Abstract
‘Lesser-known varieties of English’ (Schreier, 2009; Schreier et al., 2010) have received increasing attention in the last decade. In particular, Englishes on islands with historical and political ties to the United Kingdom or the United States have been described, such as the varieties in Bermuda (Eberle, 2021), Samoa (Biewer, 2020), and Tristan da Cunha (Schreier, 2009). However, Madeira has hitherto received extraordinarily little attention, although it used to be home to a small but enormously influential group of British expatriates who controlled large parts of the economy and owned a considerable amount of land on the island. Even today, approximately 1,000 emigrants from the United Kingdom live permanently in Madeira, which constitutes the second largest group of foreign residents (DREM, 2020b: 11). ‘Madeira’ refers to both a Portuguese archipelago and this archipelago's main island located ca. 737 km west of Morocco's coast (see Figure 1). Overall, Madeira had a population of 267,785 in the last official census from 2011 and is a highly popular tourist destination, with roughly 8 million overnight stays by visitors in 2019 (DREM, 2020a).
Highlights
Apart from its mountainous beauty, Madeira has complex relations to England and the English language
English has become indispensable as the language of tourism, the dominant economic factor on the island. In touristic contexts it functions as a Lingua Franca and is constantly in contact with Portuguese and with the tourists’ languages. In this first study of English in Madeira with a World Englishes focus, we provide an overview of the variety by briefly discussing its history, its importance in the tourism sector, some linguistic features identified in a small corpus of Madeiran Airbnb entries, and the theoretical framing of English in Madeira
What made Madeira a quasi-British colony was certainly not the military presence but rather the pervasive and continual economic influence British expatriates exerted. While this started with sugar and wine trade, tourism soon became a central source of income for both Madeirans and British citizens living on the island
Summary
‘Lesser-known varieties of English’ (Schreier, 2009; Schreier et al, 2010) have received increasing attention in the last decade. In particular, Englishes on islands with historical and political ties to the United Kingdom or the United States have been described, such as the varieties in Bermuda (Eberle, 2021), Samoa (Biewer, 2020), and Tristan da Cunha (Schreier, 2009). English has become indispensable as the language of tourism, the dominant economic factor on the island In touristic contexts it functions as a Lingua Franca and is constantly in contact with Portuguese and with the tourists’ languages. In this first study of English in Madeira with a World Englishes focus, we provide an overview of the variety by briefly discussing its history, its importance in the tourism sector, some linguistic features identified in a small corpus of Madeiran Airbnb entries, and the theoretical framing of English in Madeira
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