English in Canada [in press 2018, published 2020]

English in Canada Stefan Dollinger, [email protected] Forthc. In In: Handbook of World Englishes, Second edition, ed. by Braj B. Kachru, Cecil L. Nelson, Zoya Proshina and Larry E. Smith. Malden, MA: Blackwell‐Wiley. 1. Introduction Canadian English (CE) is an Inner Circle variety of English that has been shaped in relation to American English and British English varieties since the early 18th century. In 1763, the French colony of New France was ceded to Britain, which lay the foundation of British North America spanning from the East to the West. In the aftermath of the American Revolution in 1776, thousands of Americans loyal to the British Crown relocated northwards and settled the land, a process that would take one and a half centuries. Since 1969, Canada is officially a bilingual nation in all areas of federal jurisdiction, with both English and French being accorded equal status. This bilingual status is sometimes misinterpreted. As almost all French speakers are located in the Province of Quebec and its bordering regions in Ontario and New Brunswick, the practical implications for many Canadians are minimal. In Quebec, 81.2% speak French in their homes, while the rate outside of Quebec is only 2.4%.1 To complicate matters, since 1976, the Province of Quebec is in all provincial matters monolingually French. In all other Canadian provinces English is the dominant language, as 84.2% report speaking English outside of Quebec at home, either alone or in combination with another language. English is the mother tongue of only 58% of the Canadian population of about 33 million in 2011. French is the mother tongue of 21.7% of residents, a figure which has been consistently seen percentile reductions in recent censuses, while mother tongue speakers of non‐official languages (neither English nor French) have been increasing and are now, with 20.6%, almost as big as the population of French L1 speakers. An Aboriginal language is reported by 213,000 residents. Of the more than 200 home languages, 22 have more than 100,000 speakers (Table 1; “+/‐“ marks an increase or decrease from the 2006 to 2011 census): Mother tongue 1. Punjabi 2. Chinese2 3. Spanish 4. Italian 5. German 6. Cantonese 7. Tagalog 8. Arabic 9. Mandarin 10. Portuguese 11. Polish 1 Population 460000 441000 439000 438000 430000 389000 384000 374000 255000 226000 201000 +/‐ +25.2% ‐6.6% +32.4% ‐5.2% +12.6% +3.0% +64.1% +46.8% +50.4% +5.1% ‐3.8% Mother tongue 12. Urdu 13. Persian 14. Russian 15. Vietnamese 16. Tamil 17. Korean 18. Ukrainian 19. Greek 20. Dutch 21. Hindi 22. Gujarati +28.8% +32.5% +27.3% +3.3% +21.3% +11.2% +8.7% ‐1.0% ‐10.1% +43.7% +26.2% Population 194000 177000 170000 153000 143000 143000 120000 118000 116000 106000 101000 All data in this section is from the 2011 Census (Statistics Canada), unless noted otherwise. Chinese in the Canadian Census refers to “Chinese not otherwise specified”. It is the label selected (and preferred) by some census respondents. It should be read in combination with Cantonese and Mandarin. 2 Table 1: Mother tongue speakers of more than 100,000 (2011 Census) A striking characteristic of the Canadian linguistic landscape is that 80% of speakers of immigrant languages (not English, French or an Aboriginal language) live in Canada’s six largest metropolitan areas (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton & Ottawa). The trend in Canada’s largest cities is toward an increasing use of non‐official languages. In 2011, only 55% of Greater Toronto residents use only English at the home (2001: 62.5%), in Greater Vancouver 58% (2001: 65.3%) and in Montreal, the largest city in Quebec, 56.5% report only French at the home (2001: 62.4). This means that speakers of non‐official home languages are very large minorities in Canada’s cities: 42% in Vancouver and 45% in Toronto (37.6% in Montreal), and are poised to increase their ratios further for the foreseeable future. 2. Research history The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the first linguistic treatments: Geikie (1857), as discussed below, Lighthall (1889) and Chamberlain (1890) are noteworthy. It was not until the 1930s (e.g. Ahrend 1934), when more systematic approaches emerged. The key research projects at the time failed to gain momentum in Canada. The Linguistic Altas of the United States and Canada included Canada in name, but produced only a small set of field records in the Maritimes (Alexander 1939), Ontario, and the Prairie provinces. The postwar period was the important catalyst for work on the variety. Starting with Avis (1954, 1955, 1956), a vibrant research tradition in dialect geography developed. This tradition was based on written questionnaires rather than on the dominant fieldworker