British English Research Articles

“Dude” and “Dudette”, “Bro” and “Sis”: A Diachronic Study of Four Address Terms in the TV Corpus

This corpus linguistics study offers a diachronic perspective on masculine and feminine address terms by analyzing the frequencies of the pairs “dude”/”dudette” and “bro”/”sis” in the 325 million-word TV Corpus. Results show an increase of the frequency of “dude” and “bro”, a quasi-absence of “dudette”, and a stable but low frequency of “sis”. They suggest that “dude” and “bro” have taken on generic meanings, while the usage of “sis” remains kinship-specific. They also show that familiarizers are more frequent in American English than in British and Canadian English, and that their frequency in the TV Corpus is genre-dependent, with animated series and reality television shows being more conducive to their use.

Individual profiles amidst a multiethnolect: Acoustic hetereogeneity in London English

Multicultural London English (MLE; Kerswill and Torgersen 2008; Cheshire et al., 2011) arose in working class areas of London around 30 years ago through intensive, multiethnic social contact (Kerswill and Torgersen, 2021). The variety’s highly systematic phonological system has been seen as displacing traditional London vernacular varieties including Cockney, which have moved further East (Fox, 2015). MLE and Standard Southern British English are two strands among many, interwoven with features of the earlier London vernacular and features of non-MLE varieties (Sharma and Sankaran, 2011). Using preliminary data from a new project, Generations of London English, we present an acoustic analysis that shows both the stability and emerging maturity of MLE as well as strands of continuity from the past. The GOAT vowel shows a diverse range of variants indexing social class, ethnicity, age, and gender. By contrast, all Londoners participate in GOOSE-fronting, which is thus primarily an index of age, and women lead FOOT-fronting, a city-wide change showing less ethnic and social class sensitivity. A generalized use of labels such as MLE risks mischaracterizing the sociophonetic reality. We argue for analysis of individual phonetic profiles as unique intersections of historically layered features, diffusing differently through a heterogeneous population.

Unveiling Pakistani English: A Linguistic and Cultural Odyssey of Features, Evolution, and Distinctiveness

Pakistani English, recognized as a unique non-native, emerging, and indigenous variety of English, has evolved into an independent norm-dependent, and institutionalized language form. Diverging from Standard British English, it exhibits distinctive features in morphology, syntax, lexis, grammar, and phonology, shaped by socio-cultural, religious, and regional influences, contributing to its singular linguistic and cultural identity. Utilized across various domains, including education, commerce, and science and technology, Pakistani English plays a pivotal role within the Pakistani context. This comprehensive study sheds light on Pakistani English, encompassing its historical development, and conducting an in-depth exploration of its linguistic characteristics, namely lexical, morphological, syntactic, and phonological features. Additionally, it meticulously delineates the distinctions between Pakistani English and Standard British English. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative analysis of linguistic data with ethnographic insights, providing a holistic understanding of Pakistani English's intricate interplay between language and culture. The study underscores the significance of these findings in advancing the fields of linguistic and cultural studies, offering valuable insights into the complex dynamics of language evolution and its profound impact on cultural identity and communication in the contemporary world.

The Study of Various Errors of Language in Local News Items of English Newspapers of Southern Punjab

Our media language needs to be improved. Press reporters, hosts, and anchors making so many grammatical errors is excruciating. They keep making mistakes on common stuff. When communication was limited to printing, spelling errors predominated. With electronic media sweeping the world, we see various problems besides spelling errors. Simply observe television broadcast tickers for errors. Typesetting before computers caused many spelling problems. With computerized word processors, there is no excuse. Readers are forgiving, so it is a rush to print. As for grammar, some of the text uses Indian English phrases that may be improper in British or American English. Sloppy grammar is another issue. Associated Press of Pakistan Lahore Bureau required me to write and edit news. I found various linguistic faults in Pakistan's foremost official news agency reporters. English newspapers have many errors. That led me to study newspaper inaccuracies. Objectives are to examine Southern Punjab English newspaper local news linguistic faults and to examine the causes of language faults in Southern Punjab English newspapers' local news. The local English newspapers were read. Various language errors were noted. The errors were categorized, and their repetition percentage was computed. Academic qualifications and journalism experience of journalists were collected. A total of 79 news articles from both publications were examined. The following graphs, including a diagram of a pie, bars, and various other graphs, show the proportion of errors that were discovered. According to Martin R. Maier's study, readers need to fix errors. Readers can report errors by email and a toll-free number in the New York Times daily. Pakistani publications need a similar approach so readers may correct errors. Unfortunately, none will recognize their mistakes and take such action.

