This study examines the language use and specifically the level of politeness of Thai speakers of English when confronted with face threatening acts related to their daily life and workplace: requests, complaints and disagreements. Data were collected by role play and discourse completion test from people employed in hotels and travel agencies, and from Rajabhat university students. Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory was used as a framework to analyse and interpret the data. The overall results showed that negative politeness is the most common strategy for all groups, followed by bald on record and positive politeness. Their participants’ choice of politeness strategies in part reflected their occupational identities. For the hotel workers, negative politeness is the chosen strategy in most scenarios, and the focus is on showing deference to and maintaining distance from their interlocutors. For the other groups, although negative politeness is still the most common strategy, positive politeness and bald on record are found quite often. Use of both negative and positive politeness suggests that respondents attach importance to avoiding confrontation and showing solidarity as well as to direct expression. Through analysis of the use of negative and positive politeness for different scenarios and status levels, I determine that these participants possess pragmatic competence in the context of the “small culture” of the workplace. It is also clear that sociological variables (e.g. power, social distance) influence the use of language and the level of politeness on the speaker side.

The development of Hong Kong English has triggered a number of concerns amongst the local population with respect to its status. However, despite the prominence of research into attitudes towards language variation within sociolinguistics, very few studies focus on the Hong Kong context. Furthermore, while previous research has demonstrated that native English speakers tend to have more positive attitudes towards Standard English varieties as far as status is concerned, whereas non-standard varieties are usually evaluated more highly in terms of solidarity, we lack information about the attitudes of Hong Kong Chinese people with respect to different English varieties (particularly the local non-standard variety). This quantitative study sets out to investigate the attitudes of 44 Hong Kong university students with respect to eight varieties of English speech, i. e. educated Hong Kong English accent (HKed), the broad Hong Kong accent (HKbr), Received Pronunciation (RP), General American (AmE), Australian English (AusE), Tyneside English (TynE), Philippine English (PE) and Mandarin-accented English (ME). This study employed a range of direct (e. g., interviews) and indirect (e. g., the verbal-guise test) techniques of attitude measurement in order to obtain in-depth information regarding such perceptions. The results suggest that Hong Kong informants actually have relatively positive attitudes towards HKed - especially in terms of solidarity. Moreover, ME was evaluated comparatively highly, indicating that it might potentially develop into a ubiquitous `China English'. The finding that AmE was rated even more highly than RP provides grounds for suggesting that the replacement of RP by a General American accent could already be underway. Overall, though, Hong Kong informants prefer HKed since it is a variety close to RP. Therefore, although the results demonstrate that a certain amount of linguistic self-hatred does exist in Hong Kong, it is not extended to HKed and the broadness of local accents does indeed appear to play a role in Hong Kong people's language attitudes. Surprisingly, the ability to identify an accent, as well as a range of social variables tested had no significant effect on informants' attitudes towards the eight varieties of English under investigation. The thesis concludes with discussion of these findings with respect to the pedagogical implications they have for the choice of linguistic model in English language teaching both within the Hong Kong population and indeed with regard to other Chinese communities.

A fundamental skill in listening comprehension is the ability to recognize words. The ability to accurately locate word boundaries(i . e. to lexically segment) is an important contributor to this skill. Research has shown that English native speakers use various cues in the signal in lexical segmentation. One such cue is phonotactic constraints; more specifically, the presence of illegal English consonant sequences such as AV and MY signals word boundaries. It has also been shown that phonotactic probability (i. e. the frequency of segments and sequences of segments in words) affects native speakers' processing of English. However, the role that phonotactic probability and phonotactic constraints play in the EFL classroom has hardly been studied, while much attention has been devoted to teaching listening comprehension in EFL. This thesis reports on an intervention study which investigated the effect of teaching English phonotactics upon Arabic speakers' lexical segmentation of running speech in English. The study involved a native English group (N= 12), a non-native speaking control group (N= 20); and a non-native speaking experimental group (N=20). Each of the groups took three tests, namely Non-word Rating, Lexical Decision and Word Spotting. These tests probed how sensitive the subjects were to English phonotactic probability and to the presence of illegal sequences of phonemes in English and investigated whether they used these sequences in the lexical segmentation of English. The non-native groups were post-tested with the -same tasks after only the experimental group had been given a treatment which consisted of explicit teaching of relevant English phonotactic constraints and related activities for 8 weeks. The gains made by the experimental group are discussed, with implications for teaching both pronunciation and listening comprehension in an EFL setting.

This study investigates accent variation in the speech of three generations of two Kuwaiti ethnic groups: Najdis (originally from Saudi Arabia) and Ajamis (originally from Iran). The ethnic groups were chosen due to their varying social status: the Najdis have held a prestigious status in Kuwait for historical reasons, while Ajamis have held the least prestigious status on the social scale. The two groups have over the years gradually come into contact with each other, and this study explores the outcome of dialect contact by focusing on a set of phonological variables which traditionally had accent-specific realisations. The phonological variables (ʤ) (typically realised by Najdis as [j] and by Ajamis as [ʤ]), (s) (realised by Najdis as [s] more often than Ajamis, who use [sʕ] in exclusive co-articulatory environments) and (Ɣ) (realised by Najdis as [q] and by Ajamis as [Ɣ]) were investigated. These variables were analysed in relation to the social variables (of ethnicity, age and gender). Social networks and the correlation between identity and dialect levelling were also considered. Data were collected from 48 Kuwaiti speakers representing the two ethnicities, three ages groups (chosen according to relevant milestones in the history of Kuwait), and a balanced number of males and females. A variety of techniques (picture-naming, map task, interview, and questionnaires) were used to collect data. Results show that the Najdi accent is generally more stable across generations than the Ajamis’. The Ajami accent seems to be moving towards the Najdis’. The accent of the old generation of Ajamis resembles the Najdi accent the least, while the young generation of Ajamis use Najdi variants the most. The female Ajamis are the forefront of this change, followed by young Ajami males. (ʤ) and (s) showed change the most across the Ajami generations, with the young speakers actively avoiding the original Ajami realisations due to their social connotations. Language and linguistic differences used to be the largest barrier against welcoming Ajamis to the Kuwaiti community; the reported accent transformation seems to be playing a major role in bringing the two ethnic groups closer to each other.

English is increasingly being chosen as the medium of education at the tertiary level in education in the Arabian Gulf. In Oman a decision was taken to switch the medium of education in all colleges of applied sciences from Arabic to English. To assist students with the switch the Ministry of Higher Education requested all colleges to establish foundation years with the focus on teaching English. This study is an analysis of that decision from both macro language planning and a micro sociolinguistic perspectives. Three contentions were used to measure the efficacy of the practices in the College of Applied Sciences in Salalah, Oman. These were the native speaker fallacy, the L2 fallacy and the English medium fallacy. The study adopted a case study framework and analysed each of the preceding fallacies with a view to establishing their individual and collective veracity. Data collected included 370 student questionnaires, 15 questionnaires distributed to native speaker teachers and 10 to non-native speaker teachers. There were also interviews with leading stakeholders involved at the College level. The results of the study suggest that of the three fallacies, the native speaker fallacy was not seen to be in evidence at the college whilst the other two were. Amalgamating the findings leads to the conclusion that there are a complex array of factors involved in a decision to switch the medium of instruction from Arabic to English and the establishment of an English foundation programme to facilitate this decision. The results do not corroborate a view of reality that posits that external forces are responsible for enforcing an imperialistic agenda. What the findings of the V study do support is the need for research based decision making, to avoid situations where perspectives devoid of academic merit become the norm.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

A brief consideration of field-work is followed by a general discussion of Scouse, and the main problem for description is found to be the phonology rather than the grammar or the vocabulary. In particular, the question is raised of the relation between Anglo-Irish and North~Western English in the formation of Scouse. Before the phonology proper, attention is paid to articulatory setting and voice quality. In the phonology, rhythm and the rhythmic framework are taken as basic, and essential for the identification of the peculiarities of Scouse. Intonation is closely related to rhythm, and vowels and consonants are described in the context of rhythmically defined syllables. Finally, a number of phonological variables are discussed, and the nature of the variation is identified by reference to the Scouse sound-patterns described in earlier chapters.