method. Scargill & Warkentyne (1972), Nylvek (1992), Chambers (1994, 1998b), Boberg (2005a) and Dollinger (2012a) are reiterations of the written questionnaire method that has contributed important insights into the variety. A lexicographical tradition developed parallel with the written questionnaire approach, a tradition that would produce some of the most widely popularized findings on the variety. The Gage Canadian Dictionary was first published in 1967 (as the Senior Dictionary) in a graded dictionary series for schools. Part of this series of thoroughly Canadianized dictionaries, was A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (Avis et al. 1967, DCHP‐1 Online). Most notably, the Gage Canadian Dictionary must be credited for establishing a Canadian dictionary (rather than British or American one) for general use in Canada (see Gregg 1993), while the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, first published in 1998, was a relative latecomer to the field but became the de facto standard for most institutions of higher learning. Since 1997, a grammar of CE has been available in the form of a “usage guide” (Fee & McAlpine 22007). In the early 1970s, Avis reported that there were “relatively few people engaged in research specifically related to Canadian English” (1973: 57). Since then, the sociolinguistic turn has produced an impressive number of studies. Variationist work is diverse in its range and unified in its methodology, includes the study of grammatical phenomena (e.g. Tagliamonte & Denis 2014, Tagliamonte 2013, Childs & Van Herk 2010, Tagliamonte & D’Arcy 2007, Clarke 2006), phonetic phenomena (e.g. Roeder 2012, Hoffman 2010, Hoffman & Walker 2010, Boberg 2008a, 2005b) and, less often, lexical variables (e.g. Boberg 2012, Boberg 2005a). Corpus linguistic studies have played a somewhat less prominent role to date, partly because the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English (Strathy Corpus 1985–) remained underutilized while ICE Canada (Newman & Columbus 2010) and the Bank of Canadian English (Dollinger, Brinton and Fee 2006–) were not completed or released until 2010. Corpus‐based studies include, e.g., Geeraert & Newman 2011, Columbus 2010, Brinton In press, 2008: passim, Dollinger 2008b). Today, though, a wealth of information is known on linguistic variables that cannot be done justice in the present overview (concise feature summaries are, e.g. Boberg (2008b, 2005a) for mainland Canada and Clarke (2010) for Newfoundland). There are, however, some knowledge gaps. To date, empirical work has generally focussed on first language (often monolingual) speakers of CE. While a World Englishes perspective has helped to see the variety in the larger context (e.g. Bähr 1981, Bailey 1982, Görlach 1991, Chambers 1991), some work on L2 and heritage language speakers is now in progress (e.g. Nagy et al. 2013). Generally, the diachronic development of the variety remains one of the biggest desiderata (Dollinger 2008a: 55‐62) as most developmental scenarios are supported by language‐external evidence or present‐day data, but little or no real‐time historical data (see Dollinger 2012b). 3. Settlement & Development theories Table 2 summarizes the five “settlement waves” (Chambers 2010; more detail in Boberg 2010: 55‐105) that have been used to characterize the settlement of Canada: 1776‐1812 1815‐1867 1890‐1914 Wave I Wave II Wave III 1945‐70s Post WW‐II Wave IV 1990s‐present Wave V American immigration (“United Empire Loyalists”) British & Irish immigration Continental European immigration (Germany, Italy, Scandinavia & Ukraine), & British immigration Highly diverse immigration populations, including Europe, Asia (Korea, China, Vietnam, India, Pakistan), Latin America and the US Diverse immigration continues, with Chinese immigration now peaking Table 2: Canada’s five major immigration waves (Chambers 2010: 12‐19, 28‐32) While English speakers lived in what is now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as of 1713, the Canadian westward expansion began with the American Revolution in 1776, when Ontario and Quebec saw the first significant influx of English speakers. Accepted opinion today is that this immigration, WAVE I from mostly the Northern and Midland US, was responsible for establishing the basic character of CE. Bloomfield (1948) described the scenario that is now known as the LOYALIST BASE THEORY, which is named after the United Empire Loyalists who left the newly‐founded US for (British) Canada. After 1815, immigration WAVE II, which was comprised of immigrants from Britain, is responsible for foregrounding British linguistic variants that speakers have conscious access to. They include, e.g. schedule with [ʃ], fill in a form (not fill out), tap (not faucet) and colour (vs. color), centre (vs. center), first person shall (not will) for the future tense; these forms have had wide currency as prestige forms in Canada. The effects of the three subsequent immigration waves have usually been considered as limited to cultural items and loan words, but not affecting the linguistic structure of CE: WAVE III was instrumental in settling the Canadian Prairie provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and around 1900 and accounts for large groups of continental and Eastern European speakers. WAVE IV helped to shape the multi‐ethnic character of the nation around the mid‐20th century with mostly European immigrants, but including migrants from many parts of the globe; since the 1990s, migration from Asia has become the main contributor to the most recent WAVE V, which is even more diverse in nature than WAVE IV. Developing the new variety Staring with WAVE I, the nascent variety of CE began to develop. Generally to date, only WAVE I and WAVE II have been seriously considered in this process. Bloomfield characterized the Loyalists as “conservatives who had suffered for their loyalty [to the British crown] […] [showing] a strong political and psychological conservatism.” His claim about the conservative nature of CE that is reiterated to this day: “This frame of mind was to have its effect upon Canadian English and Canadian life” (1948: 5). “The Loyalists had molded Canada, […] among which was its language” (Bloomfield 1948: 6). Scargill (1957) took issue with Bloomfield’s characterization of CE as overlooking independent Canadian developments and the extent of British English influence. British immigrants, Scargill argued, numbered close to a million between 1830 and 1867 and may have “swamped” prior‐existing features. For Ontario, a detailed case study ranks Loyalist influence as most pervasive, followed by Canadian innovation and British influence (Dollinger 2008a: 279). Today, the Loyalist theory is still the main theory (e.g. Chambers 1991, 2010), though most of the precise developmental aspects of CE remain unresolved. There are two competing models that account for the koinéization process, which is the creation of a compromise dialect based on input of different dialects. Schneider’s (2007) model of koinéization provides a general framework and guide to important development stages. Applying the model to Canada, he lists the five phases as follows: Phase I Phase II Phase III Phase IV Phase V FOUNDATION EXONORMATIVE STABILIZATION NATIVIZATION ENDONORMATIVE STABILIZATION DIVERSIFICATION English is brought to Canada The colony is stabilized, norms taken over from London The creation of a new variety, mixing English and aboriginal, and some French, features The codification of CE in its own right 1713‐1812 1812‐1867 The development of ethnolects and the like c.1970– 1867‐c.1910s c.1920‐c.1970 Table 2: Five phases in Schneider’s Dynamic Model applied to CE (Schneider 2007: 240‐50) A problem with general models is that they can consider regional differences only to a limited degree. For instance, by the time Nativization is listed as taking place, much of Western and Prairie Canada was not yet settled. Geography is an important factor in Canada and a developmental model would expressly have to account for that dimension. Schneider characterizes koinéization as an “identity‐driven process” (2007:30), which is in marked contrast to the second model by Trudgill (2004), which aims to isolate periods where social factors would have played no or only a minor role. Trudgill’s model is smaller in scope than Schneider’s as it only deals with the first three generations since initial settlement with English speakers. The prime role in the development process is accorded to the first and second‐generation born Canadians, who choose forms, by and large, based on input frequency. One important limitation of Trudgill’s model is that it is confined to situations in which the target language was not previously spoken: a “tabula rasa” situation. Trudgill claims to be able to “within certain limitations, make predictions” (2004: 26) of the outcome of the dialect mixing process. Criticised for introducing a deterministic element, Trudgill’s model creates falsifiable predictions, which is not, or only in a very limited way, the case with Schneider’s. A real‐time test on historical Ontario English (Dollinger 2008a) suggests that with one minor modification, Trudgill’s model can account for early Ontario developments. 