This paper investigates spelling practices in Nigerian Pidgin (NigP) computer-mediated communication (CMC) as well as Nigerians’ perceptions of these. The first part is a corpus-based analysis. It shows that conventionalization of spelling variants is taking place in the absence of formal standardization. Furthermore, we observe the application of general CMC respelling strategies, e.g. vowel reduction. The second part is a survey study where participants were asked to judge the correctness of spelling variants. When the corpus results indicated the existence of a conventionalized spelling, the participants tended to either endorse this or, when shown an alternative, suggest it as the correct form; items that are more variable in the corpus yielded more mixed results. We apply and elaborate on the notion of “standardization from below” ( Elspaß 2021 ) and we argue that the existence of conventionalized NigP spellings makes possible deviations from these in CMC-typical fashion just as in Standard English.

This study investigates language use and attitudes among teachers and students at two secondary schools in Dominica, a multilingual Caribbean island shaped by both French and British colonial influence. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 56 students and 11 teachers, the study explores perceptions of standard English, Dominican English Creole (DEC), and Kwéyòl. The findings show that standard English holds strong overt prestige and is widely used in formal settings, while DEC is the dominant spoken variety among students yet is often described as ‘broken English’ and socially stigmatized. Kwéyòl, associated with older generations, retains cultural value but is declining in active use among youth. Media exposure, particularly through music and social platforms, plays a key role in shaping language attitudes, often reinforcing stigmas. The findings offer insight into processes of language shift and the sociocultural positioning of local varieties in a postcolonial, digitally connected society.

Susanne Mühleisen, Genre in World Englishes: Case studies from the Caribbean (Varieties of English Around the World, G67). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2022. Pp. viii + 229. ISBN 9789027211385.

This paper analyses the use of indigenous language elements including code-switching in two contrasting genres, i.e. group chats and Twitter memes along with tweets, in the English communication of South Asian (Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan) internet users. The results from group chats show that one of the most common lexical indigenous elements are tags, for example, address forms like yaar, machan, and da which all can be translated to English as 'dude' or 'buddy'. The analysis of Twitter memes along with tweets shows that despite the tweet text being in English, the South Asian users tend to employ memes with indigenous text more often as compared to English memes for political satire. Overall, the study finds that code-switching and indigenous resources are used to create a sense of localness in English communication, whether it is group chats or Twitter memes and tweets.

In the anglophone Caribbean, varieties of English typically coexist with English-based Creoles in a continuum of sociolinguistic variation. In the small Eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, English has historically coexisted with a French-based Creole. Only in recent decades has a major shift towards Dominican English Creole (DEC) occurred. This study investigates morphosyntactic variation in spoken English based on speech data from interviews conducted at two Dominican secondary schools. A cline is found where the teachers incorporate DEC features least into their speech, while the students from one of the schools use these and other non-standard morphosyntactic features the most. Furthermore, different features seem to be associated with DEC to different degrees, another finding which supports the notion of a continuum. The absence of stylistic uses of DEC morphosyntactic features can be attributed to the interview situation. At the same time, given limited recognition and identification with DEC, stylistic uses in connection with the expression of identity in discourse are not necessarily expected. The further development of variation in spoken English in Dominica in connection with the ongoing language shift will merit further investigation.

Abstract In this research article we introduce the South Asian Online Englishes (SAOnE) corpus representing four South Asian countries, i.e. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and two native English-speaking countries, i.e. the UK and the USA. We have used semi-automatic and manual methods to collect data from three internet registers, i.e. newspaper comments, web forums and tweets, and a collection of internet sub-registers which we label as blogs and websites. Additionally, we have collected text messages using online freelance hiring platforms from each of the South Asian countries mentioned above. Each register category in the corpus consists of approximately 1 million words per register per country, except text messages, which contains around 500,000 words per country and only includes the four South Asian countries. We have verified the origin of website and blog links, authors of Twitter, and where possible of commenters and web forum users to make sure that only local content of each country is included. The corpus features some indigenous language content, which is tagged. In addition to the description of this dataset, we also present a pilot study analysing three discourse particles, namely na, neh, and yaar. The discourse particles na and yaar are native to Hindi/Urdu, while neh is based on a Sinhala negation marker. Our analysis indicates that na and neh have similarities in terms of their position in the clause/utterance. However, neh is confined to Sri Lanka while the Hindi/Urdu based discourse particles are also used in our Twitter data from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The use of these discourse particles in Bangladeshi tweets shows the influence of Indian culture through Bollywood celebrities. Of the Hindi/Urdu discourse particles yaar and na, yaar is preferred in Pakistan while na is preferred in India; additionally, yaar is used at the start of the clause more often in our Pakistani data. Lastly, we discuss the implications of the pilot study, the advantages of the type of data used for the pilot study, and future research directions.

