New Brunswick English and the American Standard: Evidence of Convergence

Abstract

Among the rare investigations of language use by speakers of New Brunswick English are Scargill and Warkentyne’s The Survey of Canadian English (1972) and, in younger speakers, Bateman’s Survey of Canadian English: a comparison of the language patterns of English-speaking New Brunswickers at two different levels of education (1975) and Miller’s The United Sates-Canada border as a linguistic boundary: The English language in Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick (1989). The present paper examines a selection of linguistic items from a current study (2001), which on being compared to die results of the previous investigations, illustrates changes taking place in New Brunswick English. It will be seen that although these changes indicate a convergence towards American Standard English, some items continue to adhere to the Canadian norm.