Syntactic variation across the grammar: modelling a complex adaptive system

While language is a complex adaptive system, most work on syntactic variation observes a few individual constructions in isolation from the rest of the grammar. This means that the grammar, a network which connects thousands of structures at different levels of abstraction, is reduced to a few disconnected variables. This paper quantifies the impact of such reductions by systematically modelling dialectal variation across 49 local populations of English speakers in 16 countries. We perform dialect classification with both an entire grammar as well as with isolated nodes within the grammar in order to characterize the syntactic differences between these dialects. The results show, first, that many individual nodes within the grammar are subject to variation but, in isolation, none perform as well as the grammar as a whole. This indicates that an important part of syntactic variation consists of interactions between different parts of the grammar. Second, the results show that the similarity between dialects depends heavily on the sub-set of the grammar being observed: for example, New Zealand English could be more similar to Australian English in phrasal verbs but at the same time more similar to UK English in dative phrases.

The Role of Gender in the Realisation of Apologies in Local Council Meetings: A Variational Pragmatic Approach in British and New Zealand English

Abstract This variational pragmatic study investigates the realisation of apologies in local council meetings in New Zealand and Britain. Specifically, it aims to establish to what extent the macro-social factors gender and region influence the choice and combination of apology strategies. The data are drawn from two multi-modal corpora, The Corpus of Australian and New Zealand Spoken English (CoANZSE) and The Corpus of British Isles Spoken English (CoBISE). Our findings reveal general shared trends both across the two regional varieties and the two gender groups. Apologies are mostly realised by sorry forms and speakers prefer to use just one single apology strategy. Nevertheless, within these general trends, some distinct gender patterns are manifest. Overall, though, our findings indicate that the influence of gender and region on the realisation of apologies is limited. The communicative setting of council meetings seems to exert a bigger impact on the apology behaviour of the councillors.

L2 acquisition of Wh-interrogatives at the syntax-discourse interface: interface hypothesis again.

This study sets out to answer one major question: do linguistic phenomena relating to syntax-discourse interface constitute difficulty for Yemeni learners of English? It presents data from an experiment on the acquisition of L2 English wh-interrogatives by L1 Yemeni Arabic speakers, aiming to provide empirical evidence either in support of the Interface Hypothesis (IH) or against it. Two learner groups, intermediate and advanced, were recruited as participants of the study, and a native speaker group of (British) English was also recruited as the control group. The advanced group learners have a near-native proficiency in English. The data utilized consisted of 20 (D-)iscourse linked and non-d-linked wh-interrogatives presented to the three groups in the form of a (decontextualized) bi-modal multiple-choice paced judgement task. Results showed that both learner groups, specifically the advanced learners, performed near-native like in the non-d-linked, but far short of near/native-like performance in the d-linked wh-interrogatives. The study concluded that L2 learners' English is still vulnerable at the syntax-discourse interface, hence supporting the IH.

LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL PECULIARITIES OF NIGERIAN SCREENPLAYS

The article deals with the features of linguistic and cultural picture of the world representation on the example of Nigerian screenplays. The authors of the research analyze the features of the Nigerian cinematographic art which is the reflection of the Nigeria national picture of the world, that is subject to the dominant influence of the British English language influence. In the course of the work, the key characteristics of the screenplays of Nigeria are revealed, viz. the influence of the phenomenon called creolization which is the forced adaptation process of the British English language to the norms of the Nigerian autochthonous languages and cultures. The key characteristics of the Nigerian screenplays grammatical structures are due to the interference processes of autochthonous Nigerian languages Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo with English.

