Phonological patterning for English as a lingua franca in Asia: Implications for norms and practice in multilingual Asia

Abstract

AbstractWith the rapid economic development and the increasing activities in trade, education, cultural events, and tourism in Asia, more and more people are using English as a lingua franca (ELF). The Asian Corpus of English (ACE) project has, as one of its defining goals, the collection of a million-word corpus of naturally occurring speech in order to analyse and describe the distinctive linguistic features of Asian ELF and to identify shared features if any. However, little research has been done hitherto on the features of ELF in the Asian context. This paper, therefore, presents a description of the phonological patterns found in ELF. Specifically, the paper focuses, inter alia, on the monophthong vowels and rhythmic patterning in the spoken interactions of ELF speakers from the data as well as the implications for policy and practice of ELF in multilingual Asia. The study is based on the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) data collected in Singapore by the National Institute of Education (NIE) team. Participants in the study include speakers from China, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and India. The paper aims to deepen the boundaries of thinking about shared pronunciation patternings of ELF speakers in Asia and considers the implications of such shared patternings and norms on practice in multilingual Asia.