Showing papers in "World Englishes in 2000"

Towards a phonology of Hong Kong English

Abstract: Whether or not Hong Kong English (HKE) has acquired the status of a ‘new variety of English’, there is no doubt that there exists an identifiable ‘HKE accent’, and therefore a HKE phonology. The paper embodies the author's findings in the first part of his research project on HKE phonology, which covered segmental phonology—in particular the underlying phonemic system of HKE speakers, and the phonetic realisations of its phonemes in different phonological environments. The subjects comprised 15 undergraduates at the Hong Kong Baptist University. The initial batch of data consisted of a number of key words designed to capture all potential vowel and consonant contrasts in a variety of phonological environments. With the help of spectrographic analysis, it was found that the typical HKE speaker operates with a considerably smaller set of vowel and consonant contrasts than in native varieties of English. In particular, there is no length/tenseness contrast in vowels, and no voicing contrast in fricatives. HKE also exhibits a number of interesting and possibly unique phonological properties. An underlying phonemic system is postulated for HKE, and a number of allophonic variations are described.

The Sociolinguistics of Hong Kong and the Space for Hong Kong English.

Abstract: While Asian Englishes such as Indian English, Malaysian English, Philippine English, and Singapore English have gained wide acceptance in the past two decades, relatively little notice has been taken of ‘Hong Kong English’. This paper surveys the sociolinguistic background to the recognition of Hong Kong English, and considers the arguments in favour of a ‘paradigm shift’ in approaches to this issue. The paper begins by reviewing the history of English in Hong Kong and language planning and language policies in the late colonial period. It then goes on to discuss the ideological background to English in Hong Kong, noting the persistence of the ‘monolingual myth’ and the ‘invisibility myth’ in a number of recent sociolinguistic discourses. In the later sections of the paper, the case is made not only for a recognition of Hong Kong English in terms of distinctive linguistic features at the levels of accent and vocabulary, but also with reference to the creativity of the variety, in literary as well as less formal contexts. Ultimately, it is suggested, the notion of a distinct variety rests not only on the recognition of features of language, but also on the acceptance of a new space, or spaces, for the discourses of Hong Kong English.

Cantonese‐English code‐switching research in Hong Kong: a Y2K review

Abstract: This paper is a review of the major works in code-switching in Hong Kong to date. Four context-specific motivations commonly found in the Hong Kong Chinese press - euphemism, specificity, bilingual punning, and principle of economy - are adduced to show that English is one of the important linguistic resources used by Chinese Hongkongers to fulfill a variety of well-defined communicative purposes.

English in Brazil: Functions and Attitudes.

Abstract: The present survey project aims at investigating and describing the attitudes of Brazilian EFL learners towards the target language. The focus is on their perception of the importance of English as a language for international communication, the role of English within Brazil and the learners' expectaitons of time and energy to be consumed in the learning of the language. The participants are 190 adult learners attending a private institute in the metropolitan area of Sao Paulo who answered a survey questionnaire. The answers are discussed and the results analyzed vis-a `-vis the importance of creating a curriculum which addresses not only the formal features of the language but also the cultural and attitudinal elements which are brought into the classroom. INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXTUALIZATION

The discourse and attitudes of English language teachers in Hong Kong

Abstract: This paper suggests that Hong Kong English, insofar as it varies from Standard English, has not achieved wide acceptance in the community. The paper approaches this by investigating the attitudes of Hong Kong's English language teachers. Over a thousand messages on language issues to a computer network for English teachers were analysed, in terms of their discourse and the sources of authority the teachers referred to in support of their views on correctness or acceptability. 1 The sources regarded as most authoritative were dictionaries and grammar or usage books from native speaking countries such as Britain. Hong Kong sources such as textbooks and the media were treated with more caution, and sometimes criticised. The model of English the teachers adopted was clearly exonormative. The term Hong Kong English did not occur anywhere in the 1,234 messages, and no deviations from a native speaker norm were referred to favourably. The paper concludes that these attitudes, similar to those in the business community, will constrain the use of Hong Kong English for formal communication.

