Standardization and language change in postcolonial speech communities: The Bahamas

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Stephanie Hackert
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 279047479

Whereas the creoles of the anglophone Caribbean have received a fair amount of attention in the past fifty years or so, much less is known about standards of English in the region. The proposed project aims to describe and explain the restructuring processes which have been taking place in educated Bahamian English in the postcolonial era. Two main research questions are to be answered: (1) Is the variety becoming Americanized? (2) What is the extent of the influence of the locally coexisting creole? In order to answer these questions, a representative database has been compiled using the International Corpus of English framework; this database will be supplemented by diachronic and attitude data, all of which will be subjected to rigorous quantitative (as well as qualitative) analysis.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants