The Lexis and Lexicogrammar of Sri Lankan English
The Lexis and Lexicogrammar of Sri Lankan English

Author: Tobias Bernaisch

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 9027268223

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This book offers the first in-depth corpus-based description of written Sri Lankan English. In comparison to British and Indian English, lexical and lexicogrammatical features of Sri Lankan English are analysed in a complex corpus environment comprising data from the respective components of the International Corpus of English, newspapers and online sources to explore the status of Sri Lankan English as a variety in its own right. The evolution of Sri Lankan English is depicted against the background of historical as well as sociolinguistic considerations and allows deriving a fine-grained model of the emergence of distinctive structural profiles of postcolonial Englishes developing in a multitude of norm orientations. This book is highly relevant to readers interested in Sri Lankan English and South Asian Englishes. It also offers more general sociolinguistic perspectives on the dynamics of postcolonial Englishes world-wide and on the inextricable link between language and identity.

English in East and South Asia
English in East and South Asia

Author: Ee Ling Low

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-29

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0429782063

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This book provides a first systematic and comprehensive account of English in East and South Asia (EESA) based on current research by scholars in the field. It has several unique features. Firstly, it provides a rigorous theoretical overview that is necessary for the understanding of EESA in relation to the burgeoning works on World Englishes as a discipline. Secondly, in the section on linguistic features, a systematic template was made available to the contributors so that linguistic coverage of the variety/varieties is similar. Thirdly, the vibrancy of the sociolinguistic and pragmatic realities that govern actual English in use in a wide variety of domains such as social media, the Internet and popular culture/music are discussed. Finally, this volume includes an extensive bibliography of works on EESA, thus providing a useful and valuable resource for language researchers, linguists, classroom educators, policymakers and anyone interested in the topic of EESA or World Englishes. This volume hopes to advance understanding of the spread and development of the different sub-varieties reflecting both the political developments and cultural norms in the region.

The Handbook of Asian Englishes
The Handbook of Asian Englishes

Author: Kingsley Bolton

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-09-14

Total Pages: 928

ISBN-13: 1118791657

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The first volume of its kind, focusing on the sociolinguistic and socio-political issues surrounding Asian Englishes The Handbook of Asian Englishes provides wide-ranging coverage of the historical and cultural context, contemporary dynamics, and linguistic features of English in use throughout the Asian region. This first-of-its-kind volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of the English language throughout nations in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Contributions by a team of internationally-recognized linguists and scholars of Asian Englishes and Asian languages survey existing works and review new and emerging areas of research in the field. Edited by internationally renowned scholars in the field and structured in four parts, this Handbook explores the status and functions of English in the educational institutions, legal systems, media, popular cultures, and religions of diverse Asian societies. In addition to examining nation-specific topics, this comprehensive volume presents articles exploring pan-Asian issues such as English in Asian schools and universities, English and language policies in the Asian region, and the statistics of English across Asia. Up-to-date research addresses the impact of English as an Asian lingua franca, globalization and Asian Englishes, the dynamics of multilingualism, and more. Examines linguistic history, contemporary linguistic issues, and English in the Outer and Expanding Circles of Asia Focuses on the rapidly-growing complexities of English throughout Asia Includes reviews of the new frontiers of research in Asian Englishes, including the impact of globalization and popular culture Presents an innovative survey of Asian Englishes in one comprehensive volume Serving as an important contribution to fields such as contact linguistics, World Englishes, sociolinguistics, and Asian language studies, The Handbook of Asian Englishes is an invaluable reference resource for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and instructors across these areas. Winner of the 2021 PROSE Humanities Category for Language & Linguistics

Corpora, Constructions, New Englishes
Corpora, Constructions, New Englishes

Author: Samantha Laporte

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2021-06-15

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 9027260087

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This book takes an integrated approach to the fields of Corpus Linguistics, Construction Grammar, and World Englishes through a thorough constructional and corpus-based examination of the patterning of the versatile high-frequency verb make in British English and New Englishes. It contributes to Construction Grammar theory by adopting a verb-based, rather than construction-based, perspective on argument structure. This allows the probing of the interface between verb-independent generalizations and item-specificity from an underexplored angle that offers new insights into the shape of the constructicon. From a variationist perspective, it seeks to (i) identify features of New Englishes and gauge whether these features exhibit traces of conventionalization, and (ii) assess whether the degree of institutionalization of the New Englishes correlates with linguistic behavior, both from a social and cognitive perspective, thereby contributing to the budding effort to integrate the cognitive and social dimensions into the modeling of linguistic variation in World Englishes.