English, identity and the Malaysian workplace

Abstract: This paper, which is an outgrowth of an ethnographic study of code and style choice in two Malaysian business organizations, explains individual and institutional choices as locally motivated pragmatic selections within the specific contexts of the workplace settings and the larger Malaysian sociolinguistic context of English as the normative choice of Malaysian business and Malay as the lingua franca. Malaysian English (ME) as the prevailing sociolect emerged as the unmarked choice in Malaysian business, rather than approximations to exonormative models, such as Standard British English, thereby challenging traditionally imposed norms of speech in Malaysian business settings which are a legacy of British rule and business links. Localized speech variation was consistently demonstrated. Sub-variants of ME spoken in ethnically distinct ways, mainly in the prosody of the native languages of the speakers, as ethnolects, together with style shifting along the full varietal range of ME, and the code-mixing of English and Malay and code-switching into Malay, were the most common ways of speaking in these settings. They voice local notions of language and communication through ethnic speech diversity in the projection of specific social and cultural personae and identities.

English in the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Abstract: After a review of the history of the English language in Egypt, the forms and functions for English use in contemporary Egypt is examined. While enrollment in English courses continues to grow quickly, and Egyptian English continues to gain ground among members of several professions, English will remain for the most part in what Kachru (1992) calls the ‘Expanding Circle’ of English for the majority of Egyptians. Notable exceptions include university communities, those involved in the large tourist industry, and professionals in Engineering, Business, and Medicine.

Hong Kong's new English language policy in education

Abstract: The use of English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong's education system has been a source of controversy since the early years of British colonial rule. Debate has been particularly intense since the 1970s, when the expansion of secondary education underlined the problems which many teachers and students experienced when teaching and learning academic subjects through the medium of English. In late 1997, debate over the issue was reinvigorated after the publication of a policy document which requires most schools to switch their language of instruction from English to Chinese. When implemented, the new language policy will end the process of convergence between the English and Chinese streams which has been going on since the late 1970s, and mark a return to the dual system which characterised Hong Kong's education system for much of the colonial period. This article examines the new policy in the light of developments in educational language policy in the post-war years, and changes in the role of English in Hong Kong since the 1840s. In particular, it aims to show that the problems which have confronted English language policy makers in the past two decades owe their origins to the unique historical forces which have shaped the development of education and society in Hong Kong since the mid-nineteenth century.

Relative clauses in Hong Kong English

Abstract: This paper discusses relative clauses in Hong Kong English, and considers a number of questions about the morphosyntactic feature system of Hong Kong English, comparing relevant attestations from local data to those found in other varieties of English. It looks at the ways in which relative constructions in Cantonese may affect how relative clauses in Hong Kong English are formed, and also examines the degree to which the relative clause system of Hong Kong English is independent of the relative clause system of both Cantonese and standard native-speaker varieties of English, and therefore could be said to provide evidence of whether Hong Kong English is an independent variety of English or not.

Pitch Accent in Indian-English Teaching Discourse.

Abstract: The phonetic correlates of accent/stress distinguish Indian English (IE) from American dialects (Spencer, 1957; Kachru, 1983). We examine the realization of accent in IE compared to American English (AE) produced by teaching assistants in similar contexts. In teaching discourse, we find that a lexically accented syllable is often realized in IE with a relative drop in frequency and without a reliable increase in amplitude. In similar contexts, lexically accented syllables in AE reliably increase in both frequency and amplitude. Following the distinction made in Beckman (1986), we conclude that IE acts as a pitch-accent language rather than as a stress-accent language like AE. We also suggest a source for the distinct prosodics of IE: some Indian languages use a low pitch on accented syllables (Mohanan, 1986; Hayes and Lahiri, 1991; Harnsberger, 1999). We investigate the effect of different first languages on the production of IE using three Indian teaching assistants with different L1 (Bengali, Tamil, Hindi-Urdu), and compare their IE discourse to L1 sentences. The similarity of the results for three different L1 suggests that the phonetic correlates of accent in IE are common to Indian languages.

Regional Variations in the Phonological Characteristics of African American Vernacular English

Abstract: At present little is known about regional variations in the phonological characteristics of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Regional variation in AAVE allows for a closer examination of the convergence-divergence controversy. Researchers are still in disagreement on whether AAVE is converging to white speech or diverging away from white vernaculars. In addition, speakers of AAVE who have more contact with whites have been observed to assimilate toward such speech and have less of a change in their lexicons and phonologies (Ash and Myhill, 1986). These findings have implications for the dialects of African Americans residing in the midwest region where communities are less segregated. The present study investigated AAVE dialect features in the midwestern community of Davenport, Iowa and compared them to those reported by Pollock and Berni (1997) for Memphis, Tennessee – specifically, productions of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ across African American speakers from Davenport and Memphis. Results showed that AAVE speakers from Davenport produced vocalic and postvocalic /r/ in all contexts, in sharp contrast to AAVE speakers from Memphis who showed a consistent pattern of variation in /r/ usage according to phonetic context. The implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research are outlined.

