NATIONAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF CANADIAN ENGLISH
Journal Title: Записки з романо-германської філології - Year 2019, Vol 1, Issue
Abstract
The recognition of the Canadian language standard means that in Canada, continuous historical interaction of the British and American English standards brought about a special norm which is no longer British or American. The distinguishing features of Canadian prosodic rules serve as the evidence for divergent characteristics of the Canadian linguistic standard in the paradigm of the national variations of the multinational English language. Therefore, Canadian English is an amalgam of American, British, and Canadian English. It includes the literary norm of its own, based on the local linguistic norm, distributed through the system of education and media in the Canadian areas, where the local speech distinctiveness is particularly pronounced and is close to the dialect status.The body of the experimental material, arising from the research aim and the tasks, included 20 episodes of speech from representatives of 4 Canadian areas: provinces Ontario, British Columbia, the Islands of Newfoundland and Labrador, Island of Prince Edward. All experimental texts are quasi-spontaneous monologues of improvised, informal, and laidback nature. These characteristics of a communicative act are the key extralingual factors to feature colloquial speech. This gives the groundings to study these monologue texts as samples of natural colloquial informal speech. The perceptive and instrumental analysis revealed the key speech units of the speech melodies (scales and terminal tones), common and distinguishing features of speech prosody as well as frequent speech parameters, taking into consideration gender and territorial belonging of the Canadians. The bilingual situation in the country, influence of British and American English on Canadians’ pronunciation resulted in emerging of a distinguishing Canadian English with its peculiarities at the prosodic level of the phonological system. The divergent features of Canadian English are associated with re-distribution of functions of American and British prosodic parameters with a due consideration of the new language system requirements, revealed at the prosodic level as a high frequency of descending stepping and level types of scale, ascending and fall-rising terminal tone within the variable nature of basic frequency. The specific national features of the prosodic system of Canadian English is the high frequency of descending and level stepping scales.
Authors and Affiliations
O. Rusavska
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP625978
- DOI 10.18524/2307-4604.2019.1(42).168860
- Views 86
- Downloads 0
CHANGES IN THE CONSONANT SYSTEM OF ENGLISH FROM A DIACHRONIC LINGUOSYNERGETIC PERSPECTIVE
The article focuses on historical changes in the consonant system of the English language. The investigation lies within a new multidisciplinary research program – diachronic linguosynergetics. The notion of ‘phase state...
LINGUISTIC SYNERGETICS: ORIGIN, KEY CONCEPTS AND APPLICATION
The article advances linguistic synergetics as a new interdisciplinary research approach to language studies. It starts with a brief outline of origin and development of synergetics that was to become the methodological...
PECULIARITIES OF ADAPTATION OF A BELLES-LETTRES TEXT INTO A SCRIPT COMMUNICATIVE TRANSFORM
The article is devoted to the study of the features of the adaptation of the text of a literary work (source text) into the text of the screen version of its adaptation (script communicative transform). Various types of...
SPECIFICITY OF LANGUAGE POLICY OF FRANCE IN THE SPHERE OF NATIONAL LANGUAGE AND NEOLOGY. THE MAIN DIMENSIONS
This paper investigates some questions of the language policy of France. In particular the thesis is emphasizing on that the French language universalism is based not only on the centralized force of French economy, cult...
MEANS OF SOFTENING OF CATEGORICAL EXPRESSIONS AND MITIGATING STRATEGIES IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION (BASED ON ITALIAN AND SPANISH BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE)
This article examines the conditions for the implementation of the mixing strategy in Spanish and Italian business writing communications. An attempt is being made to determine whether mitigation is a strategy or tactic...