable 2 = raising of // (act). Variable 3 = further fronting of // (< // in hope, know). Variable 4 = rounding of // (I, life). Variable 5 = fronting of // (mouth). Variable 6 = fronting of // (cut) to [>]. Variable 7 = fronting of // (do). Variable 8 = glottalling of word-final and intervocalic t (get, get on). -ing of // (the do vowel) in contexts without preceding /j/ only Prince William fronts, like most modern southern youngsters, though insufficient data do not permit further observations to be made. The tensing, raising and fronting of word-final /-/ as in happy // (becoming variably []) is going on apace, and the [] variant is 50% established in the Queens and Prince Charles recent formal speech, much as Harrington 2006 claimed 20. In William [] is, instead, regular, no longer variable but the norm. The centralization or fronting of // also seems a general trend. Prince William fronts // (< older //) to [], as did a younger Prince Charles, but more consistently, he rounds his // [], and consistently glottals intervocalic and syllable-final t21, so some sort of studiable tendency towards an
We have not compared it with their stressed // vowel as in kit, differently from Harringtons more detailed study. 21 A good example at the beginning of the interview is its amazing how people will just get on with their lives [ > ]. This is pronounced with pre-pausal creak but no clipping.
20

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EE-ized Advanced RP is recognizable even in his formal interview speech, unless, of course, some of his interviews aim at a more informal level. In other words he seems to be behaving like southern youngsters of a certain social class, where some but not too many concessions are made to EE. Further dimensions to be taken into account in the case of a language like English are, obviously, the enormous quantity of, and quality change in, variability introduced by its having worldwide use, on one hand, and, on the other, how much such a factor may influence language sensitivity and even attitudes to the standard/ non-standard question and the ongoing debate on prestige vs. non-prestige varieties. This problem obviously goes beyond our present discussion but one has to come to terms with it. We will try to come to grips with such factors elsewhere. 2. Standard, non-standard and prestige. We might conclude our present overview of the problem of the creation of standards by emphasising their relative nature and their evolution in time and space. In the case of English even written and spoken prestige models with an almost 150 years time depth have fallen foul of radical social and economic change, leaving the British having to discuss their complex English repertoire, reducing bias against regional accent, and foreign language teachers of English as L2 the burden of coming to terms with a new linguistic complexity and the painstaking search for a model of English to be taught. An example of bias is the Scottish one. Childrens school performance and admission to University based on the possession of some form of RP and not Scottish English (Lallands) is now judged negatively in much of the latest literature. Teaching English as L2 must perforce be accompanied by judicious reflexion on the new English repertoire from a strictly socio-linguistic standpoint. 3. The Italian model or non-model. The present-day socio-linguistic situation in Italy is characterized by the largescale presence of traditional geographical dialects, used with different modalities in differing areas. The recognition of a strong dialect tradition, with genetically related but structurally very distinct outcomes of late Spoken Latin, certainly does not in Italy represent any existential crisis or break-up of the nation-state and its national standard language. Italy has not in any conscious way since 1860 built up a centralizing nation-state, or any consequent highly marked language structure at both the spoken as well as written level which might be construed as being specific to such a political structure, as is constantly remarked at the historical political level in Grazianos various contributions (2007; 2010). Even the so-called regions do not correspond to either the Roman regiones in any historical administrative sense nor to later historical or even linguistic (dialectal) divisions: they are merely the tacit acceptance by Crispis government at the beginning of the 20th century of the late 19th century statistical regions invented by government officials to facilitate the new national census and official returns. So-called regionalism has thus no sure and unequivocal reason for existing, whether at any administrative, social or even, more importantly, at any linguistic level. At the same time the so-called Padania has no common political, historical, cultural or linguistic unity. It may well have, instead, a modern unity of economic intent. Hroch 1985: 172 rightly insists that the most
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productive and the most market oriented parts of the territory are those most active in creating ideologies about language and cultural differences, as well as in promoting the separate nation concept and practice. This is certainly the case of the Lega in Italy. However, that alone is not sufficient to create any complex linguistic identity or any identity, however formulated: it is merely the expression of economic interests, just one of the indexes which can be used in definitions. An Italian language and identity crisis in English or French terms is not possible22, since an originally monocentric and temporally restricted choice23 gradually became after 19th century unity polycentric expansion in terms of a common impoverished denominator, i.e. Tuscan morphology and very basic phonology and word structure with local lexicon and pragmo-syntax. It was certainly not true in the 1860s when the Minister Broglios Commission for the edition of an adequate national Dictionary was dominated by Manzoni, whose position was that all would-be schoolteachers in the new kingdom should lavarsi