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How English Developed Over Time To Meet The Cultural Needs Of A Diverse Social Context?

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The everchanging nature of our global society has required adjustments in every area of society. The social assumptions and norms used in the past are increasingly incompatible with our multicultural, multilingual societies. Education is moving away from its previous focus on nurturing the ‘dominant’ culture and is evolving into a system aimed at supporting the needs of an increasingly diverse social context. This essay will discuss the importance of educators acknowledging how English has developed over time to meet the cultural needs of different groups, as well as creating an understanding of the role which class, geography and time play in the development and acceptance of ‘Englishes’. The necessity and application of multi-literacies …show more content…

Halliday (1973-75, cited in Fellowes & Oakley, 2014, p.29) presents seven distinct categories of language use which children use as they develop their language skills including instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative and informative functions. Essentially, depending what one is trying to communicate (field), as well as to whom (tenor) and the way in which they will communicate it (mode), people will use a different language ‘register’ or style (Halliday, 1964, cited in Fellowes & Oakley, 2014, pp.32-33). The language register which is chosen must take into consideration the social norms and context of the conversation, but also it is required that a person is able to switch between registers as and when necessary to produce effective communication in a variety of cultural and social situations (Emmit, komesaroff & Pollock, 2010, p.68, cited in Fellowes & Oakley, 2014, p. 34). In this sense, the term Englishes encompasses not only different dialects, but the different ways the language is used as well as the context and desired outcome of the

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In her essay, “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan notes the many impacts that her adapted way to verbalize has affected her life. She develops her claim by first narrating the peak of her realization, in which she became aware of her speaking with other people using fragment English inherited from her immigrant mother and then by illustrating scenarios where her friends would describe her mother’s English as “broken” or “fractured.” Furthermore, Tan claims that her mother’s English had an effect on her possibilities in life by providing examples of basic English test sentences that she found difficult to comprehend in comparison to the rest of her peers. Thus, she however concludes that despite how challenging it may be to deal with this language restriction,

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