The search for linguistically coherent accents

Abstract Linguistic research refers to many related accents in Southeast England: Standard Southern British English (SSBE), Received Pronunciation (RP), Estuary English (EE), Cockney and Multicultural London English (MLE). However, there is inconsistency and imprecision in the demarcation of these accents based on linguistic and social factors. This paper delineates accents in Southeast England based on patterns of linguistic co-variation which we then relate to social predictors. We applied functional Principal Component Analysis to F1 and F2 measurements for diphthongs extracted from wordlist and passage productions for 193 young, south-eastern speakers. Principal Components were entered into a clustering analysis that identified patterns of linguistic co-occurrence. Three clusters emerge, broadly aligning with SSBE, MLE and EE for both linguistic and social factors. We illustrate the linguistic centre of gravity of the three diphthong systems for use as reference points in future research, and we discuss the need to make explicit how accents are defined.

Articles in Zimbabwean English: A corpus-based analysis

This study investigated the usage frequency of articles in the Zimbabwean English (ZE) corpus and the International corpus of English Great Britain (ICE-GB) for British English (BrE) to determine whether there are variations between the two corpora. A log-likelihood test was used to determine whether the observed variations were statistically significant. In addition, eight morphosyntactic features that are reported to show variation by Kortmann, Lunkenheimer and Ehret (2020) were used to determine whether innovation and nativisation occur in ZE and to ascertain the stage of ZE in the dynamic model (DM). A comparative analysis revealed statistically significant variations in the normalised frequency (per 10 000 words) of the indefinite article, with the ICE-GB recording a higher normalised frequency. Regarding the zero article, the normalised frequency was higher in the ZE corpus compared to the ICE-GB. There were no significant differences in the usage frequencies of the definite article in the two corpora. The findings indicate that the eight features belong to different categories from A to D. Data analysis showed that ZE is at stage 2 of the DM because features 62, 63 and 65 existed, but were extremely rare, and at stage 3 since feature 67 was neither pervasive nor extremely rare.

L1 influence on stress placement by English language teachers in Anambra State (Nigeria)

Despite the availability of a number of studies on stress in Nigerian English, scant attention has been paid to patterns of stress placement in connected speech by Anambra State English language teachers, especially insights that are supported with acoustic evidence. Bearing in mind this gap as well as their training in the language and its expected standardising role, this study describes the patterns that characterise stress assignment to words in the context of connected speech by Anambra State English language teachers, while tracking possible L1 influence. A short passage which was read by 50 Anambra State teachers and audio-recorded, in addition to naturally occurring classroom speech, constitute the data. The analysis, which was done perceptually and acoustically, shows that when placed against the constitutionally mandated patterns of Standard British English (SBE), the teachers have variable and unstable stress placement patterns on words in connected speech. They produced stressed syllables with higher F0, intensity and duration than SBE. Out of the 50 participants, only 21% had patterns that are close to SBE, while L1 influence was evident in 79% of the participants. This evidence does not support the continuous exonormative role of SBE for Nigerian English.

L1 Influence on Stop Consonant Production: A Case Study of Malaysian Mandarin-English Bilinguals

ABSTRACT Although English plays an important role in the linguistic repertoire of Malaysian speakers, there have been limited acoustic studies on the phonological aspect of English spoken in Malaysia. This study investigates the phonetic variation of the English initial stop consonants produced by 10 Mandarin–English bilinguals by measuring voice onset time (VOT) and closure duration as the primary acoustic cues. The effects of place of articulation are also examined. The results are then compared with Mandarin (ChM) and British English (BrE). Findings show phonetic variation in Chinese-influenced English (ChE) from both ChM and BrE with a tendency of assimilation towards BrE. The intermediate data distribution of VOT in ChE also shows weaker voicing contrast. While previous studies suggest closure duration as a secondary cue for the acquisition of stop consonants, it seems to carry an equivalent weight in the voicing distinction of ChM. However, ChE shows greater similarity to BrE with closure duration playing less role in voicing distinction. While bidirectional influence of both first language and BrE in the phonetic realisation of initial stop consonants among Mandarin–English bilinguals is observed, language-specific and social factors may set Malaysian Mandarin–English bilinguals apart due to the complex linguistic settings in multilingual Malaysia.