4. Linguistic autonomy Questions of autonomy – political, economic, cultural and linguistic – are a perennial theme in societies that have a more powerful neighbour. Canada’s case is complex, as there are two powerful relations: the US is geographically close, while the UK is historically so. Political independence from Britain was slow in the making. It started in 1867, but was constitutionally not resolved until 1982, when the founding document from 1867 was repatriated from London to Ottawa. With political independence slow to come, it is perhaps not surprising that linguistic autonomy was slow in the making, too. The term “Canadian English” is an interesting case in point in this context. It is first documented in 1857 by Reverend Geikie (DCHP‐1 Online, s.v. “Canadian English”), a Scottish pastor working in Ontario at the time. Characterizing any Canadian innovation as aberrations from the British standard and therefore necessarily defective, he cites, among other variables, dove for dived, or to loan for to lend as examples. Geikie concludes his paper with the words that apparently “coined” the term: These and a thousand other examples which might be produced, fully justify the use of the term “Canadian English,” as expressive of a corrupt dialect growing up amongst our population (Geikie 2010 [1857]: 52) Giving his speech before Canadian scholars and publishing it in a Canadian journal in the same year illustrated the low standing of CE in the mid‐19th century, even among educated Canadians. It would not be until after World War I, when the first clear statements on a possible Canadian English variety materialized. One anonymous writer did just that, as s/he speculated on the future of a possible Standard Canadian English, an educated Canadian English, in response to H. L. Mencken’s publication of The American Language in the previous year. The author reasons that The language in which he [a Canadian] writes it may not for many generations to come, may perhaps never, be sufficiently characteristic to be described a Canadian language; but it will not be absolutely identical, either with the English of London, or with the American of New York. (Anon. 1920: 5) Some years later, Ayearst (1939: 231) claimed that differences [between Americans and Ontarians], at any rate, are sufficient to enable Canadians and Americans usually to place one another very quickly by speech alone. Since then, questions on the autonomy of CE in relation to AmE have been addressed repeatedly and with different outcomes but can be summarized as follows: the post‐war period showed unprecedented national fervour, which produced the first important Canadian dictionaries. This period was succeeded by linguistic scepticism in the 1980s and 1990s, when many linguists noted the decline of traditional CE variables and the increase of AmE ones in their particular settings and contexts (e.g. Chambers 1980, Clarke 1993b, Woods 1993). At that time, the “Americanization” of CE seemed inevitable. More refined data collection methods (continent‐wide sampling) and techniques of analysis (e.g. acoustic phonetics) have since produced statements that allow generalizations for CE beyond a particular location. The first trans‐continental sample of CE and AmE speech became only available in the early 2000s. This sample, the Atlas of North American English (Labov, Ash and Boberg 2006), produced isoglosses on the phonetic level that coincide with the Canada‐US border. In combination with subsequent studies (Boberg 2008), it could be shown that the Canadian Vowel Shift, a retraction and lowering of the DRESS and TRAP vowels, with some participation of KIT, represents a “a pan‐Canadian pattern, at least among young, middle‐class Canadians” (Boberg 2010: 204) and sets CE phonetically apart from bordering AmE varieties. Canadian Raising, the raising of the onset of the MOUTH and PRICE diphthongs in voiceless contexts, is “generally diagnostic of SCE [Standard Canadian English]” (Boberg 2010: 156), though it shows regional variation to a greater degree than the Canadian Vowel Shift. Similar statements can be made about everyday Canadian vocabulary items. DCHP‐1 has shown an impressive 10,000 lexemes that have some claim to being Canadian, many of which are historical and specialist terms. More recently, statistical analysis of a small set of 44 lexical variables in Canada and the US has shown that terms of everyday use, such as washroom ‘bathroom’, bank machine ‘ATM’ and parkade ‘parking garage’, have developed a Canadian element of language use. As Boberg summarizes: Canadian dialect regions have more in common with one another than any of them has with the United States and [...] no region of Canada could be characterized as consistently more or less American in its lexicon than any other. (Boberg 2005a: 53) Such studies give additional weight to previous observations of the relevance of the CE lexicon. Avis (1967) considered the lexicon the most distinct area of CE, a point that has now been corroborated with more objective measures. Interestingly, the area west of Ontario is usually considered