Lexical Shift in Working Class New Zealnd English

Meyerhoff, Miriam

doi:10.1075/eww.14.2.04mey

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Table 6 provides ample evidence for extensive exposure to American-accent media, particularly if taken in conjunction with American ®lms and pop music. There is also abundant evidence of lexical and pronunciation shifts to American models in NZE (Bayard 1989;Meyerho 1993;Leek and Bayard 1995;Vine 1995). As Chambers says, his`heart' index draws out less useful conscious attitudes toward American in¯uences.…”

Section: The Media And`pax Americana'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pax Americana? Accent attitudinal evaluations in New Zealand, Australia and America

Bayard

Weatherall

Gallois

et al. 2001

Journal of Sociolinguistics

207

152

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This study describes a series of evaluations of gender pairs of New Zealand English, Australian English, American English and RP-type English English voices by over 400 students in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S.A. Voices were chosen to represent the middle range of each accent, and balanced for paralinguistic features. Twenty-two personality and demographic traits were evaluated by Likert-scale questionnaires. Results indicated that the American female voice was rated most favourably on at least some traits by students of all three nationalities, followed by the American male. For most traits, Australian students generally ranked their own accents in third or fourth place, but New Zealanders put the female NZE voice in the mid-low range of all but solidarityassociated traits. All three groups disliked the NZE male. The RP voices did not receive the higher rankings in power/status variables we expected. The New Zealand evaluations downgrade their own accent vis-a Á-vis the American and to some extent the RP voices. Overall, the American accent seems well on the way to equalling or even replacing RP as the prestige ± or at least preferred ± variety, not only in New Zealand but in Australia and some non-English-speaking nations as well. Preliminary analysis of data from Europe suggests this manifestation of linguistic hegemony as`Pax Americana' seems to be prevalent over more than just the Anglophone nations.As hypothesized, speakers of British English were assigned higher social status than speakers of the respondents' own accent, even though British speech was considered less intelligible and aroused more discomfort. . . . These results underline the prevailing status of British RP throughout the Anglophone world and even in a society that possesses economic and political advantages over Britain internationally. (Stewart, Ryan and Giles 1985: 103) ACCENT EVALUATIONS IN AUSTRALASIA AND THE U.S.A.

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Section: The Media And`pax Americana'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pax Americana? Accent attitudinal evaluations in New Zealand, Australia and America

Bayard

Weatherall

Gallois

et al. 2001

Journal of Sociolinguistics

207

152

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…As for studies investigating the American impact on varieties of English worldwide, lexical influences have been at the forefront of attention (see, e.g., Bayard 1989;Meyerhoff 1993;Leek & Bayard 1995;and Vine 1999 Sedlatschek 2009 on Indian English). Leech et al (2009) explore grammatical changes in contemporary English.…”

Section: Introduction: Pseudotitles and The Americanization Of Varietmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for studies investigating the American impact on varieties of English worldwide, lexical influences have been at the forefront of attention (see, e.g., Bayard 1989;Meyerhoff 1993;Leek & Bayard 1995;and Vine 1999 on New Zealand English;Modiano 1996 on English in Europe; Taylor 1989 andPeters 2001 on Australian English;Awonusi 1994 andIgboanusi 2003 on Nigerian English; Trüb 2008 on South African English; and Sedlatschek 2009 on Indian English). Leech et al (2009) explore grammatical changes in contemporary English.…”

Section: Introduction: Pseudotitles and The Americanization Of Varieties Of English Worldwidementioning

confidence: 99%

Pseudotitles in Bahamian English

Hackert¹

2015

Journal of English Linguistics

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This study investigates the use of so-called pseudotitles, that is, determinerless structures providing descriptive information in front of name noun phrases, as in linguist Allan Bell, in Bahamian newspaper language. Pseudotitles originated in American journalistic writing, but they have spread to numerous varieties of English worldwide and even to British English. A corpus of pre-independence and contemporary press news reports is analyzed quantitatively with a view to establishing not only the frequency of pseudotitles but also the constraints that govern their usage in Bahamian English. The study also considers the position and structure of equivalent appositives and their relationships with pseudotitles. It will be shown that, at least with regard to the feature investigated here, Bahamian journalists followed American norms even in British colonial times, which may be accounted for by the social history and current sociolinguistic situation of the country. At the same time, these norms have been modified and adapted to local linguistic realities, which presents another piece of evidence in favor of a nuanced view of linguistic Americanization.

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“…In some languages, including English, up to half of the lexicon originates in loans (Taylor and Grant 2015). In New Zealand English, US English is an ongoing source of new variants: many American words have replaced, or alternate with, traditional British-origin variants, such as mail (for post), movie (for pictures), sweater (for jumper), can (for tin ;Meyerhoff 1993). This process is likely accelerated in the era of online media saturation.…”

Section: Signed Language Contact and The Global Presence Of Aslmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Globalization in the sense of supra-national flows of cultural capital is widely associated with Americanization and, linguistically, with the spread of American English lexicon and discourse features (such as quotative "be like"; Meyerhoff and Niedzielski 2003;Buchstaller 2008). In New Zealand English, for instance, lexical shift from traditional British to American terms began before WWII and increased subsequently with the expansion of US economic and media influence (Bayard 1989;Green and Bayard 2000;Meyerhoff 1993). Although American Sign Language (ASL) is historically and typologically unrelated to NZSL (i.e., at greater linguistic distance than American and New Zealand varieties of English), over the last decade or so we have observed an increase in the use of ASL-concordant vocabulary as a source of variation and change in NZSL.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signs of Globalization: ASL Influence in the Lexicon of New Zealand Sign Language

McKee¹,

Vale²,

Alexander³

et al. 2021

Sign Language Studies

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Lexical variation and change is prevalent in the short history of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and in the current context of globalized flows of communication we observe growing use of ASL-concordant variants that land in New Zealand via other signed languages, online deaf media, and international interaction. Results from a variant-pair preference task show no significant effect of demographic characteristics on variant use, suggesting their use is not socially marked. We observe effects of lexical borrowing at the levels of phonology (e.g., handshape types), morphology (e.g., classifier handshapes, modified verbs) and discourse markers. In parallel with studies of Americanization in New Zealand English, we find that ASL-concordant variants in established use tend to be perceived as local in origin, and that new/traditional variants are not always seen as exact synonyms or replacements, but may be ascribed pragmatic, semantic, and stylistic distinctions. In this way, global features serve to elaborate local NZSL repertoires rather than being experienced as Americanization.

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Lexical Shift in Working Class New Zealnd English

Cited by 11 publications

References 5 publications

Pax Americana? Accent attitudinal evaluations in New Zealand, Australia and America

Pax Americana? Accent attitudinal evaluations in New Zealand, Australia and America

Pseudotitles in Bahamian English

Signs of Globalization: ASL Influence in the Lexicon of New Zealand Sign Language

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