The social dimensions of Philippine English

Abstract

The context of Philippine English is described in terms of its historical, social, political and economic dimensions. The past is reviewed to explain the present, and the contemporary status and characteristics of this Philippine variety are outlined. Some tentative predictions are made as to its future, based on current social and economic trends in the area. A statement is attempted on the factors contributing to the maintenance of a standardized Asian variety of English (mutually intelligible with other world varieties) as well as factors contributing to the rise of Englishes which will eventually be mutually unintelligible (in the same way that Latin devolved to the Romance languages as the Roman Empire gave rise to independent nation-states).

Exploring grammatical colloquialisation in non-native English: a case study of Philippine English

“…essentially , frankly , unfortunately ) in everyday speech (Dita 2011) and the preference for modal would in non-past, non-conditional contexts where AmE would require will (Bautista 2004). Gonzalez (2004: 12) comments that Filipinos have a tendency to speak as they write and to transform features characteristic of formal written English to speech and less formal registers, so that their English is ‘a monostylistic variety of English’. The monostylisticism hypothesis may serve as an explanation for the tendency discussed above, that PhilE makes less use of typical spoken features compared to native varieties of English.…”

“…First, increased international communication may have prompted Philippine journalists to adhere to the conventions of international journalism as promoted by the more colloquial American newspapers. Importantly, census figures show that the proportion of English speakers in the Philippines rose from around 39 per cent in 1960 to 56 per cent in 1990 (Gonzalez 2004). This substantial rise in English literacy resulted in the expansion of the general reading public, whose needs were better catered for by less complex and abstract styles.…”

The Workplace, the Society and the Wider World: The Offshoring and Outsourcing Industry

“…During this period there was a strong movement to "decolonize" the education system, and a bilingual education policy passed in 1974 meant that English and Tagalog were used to teach different subjects at school. For the last 30 years, most Filipinos have received their education in both Tagalog and English (Gonzalez 1997(Gonzalez , 2004.The policy of bilingual education in the schools and universities continues to be controversial today. Private education in the urban areas is producing good language speakers, while the rural schools lag badly behind (Nical, Smolicz, & Secombe 2004).…”

A Linguistic Landscape Analysis of Public Signs After Typhoon Haiyan

“…In the case of the Philippines, the existence of several languages remains embedded in a complex web of political, sociocultural and economic ideologies (Tupas 2007). For instance, the existing government policies pertaining to language policy remain controversial due to difficulties in implementation and resistance articulated by different stakeholders (Floralde and Valdez 2017;Gonzalez 2004;Martin 2014). However, the emergence of linguistic landscape (henceforth, LL) sheds new light on the ways multilingualism is employed to address issues of importance in a community.…”