as more linguistically diffuse and less pronounced than Eastern or Central Canada. For the set of 44 lexical items, however, findings that counter these general impressions can be reported (Boberg 2010: 187): for instance, the Prairie province of Saskatchewan appear to be the most diverse region from its US neighbouring region for these 44 variables, with 30 variables showing a differential of 50% or greater to the US border region. Closely followed by BC (29 variables) and Manitoba (28 variables), it seems that Western Canada is lexically more distinct from its US neighbours than the Greater Toronto region, which is at the bottom of the comparisons, though with 21 such differences still showing differences from AmE. In syntax and morphology few comparative studies with AmE exist. While these systems seem to be largely similar across the US‐Canada border, one needs to be cautious not to conclude they are identical. Yerastov (2012), for instance, has shown the omnipresence of the be + perfect construction in CE, e.g. I am done dinner (vs. I am done with dinner), while having only marginal status in the US. 5. Linguistic homogeneity & Standard Canadian English Inextricably linked with CE are discussions about its homogeneous nature. The observations date again back to Morton Bloomfield’s paper, where he asserted that “one type of English is spread over Canada’s 3000‐mile populated belt” (1975 [1948]: 8), referring to Nova Scotia in the east to British Columbia in the west. The settlement of the Canadian West is often cited as the cause for relative homogeneity in CE. Newfoundland is generally excluded from proposals of homogeneity because of its unique settlement patterns (Clarke 2010), though lately claims to the contrary have been heard (Chambers 2012) and counter claims (Clarke 2012; Dollinger and Clarke 2012: 461). Bloomfield’s generalization can be considered as the first in a string of claims that abstract away from existing variation within CE. As early as 1951, however, Alexander (1951: 13), who had the best Maritime data, expressly excluded Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island from discussions of homogeneity. Recent studies have more clearly identified the limitations of existing work on CE. Nearly all descriptions of CE are based on urban, middle‐class varieties of speakers. Boberg’s studies are on “essentially, the speech of middle‐class people from Vancouver to Halifax” (2010: 199), which is close to Standard Canadian English. The clearest definition of Standard Canadian English (SCE) comes from Chambers (1998b: 252), who describes the “standard accent” as “urban, middle‐class English as spoken by people who have been urban, middle‐class, anglophone Canadians for two generations or more”. This definition means that about one‐third (36%) (Dollinger 2011: 5) of the Canadian population would be deemed speakers of SCE, which would imply that large swathes are not. Homogenization and heterogenization processes are clearly operative simultaneously. As SCE is spreading, rural and social dialect enclaves will feel its influence, extending to the Maritimes and to Newfoundland alike. Regional and social mobility in Canada is one factor that drives these levelling forces. For instance, as Newfoundlanders travel to the Alberta oil sands and back, they bring mainland speech patterns to their home communities. At the same time, not all changes in more traditional dialects are adoptions of SCE forms, as speakers shape their own linguistic identities that are motivated by regional and social contexts. 6. Regional varieties Until recently, regional varieties or “dialects” in CE were defined extra‐linguistically in the absence of adequate linguistic atlas data. Newfoundland, which joined Canada only in 1949, has a distinct settlement history. Table 3 shows the generalized results from Boberg’s two continental surveys on middle‐class speakers, which underreports the importance of Newfoundland’s traditional dialects (e.g. Traditional Newfoundland Irish, Traditional Newfoundland South‐East British, Modern Urban). As can been seen, the isoglosses in phonetics and vocabulary are largely congruent. At the largest phonetic level, four regions can be defined: a region comprising BC, the Prairies and Northwestern Ontario, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. At a more detailed level, British Columbia differs from the Prairies showing features (e.g. a relative lack of Canadian Raising) that are generally found in the Prairie provinces. Table 3: Major dialect zones in CE, by phonetic features (Boberg 2008) and by lexical features (Boberg 2005a) The basic pattern remains similar for vocabulary, with Northwestern Ontario functioning as a transition zone between the rest of Ontario and the western provinces, while New Brunswick and Nova Scotia pattern together. 