Lexical change and stability in 100 years of English in US newspapers

This study explores diachronic variation across approximately one hundred years of the newspaper register in US American English from 1920 to 2019 as captured in the Corpus of Historical American English (Davies, 2010). Informed by a similar study of lexical change in British English (Baker, 2011), the analysis identified high-frequency words exhibiting the greatest increases and decreases in use as well as those words demonstrating stability across the four sampling periods: 1920–29, 1950–59, 1980–89, 2010–19. The process to identify words of change and stability began first with the application of a cumulative frequency threshold; coefficient of variance and Kendall's Tau correlation coefficient were then calculated to aid in identification. In other words, the process targeted high-frequency words whose use has demonstrated the greatest change or stability. The discussion presents the three resulting word lists (increasing, decreasing, stable) and reports concordance and collocation analysis of select words from each list to gain insight into the underlying factors informing lexical change and stability.

Relative clauses in written Hong Kong English: a corpus-based study of untimed student essays

ABSTRACT Cantonese English learners in Hong Kong appear to confront substantial difficulty in their development of English relative clauses, yet knowledge on learners’ development of such a language structure is limited. The present corpus-based study aims at verifying predictions of hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses with data from written Hong Kong English and identifying quantitative and qualitative attributes of relative clauses in Hong Kong English in comparison with their counterparts in British English in a bid to inform second language grammar instruction. Language data for the study were collected from the Hong Kong and Great Britain components of the International Corpus of English. 'wh' relatives and 'that' relatives in the data were identified from untimed student essays in the corpus through concordance search. The Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis appears to be supported by data from written Hong Kong English whilst the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy and the Subject–Object Hierarchy Hypothesis are only partially supported. Relative clauses appear much more frequently in written British English than in written Hong Kong English, and some attributes of non-standard relative clauses are identified.

Corpus-pragmatic perspectives on the contemporary weakening of fuck: The case of teenage British English conversation

This study examines the pragmatic functions of fuck among British English teenagers in casual conversation in two youth language corpora from the 1990s and 2010s. It applies a corpus-pragmatics approach to explore how the ongoing weakening of the taboo strength of fuck in the perception of young speakers is realised in usage data. The major functions observed involve a predominance of idiomatic, emphatic and emotionally expressive functions. Conversely, usage associated with potentially abusive functions, including literal reference to sexual intercourse, is infrequent. Our observations are interpreted in the context of delexicalization and related long-term diachronic processes, whereby contemporary usage of fuck among teenagers is characterised in terms of semi-delexicalized, pragmatically strengthened usage with weakened taboo status. The article also evaluates the interpretation of idiomatic usage from a functional perspective, and contributes to methodological considerations of the use of spoken corpora for pragmatic research.

Lancsbox software options for the prospective investigation of the multilingual corpus for European studies

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the lexeme European in two language variations (British and American English) based on the built-in corpora represented by newspapers, fiction, etc. that are licensed by LancsBox software (AmE06 and BE06 respectively). The investigation describes the algorithms of implementing linguistic research as part of the project taught during the course “Multilingual Corpus and its Resources for European Studies (KNLU)” (Erasmus+ Program). The LancsBox user-friendly software, that works with major operating systems, has proved to be a powerful manager for compiling and using the existing corpora. It enables to visualize the textual data based on the following software package tools: KWIC, GraphColl, Words, Ngrams, Wizard, etc. essential for the study of a specific linguistic unit. The statistical analysis of both corpora under analysis has revealed that the word European belongs to the lexemes that are seldom employed in the language. The comparison of the two variations has shown that the word occurs in similar top-ten frequent collocates, however, the GraphColl tool visualization has indicated the major differences between two сorpora. Thus, in British English Corpus N+N structures are more commonly employed and are more vibrant than in American English Corpus. The t-test has proved a statistically significant difference between the corpora with regard to the linguistic variable European. These data may testify to cultural differences between the users of two language variations taking into account that both сorpora represent the same time frame.

