Philippine Englishes

Decentering language: displacing Englishes from the study of Englishes

“…Studies on Philippine English have had a long historical trajectory, making it one of the earliest extensively researched postcolonial Englishes in the world, with Tay (1991) claiming early on that the "Philippines has perhaps produced the most comprehensive research on an indigenized variety of English" in Southeast Asia (p. 323). I would, therefore, no longer repeat much of what has been written about it for around 50 years nowfrom its linguistics (Llamson, 1979;Bautista, 2000) to its politics (Gonzalez, 1976;Author, 2001Author, , 2004; from its pragmatic and social dimensions (Gonzalez, 2004;Martin, 2014) to its pedagogical implications (Bernardo, 2011); from attitudes towards it (Bautista, 2001;Borlongan, 2009) to its nature as a contact language (Enriquez, 2012;Gonzales, 2017) but attempt to broaden the frame through which we study it with the hope that it will surface more clearly the entanglements of different sociolinguistic, cultural and socioeconomic conditions and phenomena which generate, animate and/or saturate the possibility of a phenomenon called 'Philippine English'. Suffice it to say that Philippine English studies for the past five decades have generated ample evidence of the patterned and socioculturally shaped use of English in the Philippines, consequently affirming the reality of the globalization/pluralization of English around the world.…”

Are new sounds learned in an FL context?

“…In the Philippines, for example, English is beginning to show signs of regional variation and internal differentiation (Gonzales, 2017) in the form of Philippine English, or the English language as spoken in the Philippines (Llamzon, 1997). In general, 'acrolect' Filipinos tend to emulate the norms of General American speech, although proficiency and phonological production vary widely across the population (Tayao, 2008).…”

Philippine English in retrospect and prospect

“…Gonzales's argument rests on his claim that Philippine English is best approached as Philippine English es . He maintains that there is a need to ‘redefine ‘Philippine English’ to include other ‘regional,’ social, and hybrid varieties’ (Gonzales, , p. 90). This position supports an argument I make elsewhere (Martin, ) that calls for a rethinking of PE as an Outer Circle variety in Kachru's Three Circles model.…”