Futures for Hong Kong English

Abstract: In this paper the authors discuss the themes of autonomy and creativity as they have been expressed in this special issue. At a linguistic level, the emergence of Hong Kong English has been clouded by a cluster of language ideologies within a localised complaint tradition. This has included discourses relatinzg to ‘monolingualism’, the ‘invisibility’ of Hong Kong English, and ‘falling standards’. Parallel discourses have also constrained creative writing in Hong Kong, but the appearance of new Hong Kong writers points the way to a fresh and energetic future for literary creativity. One example of this is the new journal Yuan Yang, largely written and edited by creative writing students at The University of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Words: Variation and Context.

Abstract: The ideal description of a variety of English is one that is constructed within the terms of the variety itself. This paper discusses a number of issues involved in such a description in relation to the distinctive vocabulary of Hong Kong English. Attention to semantic and pragmatic relationships internal to the variety and the sociocultural context in which it operates is urged. These are illustrated with examples related to underlying definition, taxonomies, semantic opposition and the productivity of localised words.

The International Comprehensibility of Varieties of South African English.

Abstract: The justification for the continued use of a high status (‘international’) variety of English in education and the media in South Africa is that re-standardizing to a local variety will result in South Africans becoming incomprehensible to the rest of the world. The study challenges the truth of this statement while it attempts to devise a more contextualized research methodology in the area of intelligibility and comprehensibility studies. It concludes that, although the comprehensibility tests devised for this study prove that South African Englishes are comprehensible internationally, comprehensibility and intelligibility cannot be reduced to linguistic features of a language. The results of the study imply that the use of ‘non-standard’ varieties of language in education does not necessarily preclude international communication possibilities. Furthermore, teachers should be trained to avoid stigmatizing the varieties their students bring to school. The study also points the way to further developments in research methodology.

Catching up with Europe: Speakers and Functions of English in Hungary

Abstract: In several studies it has been shown that, since the political and economic changes precipitated by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989, English in the ‘new’ Hungary is in great demand and the number of its uses and users is expanding (e.g. Halasz, 1993; Medgyes, 1993; Petzold, 1994). This paper discusses the functional range of English and its penetration into Hungarian society and shows that in just a few years English has become an essential tool for modernization and economic development and a significant medium in the tourist and entertainment industries as well as education, and that need for the use of English in the workplace has had a major impact on its learning, especially in Budapest. The data is drawn from Petzold's comprehensive study of English in the capital city (1994). The authors offer an account of the sociolinguistic contexts of English in Hungary and provide insights into the reasons why Hungarians regard English proficiency as vital to their country's efforts to catch up with its more prosperous neighbors to the west.

Issues in Reconstructing Earlier African‐American English

Abstract: Despite intense scrutiny over the past several decades, there remain a number of unresolved issues in the reconstruction of the historical development of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). These issues concern the reliability of written texts representing earlier AAVE, the representativeness of the spoken data from ex-slave recordings and remnant transplant communities, the delimitation of the sociohistorical context of earlier AAVE development, the nature of inter- and intra-community variation in earlier AAVE, and the principles for identifying donor sources for AAVE structures. Evidence from representative written sources is compared, along with spoken language data from a long-term, bi-racial remnant community in coastal North Carolina. The spoken language data demonstrate that earlier AAVE was affected both by its original contact history and the localized varieties spoken by European American cohort communities. Furthermore, data indicate that there was considerable intra-community as well as inter-community language variation among earlier African Americans. The analysis shows that sociolinguists need to reconstruct the historical development of AAVE in a way that is consistent with the sociohistorical and demographic circumstances of early African Americans; faithful to an understanding of contact linguistics, independent language development, and dialect diffusion; and sensitive to the local sociolinguistic situations that have contextualized different groups of individual African Americans within these communities.

The English‐language media in Hong Kong

Abstract: The forces of de-colonization and globalization have shaped the development of the English-language news media in Hong Kong over the past two decades. When in the mid-1980s Hong Kong began the transition to Chinese sovereignty, the position of influence of the local English-language press began to erode while the Chinese-language newspapers started to proliferate and expand their readership. As Hong Kong moved out of the colonial era, however, a countertrend emerged with international English-language media conglomerates, mostly US-owned, extending their reach and reshaping Hong Kong's identity. The images of Hong Kong projected by the colonial press and then by the international media have often been distorted, reflecting the cultural biases of their writers, editors and producers. To increase Hong Kong's representation in an era of ‘new media,’ Hong Kong needs a new type of bilingual media professional with a high level of English proficiency who can contest the assumptions and biases in the English-language news coverage of Hong Kong and China.

