Book contents
- Worldwide Perspectives on English Usage
- Worldwide Perspectives on English Usage
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Section 1 Usage Variation and Codification
- 1 ‘All-Governing Custom’
- 2 On National Dictionaries
- 3 ‘No “Afringlish”, Please, We’re British’
- 4 Being Representative?
- Section 2 Usage Variation amid Social Diversity and Political Change
- Section 3 Corpus-Based Research on Variable Usage in Place and Medium
- Index
- References
3 - ‘No “Afringlish”, Please, We’re British’
Contemporary Editorial Practice and Usage Commentaries on South African English since the 1970s
from Section 1 - Usage Variation and Codification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 June 2026
Book contents
- Worldwide Perspectives on English Usage
- Worldwide Perspectives on English Usage
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Section 1 Usage Variation and Codification
- 1 ‘All-Governing Custom’
- 2 On National Dictionaries
- 3 ‘No “Afringlish”, Please, We’re British’
- 4 Being Representative?
- Section 2 Usage Variation amid Social Diversity and Political Change
- Section 3 Corpus-Based Research on Variable Usage in Place and Medium
- Index
- References
Summary
In this chapter, we analyse editorial intervention in modal usage in a corpus of written South African (SA) English texts across a range of registers. The corpus consists of unedited and edited versions of the same texts with metadata about the authors and editors, who are users of different subvarieties of SA English. We focus on two factors that play a role in editorial decision-making: the linguistic background of the editor in relation to that of the author; the role of codified norms, as reflected in grammars, usage guides and dictionaries. Results indicate that editors reduce the frequency of all modals across text types or author subvarieties, except for the modal may which is increased marginally, consistent with normative advice pertaining to its use for epistemic possibility meanings. Typical SA usage, such as the extended use of must, is not targeted for normative intervention. Editors tend to make fewer changes to texts written by Black SA authors, and intervene most with texts written by Afrikaans English bilingual authors. Native white SA editors make more frequent changes than Afrikaans English bilingual editors.
Information
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- Worldwide Perspectives on English UsageInto the Third Millennium, pp. 59 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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