Spelling Variation in Inner-Circle Englishes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2023-45.1.10Abstract
English is the language with the largest number of speakers in the world, when both native and non-native speakers are included. With an estimated 1,268 million users around the globe, linguistic variation is bound to occur. Research on World Englishes focuses on the study of this variation, though it has systematically disregarded the linguistic level of orthography. This neglect has operated under the assumption that most contemporary varieties must adhere to British English spelling norms. Nevertheless, recent studies on the Americanisation of English worldwide (Mair 2013; Gilquin 2018; Gonçalves et al. 2018) have brought the question of spelling variation back to the fore. The present paper thus analyses the distribution of the most distinctive spelling variants—i.e. -our/-or, -re/-er and -isation/-ization—in the varieties of the inner circle from a synchronic perspective. By means of a corpus-based investigation of English online, this study will outline the spelling usage patterns for the aforementioned varieties and will analyse the highly-likely Americanisation process in spelling on the Internet.
Downloads
References
Algeo, John, ed. 2001. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol 6, English in North America. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
—, 2003. “The Effects of the Revolution on Language.” In Greene and Role 2002, 594-99.
Avis, Walter Spencer. 1983. Gage Canadian Dictionary. Toronto: Gage.
Baker, Paul. 2017. American and British English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Barber, Katherine, ed. 2004. Canadian Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 1st ed. Ontario: Oxford UP.
Blair, David and Peter Collins, eds. 2001. English in Australia. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Boberg, Charles. 2010. The English Language in Canada: Status, History and Comparative Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
—, 2012. “Standard Canadian English.” In Hickey 2012b, 159-78.
Brinton, Laurel and Margery Fee. 2001. “Canadian English.” In Algeo 2003, 422-39.
Calle-Martín, Javier. 2021. “Spelling Forms in Competition: The Case of -ise vs. -ize.” English Today 38 (3): 1-11.
Clarke, Sandra, ed. 1993. Focus on Canada. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Confused Words. 2019. “British vs American Spelling Differences ESL Learners Should Know.” May 15. [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Considine, John. 2003. “Dictionaries of Canadian English.” Lexikos 13: 250-70.
Cook, Vivian. 2004. The English Writing System. London and New York: Routledge.
— and Des Ryan, eds. 2016. The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System. London and New York: Routledge.
Cox, Felicity and Sallyanne Palethorpe. 2012. “Standard Australian English: The Sociostylistic Broadness Continuum.” In Hickey 2012b, 294-317.
Crystal, David. 2011. Internet Linguistics: A Student Guide. London and New York: Routledge.
Cummings, D. W. 2016. “The Evolution of British and American Spelling.” In Cook and Ryan 2016, 275-92.
Davies, Mark. 2013. “Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE).” [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
— and Robert Fuchs. 2015. “Expanding Horizons in the Study of World Englishes with the 1.9 Billion Word Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE).” English World-Wide 36 (1): 1-28.
Delbridge, Arthur. 2001. “Lexicography and National Identity: The Australian Experience.” In Blair and Collins 2001, 303-16.
Deshors, Sandra C. and Alexander Kautzsch, eds. 2018. Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the Interplay of Emancipation and Globalization of ESL Varieties. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Deverson, Tony and Graeme Kennedy, eds. 2005. New Zealand Oxford Dictionary. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Dolan, Terence P. 2012. A Dictionary of Hiberno-English. 3rd ed. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.
Dollinger, Stefan. 2011. “Academic and Public Attitudes to the Notion of ‘Standard’ Canadian English.” English Today 27 (4): 3-9.
English Club. n.d. “British and American Spelling.” [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Ethier, Sheila. 2017. “Why Canadian Spelling Is Different.” Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government Services Canada, November 14. [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Fritz, Clemens W. A. 2010. “A Short History of Australian Spelling.” Australian Journal of Linguistics 30 (2): 227-81.
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2018. “American and/or British Influence on L2 Englishes: Does Context Tip the Scales?” In Deshors and Kautzsch 2018, 187-216.
Gonçalves, Bruno et al. 2018. “Mapping the Americanization of English in Space and Time.” PLoS ONE 13 (5): 1-15.
Gordon, Elizabeth and Tony Deverson. 1998. New Zealand English and English in New Zealand. Auckland: New House.
Gramley, Stephan, Vivian Gramley and Kurt-Michael Pätzold. 2021. A Survey of Modern English. London and New York: Routledge.
Greene, Jack P. and J. R. Pole. 2003. A Companion to the American Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell.
Grue, Dustin. 2013. “Testing Canada’s ‘Honour’: Does Orthography Index Ideology?” Student Strathy Working Papers on Canadian English 2013, 1-18.
Hay, Jennifer, Margaret Maclagan and Elizabeth Gordon. 2008. New Zealand English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
Heffernan, Kevin et al. 2010. “Preserving Canada’s ‘Honour:’ Ideology and Diachronic Change in Canadian Spelling Variants.” Written Language and Literacy 13 (1): 1-23.