The English Language in Hong Kong
The English Language in Hong Kong

Author: Stephen Evans

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-08-24

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1137506245

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This book presents an empirically-grounded sociolinguistic history of the English language in Hong Kong in the past 170 years. Using substantial sets of diachronic and synchronic data, it traces the changing status and functions of English in relation to spoken Cantonese, Mandarin and written Chinese in the key domains of government, education and business. The author tracks the rise of English-knowing bilingualism in the city’s Chinese community and explores the evolutionary dynamics of Hong Kong English. He also speculates on the future of English in the territory, particularly after 2047 when the ‘one country, two systems’ framework established by the Sino-British Joint Declaration is dismantled. Researchers and students working in the fields of sociolinguistics, English as a global language, world Englishes, applied linguistics and English-language education will find this book provides valuable information and insights about the uses and users of English in colonial and post-colonial Hong Kong. More generally, it makes a unique contribution to the literature on the diffusion and diversification of English worldwide.

Concessive constructions in varieties of English
Concessive constructions in varieties of English

Author: Ole Schützler

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 3961104220

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This volume presents a synchronic investigation of concessive constructions in nine varieties of English, based on data from the International Corpus of English. The structures of interest are complex sentences with a subordinate clause introduced by although, though or even though. Various functional and formal features are taken into account: (i) the semantic/pragmatic relation that holds between the propositions involved, (ii) the position of the subordinate clause, (iii) the conjunction that is used, and (iv) the syntax of the subordinate clause. By exploring patterns of variation from a Construction Grammar perspective, the study works towards an explanatory model, whose point of departure is at the functional (semantic/pragmatic) level, and which makes hierarchically organised predictions for different formal levels (clause position, choice of connective and realisation of the subordinate clause). It treats concessives as complex form-function pairings, and develops arguments and routines that may inform quantitative approaches to constructional variation more generally.

The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies
The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies

Author: Philip Seargeant

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-06

Total Pages: 1032

ISBN-13: 1351001701

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The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies provides a comprehensive overview of English Language Studies. The book takes a three-pronged approach to examine what constitutes the phenomenon of the English language; why and in what contexts it is an important subject to study; and what the chief methodologies are that are used to study it. In 30 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, this Handbook covers and critically examines: English Language Studies as a discipline that is changing and evolving in response to local and global pressures; definitions of English, including world Englishes, contact Englishes, and historical and colonial perspectives; the relevance of English in areas such as teaching, politics and the media; analysis of English situated in wider linguistics contexts, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic ethnography. The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies is essential reading for researchers and students working in fields related to the teaching and study of the English language in any context.

Gender in World Englishes
Gender in World Englishes

Author: Tobias Bernaisch

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-01-07

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1108482546

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This book uncovers how women and men from around the world really speak English based on empirical evidence.

Rethinking Linguistic Creativity in Non-native Englishes
Rethinking Linguistic Creativity in Non-native Englishes

Author: Sandra C. Deshors

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-07-19

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 9027263523

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At a time when the paradigm gap (Sridhar & Sridhar 1986) between the EFL and ESL research areas is attracting much scholarly attention, the contributions in the current volume explore this gap from the perspective of linguistic innovations across the two different types of non-native Englishes. In this endeavour, this volume unveils the many facets of linguistic innovations in non-native English varieties and explores the fine line between learners’ erroneous versus creative use of a target language. Adopting empirical, corpus-based approaches to portray linguistic innovations characteristic of EFL and ESL varieties, the contributions show how the interaction of linguistic and social forces influences the development of novel linguistic forms in both endonormative ESL contexts and exonormative EFL contexts. This volume is of relevance to linguists who are interested in the features of non-native English and who wish to gain a better understanding of the nature of innovations along the EFL – ESL continuum.Originally published as a special issue of International Journal of Learner Corpora Research 2:2 (2016).

Corpus Linguistics and Sociolinguistics
Corpus Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

Author: Beke Hansen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-12-24

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 900438152X

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In Corpus Linguistics and Sociolinguistics, Beke Hansen analyses variation and change in the modal systems of three second-language varieties of English in Asia by taking a sociolinguistic approach to corpus data. Her study focuses on the modal and semi-modal verbs of strong obligation and necessity in Hong Kong English, Indian English, and Singapore English based on the relevant ICE component corpora. She adopts a typologically-informed perspective on variation in World Englishes by comparing the structures of the speakers’ first languages with the structures of the emergent varieties in the expression of epistemic modality. Beyond this, she analyses language change by constructing apparent-time scenarios to compensate for the lack of diachronic corpora in World Englishes.