Main Difficulties of Comparative Studies of English Regionally Marked Nominative Units

Abstract

The author analyzes the main difficulties researchers may face in studying British and American nominative units (words or word combinations) from comparative perspective, namely: changeability of the regional status of the units in question; inaccuracy of the metalanguage of the research; methods applied; selection of units for analysis; discrepancies in the ways of presenting information by dictionaries. Ways to overcome the difficulties are suggested: applying a wide range of sources for researches (corpora, dictionaries of American English, academic dictionaries, texts from fiction, or from films and plays, questionnaire data collection, monitoring of the information provided by dictionaries; thorough choice of the terms, e.g. using the term “regional variation” or “regional markedness”); employing methods of semantic analysis and comparative linguistics; using certain criteria for determining the fact that a nominative unit belongs to British or American English. Much attention is paid to the importance of researches into the differences between British and American English as the most influential varieties of the English language. The article may be of interest for the linguists studying varieties of English or other polynational languages.