In the anglophone Caribbean, tendencies of endonormative reorientation have been observed in the development of local standards of English. Situated in the school context, this study adds a language attitude perspective on the question of whether and to what extent an endonormative standard of English is emerging in the island of Trinidad. In an accent rating study, 803 secondary students were asked to evaluate the accents of Trinidadian, other anglophone Caribbean, American, and British teachers and to identify their countries of origin. The results indicate that the respondents’ norm orientation is multidimensional and includes exo- and endonormative influences: first, there is a general coexistence of different standards since no standard serves as a superordinate norm. Second, there is no clear-cut distinction between exo- and endonormative accents, but fine-grained differences in the ratings: British and American voices received slightly higher ratings than local ones, but an American-influenced Trinidadian voice was also highly appreciated. These findings provide some new perspectives for evolutionary models of World Englishes and new insights for the discussion of standards in Trinidad, the wider anglophone Caribbean, and other small postcolonial speech communities where different local and global norms interact.

An accent recognition survey was designed and distributed among respondents from the anglophone Caribbean with the aim of finding out whether they can recognize different standard accents of English as spoken by newscasters from five Caribbean countries, namely Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. The results revealed that there is a general difficulty in placing Caribbean newscaster accents in the correct country. The only exception was a Trinidadian accent that was recognized in 60 per cent of all cases. The results suggest that in the context of newscaster accents, recognizable national standard varieties are the exception. This paper also introduces the idea that to some extent, standard accents of English in the Caribbean might be recognizable on a subregional level.

This paper studies the sociolinguistics of quotative be like in Trinidad and its relation to Trinidadian English Creole (TrinEC). Corpus evidence shows a significant association of be like use and young age as well as female gender, in line with global trends. Questionnaire data reveal that it does not detract from the perception of a speaker as educated and of high social status as long as utterances are grammatically standardized English (StE). TrinEC grammar triggers contrasting perceptions but the data also point to traditional social prejudice against TrinEC being transcended. This ties in with the finding that be like users tend not actually to be averse to using TrinEC. Overall the sociolinguistics of be like in Trinidad is shaped by global trends as well as the local sociolinguistic configuration.

This paper analyzes online English‐language newspapers from the former British colonies of Kenya, Singapore, and Trinidad and Tobago with respect to Americanisms in spelling and vocabulary. The guiding question is whether the degree of Americanization can be related to the different degrees to which these countries participate in globalization. It is shown that the influence of American English is least pronounced in Kenya and most in Trinidad and Tobago, with Singapore in between, and that globalization is indeed a factor, but that other factors including official language attitudes play a role as well. The role of international news agencies in disseminating Americanisms is also considered and is found to be prominent mainly in the case of Singapore.

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