A Comparison of Canadian and British English Through Newspapers

Abstract

This paper investigates whether Canadian English has converged with Briti sh English during the past fifty years,
through the analysis of newspapers. Four groups of newspapers were se lected for this stud y: Canadian
newspapers in the 1960s and the 2000s, and British newspapers in the 1960 s and the 2000s. The study compares
five variables chosen from the 1972 paper "The Survey of Canadian English: A Report" by Scargill and
Warkentyne. The five variables are the following: " mailman vs. postman" , " icing vs. frosting", "chesterfield vs.
sofa", "color vs. colour", and "defense vs. defence". For each variable , a British variant and an American variant
was chosen to analyze which variant Canadian newspapers would choose to use. For each newspaper, both
variants of each variable were searched in all the editions published during the time period of 1960 to 1970 and
2000 to 2010, respectively. The percentages of the variants are then compared. The results showed that, of the
five variables studied, Canadian newspapers prefer the British variants over the American one, and that the
younger generation seemed to shift towards British English in general.