Two weeks later: ‘English’

This is a brief addendum to my previous post from two weeks ago about my daughter’s emergent and idiosyncratic typology of language types. Today she mentioned a new one: English. And what it seems to mean is ‘speaking correctly’.

We were reading books at bedtime. The books we were reading were among the ones that she has memorized. They’re particularly short and simple and, therefore, boring if read straight off the page. So, one way to keep it fun is to change up the words to say new, silly things. For example, instead of saying, “That’s not my panda, its ears are too fluffy,” it’s more fun to say, “That’s not my panda, its ears are too bubbly!” Anyway, we did this for a few books until at one point I was going a little overboard with it and she said in a breathless, laughing-too-hard voice, “No, stop! Speak English!”

Of course this one anecdote doesn’t mean that she thinks ‘English’ means ‘speaking correctly’. When I stumble over what I’m trying to say or say the wrong word for an object, she doesn’t tell me to speak English. So it’s probably more likely to be her new word for what I called ‘unmarked’ my previous post, meaning something like ‘speaking normally’. It’s probably the context of reading out loud that especially made it seem to me like it had a twinge of ‘speak it the proper way’. Or maybe it’s just me making a big deal out of nothing because I’m a sociolinguist and I’m sensitive to contexts in which ‘English’ becomes equated with moral judgments of that which is ‘good’. Or (and I doubt this is true, but I like it) maybe what she means by ‘English’ is ‘calm and predictable’!

Anyway, the next thing to find out is if ‘America’ can ever be ‘English’…