Varieties of English in the Caribbean have been claimed to have characteristic pitch patterns. However, there is little empirical research on prosodic aspects of English in the region. This paper provides a comparative phonetic analysis of several pitch parameters (pitch level, range, dynamism, rate of change, variability in rate of change, and tone rate) in English language data from Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad that comprises read and spontaneous speech from 243 speakers. The results show that a wide pitch range and a high degree of variability in pitch, as mentioned in previous works, are not necessarily characteristic of English in the Caribbean overall, but that there are considerable cross-territorial prosodic differences, with English in Trinidad showing more variability than in Dominica and Grenada, particularly among female speakers. Socioprosodic variation, largely specific to Trinidad, was also identified.

This paper analyzes the speech of 27 Trinidadian professionals (lawyers, lecturers, and politicians), who are typical speakers of Standard Trinidadian English in formal contexts, where traditionally Standard English is targeted. We investigate phonetic variation in Trinidadian English speech with regard to the varying integration of Creole features. The paper presents the results of an acoustic study of 10 vowels and an auditory analysis of three consonantal variables, using data from the Trinidad and Tobago component of the International Corpus of English. The analysis shows that exonormative influences do not play a role. Individual Trinidadian Creole features are integrated into standard speech (voiced TH-stopping, partial overlap of bath - start-trap , partial overlap of strut - lot ) and some realizations are identical in both codes ( face and goat ), while others are avoided (voiceless TH-stopping, the realization of down with as a monophthong with a velar nasal, the cloth - thought merger, and the realization of mouth as [ɔʊ]). These results from Trinidad confirm the validity of Irvine’s ( 2004 , 2008 ) model of load-bearing and non load-bearing variables for the distinction between English and Creole. The conclusion highlights methodological differences to Irvine’s study and discusses an extended conceptualization of Standard English that incorporates variation along the dimension of exo- versus endonormativity.

This paper presents the results of two largely parallel verbal guise studies that elicited students’ attitudes toward different standard varieties of English. The studies were conducted in the small anglophone Caribbean island country of Grenada. The two studies were contextualized in the domains of education and newscasting, respectively, with the aim of finding out how language attitudes are influenced by context in societies where different endo- and exonormative standards are of relevance. As hypothesized, the results revealed strong differences between the evaluations of speakers of the two domains and confirm that contextualization is crucial in language attitude research. Against previous hypotheses, however, the acceptance of endonormative standard accents was stronger in the more globally open context of newscasting than in the more locally restricted domain of education. The results are discussed against the background of the sociolinguistic situation in Grenada and inform on endonormativity and norm orientation in one of the underresearched island countries of the anglophone Caribbean.

This study examines newspaper writing from 10 Caribbean countries as a window on the norm orientation of English in the region. The English used in the former British colonies of the Caribbean has been assumed to be especially prone to postcolonial linguistic Americanization, due to mass tourism, media exposure, and long-standing personal and sociocultural links. The authors present a quantitative investigation of variable features, comparing their Caribbean data with American and British reference corpora as well as newspaper collections from India and Nigeria. The amount of American features employed varies by type of feature and country. In all Caribbean corpora, they are more prevalent in the lexicon than in spelling. With regard to grammar, an orientation toward a singular norm cannot be deduced from the data. While Caribbean journalists do partake in worldwide American-led changes, the frequencies of the relevant features align with neither American English nor British English but instead resemble those found in the Indian and Nigerian corpora. Contemporary Caribbean newspaper writing, thus, neither follows traditional British norms nor is it characterized by massive linguistic Americanization; rather, there appears to be a certain conservatism common to New Englishes generally. These results are discussed in light of new considerations on normativity in English in the twenty-first century.

This paper presents the results of two largely parallel verbal guise studies that elicited students' attitudes toward different standard varieties of English. The studies were conducted in the small anglophone Caribbean island country of Grenada. The two studies were contextualized in the domains of education and newscasting, respectively, with the aim of finding out how language attitudes are influenced by context in societies where different endo- and exonormative standards are of relevance. As hypothesized, the results revealed strong differences between the evaluations of speakers of the two domains and confirm that contextualization is crucial in language attitude research. Against previous hypotheses, however, the acceptance of endonormative standard accents was stronger in the more globally open context of newscasting than in the more locally restricted domain of education. The results are discussed against the background of the sociolinguistic situation in Grenada and inform on endonormativity and norm orientation in one of the underresearched island countries of the anglophone Caribbean.