Hickey, Raymond. 2012a. “Standard Irish English.” In Hickey 2012b, 96-116.
—, ed. 2012b. Standards of English: Codified Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
—, 2019. “The Colonial and Postcolonial Expansion of English.” In Schreier, Hundt and Schneider 2019, 25-50.
Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Ishikawa, Tomokazu. 2016. “World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca: Conceptualising the Legitimacy of Asian People’s English.” Asian Englishes 18 (2): 129-40.
Kallen, Jeffrey L. 2016. “The English Writing System in the Linguistic Landscapes of the World.” In Cook and Ryan 2016, 365-96.
Kirkpatrick, Andy, ed. 2010. The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. London and New York: Routledge.
Kretzschmar, William A. 2010. “The Development of Standard American English.” In Kirkpatrick 2010, 96-112.
Lăpușneanu, Diana. 2020. “British English vs American English Differences: Spelling, Pronunciation and More.” Mondly, June 16. [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Lipski, John. 1975. “Orthographic Variation and Linguistic Nationalism.” La Monda Lingvo-Problemo 6: 37-48.
Macquarie Dictionary. n.d. Online Edition. [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Mair, Christian. 2013. “The World System of Englishes.” English World-Wide 34 (3): 253-78.
McArthur, Tom. 1996. “Third in the Pecking Order?” English Today 12 (2): 2.
McMullin, Ross. 1991. The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party 1891-1991. South Melbourne: Oxford UP Australia.
Melchers, Gunnel and Philip Shaw. 2011. World Englishes. 2nd ed. London: Hodder Education.
Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy. 1999. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge.
Murray, James A. H. et al. 2000. “A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.” In Simpson et al. 2000, online.
OED. 2000a. s.v. “-ize.” [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
—, 2000b. s.v. “-our.” [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Pacheco-Franco, Marta. 2020. “The Alternative -our vs. -or in the Outer Varieties of English Worldwide.” Gaudeamus 0: 67-85.
— and Javier Calle-Martín. 2020. “Suffixes in Competition: On the Use of -our and -or in Early Modern English.” International Journal of English Studies 20 (2): 169-83.
Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. “The Future of Englishes: One, Many or None?” In Kirkpatrick 2010, 673-87.
Peters, Pam. 2004. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
—, 2007. The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
—, Peter Collins and Adam Smith, eds. 2009. Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Pratt, T. K. 1993. “The Hobgoblin of Canadian English Spelling.” In Clarke 1993, 45-64.
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
—, (2020). English around the World: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Schreier, Daniel, Marianne Hundt and Edgar W. Schneider, eds. 2019. The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Sebba, Mark. 2000. “Orthography and Ideology: Issues in Sranan Spelling.” Linguistics 38: 925-48.
Simpson, John A. et al., eds. 2000. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2009. An Introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
Translation Bureau Public Works and Government Services Canada. 2015. s. v. “Spelling.” [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah. 2008. International English: A Guide to Varieties of Standard English. 5th ed. London and New York: Arnold.
Warschauer, Mark, Rebecca Black and Yen-Lin Chou. 2010. “Online Englishes.” In Kirkpatrick 2010, 490-505.
Webster, Noah. 1806. A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. [Accessed online on April 26, 2021].
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The authors retain copyright of articles. They authorise AEDEAN to publish them in its journal Atlantis and to include them in the indexing and abstracting services, academic databases and repositories the journal participates in.
Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), for non-commercial (i.e., personal or academic) purposes only, users are free to share (i.e., copy and redistribute in any medium or format) and adapt (i.e., remix, transform and build upon) articles published in Atlantis, free of charge and without obtaining prior permission from the publisher or the author(s), as long as they give appropriate credit to the author, the journal (Atlantis) and the publisher (AEDEAN), provide the relevant URL link to the original publication and indicate if changes were made. Such attribution may be done in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the journal endorses the user or their use of the material published therein. Users who adapt (i.e., remix, transform or build upon the material) must distribute their contributions under the same licence as the original.
Self-archiving is also permitted, so that authors are allowed to deposit the published PDF version of their articles in academic and/or institutional repositories, without fee or embargo. Authors may also post their individual articles on their personal websites, again on condition that the original link to the online edition is provided.
Authors are expected to know and heed basic ground rules that preclude simultaneous submission and/or duplicate publication. Prospective contributors to Atlantis commit themselves to the following when they submit a manuscript:
- That no concurrent consideration of the same, or almost identical, work by any other journal and/or publisher is taking place.
- That the potential contribution has not appeared previously, in any form whatsoever, in another journal, electronic format or as a chapter/section of a book.
Seeking permission for the use of copyright material is the responsibility of the author.
Funding data
-
Ministerio de Universidades
Grant numbers FPU19/05104
