1887
Volume 27, Issue 2
  • ISSN 0155-0640
  • E-ISSN: 1833-7139
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Abstract

The concurrent trends of globalisation and ‘indigenisation’ affecting the English language (varieties) around the world pose some interesting questions for language planning and reform issues (e.g. Phillipson, 1992; Pennycook, 1994; Crystal, 1997). With this project we examine the impact of these competing trends on relating to gender-inclusive language use in the Englishes of Singapore and the Philippines, categorised as ‘outer-circle’ Englishes by Kachru (1992,1997). In this paper we present some findings on aspects of gender-inclusive language reform based on an analysis of the student and academic texts in the Singapore and Philippine components of the International Corpus of English [ICE]. Education, particularly higher education, has been identified as a leading site of contact with and trajectories of change for gender-inclusive language reform. We focus in particular on one of the main features of gender-inclusive language reform: generic pronouns. The results of the ICE corpus analysis suggest that adoption of gender-inclusive and gender-neutral generic pronouns is not yet profiled in these ‘outer-circle’ Englishes. Generic remains the pervasive generic pronoun in the student and published academic writing in the Singapore English corpus. The Philippines data reveal a similar trend although there is some emergence of forms as the preferred gender-inclusive alternative.

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2004-01-01
2025-02-18
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