Variation in English on the internet and its implications II: an empirical study of web registers in the Anglophone Caribbean

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Dagmar Deuber
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 452561886

The research proposed here constitutes phase II of the project on "variation in English on the internet and its implications", whose first phase was devoted to South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). The proposed phase II centers on five Anglophone Caribbean countries (Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, The Bahamas, Grenada, and Dominica). Previous corpus research on Anglophone Caribbean countries has mostly either focused on standard varieties in traditional spoken and written registers (e.g. using the International Corpus of English, especially ist Jamaican component) or on non-standard varieties in specific genres of computer-mediated communication (e.g. Creole spellings in forum posts), with few studies adopting a regional perspective. Phase I of this project has shown that the study of web registers can enable important contributions to underrepresented research areas in the field of World Englishes. Thus, there is scope for a broad and diversified study of Caribbean Englishes using a varied set of web registers (text messages, newspaper comments, web forums, websites, and social media posts like on the X platform) from multiple Caribbean countries. Three research foci have been identified for this purpose based on previous research on Caribbean Englishes as well as the research on South Asian English conducted in phase I: the study of functional variation using Multidimensional (MD) Analysis, the study of variation and conventionalization in English and Creole spellings, and the study of trans-local patterns of linguistic variation on the grammatical and discourse levels, as exemplified by second person plural pronouns and invariant tag questions, respectively. The overall aim of the research project is to extend the research on South Asia conducted in phase I by studying the various uses of English on the internet in the above-mentioned five Caribbean countries in order to allow for a more wide-reaching contribution to the field of World Englishes. A corpus comparable to the South Asian corpus compiled in phase I will be collected. Five research papers are planned. The first (MD Analysis) aims to determine the specific communicative purposes of English use in the Caribbean countries by comparing and contrasting the findings with the results from phase I. The aim of the second paper is to ascertain variation and conventionalization patterns of selected Standard English and Creole spellings. The third paper will analyze second person plural pronouns and invariant tag questions. The fourth paper will reflect on the challenges faced in collecting a multi-register corpus of web data from the Caribbean, especially by comparing these with the issues faced in phase I. The last paper will discuss the published findings of phase I and II to make a more general contribution to the field of World Englishes focusing in particular on the role of regional variation and the research potential of interactive web registers.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants