Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- 1 World Englishes: An Introduction
- Part I The Making of Englishes
- Part II World Englishes Old and New
- 7 A Sociolinguistic Ecology of Colonial Britain
- 8 English in North America
- 9 English in the Caribbean and the Central American Rim
- 10 English in Africa
- 11 English in South Asia
- 12 English in Southeast Asia
- 13 World Englishes Old and New: English in Australasia and the South Pacific
- Part III Linguistics and World Englishes
- Part IV Current Challenges
- Index
- References
7 - A Sociolinguistic Ecology of Colonial Britain
from Part II - World Englishes Old and New
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2019
- The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- 1 World Englishes: An Introduction
- Part I The Making of Englishes
- Part II World Englishes Old and New
- 7 A Sociolinguistic Ecology of Colonial Britain
- 8 English in North America
- 9 English in the Caribbean and the Central American Rim
- 10 English in Africa
- 11 English in South Asia
- 12 English in Southeast Asia
- 13 World Englishes Old and New: English in Australasia and the South Pacific
- Part III Linguistics and World Englishes
- Part IV Current Challenges
- Index
- References
Summary
In this chapter, I look at the sociolinguistic context that colonists, settlers, pioneers, convicts, and others left when embarking on their travels. It does not therefore look at the migrants themselves or their linguistic profiles per se but at the social and linguistic ecology of Britain at the time colonization began. Its aim, therefore, is, for the colonial period that peaked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to sensitize the reader to some of the critical domains that shaped the prevailing linguistic landscape: multilingualism and multidialectalism in Britain; patterns of internal mobility and their linguistic consequences; the British education system and literacy before compulsory education and prevailing language ideologies, and the implications they had for the language use in the British Isles.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes , pp. 145 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020