My Talk at the
24th Conference of the International Association of World Englishes
(IAWE 2019)

University of Limerick, Ireland

20 - 22 June 2019

Frederic Zähres

Contact: Email Twitter

My profiles: @Uni Bielefeld @ResearchGate

Broadcasting Your Variety: Namibian English(es) on YouTube

Frederic Zähres, Bielefeld University

Presentation Slides (PDF):

Click image to download

(last update: 18/06/2019)

Abstract:

English, despite its limited history within the country, gained significant ground in Namibia over the last 30 years, which has become evident through recent quantitative and qualitative research on English in Namibia (cf. e.g. Buschfeld & Kautzsch 2014; Kautzsch & Schröder 2016, Stell 2016). This research also suggests that English is moving from foreign to second language status with nativization being observable on several linguistic levels. Additionally, in Namibia’s urban center, the former Afrikaans-dominated diglossic situation is progressively changing towards a “triglossic pattern dominated by English” (Stell 2016: 326).

What could complement this traditional picture, and is missing thus far, is a digital perspective: Young Namibians use online social media services in all their facets, including content creation on the video-sharing platform YouTube. Since the audience of these channels transcends national and ethnic boundaries, this data could shed light on general questions of Namibian sociolinguistic standards and identities as well as details of the role and features of English in Namibia. The majority of Namibian YouTubers use English for their broadcasts from the periphery and almost exclusively produce natural videos, according to the typology proposed by Schneider (2016), which renders this digital content a valuable yet largely unexplored resource in the World Englishes context.

The present paper aims to address this methodological gap by using a corpus consisting of five hours of YouTube data to scrutinize recent hypotheses on the status and features of Namibian English, focusing on phonological aspects such as splits in the lexical sets NURSE and KIT as well as mergers of the DRESS, TRAP, and NURSE vowels (cf. Kautzsch et al. 2017).

Bibliography:

Androutsopolous, J. (2013). “Participatory Culture and Metalinguistic Discourse: Performing and Negotiating German Dialects on YouTube.” In: Tannen, D. & A.M. Trester (Eds.). Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media. Georgetown UP, 47–71.
Buschfeld, S. & A. Kautzsch. (2014). “English in Namibia: A First Approach”. English World-Wide 35(2), 121–160. https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.35.2.01bus
Friedrich, P., & Diniz de Figueiredo, E. H. (2016). The Sociolinguistics of Digital Englishes. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315681184
Frobenius, M. (2011). “Beginning a monologue: The opening sequence of video blogs.” Journal of Pragmatics, 43(3), 814–827. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.09.018
Frobenius, M. (2014). “Audience design in monologues: How vloggers involve their viewers.” Journal of Pragmatics, 72, 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.02.008
Kautzsch, A. (2019). “Namibian English on the web: Lexical and morphosyntactic features in a Corpus of Namibian Online Newspapers (CNamON).” In A. U. Esimaje, U. Gut, & B. E. Antia (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes (pp. 232–258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https ://doi.org/10.1075/scl.88.11kau
Kautzsch, A. & A. Schröder. (2016). “English in Multilingual and Multiethnic Namibia: Some Evidence on Language Attitudes and on the Pronunciation of Vowels”. In C. Ehland, I. Mindt, & M. Tönnies, eds. Anglistentag 2015 Paderborn. Proceedings. WVT: Trier, 277–288.
Kautzsch, A., A. Schröder and F. Zähres. (2017). “The Phonetics of Namibian English: Investigating Local Features in a Global Context.” Paper presented at the IAWE Conference, June 30 – July 2, 2017, Syracuse University, NY.
Lee, S. (2017). “Style-Shifting in Vlogging: An Acoustic Analysis of ‘YouTube Voice.’” Lifespans and Styles, 3(1), 28–39. https://doi.org/10.2218/ls.v3i1.2017.1826
Mair, C. (fc.2020). “World Englishes in Cyberspace.” In D. Schreier, M. Hundt, & E. W. Schneider (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pre-print draft retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication /305626506.
Moll, A. (2015). Jamaican Creole Goes Web: Sociolinguistic styling and authenticity in a digital “Yaad”. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.49
Nekomba, N. (2017, July 21). “The Vlogger Nation.” The Namibian. Retrieved from https://www.namibian.com.na/167207/archive-read /The-Vlogger-Nation.
Nekomba, N. (2018, April 27). “Vlogging It.” The Namibian. Retrieved from https://www.namibian.com.na/176911/archive-read /Vlogging-It.
Pihlaja, S. (2015). “Research Ethics in YouTube Research.” Presented at the BAAL New Media SIG, University of Cardiff, Wales. Retrieved from https://prezi.com/chtdkdjtjcjz/ethics/.
Rieder, B. (2015). YouTube Data Tools (Version 1.10). Retrieved from https://tools.digitalmethods.net/netvizz/youtube/.
Rieder, B., Matamoros-Fernández, A., & Coromina, Ò. (2018). “From ranking algorithms to ‘ranking cultures’: Investigating the modulation of visibility in YouTube search results.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 24(1), 50–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517736982
Sand, A. (2014). “Singapore weblogs: between speech and writing.” In F. Tuominen, I. Taavitsainen, M. Kyto, C. Claridge, & J. Smith (Eds.), Developments in English (pp. 224–236). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139833882.017
Schneider, E. W. (2016). “World Englishes on YouTube: Treasure trove or nightmare?” In E. Seoane & C. Suárez-Gómez (Eds.), World Englishes: New theoretical and methodological considerations (pp. 253–282). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g57.11sch
Schröder, A. (Ed.). (fc.). The Dynamics of English in Namibia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Squires, L. (Ed.). (2016). English in computer-mediated communication: variation, representation, and change. Berlin ; Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Stell, G. (2016). “Trends in linguistic diversity in post-independence Windhoek: A qualitative appraisal”. Language Matters47(3), 326–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/10228195.2016.1229360
Titus, H. (2015, September 4). “YouTube’ing It!” The Namibian. Retrieved from https://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=141452&page=archive-read #close.
Wagner, P., Trouvain, J., & Zimmerer, F. (2015). “In defense of stylistic diversity in speech research.” Journal of Phonetics, 48, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2014.11.001
Westphal, M. (2017). Language Variation on Jamaican Radio. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g60
Zähres, F. (fc.). “Broadcasting Your Variety: Namibian English(es) on YouTube.” In: Schröder, A.. The Dynamics of English in Namibia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

My Talk at the 24th Conference of the International Association of World Englishes (IAWE 2019)