7. Social varieties CE has not yet developed widely perceived social distinctions in speech of the kind that are found in areas that have longer settlement histories or less pervasive forces of homogeneity (e.g. variation in Australian English, Horvath 2008 for Broad, General and Cultivated AusE varieties). One social variety of long standing relates to Canadian attitudes favouring British conventions rather than American ones. Ayearst (1939: 233) described the phenomenon as “a tendency to imitate the English in as many ways as possible” including “British speech mannerisms”, which was recently termed “Canadian Dainty” (Chambers 2004). Canadian Dainty served as the preferred elite dialect until the third quarter of the 20th century when it declined rapidly in use. It exhibited a range of linguistic behaviour from fully imitating RP accents to highlighting such British as listed in section 3. Traditional Dialect Enclaves have long been studied in CE, usually from the perspective of dialect and language loss as a result of the influence of SCE. Such dialect enclaves have included, most prominently, Black Loyalist communities in rural Nova Scotia (e.g. Poplack and Tagliamonte 1991), which offered important insights into theories of African American English, the Scottish‐French influenced communities in the Ottawa Valley (e.g. Pringle and Padolsky 1983), German‐influenced communities in Lunenburg, N.S. (Emenau 1935) and the Scots‐influenced Cape Breton (Davey and Mackinnon 2002). Other work includes contact languages such as Bungi, a now extinct contact language between English and Cree in Manitoba (Gold 2007). The province of Quebec is afforded special status in Canada as the only monolingual French‐ speaking province within a federally bilingual state. This situation has created a reverse power relationship, where French is the superstrate and English the substrate language, which has resulted in influence of French on Anglophone English (L1 English) in Quebec that is shown in a number of variables (McArthur 1989, Fee 1992). Features include loan words (guichet ‘ATM’, dep(anneur) ‘corner store’), semantic change (security to mean safety, primordial to mean essential, Fee 2008: 181) phonetics in relation to major ethnic groups in Montreal (Boberg 2010: 213‐25), and some syntactic phenomena (e.g. Eng We’re living on St. Catherine corner Peel < Fr St. Catherine coin Peel, Boberg 2012). Recently, ethnic varieties in urban settings have begun to attract attention. For the time being, the homogeneity theme seems to be borne out even in some ethnic contexts. For instance, Hoffman and Walker (2010) found that in Canada’s largest city, Toronto, the phonetic systems of the second generation (first native‐born generation) of Chinese and Italian Canadians were like the systems of Anglo‐Irish Canadians, the traditionally dominant group. In other words, the children of immigrants were shown to talk like the old‐line Canadians. In the emerging Jamaican community in Toronto, Hinrichs (2014) also sees no signs of an existing Jamaican English in Toronto, but he highlights the complex interplay between language attitudes and ideologies and the possibility of the creation of an ethnic variety. Such forces are not witnessed in Montreal, however. Italian Jewish and Irish Montrealers with an L1 English background have been shown to exhibit vowel phonetics that pattern with their ethnic groups, a fact that is explained by homogeneous ethnic neighbourhoods in Montreal that provide enough services and social networks that they are fairly autonomous (Boberg 2004). In this context, it is surprising that in Toronto, where clear ethnically defined neighbourhoods exist, no significant differences were found. The reasons may lie in lesser density of ethnic neighbourhoods in that city compared to Montreal, or in the difference of status in English in both cities: no official status in Montreal, while still the unchallenged matrix language of the dominant group in Toronto (Boberg 2014: 74‐5). Aboriginal varieties of English represent one of the biggest desiderata. Aboriginal Englishes, i.e. varieties of English influenced by an Aboriginal language substrate, are mainly represented in the territories (Yukon, Northwest and Nunavut) and on Indian reserves, where denser network structures ensure the maintenance of particular contact features. Work on Aboriginal Englishes is extremely limited as there is “virtually no research on First Nations English dialects in Canada” (but see Boberg 2010: 27‐8). This is a clear and pressing research desideratum, especially as features of Aboriginal varieties are at times misinterpreted as pathological and not as the ethnic markers they actually are (ibid). 