(Un)democratic Epicene Pronouns in Asian Englishes: A Register Approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-313
Author(s):  
Lucía Loureiro-Porto
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Outer Circle ◽  
High Preference ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
Hong Kong English

The search for gender equality in language use is one of the most frequently cited cases of linguistic democratization (e.g., Farrelly & Seoane 2012:394). At the grammatical level, this process implies, for example, that pronouns such as generic he used with epicene antecedents are being replaced by singular they or by combined he or she, at least in inner-circle varieties of English. However, outer-circle varieties remain underexplored in this regard. For this reason, this paper analyzes three Asian English varieties, namely Hong Kong English (HKE), Indian English (IndE), and Singapore English (SgE), based on the relevant ICE corpora. More than 58,000 examples were retrieved from the corpora and manually filtered, resulting in 2120 tokens of epicene pronouns. The results show a very different picture for each variety. While overall HKE shows a high preference for the more democratic options they and he or she, IndE and SgE exhibit different patterns. IndE shows singular they in speech, but it is almost non-existent in writing, while in SgE there is a sharp contrast between the most spontaneous spoken register and all other registers. After testing different hypotheses, the findings are explained in socio-cultural terms, as a result of democratization possibly related to women’s movements in those territories.

Innovative conversions in South-East Asian Englishes

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Horch
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Language Use ◽  
East Asian ◽  
British English ◽  
Outer Circle ◽  
Usage Frequency ◽  
The Status ◽  
Institutional Status ◽  
Hong Kong English

Singapore English and Hong Kong English started out as contact varieties and developed into ESL varieties belonging to the Outer Circle (Kachru 1985). Both varieties show a similar contact ecology (Chinese), but differ in their socio-institutional status in the Dynamic Model (Schneider 2003, 2007). By analyzing innovative verb-to-noun conversion in these two varieties, and comparing them to British English, this study shows that despite the obvious similarities in substratum, the usage frequency of conversion in both varieties differs considerably. These findings, similar to — most recently — Deshors (2014) and Gilquin (2015), call into question the established notion of ESL in general and the status of SgE and HKE as ESL varieties in particular. In order to accurately reflect contemporary language use, it is reasonable to conceptualize the notion of ESL as a continuum and to situate HKE and SgE at opposite ends.

Language variation in the West Midlands

English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-60
Author(s):  
Natalie Braber
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Newfoundland And Labrador ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
The West ◽  
Indian English ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
West Midlands ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Hong Kong English

West Midlands English: Birmingham and The Black Country forms part of the series Dialects of English which has so far included volumes on varieties such as: Urban North-Eastern English, Hong Kong English, Newfoundland and Labrador English, Irish English, Indian English, New Zealand English, Singapore English and Northern and Insular Scots. As such, it follows the general format of the series which covers the history and geography of a region, chapters on phonetics and phonology, grammar, lexis and a survey of previous works and bibliography. This contribution to the series follows this same general format and makes it applicable to the West Midlands region of the UK.

scholarly journals Linguistic democratization in HKE across registers: The effects of prescriptivism

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Lucía Loureiro-Porto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Outer Circle ◽  
Inner Circle ◽  
The One ◽  
Hong Kong English

The second half or the twentieth century witnessed the emergence and expansion of linguistic changes associated to a number of processes related to changes in socio-cultural norms, such as colloquialization, informalization and democratization. This paper focuses on the latter, a phenomenon that has been claimed to be responsible for several ongoing changes in inner-circle varieties of English, but is rather unexplored in outer-circle varieties. The paper explores Hong Kong English and studies two linguistic sets of markers that include items that represent the (old) undemocratic alternative and the (new) democratic option, namely modal must vs. semi-modals have (got) to, need (to) and want to, and epicene pronouns including undemocratic generic he, on the one hand, and democratic singular they and conjoined he or she, on the other. Using the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English, and adopting a register approach, the paper reaches conclusions regarding the role played by prescriptivism in the diffusion of democratic items.

scholarly journals 'They are going tomorrow, isn't it?' On the Use of Tag Questions in Indian English and Hong Kong English

10.29007/3jr2 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Criado Peña
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Standard Pattern ◽  
British English ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Standard Rule ◽  
Tag Questions ◽  
Hong Kong English ◽  
Positive Statement

Tag questions in standard British English (BrE) follow a standard pattern consisting of an operator and a subject. This operator generally coincides with the preceding statement while the auxiliary “do” is the choice when the operator is absent. More importantly, a negative tag is generally attached to a positive statement and vice versa (i.e. you know her, don’t you?) (Quirk et al. 1985: 810).The Asian varieties of English are an exception insofar as apparently no standard rule is observed. The present paper investigates the use and distribution of regular and irregular tag questions in Indian English and Hong Kong English with the following objectives: a) to analyze the distribution of the construction of regular and irregular tag questions across these varieties; b) to assess their frequency across speech and writing, text types included; and c) to evaluate the sociolinguistic variation, if any. For the purpose, the Indian and Hong Kong components of the International Corpus of English (ICE-Ind and ICE-HK) will be used as sources of analysis.

Examining authenticity from an ELF perspective: the development of listening test papers in Hong Kong (1986–2018)

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-165
Author(s):  
Jim Yee Him Chan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Communicative Strategies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Hong Kong English

Abstract The present study examined the degree of situational and interactional authenticity in Hong Kong’s listening examination papers throughout the history of colonisation and globalisation (1986–2018) with reference to world Englishes and particularly English as a lingua franca (ELF) research. By means of a detailed content analysis, the evaluation of situational authenticity was based on the context of language use (e.g., speech event type, nature of interaction, identity and accent of interlocutor) in the audio samples, while the evaluation of interactional authenticity centred on the speaker’s use of communicative strategies. Our findings suggest that the speech samples generally reflected the changing situations of language use over time by increasingly adopting dialogue (rather than monologue) and locally/globally relevant language use contexts, but only included native-speaker and (from 2012) Hong Kong English accents as speech models. Despite the lack of non-standardness and speakers of different cultures in the speech samples, there were numerous instances of explicitness strategies relevant to ELF interactions throughout the sample, probably owing to the intent of the listening examination to highlight key information for the candidates. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these trends in listening paper design for the future development of English language teaching from an ELF perspective.

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