ABSTRACT
So far in this book we have been content to discuss the structure of language without reference to any problems that might arise in pinning down precisely what are the boundaries of a particular language, such as English. As we shall see in this chapter and Chapter 12, it is far from simple to specify any particular communication system as a language in such a way as to emerge with a relatively homogeneous object of study. The problem is essentially this: if we wish to specify which set of utterances we shall accept as ‘English’, we have to reckon with the fact that’ English’ is spoken in many different ways in different parts of the world – even to the point where mutual intelligibility is doubtful. The temporal limits of a language are no easier to define. While there are clear differences between modern English and the English of Shakespeare’s time, most people will be inclined to recognise that both forms of language constitute the same language, namely, English. The English of Chaucer, by contrast, is hardly more recognisable to a speaker of modern English than is modern German. So while there is no historical period to which we can point, claiming that there was a sudden discontinuity of language at that time, nevertheless, normal processes of historical change are capable of effecting quite radical changes in a language over a period of several hundred years. From the point of view of linguistic structure, there is therefore a considerable degree of arbitrariness in what comes to be recognised as a single language and what does not. The unity of ‘English’ owes as much to political and social circumstances as it does to the purely linguistic properties of the various forms of a language included under that name. Equally striking, however, are the limits to such arbitrariness. In global terms it is probably the rule rather than the exception for people to be bilingual (or multilingual), and their everyday communication may often resemble a random mixture of elements of several languages. In spite of this, different languages remain different in such communities, rather than ending up as an undifferentiated mass of properties chosen at random from the different languages.
