Dissertationsprojekt

Standard English in Trinidadian Secondary Schools: Accent Variation and Attitudes

Linguistic research has only recently turned to the issue of the developing postcolonial standards of English in the anglophone Caribbean, which is characterized by diversity and complexity of linguistic norms. While the norm orientation in some domains of Standard English use has been investigated, the educational context is still underresearched, although it is a decisive context for the negotiation and inculcation of linguistic norms. The proposed PhD project aims at contributing to the question of whether and to what degree an endonormative standard is emerging in Trinidad, the second largest island in the anglophone Caribbean in terms of population, by focusing on the school context, specifically on secondary schools. In order to draw conclusions about the norm orientation in these schools, the accents of students and teachers are analyzed and their attitudes toward accents of English are investigated. Attitudes are elicited directly and indirectly on the basis of metalinguistic interviews and a verbal-guise survey with advanced secondary students, while word lists, reading passages and classroom recordings are used for an acoustic and auditory accent analysis. Taking into account local, regional and global influences on Standard English use as well as attitudes, the proposed dissertation not only contributes to the discussion of the status of standards in Trinidad, but also bears implications for research on the emergence of standards in the wider anglophone Caribbean and on a general level, particularly for the question of whether the development of standards is generally a national - rather than a regional or transnational - phenomenon.