I panni (get their clothes washed) in Florences river. Professor Ascolis objections based on the correct evaluation of local linguistic patrimony was decidely a minority opinion until well into the 20 th century. Results are still felt at practical levels because we have no common national fishery terms (Trumper, SILFI 2006) nor common terminology for a national meat market. The absence of a modern nation-state with its centralized and centralizing structures and functions, as stressed by Graziano (cit.), is difficult for external observers to grasp, as is the total absence of mononormativity, with a so-called norm even 20-30 years ago the patrimony of only television speakers,- now replaced by less or nonnormative journalists,- and classical stage actors, a tiny national minority, as most Italian scholars acknowledged. As a starting point for a discussion of the Italian situation we consequently posit the lack of any national prestige model at the spoken level, -without entering into the punctum dolens of written vs. spoken,- which gives an impression of a patchwork of varieties. As far as the dialects are concerned, the Italian socio-linguistic situation might still be described in the terms used in the seventies, eighties and nineties, when subtypes of diglossia were discussed24, as was the simultaneous co-presence of varieties in the repertoire and similar topics. What has changed in recent times is the geographical distribution of phenomena, the town or city vs. country binomium, age
Suzanne Citrons recent contributions on the French identity and language crisis (from 1989 on) or Kumars analysis of the similar but distinct English crisis (2003), would not be at all pertinent in the Italian situation, because such a crisis implies the recognition of a national linguistic standard as it does of a strong nation-state concept. Linguistically French and English began as geographicaaly monocentric standards and drifted towards social monocentrism which is, obviously, geographically polycentric at the present day, though originally monocentric. Italy has not known this type of development. 23 14th century Tuscan to be learnt as a foreign language by all Italians, following Bembos theorizing on the Tre Corone, the Three Crowns, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, in his Prose della Volgar Lingua. 24 For definitions and discussion see Trumper 1977, 1984, 1993, Berruto 1987, 1989, Beninc 1996. The complexity involved in the ternary opposition language (national, high level) vs. dialect X (high level > mid level) vs. dialect Y (mid level > low level) outlined in Italo-Romance in Trumper 1977 and Ibero-Romance in Montes Giraldo 1987 is dealt with in an extremely competent manner and commented in Muljai 1997.
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differences, and the North/ South dynamic. Patchwork patterns change, nevertheless remain PATCHWORK as in the seventies: no model is generalizable, each distinct model is sensitive to local patterns. Variability is, to coin a term, geo-sensitive, without there being any national homogeneity. Notwithstanding some Italian intellectuals from the sixties on, for example Pasolini and Calvino, prophesied the advent of a supervariety of Italian as hegemonic and characterizing a new emergent industrial and business Middle Class, this has never come into being. What makes Italian national is a general agreement between people with a common higher education level on morphology, on a low common number of phonemes, on a common word structure etc. within a Tuscan-origin written norm now made oral. Variation at any level obeys local trends not any inexistent national ones, so models have to be created region by region, sometimes even on a smaller scale. Though the progressive regression of geographical dialects as the means and stuff of traditional culture transmission is clear-cut, there is, nonetheless, a revival of some sort of dialect model, used especially for artistic purposes which has nothing to do with the historical setting that produced Romance dialects. In such cases DIALECT is just another creative, expressive medium. Its main function has nothing to do with transmitting meaning as such, meaning lies in the code used: it could just as well be the English used in most lyrics that Italian youngsters listen to all day long without apparently understanding the words they are actually listening to. In the Italian situation what we will call dialect levelling, distinct from what we have called accent levelling in the British English situation, only occurs where strong dialect have come to the fore over the centuries (in the Veneto, in Campania). Otherwise regional situations are extremely variegated. The Italian repertoire up to the late nineteen eighties could be described in terms of a five-way division: Local patois (areally limited, peripheral, rural) in regression; Regional dialect (where there are dialects with notable cultural history) still dynamic; Italianized dialect /dialectalized Italian, more general situation; Regional Italian (informal > formal); Stage Italian, not native to any speaker but learnt. Now present-day trends, still related to, but distinct from, the situation of thirty years ago, might be described in the following, more complex terms: PRESENT-DAY TRENDS Progressive abandonment of dialects, especially in urban centres and by the younger generations, but with meaningful differences and trends from area to area; Regional dialect (where there are dialects with notable cultural history) still dynamic; Italianized dialect /dialectalized Italian, more general situation; Regional Italian (informal > formal); To this we might add the recent ideological discovery of dialect(s), whether in Internet as a dynamic means of self-presentation, i.e. definable as [+ positive] = local >global (without the mediation of Italian), or politically determinable as [-positive],
