A study on the features of English as a lingua franca in Asian contexts: Rhythmic features

Abstract

This paper investigated the rhythmic features of speakers of English as a lingua franca in Asian contexts. A speech corpus of 150 conversations between speakers of English in Asia with different L1 backgrounds was collected and %V, ΔV, VarcoV, and nPVI-V of each speaker were analyzed. It was found that L1 difference of the speakers and the speakers' daily use of English influenced %V, while the speakers' daily use of English influenced ΔV. The gender difference of the speakers also affected the rhythm of the utterances in VarcoV. A weak correlation between the two speakers' rhythm in each conversation was also found in %V and ΔV. No significant effects were found in nPVI-V. The results revealed that the speakers tended to accommodate the rhythm of their utterance to that of the interlocutors'. Further study on the speaking rate of the speakers is required to overcome some inconsistencies found in the results of the rhythmic metrics used in this study.