Towards an Inclusive Description of the Phonology of Philippine English

Dr. Annie Mae C. Berowa

Mindanao State University – Main Campus

Marawi City, Philippines

Saturday, October 30, 2021

10:00 AM -12:00 NN via Zoom

Abstract

Over the years, there has been an increasing interest in the identification of the phonological features of Englishes around the world since it is at the level of phonology that shows the most distinctive characteristics of varieties. This presentation explores the Philippine English phonology that has been extensively studied and documented since 1969. First, we shall illustrate its features based on the spoken English of the educated Filipinos, and the use of lectal ranges of the speakers: the acrolect, mesolect and basilect. However, since the new varieties of English are situated in multilingual and multicultural contexts, the World Englishes construct highlights the notion of inclusivity. This idea maintains that the study of specific features of a particular English variety must consider all its aspects like historical, political and sociological backgrounds to strongly establish its sociolinguistic reality in relation to applied linguistics issues. Since Philippines is highly diverse, it is argued that the starting point for a more comprehensive illustration of PE is the inclusion of the speakers of the major languages in the country. Thus, the second part of this presentation draws from my work that aims to provide a more inclusive description PE phonology based on the speech samples obtained from the native speakers of the 13 major languages that roughly cover the entire country: Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. It is hoped that this lecture will encourage others to conduct more studies on the English production of Filipinos that embrace speakers from different cultural, linguistic and geographical backgrounds that will be truly Philippine English.

Bio-note

Annie Mae C. Berowa is a faculty member at the English Department in the Mindanao State University, Marawi Campus.

This webinar is FREE and is open to all. Please register HERE. Participants who attended and responded to the webinar evaluation form will receive an e-certificate of participation.