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with an instrumental use of dialect as a symbol of local identity, in other words in a highly restricted sense, we might even say as a mystification of localness. Accent levelling within and across regions in Italy over the last fifty years analogous to the English cases discussed occurs with internal migratory movement towards the only two really significant industrial cities, Milan and Turin. In all other cases every region is witness to its own internal linguistic adjustments, sensitive to sex, age, education level and socio-economic factors, in which negatively perceived variation is tendentially smoothed out or even blocked. In the Veneto the most significant factor behind divergence was an approximate socio-economic grouping divide coupled with degrees of formal education. Obviously socio-economic class divisions (WC = Working Class, LMC = Lower Middle Class, MC = Middle or Upper Middle Class) are approximate and based on the life-style of the speakers. This can be briefly illustrated by a glance at variable simplifying or degemination of double or long consonants in Italian in samples (N= 54) analyzed from spontaneous speech utterances taken from interviews in the nineteen seventies and eighties in an average Veneto city, Padua. The examples are of variable degemination in Paduas variability in local regional Italian, with results as discussed in Trumper-Maddalon 1988 and Trumper 1989: Variable CC > C (degemination, N = 54): Comparison by City Wards: Centre x = 70.14%; Arcella x = 69.84%; Forcellini x = 74. 98% (n1 = n2 = n3 = 18). Comparison by Age Grouping: (18-25 yrs) x = 63.24%; (26-50 yrs) x = 70.9%; (51-75 yrs) x = 67. 91% (n1 = n2 = n3 = 18). Comparisons based on the Sex of Informants: M x = 73. 34%; F x = 85. 44% (n1 = n2 = 27). Comparison by Social Class Grouping SEC: WC x = 84. 14%; || LMC x = 66. 67%; MC x = 58.9% (n1 = n2 = n3 = 18) . divergent but not significantly. Significantly different. This behaviour pattern was observed to be similar in other Veneto urban agglomerations but could not be generalized outside the Veneto, not even to the nearby Lombard situation. Of course, in the dialect situation there is no variability in such a case because all long consonants have historically been shortened. Calabria shows another type of speech variation. Vaguely socio-economic groupings provoke significantly different strategies, but the traditional (Upper) MC is consistently opposed to all other groupings, or at least this was the case in the eighties and nineties of the last century, since there has been historically no observable movement towards a structured bourgeoisie, at least until the nineteen eighties. We have taken as exemplar the case of the voicing of the fricative /s/ in intervocalic position, both within the word and within the phrase, i.e. whether in che bella casa! [ b ] or in che bella serata! [ b ]. The phenomenon is endemic in the Pre-Sila hill zone and in Sila mountain villages, as is the voicing of any short fricative. In and around the city of Cosenza the phenomenon is, perhaps now already was, highly
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variable, with a rule that in the traditional (Upper) Middle Class grouping was already being cancelled from the Grammar both of the local dialect and local Italian. We had measured this variability with 36 city informants interviewed in the eighties and nineties with the following results: Rule-blocking in N. Calabria (Cosenza) determinable informally as: s (>)f [+voiced] / V__V (Casali, Pre-Sila, Sila) WC (n1 = 12): x = 9.5%, s = 15.8; MC (n2 + n3 = 24): x = 3.3%, s = 1.6. T35 = 9.5 3.3/ sxy = 6. 2/ 2. 7 = 2. 3, T35 > 95%. The erstwhile invariable dialect phenomenon which characterized Cosenza and its surrounds as part of a larger Sila unit, with generalized dialect /f, s, , / > [v, z, , j] respectively, is now no longer observable in and around the city as it is in the hill and mountain dialects, and is certainly being cancelled at both the dialect and the local Italian levels. Both dialect and local Italian are moving towards a situation in which all hyper-dialectal phenomena gradually diminish and eventually disappear, in the move to a generic southern way of speaking not particularly marked in any local sense. The cancellation of the rule which reconverts casa [kaza] into [kasa] is now in opposition with usual northern norms where [kaza] dominates, because [kasa] denotes an unmarked southern identity. This behaviour is distinct from the northern case discussed (Veneto), where heavy local marking is considered indexical of identity. There is another way of considering DIALECT which is distinctly ideological, the second non-positive case exemplified amongst the present-day trends above: in such a case DIALECT is uprooted from its particular historical and social setting. This use prefigures the return to dialect advocated by exponents of the Lega. Here DIALECT represents an ideological cover for underlying political questions of an essentially different nature. The return to the local in such cases means the defence of local interests that are economic and administrative, but also represents fear of all that is global, fear fomented by local politicians. The global and all that is external to ones micro-society is considered potentially dangerous, socially disturbing, destructive, it robs you of your identity, your work, your money, your well-being, your language and culture. Politically the answer is a short-sighted, skewed form of devolution, though devolution is not in itself a negative trend. Culturally the answer given is that dialects must be taught in schools by local dialect-speaking teachers and the Lega proposes the introduction of a dialect test applicable to teachers to be assumed and not a widespread improvement in national teaching methodology and practice, as already mentioned. At the present state the backward-looking introduction of local languages and new reflexion on multiple identity may be a welcome innovation in a world dominated by global languages, provided that such an introduction not be understood or used in any instrumental sense but only with strictly cultural reference.
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