Dialect stabilization and speaker awareness in non‐native varieties of English¹

Abstract

Research on indigenized non-native varieties of English has aimed to distinguish these varieties from individual second language learning in structural and social terms (B. Kachru 1983;Platt, Weber and Ho 1984; Cheshire 1991); however, quantitative evidence of this divergence remains scarce. Through an analysis of a range of Indian English speakers in a contact situation in the United States, this study distinguishes developing dialect features from second language learning features and explores the concomitant emergence of dialect consciousness. First, an implicational analysis shows that some non-standard variables (past marking, copulause, agreement) exhibit a second language learning cline while others (articles) form a more stable, incipient non-standard system shared to some extent by all speakers; a multivariate analysis suggests that both sets of variables are governed by proficiency levels. Next, the explanatory scope of proficiency is assessed by examining the use of selected phonological variants (rhoticity, l-velarization, aspiration). The use of these features resembles native-like style-shifting, as it appears to be more sensitive to speakers' attitudinal stances than to proficiency levels. This points to the importance of understanding emerging speaker awareness and perceptions of stigma, risk, and value in new varieties of English.

Phonetic convergence towards American English by Indian agents in international service encounters

“…Everyday English usage, a component of proficiency along with education and exposure (Sharma 2005) was not as uniform: Ten participants reported 5-10 hours pd (six EXP and four NOTEXP); five reported 0-5 hours pd (all except one are NOTEXP) and only one reported 10-15 hours pd (EXP). Judging by the self-reporting of some of these participants, English is not always the lingua franca of the office outside of telephone work.…”

“…Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that even less proficient speakers of English can gain sociolinguistic mastery in an L2 (Beebe and Giles 1984;Adamson and Regan 1991). Sharma (2005) shows that relatively low proficiency speakers of English from India who have migrated to the US demonstrate AmE phonological features if they are strongly motivated to integrate. We aim to investigate whether there are such speakers in the present study.…”

“…In this study trill /r/ and null /r/ are treated as the Indian variants, and approximant postvocalic /r/ as the American variant (following Sharma 2005). Landmarks which ended in /r/ but followed by a vowel were discounted.…”

Indian English – An Emerging Epicentre? A Pilot Study on Light Verbs in Web-derived Corpora of South Asian Englishes

“…16 This was also the approach used in Mukherjee and Hoffmann 14 Zero articles are quite commonly used in IndE (see Sedlatschek 2009, 197-227); Sharma's (2005) sociolinguistic study of first-generation immigrants from India in the US indicates that zero determiners are a feature that is retained in the diaspora, even by speakers who are otherwise close to using standard, native-like English. 15 Again, the sequence hotly chased is attested on the World Wide Web (in IndE but also on pages from the US and the UK).…”

Postvocalic (r) in urban Indian English

“…Some studies suggest that a finer distinction, between trill, approximant or flap, and null realization, is necessary in the Indian context (Sahgal and Agnihotri, 1988;Sharma, 2005). The IndE liquid /r/ is hypothesized to also manifest as trilled, both in word initial consonant clusters, e.g.…”