Lexical features of universal english (based on the BNC and ANC)

Abstract

Currently, the issue of the standard of the English language remains relevant. There are many variants of English in the world, the differences of which can be found at different levels. BrE and AmE were believed to be the world standards of written and oral English taught in non-English-speaking countries, but today the situation is not so obvious: more and more conversations arise about the existence of Global English, or International English, or World English, or Universal English. David Crystal predicted the emergence of World Standard Spoken English (WSSE). This article aims to understand the processes in the modern English language, to get an answer to which version English tends to be closer, to determine the trends of its development. To achieve this goal, the authors used the method of corpus linguistics. A list of commonly used words was compiled, the frequency of their use was analyzed and it was concluded that AmE has a significant impact on BrE.: with an approximately equal frequency of the word pairs per 1 million words in the given period, the lexical units of AmE are gradually becoming part of the lexis of BrE; with a high frequency of words of BrE, the lexical units of AmE are used more and more by the British; there is a group of words of AmE that is fixed in the lexicon of the British, is perceived as synonymous by them and at the same time displaces the native British lexical units. Moreover, the modern development of the English language is gradually making AmE the standard of the English language.