Writing the literature of non‐denial

Abstract: The paper is divided into three sections, and traces my evolution as a ‘Hong Kong writer’ in English through questions of identity, language and creativity. In ‘Ethnicity and culture,’ I discuss how both factors constrain and heighten my creative process. Despite my Hong Kong origins, I am questionably ‘local’ because of my ethnicity and personal history. The city itself embraces a schizophrenic identity, neither Chinese nor Western, and lacks a ‘national culture’. This offers rich material for fiction but is also confusing. ‘Language as stumbling block’ delves into being jammed between two national Englishes, British and American, in trying to give voice to Hong Kong’s socio-political situation. The other linguistic issue, Chinese, is addressed by studying Mandarin in the US, so that my English is ultimately enriched by Chinese. Finally, ‘Beyond the denial of self’ focuses on my most recently completed novel The Unwalled City. In writing it, I come to grips with many of the issues raised in the first two sections of this paper. Not denying reality as I know it is central to the process. The novel becomes my Hong Kong statement of a city and its people whose curious reality cannot be ignored.

Defining Hong Kong poetry in English: an answer from linguistics

Abstract: In recent years, interest in Hong Kong poetry in English has grown remarkably. Amidst all the excitement, the question has arisen as to how to define Hong Kong poetry in English. This paper is an attempt to provide an answer from linguistics. Subsumed under this controversy are three questions: What is poetry? What is good poetry? What is Hong Kong poetry? The first question has to take into account the revived interest in relating literary English to the general use of English. The second one relates to literary standards, which are inevitably tied to cultural norms of interaction and interpretation. The last one can be answered with reference to sociolinguistic concepts of speech communities. The paper deals briefly with the first two questions and focuses on the last. It affirms the existence of Hong Kong poetry in English. Each poet writing in or for Hong Kong may identify with more than one poetic community just as many users of English in Hong Kong may communicate with more than one group of English speakers. The application of linguistics to the task of defining Hong Kong poetry should offer insights towards a framework for identifying literary communities elsewhere.

Ebonics and the politics of English

Abstract: In 1996 the Oakland Unified School District passed a resolution declaring Ebonics to be the primary language of the African-American students in its schools. The resolution further declared Ebonics to be a language in its own right, not a dialect of English. In the face of massive national opposition to the Oakland Ebonics resolution, this radical, separatist move shifted to a conservative, assimilationist one: Oakland retracted its declaration of linguistic independence and reaffirmed the traditional pedagogical goal of teaching students standard English. But the Oakland Ebonics controversy reminds us that, although the English of former British colonies has come into its own in the literary, cultural, and political scene, to the point where we speak of world Englishes, the English varieties of what may be regarded as internal colonies - inner cities and the socially disenfranchised - continues to be stigmatized by speakers of more esteemed varieties. Anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland. It was not natural to have come from there . . . there is no there there. Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography, 1937

TOEFL to the Test: are Monodialectal AAL-speakers Similar to ESL Students?

Abstract: In this paper, I draw attention to the validity of the Oakland School Board's resolution on Ebonics, and to the value of ESL-based approaches to the teaching of ‘Standard American English’ to speakers of other dialects of American English. I do so by demonstrating the validity of comparisons made between monodialectal speakers of African-American Language (AAL)/‘Ebonics’ and low-level ESL students, and by illustrating the bidialectalism-instilling potential of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Use of this proficiency test puts the spotlight on a much-neglected area, namely, the bidialectal or dialect-specific nature of listening comprehension for pre-college and first-year students raised in the inner city. The findings of two longitudinal studies are cited to demonstrate that, for many Ebonics-speakers, SAE is much like a second language. The students' performance on the TOEFL, particularly on the listening comprehension and grammar sections, suggests that both comprehension and production of ‘Standard English’ can be problematic for transitional students whose first language is AAL. The pedagogical implications of this finding are carefully explored. Every time I say something the way I say it, she correct me until I say it some other way. Pretty soon it feel like I can't think. My mind run up on a thought, git confuse, run back and sort of lay down.…. Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind. (Alice Walker, 1982: 183–4)

Writing between Chinese and English

Abstract: Leung Ping-kwan has previously published very widely in Chinese, with over 30 books to his credit, but publishing poetry in English is something of a new venture. His poems were first rendered into the English language with the publication of City at the End of Time in 1992. In this article, Leung Ping-kwan describes some of the difficulties and excitement in negotiating between two languages and two cultures. The poem, ‘Leaf of Passage’, published here for the first time, draws on the mythology of the Haida Gwaii, native Americans from British Columbia, as well as the experience of contemporary Hong Kong ‘astronaut’ fathers who shuttle between Vancouver and Hong Kong.

