Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:16:14.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the role of children, and the mechanical view: A rejoinder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2008

PETER TRUDGILL
PETER TRUDGILL
Affiliation:
Agder University, 32 Bathurst Road, Norwich NR2 2PP, U.K., peter.trudgill@unifr.ch
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There is nothing controversial about Keller's assertion that human beings operate according to a powerful maxim which he renders as “Talk like the others talk.” This is self-evidently true (although we could of course discuss precisely who “the others” might be). If it were not true, there would be, say, no local dialects. The fact that everyone who has grown up in the same community speaks in the same way therefore, in a sense, needs no discussion. It is always the case, as near enough as makes no difference.

Type
DISCUSSION
Information
Language in Society , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 277 - 280
Copyright
© 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Belich, James (1997). Making peoples. Auckland: Penguin.
Britain, David (2005). Where did New Zealand English come from? In A. Bell, R. Harlow, & D. Starks (eds.), The languages of New Zealand, 156–93. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Britain, David, & Trudgill, Peter (1999). Migration, new-dialect formation and sociolinguistic refunctionalisation: Reallocation as an outcome of dialect contact. Transactions of the Philological Society 97:245–56.Google Scholar
Britain, David, & Trudgill, Peter (2005). New dialect formation and contact-induced reallocation: Three case studies from the Fens. International Journal of English Studies 5:183–209.Google Scholar
Newbrook, Mark (1986). Scot or Scouser? An anomalous informant in outer Merseyside. English World-Wide 3:77–86.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter (2004). Dialect contact and new-dialect formation: The inevitability of colonial Englishes. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.