St Helenian English

Origins, evolution and variation

Author
Daniel Schreier | University of Zurich
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027248978 | EUR 115.00 | USD 173.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027290137 | EUR 115.00 | USD 173.00
 
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This volume provides the first-ever sociolinguistic analysis of English on the island of St Helena, the oldest variety of English in the Southern Hemisphere. It is based on a concise synchronic profile of the variety (describing its segmental phonology and morphosyntax) and an evaluation of diachronic material in the form of letters, court cases, ghost stories, etc. The analysis is embedded into a theoretical framework of contact linguistics (contact dialectology and pidgin/creole linguistics) and builds upon the social and sociodemographic development of the community. The aims of this book are to trace the origins and evolution of the variety, to pinpoint the forms of English it affiliates with today and the inputs it derived from historically and to investigate whether local contact scenarios have led to the formation of regionally distinctive varieties across the island. Insights from St Helenian English thus challenge us to rethink principles of classification that are applied to determine the status of post-colonial varieties of English.
[Varieties of English Around the World, G37] 2008.  xv, 312 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“This is a study which offers an empirically rich description of a lesser known variety of English and which integrates this description with current theoretical debates in dialectology and contact linguistics. It is this a welcome addition to the prestigious Varieties of English around the World series.”
“This is a precious book that everybody interested in the differential evolution of English around the world since the 17th century will need to read. It provides lots of useful information on the colonization, including peopling, of St. Helena that influenced the emergence of the local English variety. With this contribution to the big picture, Daniel Schreier sheds light on the family resemblance character of (post-)colonial Englishes, making it obvious that each colony was a unique ecology of human interactions and language contacts which differed from other colonies while resembling them in a number of ways and to differing extents. Whether or not St. Helenian English should be called a creole is apparently a question that cannot be usefully answered independent of the ideological biases of individual scholars. This book is impressively well documented socially and linguistically and provides incisive analyses by a critical and sharp thinker.”
“Schreier's book is both an inspiring sociolinguistic history and an effective case study that stimulates reflection on sociohistorical methodologies.”
“A sparkling study of a lesser-known variety of English, from the viewpoints of contact linguistics and the social history of the island of St Helena. Daniel Schreier’s meticulous empirical work and his mastery of the literature on koinés and creoles combine to provide a study for linguists to savour. This is a welcome addition to, and advance of, the field of language contact.”
Cited by

Cited by 37 other publications

Bekker, Ian
2019. South African English, the Dynamic Model and the Challenge of Afrikaans Influence. In English in Multilingual South Africa,  pp. 30 ff. DOI logo
Bitko, Natali
2018. English in Nigeria: a History of Research. Studia Linguistica :12  pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Dollinger, Stefan
2020. English Lexicography. In The Handbook of English Linguistics,  pp. 525 ff. DOI logo
Evans, Stephen
2016. Introduction: Exploring the Diffusion and Diversification of English. In The English Language in Hong Kong,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Foulkes, Paul
2020. Phonological Variation. In The Handbook of English Linguistics,  pp. 407 ff. DOI logo
Hazen, Kirk
2014. A new role for an ancient variable in Appalachia: Paradigm leveling and standardization in West Virginia. Language Variation and Change 26:1  pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Hickey, Raymond
2014. Vowels before /r/ in the history of English. In Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English [Studies in Language Companion Series, 159],  pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Hickey, Raymond
2019. The Colonial and Postcolonial Expansion of English. In The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes,  pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
Hiramoto, Mie
2022. Change of Tōhoku dialect spoken in Hawaii. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2022:273  pp. 31 ff. DOI logo
Hoffmann, Sebastian
2018. I would like to request for your attention. In Changing Structures [Studies in Language Companion Series, 195],  pp. 171 ff. DOI logo
MELCHERS, GUNNEL
2010. A treasury of Englishes. English Language and Linguistics 14:3  pp. 485 ff. DOI logo
Prestholdt, Jeremy
2023. Global Currents and the Transformation of Space in Indian Ocean Africa. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 43:2  pp. 146 ff. DOI logo
Rupp, Laura & David Britain
2019. Verbal Zero. In Linguistic Perspectives on a Variable English Morpheme,  pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Schneider, Edgar W.
2020. English around the World, DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2009. Language in Isolation, and Its Implications for Variation and Change. Language and Linguistics Compass 3:2  pp. 682 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2010. Tristan da Cunha English. In The Lesser-Known Varieties of English,  pp. 245 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2010. St Helenian English. In The Lesser-Known Varieties of English,  pp. 224 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2012. The Impact of Migratory Movements on Linguistic Systems: Transplanted Speech Communities and Varieties from a Historical Sociolinguistic Perspective. In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics,  pp. 534 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2014. On cafeterias and new dialects. In The Evolution of Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G49],  pp. 231 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2016. Super-leveling, fraying-out, internal restructuring: A century of presentbeconcord in Tristan da Cunha English. Language Variation and Change 28:2  pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2017. Dialect Formation in Isolated Communities. Annual Review of Linguistics 3:1  pp. 347 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2017. Hendery. 2015. One Man Is an Island. The Speech Community William Marsters Begat on Palmerston Island. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 38:1  pp. 110 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2017. Early Twentieth-Century Tristan da Cunha h'English. In Listening to the Past,  pp. 484 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2018. Robert McColl Millar. 2016. Contact. The Interaction of Closely Related Linguistic Varieties and the History of English . English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 39:1  pp. 122 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2019. World Englishes and Their Dialect Roots. In The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes,  pp. 384 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel
2019. /h/ insertion as a ‘camouflage archaism’?. Diachronica 36:1  pp. 37 ff. DOI logo
Schreier, Daniel, Peter Trudgill, Edgar W. Schneider & Jeffrey P. Williams
2010. Introduction. In The Lesser-Known Varieties of English,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Tuten, Donald N.
van Hattum, Marije
2014. New-dialect formation in medieval Ireland. In Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English [Studies in Language Companion Series, 159],  pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Zullo, Davide, Simone E. Pfenninger & Daniel Schreier
2021. A Pan-Atlantic “Multiple Modal Belt”?. American Speech 96:1  pp. 7 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2009. RECENT PUBLICATIONS. World Englishes 28:4  pp. 566 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2009. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. English Language and Linguistics 13:1  pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2013. Reference Guide for Varieties of English. In A Dictionary of Varieties of English,  pp. 363 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2017. . English World-Wide 38:1 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
2023. References. In Sounds of English Worldwide,  pp. 354 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFB: Sociolinguistics

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2008031634 | Marc record