Past Event

How settler colonialism shapes Canadian English and other Settler Colonial Englishes

Dr. Derek Denis
University of Toronto
(Joint work with Alexandra D’Arcy)

My goal for this talk is to interrogate both the term ‘postcolonial’ as used in research on World Englishes and the study of (post)colonial Englishes as following a single evolutionary pathway pace Schneider 2007). I’ll discuss an alternative framework for future investigations, one that differentiates between colonial settings as explanatory of key developmental differences that emerge as a consequence of the nature and history of distinct types of colonialism. Building on work of scholars of colonialism and Indigenous governance (e.g., Wolfe 1999, 2006; Alfred and Corntassel 2005; Veracini 2010; Lowman and Barker 2012), I first argue that the label postcolonial Englishes misrepresents a subset of English varieties. In (at least) the Canadian, American, Australian, and New Zealand contexts, colonialism persists today in the form of settler colonialism; there is nothing ‘post’ about these colonial settings. As such, settler colonial Englishes (SCEs) is the more appropriate nomenclature. Critically, this is not only matter of sociopolitical terminology; distinguishing settler colonial contexts from other colonial contexts has (socio) linguistic implications. In the talk, I will discuss these four implications:

1. Nature of indigenous language loanwords: In SCEs, loanwords are vastly limited to toponyms, and terms for flora, fauna, and culture. In non-SCEs, loanwords from indigenous languages include basic or core vocabulary.
2. Grammatical innovations and contact effects: In SCEs, there is essentially no trace of grammatical contact effects with indigenous languages. In non-SCEs, grammatical innovation and contact effects are present (if not widespread).
3. Who speaks the national variety?: In SCEs, the demolect refers to the settlers’ variety (e.g., Canadian English); indigenous varieties are treated as separate chthonolects (e.g., Inuit English). In non-SCEs, the demolect refers to the variety spoken by indigenous people (e.g., Nigerian English).
4. Extent of homogeneity: Only in SCEs do we observe widespread dialect homogeneity.

The talk focuses on Canadian English in comparison with Australian English, Singaporean English, and Indian English.

This event is sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies.