hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2023-10-05

■ #5274. 19世紀のイングランド英語を研究する意義 [lmode][sociolinguistics][world_englishes][variety][standardisation][enl][esl]

　19世紀のイングランド英語を研究するというのはどういうことか．確かに100年以上前の英語ではあるにせよ，歴史と呼ぶには新しい感じがするし，実際ほぼ普通に読むことができる．19世紀の英文学や英国文化に関心があるというのであれば分かるが，19世紀の英語そのものに関心が湧くというのはどういうことか．
　先日，逝去された英語史の大家 Manfred Görlach は，上記のように評価されることが多い19世紀のイングランド英語に真っ向から立ち向かい，1999年に一冊の本を著わした．ずばり English in Nineteenth-Century England: An Introduction である．この本の冒頭の節は "Motivations for the present book" である．まず前口上を引用しよう (1) ．

Interest in the history of English has recently focused on more modern periods than the traditionally favoured ones of OE and ME. However, whereas EModE is becoming a well-researched field, the investigation of the language after 1700 has been more patchy. The 18th century has, for various reasons, received more attention than the period between 1800 and 1900.
   No comprehensive description of 19th-century English --- in particular that of England --- has ever been attempted. And yet such a study promises to yield important insights, for the following reasons:

　そして19世紀のイングランド英語に注目すべき3つの理由が続く (1--5) ．

(1) The sociolinguistic foundations of PDE were laid in a period when the population expanded tremendously, especially in the industrial urban centres . . . , when the standard form of the language (St E) spread from the limited number of 'refined' speakers in the 18th century to a considerable section of the Victorian middle classes, and when general education began to level speech forms to an extent that is impossible to imagine for earlier periods.
(2) Comparisons between varieties of English in England and overseas are likely to provide evidence of the drifting apart of the colonial Englishes in spite of the retarding influences of British administration, the schools, and the influence of the high prestige of London English on educated speakers world-wide. Moreover, a description of the BrE of the time is a necessary precondition for evaluating the British linguistic input in overseas Englishes --- in regions where English is a native language (= ENL), like the American West, Upper Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Cape and Natal, and in the great number of varieties of English used as a second language (= ESL) in Africa and Asia.
(3) A comparison of English in England with standard languages on the continent may well permit interlinguistic insights into parallels and differences in development within the framework of an increasingly similar West European material culture. Such comparisons might also prompt new questions and the application of new methods in cases where it has proved fruitful to look at sociolinguistic conditions in one culture which have been neglected in another.

　この3つの視点はざっくり次のような趣旨と読めるだろう．

　(1) 20世紀以降のイングランド英語を生み出した土壌を知る
　(2) 世界に拡散した ENL や ESL の種を知る
　(3) ヨーロッパの諸言語の社会言語学的事情と比較対照する

　・ Görlach, Manfred. English in Nineteenth-Century England: An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP, 1999.

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