standardization

And I thought that the topic of standardization of English within the US was a loaded rhetorical nightmare: “The team wanted an exam that would be recognized by the international community, but not at the expense of losing the sense of what English would mean to Slovaks entering the global economy” (Prendergast 113). If I understand this correctly, the objective is to create an exam that tests fluency in a respectable (for lack of a better word), internationally-understood, yet culturally situated English tailored to fit Slovakian needs. Standardized-but-customizable. International-but-Slovakian. No matter how I try to rephrase or simplify the tall order laid out here, I can’t seem to bring blurry concepts like “international community” and “what English would mean to Slovaks entering the global economy” into focus—where is this international community, exactly, and is it really speaking a coherent lingua franca with enough consistency to establish itself as a unified authority on the standardization of anything?

As we brought up in class last week, it’s hard to get a sense of what “Slovakian” means from this book (not a critique—just a function of Prendergast’s approach to ethnography); therefore, it’s difficult for me to get a cohesive picture not only of what “Slovaks entering the global community” look like, but also what they need English to do for them. I suspect that I would have these same questions even if Prendergast had undertaken a more holistic, deep-anthropological type of ethnography: at the risk of sounding obnoxiously grad-school-y (forgive me!), is “Slovakian” a viable essentialization? Is there such thing as the quintessence of Slovakianism, and what are the dangers of conceiving of a group of individuals in such a broad way?

Nor is the concept of “English” quite clear. For starters, Prendergast has clearly mapped the bifurcation of American English vs. British English in Slovakian consciousness, showing how each is (de)valued altogether differently depending on the historical moment and individuals’ purposes in learning English in the first place. The team itself is bipartisan on this issue: “When a task created by half the reform team for the purpose of modeling the speaking exam was handed out for everyone’s perusal, it was edited to comply specifically with British English… ‘On the weekend,’ for example, was corrected to ‘at the weekend’” (Prendergast 115). Consensus has not quite been reached on what kind of English is being tested here.

Further, I’m a little bit amazed that “The team did not, for example, consider it critical to assess pronunciation” (114). What?! Is this not a conversation-based language exam? A student spoke too quietly, and all hell broke loose. How is pronunciation not important? Isn’t comprehensibility a goal? I don’t understand this at all.

To recap so far: there is a team of scholars seeking to create a standard for English (which may be American English, or might be British, but either way, pronunciation won’t matter…even though the idea is to garner international respect and facilitate communication…hmm…) so that Slovaks (who are they?) can have their linguistic needs (what are they?) met as they go forth into the international community (which, I suspect, does not exist).

I suppose standardization of anything relies on the kind of blurry language that is large and vague enough to encompass what- and whom-ever needs to be encompassed, regardless of where reform is happening.

PS: Oh yeah, and um…standardization of course makes me think of Professor Gallagher’s Radical Departures. I wonder whether he ever radically departs from (standardized?) class norm to allow students to go to his house on presentation week?