8. Attitudes and perception Attitudes on CE have not been widely assessed, though indicators are found in a number of sources. In the early 1970s, after a generation in which Canadians started to embrace cultural and linguistic features that disassociated them from Britain (Chambers 1998b: 30), one prominent linguist expressed hope that more research on CE might result in “an expanded awareness […] of the English language generally, and, in particular, a deeper understanding of the particular kind of English [Canadians] speak” (Avis 1973: 61). An attitude study in the late 1970s (Warkentyne 1983), showed correlations of positive attitudes towards Canada with a number of Canadian linguistic features: front vowel merger before /r/, low‐back vowel merger, Canadian Raising, and Canadian lexical items. However, overall the B.C. sample respondents showed an attitudinal preference for the U.S. and the UK rather than Canada, with the UK leading. There have been changes since. A 2009 survey in Vancouver, BC, from a more diverse sample yields a more positive assessment of CE and, by implication, Canada. Answers in percent (from 6‐tier Likert scales) are shown in Table 4: I believe that there is a Canadian way of speaking 81.1% (strongly agree, agree & somewhat agree) English 58.9% (strongly agree & agree) I can tell Canadian English speakers from American 72.9% (always, almost always & frequently) English speakers 46.0% (always & almost always) I consider my Canadian English as part of my 69.1% (very correct, correct & somewhat correct) Canadian identity 46.0% (very correct & correct) I think Canadian English should be taught in 74.1% (strongly agree, agree & somewhat agree) schools, using Canadian dictionaries, grammars 50.4% (strongly agree & agree) etc. Table 4: Attitude Survey among 429 Vancouverites in 2009 (author’s data) Today, more than 81% attest to the existence of features of CE, almost 73% claim they can tell CE from AmE at least “frequently”, and almost 70% consider CE “part” of a Canadian identity and almost two thirds would support the explicit teaching of CE in Canadian schools. The adoption of CE teaching tools is a phenomenon of the mid‐1980s. Using references to British, American and Canadian dictionaries in the Canadian press since the mid‐1970s as an indicator of language attitudes (Dollinger & Clarke 2012: 452‐ 3), it can be shown that Canadian dictionaries only outnumbered American references works in the early 1980s, which coincides with the Gage Canadian Dictionary’s 3rd edition (1983). In today’s digital world, however, the unavailability of a free and easy‐to‐access dictionary of CE has resulted in the use of other, non‐Canadian dictionaries since. A different and final aspect of attitudinal stance is measured with the perception of dialects in CE. McKinnie and Dailey‐O’Cain (2002) asked respondents in Ontario and Alberta to rank the “pleasantness” and “correctness” of varieties of CE. The results are highly interesting and show some striking consistencies. Albertans were shown to view their province’s English as very pleasant but only in second place behind BC English, while Ontario English was ranked only in 7th place (out of 12 provinces and territories at the time). Ontarians, by contrast, rate their English as the most pleasant, followed by BC and Albertan English. However, Ontarians and Albertans share a low opinion of Quebec English. In terms of perceived “correctness”, BC is considered the most correct English by Albertans and Ontarians alike (ibid: 283), followed by their own province’s variety in second place. At the other end of the spectrum, Newfoundland and Quebec are considered the second least correct and the least correct varieties. These results probe into the complex process of the perception of dialects. While one would assume that Toronto or Southwestern Ontario English would be the most prestigious varieties, given that the area is economically most powerful, it is BC English that carries overall the highest pleasantness and correctness ratings. 8. Conclusion In some respect, a lot is known today about CE and the situation in the 1970s when “few researchers” worked on the variety has been remedied. However, as with many non‐dominant varieties, the need to relate CE data to larger contexts and discourses does not always allow the foregrounding of aspects that would be most illuminating from the Canadian perspective. Three of the biggest research desiderata are the historical study of CE, the study of ethnic and L2 varieties of English ‐ above all Aboriginal varieties – and of non‐middle class speech in general. Further Reading Avery, Peter, J.K. Chambers, Alexandra D'Arcy, Elaine Gold, and Keren Rice (eds). 2006. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 51(2&3). 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