Samoan English: An emerging variety in the South Pacific

Abstract

AbstractWhile much has been published on Outer Circle varieties of English in Asia and Africa, Outer Circle Englishes in the South Pacific (SPE) are still relatively unknown. This paper focuses on Samoan English, a newly emerging variety in Samoa, an island state in Polynesia. The paper discusses the role of English in Samoa's past and present and describes major structural features of Samoan English in terms of its phonology, lexicon and grammar. Local discourse and pragmatic strategies will also be touched upon. The study is based on recordings of Samoan speakers made during a field trip and a newspaper corpus of 300,000 words from the Samoa Observer, a local newspaper. The study demonstrates that we can indeed speak of Samoan English as a variety in the making and that it is useful to consider SPE to gain a better understanding of the evolution and nature of Outer Circle Englishes in general.