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
- Section 2 Usage Variation amid Social Diversity and Political Change
- 5 Effects of L1 and Social Attitudes on English Gender-Fair Pronouns
- 6 Lexical Influence of Migrant Languages on English in Australia
- 7 Metaphor Variations in Public Discourse in a Dynamic Multilingual Society
- 8 Light-Verb Constructions vs. Simplex Verbs in Sri Lankan English
- 9 Uniformity and Diversity at the Same Time?
- Section 3 Corpus-Based Research on Variable Usage in Place and Medium
- Index
- References
9 - Uniformity and Diversity at the Same Time?
Artificial Intelligence and the Standardisation Paradox in Twenty-First-Century English
from Section 2 - Usage Variation amid Social Diversity and Political Change
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
- Section 2 Usage Variation amid Social Diversity and Political Change
- 5 Effects of L1 and Social Attitudes on English Gender-Fair Pronouns
- 6 Lexical Influence of Migrant Languages on English in Australia
- 7 Metaphor Variations in Public Discourse in a Dynamic Multilingual Society
- 8 Light-Verb Constructions vs. Simplex Verbs in Sri Lankan English
- 9 Uniformity and Diversity at the Same Time?
- Section 3 Corpus-Based Research on Variable Usage in Place and Medium
- Index
- References
Summary
Up to at least the 1960s, English was seen as a world language integrated around two equipollent standards, British and American. Since then, in the wake of decolonisation, this bi-polar constellation has given way to models arguing for various pluricentric constellations. What tends to be overlooked, however, is the fact that the agents of standardisation and the sociocultural environment in which standardisation is taking place are markedly different today from what they were in the mid twentieth century. The power of educated elites to define linguistic standards has weakened considerably, while language technologies and software algorithms enforce homogenisation of usage in the written domain, promoting new norms that are not always in line with traditional notions of ‘good English’. In addition, the global spread of English has not only involved standard varieties, but also some non-standard ones. Removed from their vernacular home-bases, these non-standard forms have gained prestige and become available for new functions. This has produced the ‘standardisation paradox’ that Global English is facing in the early twenty-first century and that the present chapter will illustrate and analyse.
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- Worldwide Perspectives on English UsageInto the Third Millennium, pp. 228 - 246Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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