The use of discourse markers in the Asian Outer and Expanding Circles: A comparative approach
(2014) 20th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE 16) — Location: Amity University, Noida (India) (18.December.2014)
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- Abstract
- Following a recent trend which seeks to bring research on Outer Circle varieties and Expanding Circle varieties closer together (e.g. Mukherjee & Hundt 2011, Davydova 2012), this paper aims to compare the use of discourse markers in several Asian varieties of English representing both the Outer and Expanding Circles. The populations under study will include Indian, Singaporean, Chinese and Japanese speakers, talking in an informal context. The investigation will rely on spoken corpus data taken from ICE, the International Corpus of English (for Outer Circle varieties) and from LINDSEI, the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (for Expanding Circle varieties). A comparison will be made both at a macro-level (Outer Circle vs Expanding Circle) and a micro-level (i.e. that of individual varieties). It will be quantitatively oriented, by comparing the relative frequencies of discourse markers in the different (sub)corpora, but also qualitatively oriented, with a focus on the position of discourse markers in the utterance, and whether they tend to appear between or within phrases and closely-knit structures. This analysis will make it possible to highlight similarities as well as differences among the Asian varieties in the use of discourse markers. Explanations will be offered to account for these differences and similarities (transfer from the L1, general cognitive principles of L2 acquisition, etc.). The Asian varieties will also be briefly situated among other varieties from the Outer and Expanding Circles, with a view to identifying any possible universal characteristics of the use of discourse markers by non-native speakers of English.
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Gilquin, G. (2014). The use of discourse markers in the Asian Outer and Expanding Circles: A comparative approach. 20th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE 16), Amity University, Noida (India). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/189659