REGIONAL VARIATION OF THE CANADIAN NATIONAL ENGLISH VARIANT

The article deals with the issues of regional variation of the Canadian national English variant CE (Canadian English). Linguists have been showing a great interest in such a section of linguistics, as dialectology. Can a dialect be regarded as an official language and its variety, or as a deviation from the standard? “We have to recognise that, paradoxically enough, a ‘language' is not a particularly linguistic notion at all. Linguistic features obviously come into it, but languages for reasons that are as much political, geographical, historical, sociological and cultural as linguistic.” (Chambers J., and Trudgill P., 2004: 4). Language is a primary means of communication, information sharing, accurate speaking and is being constantly changed and developed by native speakers, who occupy different territories and represent different social, professional strata. This phenomenon attracts linguists for a detailed study. Language is indicated in a new paradigm. It is explained from the position of its involvement in human cognitive activity, in connection with the social conditions of the existence. The historical globalization process, which “compresses” the world into time, space, influences the language changes. All existing territorial boundaries become hypothetical. Intercultural communication has an impact on the linguistic situation. The idea that the language as a single monolithic structure has been replaced by understanding it as a heterogeneous structure. Linguistic and extralinguistic factors lead to these constant changes. The language has the ability to undergo constant changes and can be characterized by the phenomenon called variation. Variants of a language appear as a result of its differentiation under the influence of linguistic, sociolinguistic, extralinguistic factors. Variation is observed at all levels of verbal communication (phonetic, morphemic, lexical, syntactic, stylistic). Territorial, social, gender, professional, age affiliation are taken into consideration. The structure of the society, its functioning, history also have a great influence on the language variation formation and development. The variability of the language implies the peculiarities of its use by native speakers. Sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between the concepts “language variant” and “dialect speech”. We can emphasize that both of these concepts are described as a variant of the pronunciation of the language specific to a certain group of people. However, the main difference is that some variants become independent languages, whereas dialect speech cannot be regarded as it is. Studying dialects makes it possible to understand the origins of the language, its historical past, it allows to trace and understand the features of the literary norm, social and professional dialects, language variants. It clarifies rules of grammar and pronunciation, explores word meaning origins. The literary norm is formed on the basis of one or several local dialects and language features of any local dialect can be explained by strict historical regularity. Some time ago the dialect was considered to be a non-standard, low-level form of the language, a kind of fluctuation from the norm regarded as a deviation from the correct or standard form of the language. Today there is another point of view, linguists suggest that the speakers know one dialect minimum and standard English, for example, may be indicated as the same dialect as any other forms of English. From the standpoint of some researchers, no dialect is superior to any other. “We will accept the notion that all speakers are speakers of at least one dialect - that standard English, for example, is just as much a dialect as any other form of English - and that it does not make any kind of sense to suppose that any one dialect is in any way linguistically superior to any other.” (Chambers J., and Trudgill P., 2004: 3).