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Roberts, Paul (2005) Spoken English as a world language: international and intranational settings. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

This thesis sets out to characterise English as a World Language, in contrast with English used in homogeneous, intranational settings. After a brief introduction, the relevant literature is reviewed in two chapters: firstly the concept of an international variety of English is challenged and, following this, there is consideration of current thinking under the headings of English as an International Language and English as Lingua Franca. This preliminary part of the thesis leads to some hypotheses concerning the way in which EWL might be characterised, with particular attention to attitudes among different sorts of speaker.

Chapter Five introduces methodologies (1) for finding data-providing participants and (2) assessing their language-related attitudes relevant to the research questions. It continues by (3) examining ways of obtaining spoken data and (4) of transcribing and (5) analysing it. Chapter 6 presents the specific methodological choices for this thesis. The following four chapters provide results. Firstly, brief results are given of tests applied to ascertain participants' language-related attitudes. Following this, the results of analysing and explaining the spoken data itself are given. Chapter 8 closely compares one EWL conversation with one homogeneous one and draws tentative conclusions about what might be found in the remaining conversations: that EWL may be characterised by greater convergence among speakers, irrespective of whether or not they are native speakers. Chapter 9 examines the whole suite of conversations in this light and the previous results are generally confirmed: the speakers in homogeneous conversations tend to be as divergent as they are convergent, where in EWL conversations they try their best to maintain an atmosphere of comity. Chapter 10 completes the results section by comparing the performance of six speakers in particular, who each participate in an EWL conversation and in a homogeneous one. They are found to draw on convergence strategies for their EWL conversations while being more direct and divergent in their homogeneous ones. Chapter 11 attempts to summarise the preceding chapters and to draw some conclusions from the results.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	McCarthy, Michael
Keywords:	English as a world language, English language, spoken English, EWL
Subjects:	P Language and literature > PE English
Faculties/Schools:	UK Campuses > Faculty of Arts > School of English
Item ID:	11110
Depositing User:	EP, Services
Date Deposited:	05 Feb 2010 13:59
Last Modified:	08 May 2020 11:00
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/11110

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