Zoya Proshina The abc and Controversies of World Englishes ббк 81

Innovations/Deviations vs Errors

• 
  foregrounding the topic of the sentence: This book I have read already;
  
• 
  using the Past Perfect instead of the Simple Past or Present Perfect: He is very rich. He had bought another house recently;
  
• 
  using the plural with uncountables: evidences, chalks, equipments;
  
• 
  using universal tags: You are British, isn’t it?
  
• 
  changing meanings of some words: fellow (= person, not exclusively male), follow (= go with someone);
  
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  adapting words from the indigenous languages: towkay (< Hokkien = shop-owner, businessman), makan (< Malay – to eat).
  

1. 
   demographic – how many well-educated people use the innovation?
   
2. 
   geographical – how widely is it dispersed? The greater the geographical spread, the higher is its acceptance as a standard form.
   
3. 
   authoritative – who uses it? An innovation is used or approved by writers, teachers, examining bodies, media practitioners, and influential opinion leaders.
   
4. 
   codification – where is the usage sanctioned? Once an innovation enters a dictionary, grammar or course book as correct or acceptable usage, its status as a regular form is assured.
   
5. 
   acceptability – what is the attitude of users and non-users to it? To be accepted, an innovation is to be recognized as an appropriate expression of identity and solidarity.
   

Unlike innovations, though very close to them, deviations are not necessarily codified. They can be just linguistic tendencies manifest in educated speech of many people in the community. Deviation “is the result of a productive process which marks the typical variety-specific features; and it is systematic within a variety, and not idiosyncratic” (Kachru B. 1983: 81). Deviations mark an educated variety of language as distinct from another educated variety. Therefore, deviations that are salient for a variety of English are revealed on the acrolectal level.

For example, when we communicate with educated Asian speakers, we come across the following deviations in their English:

• 
  epenthetic vowels in the consonant clusters and after the final consonant: cheese > CHEESu; ice-cream >AISuKuREAMu; blue > BuLUE
  
• 
  indiscrimination of voiced and voiceless consonants (Pusan – Busan);
  
• 
  substitution of [l] - [r] (Lee –Rhee);
  
• 
  reduplication (small small things, hot hot tea);
  
• 
  using uncountables for countables: much sweets, good furnitures.
  

• 
  newly coined words like Japanese English salaryman (an employee);
  
• 
  new collocations: Chinese English a paper tiger (not a real enemy), one-family-one-child policy;
  
• 
  change of meaning: Japanese English - a dry person (too business-like, too serious, too distant); a wet person (overly sentimental, too sensitive, teary-eyed) (Stanlaw 2004: 41-42);
  
• 
  new combinability: Japanese advertising slogan – I feel Coke! (Stanlaw 2004: 169).
  

Fig. 7. A service menu in a Chinese hotel.

In practice differentiation between errors and deviations very often depends on the form of speech, as observed by Gary French: “in oral language there is a tendency to accept errors at a greater rate for the facility of overall communication than in the case for written language, which is more static” (French 2005: 371).

Innovations and deviations as social phenomena are formal markers “to provide a regional and national identity and help in establishing an immediate bond with another person from the same region or country” (Kachru B. 1984/2006: 449). So they perform very important social functions. Sometimes “the recognition of a localized norm is used as a defensive mechanism to reduce the ‘colonial’ and ‘Western” connotations associated with English. Such an attitude is one way of expressing what might be termed ‘linguistic emancipation’.” (Kachru 1984/2006: 452).

It takes time for a deviation or an innovation to be recognized and accepted as a characteristic feature of a variety of English. I cannot but agree with Jennifer Jenkins who says that innovations and deviations “often start life as forms that are widely perceived as errors in the standard language, the NS ‘error’ gradually becomes accepted as a new standard form (for example, the use of ‘data’ to replace ‘datum’ in the singular)” (Jenkins 2006: 44). Gradually, becoming traditional, deviations are standardized and, finally, codified. The same happens with deviations and innovations of non-native varieties as well.

Deviations can occur in any variety of English, including those from the Inner Circle. Peter Lowenberg (2001), for example, collected a number of sentences from the works of well-known linguists, who are native language speakers, and American media that contain such deviations as: It’s a nonsense to spend money…. West said they used a digital equipment … Since this type of using noncountable nouns as countables becomes a typical phenomenon, not an individual one, it turns from an error to a deviation. This means that deviations in any circle follow the same trend, gradually changing the standards.

Deviations are characteristic of code-switching from one lectal level to another, used at will by educated people, depending on a situation. “...(A) feature which may seem to be an error may in fact be a dialectal feature of Singapore English. If a speaker in formal setting marks the past tense, then does not mark the past tense in a domestic situation, there is no error – the speaker is merely using more than one kind of English” (Gupta 1998/2006: 384). This is a type of diglossia typical for the countries of the Outer Circle.

But to be accepted, deviations must belong to a variety of English which not only exists but whose status is recognized and accepted. So far this is difficult to implement, especially in an Expanding Circle country. We have reached a “vicious circle”: deviations are accepted if they are typical of a variety of English and a variety of English is recognized if it differs from other varieties in some deviations.

Questions to discuss:

43. Why is it necessary to differentiate between deviations and errors? Is there an essential difference between the terms or is ‘deviation’ just a politically correct term?