This study examines newspaper writing from 10 Caribbean countries as a window on the norm orientation of English in the region. The English used in the former British colonies of the Caribbean has been assumed to be especially prone to postcolonial linguistic Americanization, due to mass tourism, media exposure, and long-standing personal and sociocultural links. The authors present a quantitative investigation of variable features, comparing their Caribbean data with American and British reference corpora as well as newspaper collections from India and Nigeria. The amount of American features employed varies by type of feature and country. In all Caribbean corpora, they are more prevalent in the lexicon than in spelling. With regard to grammar, an orientation toward a singular norm cannot be deduced from the data. While Caribbean journalists do partake in worldwide American-led changes, the frequencies of the relevant features align with neither American English nor British English but instead resemble those found in the Indian and Nigerian corpora. Contemporary Caribbean newspaper writing, thus, neither follows traditional British norms nor is it characterized by massive linguistic Americanization; rather, there appears to be a certain conservatism common to New Englishes generally. These results are discussed in light of new considerations on normativity in English in the twenty-first century.

This study investigates the sociolinguistic awareness and perception of the quotative be like among German learners of L2 English. The study shows that German students are highly aware of be like and their attitudes reproduce the common perceptional pattern: Be like is associated with young female speakers and the USA; it is largely perceived negatively in terms of social status but positively in terms of social attractiveness. As only few students reported having stayed in an English-speaking country, but the vast majority stated that they are exposed to English via mass or social media, the latter two channels seem the most likely source for the students' high familiarity with the form and knowledge of its ideological loadings. To incorporate vernacular forms like be like into ELT, the article proposes to include sociolinguistic competence in curricula, introduce vernacular forms through authentic source material, and critically assess teachers' language ideologies.

This paper studies the sociolinguistics of quotative be like in Trinidad and its relation to Trinidadian English Creole (TrinEC). Corpus evidence shows a significant association of be like use and young age as well as female gender, in line with global trends. Questionnaire data reveal that it does not detract from the perception of a speaker as educated and of high social status as long as utterances are grammatically standardized English (StE). TrinEC grammar triggers contrasting perceptions but the data also point to traditional social prejudice against TrinEC being transcended. This ties in with the finding that be like users tend not actually to be averse to using TrinEC. Overall the sociolinguistics of be like in Trinidad is shaped by global trends as well as the local sociolinguistic configuration.

This article applies the Dynamic Model and the Extra- and Intra-territorial Forces (EIF) Model to Standard English in Trinidad based on the findings of a large-scale attitude study. The results suggest that, in the educational domain in Trinidad, a multidimensional norm orientation with coexisting standards that incorporates exo- and endonormative tendencies is prevalent. The Dynamic Model is not fully able to explain the findings, but the EIF Model can account for this norm complexity. However, the assumption underlying both models that postcolonial Englishes prototypically achieve (full) endonormativity unless their development is stalled at an earlier stage or even reversed is unlikely to fully capture the norm developmental processes in Trinidad and other complex postcolonial speech communities. We therefore propose an extension of the EIF Model that, depending on the constellation, directionality, and continuity of different sets of forces, allows for multinormative stabilization as an alternative development. We also introduce translocality as an alternative theoretical framework for the conceptualization of forces and argue for a more comprehensive understanding of intra-varietal heterogeneity. An extended and modified version of the EIF Model that takes these further complexities into account can help explain the norm developments in highly complex postcolonial speech communities.

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In the anglophone Caribbean, tendencies of endonormative reorientation have been observed in the development of local standards of English. Situated in the school context, this study adds a language attitude perspective on the question of whether and to what extent an endonormative standard of English is emerging in the island of Trinidad. In an accent rating study, 803 secondary students were asked to evaluate the accents of Trinidadian, other anglophone Caribbean, American, and British teachers and to identify their countries of origin. The results indicate that the respondents' norm orientation is multidimensional and includes exo- and endonormative influences: first, there is a general coexistence of different standards since no standard serves as a superordinate norm. Second, there is no clear-cut distinction between exo- and endonormative accents, but fine-grained differences in the ratings: British and American voices received slightly higher ratings than local ones, but an American-influenced Trinidadian voice was also highly appreciated. These findings provide some new perspectives for evolutionary models of World Englishes and new insights for the discussion of standards in Trinidad, the wider anglophone Caribbean, and other small postcolonial speech communities where different local and global norms interact.

The present paper analyses newspaper corpora from Jamaica and three small island nations in the Caribbean, namely St. Kitts & Nevis, Dominica and St. Vincent & the Grenadines, with the aim of shedding more light on the issue of American influence in written Standard English in the Caribbean. Spelling, lexis and selected grammatical features are analysed. This is complemented by investigating the perspectives of newspaper staff and readers. The results for spelling are mixed and can be interpreted to show that language use in the small Caribbean countries tends to be more susceptible to American influence. Concerning lexis, the findings are limited but suggest that several lexical items associated with American English are well established across the different Caribbean countries. In terms of grammatical forms and constructions, all the Caribbean corpora are characterised by a distinctive tendency towards formal variants. Finally, the study suggests that next to exonormative influences, endonormative attitudes need to be considered when assessing the current state of written Standard English in the Caribbean.(1)