English World-Wide - Online First

The durational variation, often referred to as speech rhythm, of outer and expanding circle varieties has often been described as different from inner circle varieties due to L1 influence. In an attempt to quantify previous subjective accounts, this preliminary study investigates durational variation across Kachru’s three circles, analyzing data of four inner circle, one outer circle and three expanding circle varieties, using durational variation metrics. The results indicate that these metrics can be used to identify the three circles in a comparative analysis of varieties, however categorizing a single variety into one of the three circles is not possible. Furthermore, the variation in metric is not uniform across all metrics, with only some metrics showing significant results in the statistical analysis. A future study using a more balanced sample of varieties and speakers can bring additional insights on the descriptiveness and reliability of different metrics of durational variation.

This paper analyses the use of indigenous language elements including code-switching in two contrasting genres, i.e. group chats and Twitter memes along with tweets, in the English communication of South Asian (Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan) internet users. The results from group chats show that one of the most common lexical indigenous elements are tags, for example, address forms like yaar, machan, and da which all can be translated to English as ‘dude’ or ‘buddy’. The analysis of Twitter memes along with tweets shows that despite the tweet text being in English, the South Asian users tend to employ memes with indigenous text more often as compared to English memes for political satire. Overall, the study finds that code-switching and indigenous resources are used to create a sense of localness in English communication, whether it is group chats or Twitter memes and tweets.