subject: Identifying and Classifying Lesser-Known Varieties of English [print this page] Since we are still in the process of documenting - perhaps even discovering - new varieties, it is legitimate to ask whether these can be integrated into existing models or whether they pose a challenge to them, making new taxonomies necessary. This question is particularly important and timely in the light of Schreier, Trudgill, Schneider & Williams's (fc, 2009) attempts to trace LKVEs in different parts of the English-speaking world: the British Isles (Shet-lands and Orkney, the Channel Islands), the Americas and the Caribbean (the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland and Labrador, Honduras/Bay Islands, White Caribbean, Dominica, and Anglo-Argentine English), in the South Atlantic Ocean (the Falklands Islands, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha), Africa (White Zimbabwean English and White Kenyan English), and in Asia and the Pacific (Eurasian English in Singapore, Peranakans English in Malaysia and Singapore, and Norfolk Island and Pitcairn).
Schreier et al. show that, despite obvious differences, LKVEs around the world share a Links Of London Necklaces number of similarities, namely that 1) they are identified as distinct varieties by their respective speech communities and other groups in their social environment; 2) they are associated with stable communities or regions; 3) they are typically spoken by minorities, usually delimitated (not necessarily 'isolated' but socially or regionally distinct) to small communities which are embedded into a larger (regional) population ecology; 4) they are originally transmitted by settler communities or adopted by newly formed social communities that emerged early in the colonial era, so that they substantially derive from British inputs; 5) they are formed by processes of dialect and or language contact they frequently take the function as identity carriers by their respective communities; and 7) they are very often endangered.
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The study of LKVEs attests to the heterogeneity of Englishes on a global scale and may Links Of London Bracelets help us in uncovering the complex processes that underlie the formation of new varieties. They are thus not only essential for a more complete documentation of English as a world language but also carry immense potential for linguistic analysis, allowing us to address issues such as the formation mechanisms of new varieties of English, dialect obsolescence and death, language and identity, linguistic change in a context of language minorities, etc. These are massive questions and subject to extensive future research, so, in the present paper, I would like to focus on one of these LKVEs, namely the variety of English that developed on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, and look into its general implications for language classification as discussed above. I start by giving a brief historical overview of the local community and then detail some of its linguistic characteristics to discuss whether (or not) it fits the criteria for inclusion in Kachru's (1985) model, and if so, what status it should be given.
Identifying and Classifying Lesser-Known Varieties of English
