REGIONAL VARIATION OF THE CANADIAN NATIONAL ENGLISH VARIANT

The article deals with the issues of regional variation of the
Canadian national English variant CE (Canadian English).
Linguists have been showing a great interest in such a section of
linguistics, as dialectology. Can a dialect be regarded as an
official language and its variety, or as a deviation from the
standard? “We have to recognise that, paradoxically enough, a
‘language’ is not a particularly linguistic notion at all. Linguistic
features obviously come into it, but languages for reasons that are
as much political, geographical, historical, sociological and
cultural as linguistic.” (Chambers J., and Trudgill P., 2004: 4).
Language is a primary means of communication, information
sharing, accurate speaking and is being constantly changed and
developed by native speakers, who occupy different territories
and represent different social, professional strata. This
phenomenon attracts linguists for a detailed study. Language is
indicated in a new paradigm. It is explained from the position of
its involvement in human cognitive activity, in connection with
the social conditions of the existence. The historical globalization
process, which “compresses” the world into time, space,
influences the language changes. All existing territorial
boundaries become hypothetical. Intercultural communication has
an impact on the linguistic situation. The idea that the language as
a single monolithic structure has been replaced by understanding
it as a heterogeneous structure. Linguistic and extralinguistic
factors lead to these constant changes. The language has the
ability to undergo constant changes and can be characterized by
the phenomenon called variation. Variants of a language appear
as a result of its differentiation under the influence of linguistic,
sociolinguistic, extralinguistic factors. Variation is observed at all
levels of verbal communication (phonetic, morphemic, lexical,
syntactic, stylistic). Territorial, social, gender, professional, age
affiliation are taken into consideration. The structure of the
society, its functioning, history also have a great influence on the
language variation formation and development. The variability of
the language implies the peculiarities of its use by native
speakers.
Sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between the concepts
“language variant” and “dialect speech”. We can emphasize that
both of these concepts are described as a variant of the
pronunciation of the language specific to a certain group of
people. However, the main difference is that some variants
become independent languages, whereas dialect speech cannot be
regarded as it is.
Studying dialects makes it possible to understand the origins of
the language, its historical past, it allows to trace and understand
the features of the literary norm, social and professional dialects,
language variants. It clarifies rules of grammar and
pronunciation, explores word meaning origins.
The literary norm is formed on the basis of one or several local
dialects and language features of any local dialect can be
explained by strict historical regularity. Some time ago the dialect
was considered to be a non-standard, low-level form of the
language, a kind of fluctuation from the norm – regarded as a
deviation from the correct or standard form of the language.
Today there is another point of view, linguists suggest that the
speakers know one dialect minimum and standard English, for
example, may be indicated as the same dialect as any other forms
of English. From the standpoint of some researchers, no dialect is
superior to any other. “We will accept the notion that all speakers
are speakers of at least one dialect – that standard English, for
example, is just as much a dialect as any other form of English –
and that it does not make any kind of sense to suppose that any
one dialect is in any way linguistically superior to any other.”
(Chambers J., and Trudgill P., 2004: 3).
Keywords: territorial variation, dialect, regional dialects,
language norm