18 - How different are American and British English grammar? And how are they different?

Summary

Introduction

I have chosen a somewhat provocative title for this chapter, asking the question How different are American and British English grammar? and the concomitant And how are they different? I have not done this because I wish to engage in any kind of glottometrical exercise to establish distances between the two national varieties – they are much too nebulous and hard to define in order for such a venture to be at all profitable or even possible. What I wish to do is to argue, on the basis of some recent and ongoing research, that there are more differences between American and British grammar than previously dreamt of in our philosophy, and then count the ways – or at least some of them – in which the differences manifest themselves, also stressing the need to consider the multidimensional nature of the phenomena we examine. We cannot speak simply of differences between American and British English grammar but must also consider intravarietal variation between spoken and written language and between different registers.

I shall also argue not only that we need to look at the proportions of use of the variables under study, but that we need to consider the sum totals of these variables, in order to find out about communicative and pragmatic needs of speakers of either variety. Other important issues concern the relationship between meaning and form, especially as conditioned by the pragmatics of use of different grammatical forms and constructions.