New Englishes, New Methods

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Guyanne Wilson
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 413007425

The main aim of the New Englishes, New Methods network is to critically reflect upon the research methods currently used in the field of World/ New Englishes research. New Englishes research deals with varieties of English spoken not in traditional first language contexts, like the Britain and North American, but in countries within the African continent, such as Nigeria, South East Asian territories, such as the Philippines or Singapore, and the Caribbean, such as Jamaica or Trinidad. Research on these varieties has to date been carried out with tools and approaches developed in and for traditional first language contexts, an approach to research which though convenient, might not be altogether appropriate. Thus the network questions the applicability of these methods in non-Western, multilingual, New Englishes contexts. Methods under examination include those used in the areas of: phonetics and phonology (including but not limited to lexical sets and various forms of instrumental analysis); discourse analysis and pragmatics (especially discourse completion tasks and experiments); syntax and morphology (vis à vis the use of corpora for the description of the grammatical systems of New Englishes); and language attitudes studies (particularly indirect methods). Specifically, the network considers the suitability of these methods for data collection in contexts and among speakers to which and for whom these methods are alien. It also examines the extent to which current available data are representative of speakers of New Englishes and whether they are authentic examples of English as it is spoken by its users. A further aim of the network is to facilitate discourse with international scholars who also work in New Englishes, and whose insights will enrich our exploration significantly. Thus, the network proposes to hold a series of workshops, to which international researchers from Australia, Ghana, and the United States are invited. These workshops are not only intended to enable discussion, but also to allow scholars to come together to produce new methods for researching these varieties, as well as improve upon already existing approaches. In addition to producing a series of working papers in research methods in New Englishes, the network will produce a book of articles dealing with this topic. It is hoped that this book will appear in the Varieties of English Around the World series, published with John Benjamins.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Michael Westphal