An investigation of Moroccan EFL Learners’ Explicit Attitudes towards World Englishes: Pedagogical Implications

The present study seeks to investigate the attitudes of Moroccan EFL learners (MEFLLs) towards different varieties of English speech (World Englishes (WE)). The study utilises a direct method of attitude measurement as the study’s participants are directly asked about their own explicit attitudes towards six English varieties of English speech[1] (namely, American English, British English, Indian English, Filipino English, Japanese English and Thai English). A sample of 544 MEFLLs was recruited in the study. The findings of the study show that MEFLLs’ attitudes towards varieties of English are aligned, to some extent, with those of previous studies conducted elsewhere (Jindapitak & Teo, 2012; Chien, 2018; Almegren, 2017). For example, it was found that MEFLLs, on the one hand, prefer Inner Circle Englishes (ICE) over Outer Circle Englishes (OCE) and Outer Circle Englishes over Expanding Circle Englishes (ECE) on the other hand. Another interesting finding is that the participants surveyed are already aware of English language variation, and they are willing to learn more about the different varieties of English spoken worldwide. Generally speaking, the Moroccan context seems to be a fertile setting for the discussion of World Englishes-related issues as the participants do, in fact, recognise and appreciate the sociolinguistic variation exhibited in the English language. The study concludes with a number of pedagogical implications for the choice of linguistic model(s) to be employed in EFL classrooms both inside and outside Morocco.
 
 [1] American English, AmE; British English, BrE; Indian English, InE; Filipino English, FiE; Japanese English, JpE; Thai English, ThE

Cultural Conceptualization of Congratulatory Happy Events in British English and Turkish: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Abstract This study investigates the cultural conceptualization of congratulatory happy events in British English and Turkish and discusses them cross-culturally. A lexical search was carried out in various corpora from the newspaper genre using the verbs congratulate in English and its dictionary counterparts tebrik etmek and kutlamak in Turkish along with their various lexical forms, which not only report the act of congratulating but also perform it. The results of the study showed that there were cultural differences and similarities in the conceptualization of congratulatory happy events. It was found that there were subtle differences between the events of tebrik etmek and kutlamak in the Turkish data and that the Turkish tebrik etmek was closer to congratulating although congratulating events were relatively more restricted. This study contributes to the socio-cultural dimension of congratulating and provides a cross-cultural understanding of congratulatory happy events with implications for foreign language education and intercultural communication.

Automated conversion of numeral to words in Hausa language

Working with cardinal numbers is undoubtedly an integral part of our everyday life, which tells us about quantity. They are used for instance, in numeracy lessons, on receipts, slips, tellers in banks, to represent figures on documents, to tell time and are often represented inconsistently. However, the words form representations are often inconsistent with the standard Hausa. Standard Hausa as compared to other languages such as Arabic and British English, the Numeric System is characterized by a multitude of concatenations as well as dialect variations which causes misinterpretations and confusion. Also, initial findings show that no such automation published work has been done specifically in the numerical system of Standard Hausa language. In order to fill the gap, this study proposed an algorithm for converting numerals to words for the numeric system of Hausa language automatically in standard practice. The aim of the study is to examine the effect of iteration and mapping structures algorithm for converting numeral to cardinal form in standard Hausa language. The algorithm has been tested on approximately one hundred million sequences of numbers produced accurate results. The results showed that our method is successful in automating conversion of numerals to words with a high precision.

A reflexive approach to researching bilingualism in Wales: language, legitimacy and positionality

ABSTRACT This paper engages with the negotiation of insider and outsider researcher identities in the context of Welsh-English bilingualism in Wales. It aims to develop a reflexive approach to researching bilingualism, foregrounding the actions and experiences of doing bilingual research in a minority language context. Taking data from education and business as our starting point, we present two self-reflexive accounts of how our research identities, specifically our language profiles, (as an L1 British English speaker and an LX English user, both of whom have only limited understanding of Welsh), and positionalities are questioned, (de)legitimised and assessed in our research projects. In light of this, we reflect also on the methodological consequences and decisions that were taken during the research process. Taken together, these two reflective perspectives allow us to generate new theoretical, methodical and analytic understandings of language within the bilingual Welsh-English context specifically and researcher reflexivity more broadly.