Notes on Exploring World Englishes: Language in a Global Context. New York: Routledge

Some notes on "Notes On Exploring world Englishes": Language in a global context. New York: Routledge.

• “The bottom line” : an idiom, noun, informal

1. the final account or balance sheet total.

   "the rise in turnover failed to add to the company's bottom line"

   1. the fundamental and most important factor.

      "the bottom line is I'm still married to Denny"

• “Divergent”: adj.: Different or becoming different from something else
• English is being used as a means of communication by a small group who do not share a common first language. As such, they are using it as a lingua franca.
• “Indigenous”: originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.

ex: "coriander is indigenous to southern Europe" (yerli,özgü)

• “Stranglehold”: noun,

1. a grip around the neck of another person that can kill by asphyxiation if held for long enough.
2. complete or overwhelming control.

• Codeswitching: randomly, casually switching between two languages as part of the natural flow of the conversation.
• Discourse particles: (words added to an utterance -often at the end – for the purpose of emphasis) (like, well, oh, you know etc.)

En example from the book: 

Example 2.4

This next extract – which is again real-life data – comes from a

conversation between two young women, Dream and Cherry, who are

originally from Thailand but at the time of this exchange were living

in London. They are conversing via an instant messenger service on

their mobile phones, and the topic of the conversation is the state of

Dream’s love life. Again the individual turns in the conversation are

numbered, and phrases which are not in English are translated below

the original utterance in square brackets.

1 Cherry: oh

2 Cherry: Ken-noi ngai

[How about Ken-Noi? (Ken and Noi are popular TV

personalities in Thailand)]

3 Dream: Mai wai la

[No way]

4 Dream: Too young

5 Dream: They are the same age as my students loei

6 Cherry: shouldnt b phd...

7 Cherry: should b undergrad...

8 Cherry: but everything too late now

9 Cherry: herr

[<sigh>]

10 Dream: Why don’t u have a bf?

11 Cherry: i have

12 Cherry: hahaha

13 Cherry: but i want exciting thing banggg

14 Dream: I can’t believe. U r cute mak mak na

[You are cute!]

15 Dream: Gu wa laeww

[This is what I think]

16 Dream: Dee mak I will tell ur bf dee gua lol

[Great. I’d better tell your boyfriend about your

plan]

17 Cherry: oh

English in the world today 19

18 Cherry: no la no laaa

[No]

19 Cherry: jai rai

[You are mean]

20 Dream: Eeh eeeh

[Ha ha ha]

(Example from Seargeant and Tagg, 2011, p. 10)

Comment

What is particularly interesting in this extract is that although both

participants have Thai as their mother tongue, they regularly switch

into English as well. English is not being used as a lingua franca as it is

in Example 2.1, therefore, because the two women share a common

language. Instead, it is part of their everyday repertoire of linguistic

resources and they are shifting between different languages (what is

technically known as codeswitching) as part of the natural flow of the

conversation. This switching happens extensively, both between turns

(e.g. between 3 and 4), and in the middle of utterances (e.g. turn 16).

As well as the codeswitching, this extract is also notable for the way

that the English they use is influenced in many places by their native

language, and so again displays features that are not found in

standard British or American English. For example, there is the

frequent use of discourse particles (words added to an utterance –

often at the end – for the purpose of emphasis) such as ‘loei’ (turn 5),

‘banggg’ (turn 13) and ‘laaa’ (turn 18). These particles are frequently

used in Thai (Smyth, 2002), and when they get transferred over to

English they create what could be described as a specifically ‘Thai

English’. Another distinctive feature is the use of particular grammatical

patterns such as “everything too late now” (turn 8) where the popular

the verb “is” is dropped (standard British or American English would

have “everything is too late now”).

This conversation also includes several linguistic features which are

often found in the informal use of language online. For example, there

are instances of contractions such as ‘b’ for ‘be’, ‘u’ for ‘you’, and ‘bf’

for ‘boyfriend’ in turns 6 and 10. There is also some non-standard

punctuation, such as the lack of capitalization and apostrophes in turn

6 (“shouldnt b phd”). The result is a use of English that again is far

from standard, but which, in this instance, is related not to the

geographical or cultural backgrounds of the people using it, but to the

medium of communication they are using. It is thus known as

computer-mediated discourse, and the combination of this, the

codeswitching and the ‘Thai English’ illustrates the diverse and creative

forms English can take in the era of globalization.