Semantics of Occupational Lexis in Nigerian English.

Abstract: This paper describes forms of semantic re-investment of occupational lexical items in Nigerian English. Three categories and two subcategories of re-investment are identified: shift, generalisation, narrowing (subcategories of ‘shift’), re-assignment, and analogy. These types of semantic re-investment are considered within a socio-cultural and linguistic setting of Nigeria as a developing country. The paper also discusses the intranational and international intelligibility and implications of such semantic re-investment.

Hong Kong writing and writing Hong Kong

Abstract: This paper considers the site of Hong Kong as a growing one for works of the imagination. This globalized financial centre with its many contradictions and anomalies may yet be tamed by writing; and, in process of which, may arrive at a more definite sense of identity. As a sample of Hong Kong poetry in English, works of some local poets are introduced here, and these poems are included in the final section. Four poems by Louise Ho are included in the appendix to the paper.

Linguistic Power in Virtual Communities: the Ebonics Debate on the Internet

Abstract: The recent controversy over the issue of Ebonics has been well documented in both the print media and in the electronic media, in particular, on the internet. The impact of electronic discourse has been the focus of a number of researchers (Birkerts, 1998; Lakoff, 1998; Vitanza, 1999). However, the locus of research of most theorists has been on the metalanguage of this discourse genre, and on its role in the creation of unique discourse communities (Foertsch, 1995; Hawisher and Moran, 1993). Few studies have examined the extent to which this medium functions to create and sustain group ideologies. This study presents a content analysis of the electronic debate on Ebonics that spanned over eighteen months, drawing scholars from all over the world, and culminating in over seventy individual postings on an electronic bulletin board. What this study demonstrates is that in contesting issues, using the national social debate on Ebonics, linguists seek to assert their power as a group by excluding and marginalizing those parties that do not belong. The data analysis illustrates the linguistic devices through which such othering is constructed and maintained. The resultant electronic debate while overtly framed about Ebonics, covertly functions to assert the status of linguists as a group.

Researching Hong Kong English: bibliographical resources

Abstract: This paper provides a brief guide to published research relevant to the study of Hong Kong Kong English, together with a selective bibliography. Hong Kong now has a thriving research culture although a substantial proportion of published research has earlier been devoted to applied linguistic and language pedagogy, where the discussion of ‘Hong Kong English’ has frequently been linked to studies of error analysis and interlanguage. The selective bibliography attempts to survey published research in those areas of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics of most relevance to the world Englishes paradigm, and also includes a section listing publications related to Hong Kong creative writing in English. The final section lists extant bibliographies in print and/or available online via the Internet.

From Yinglish to sado-mastication

Abstract: In Shanghai in the mid-1930s, Lin Yu-tang was dubbed the ‘King of humour’. In Hong Kong in the 1980s, this title might well have been bestowed on Nury Vittachi, whose articles in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the ‘Lai See’ column of the South China Morning Post won him an enthusiastic reading public who relished his wry commentaries on the quirks of Hong Kong life as well as the revelations of scandal in government and business that accompanied them. Nury Vittachi is also a productive writer, and has thus far produced over a dozen comic books charting the highways and byways of Hong Kong, co-authored an expose´ of the local sex trade, and written a novel of cross-cultural encounters: Asian Values (1996). In addition, Vittachi has also played a leading role in setting up Dimsum, a new Hong-Kong-based journal for Asian writing in English. In the following article, Vittachi takes a humourous look at the idiosyncrasies of local English usage, not, it should be emphasised from the perspective of the linguist, but from that of the humourist.

West Africanisms in Limonese Creole English

Abstract: Costa Rican Limonese Creole (LC) is an English-based creole language showing substrate influence from, among other African languages, the Kwa languages of West Africa, in particular from Akan (Ghana). West Africanisms exhibited in LC include: serial verb constructions, reduplication, ideophones, and lexical retentions. The study of West Africanisms in LC contributes to the body of research on substrate influence on West Atlantic Creoles. This is done not from the extreme position that the majority of creole features can be attributed to substrate influence, but, as Mufwene wrote in 1990, that ‘creoles owe their formal features variably to both substrate influence and the bioprogram as well as from superstrate influence’ (p. 3). Substrate influence will be demonstrated through a comparison of LC and Akan morphophonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon.