Differences in British and American English. A Corpus-based Case Study

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Bayreuth, language: English, abstract: Considering the "inevitability of change", Ferdinand de Saussure once stated: "Time changes all things: there is no reason why language should escape this universal law". In reference to the English language, Trask noted: "English [...] has been changing throughout its history and is still changing today". In doing so, there is a great number of factors playing an important role for ongoing changes in a language such as sociolinguistic causes of chance which are illustrated in Aitchison in a very coherent and detailed way. "Geographical separation" will be the central keyword, as I will investigate differences and varieties in British and American English use of language. Surprisingly, in comparing Australia and New Zealand, where "equally big differences in language [...] from their mother country" could be expected, it turns out that this is not the case. Although differences in slang expressions can be recognized, spelling and word usage, actually, are alike the original British form so that these differences seem trivial in contrast to the variety of English used in the United States. Therefore, I have decided to focus my attention on specific distinctive attributes of the American variety of English and, based on foregoing research in this field, to create a questionnaire whereby central hypotheses are to be checked and verified, at best. Hence, this paper comprises a brief summary of previous knowledge on this matter, so to speak the theoretical background of my work. Moreover, not only regional factors play a role but also the interviewees social background when it comes to certain features of language such as word use. Thus, it is highly exciting to see what assessments will be done in the course of this paper.