How do women and men from around the world really speak English? Using examples from World Englishes in Africa, America, Asia, Britain and the Caribbean, this book explores the degree of variation based on gender, in native-, second- and foreign-language varieties. Each chapter is rooted in a particular set of linguistic corpora, and combines authentic records of speakers with state-of-the-art statistical modelling. It gives empirically reliable evaluations of the impact of gender on linguistic choices in the context of other (socio-)linguistic factors, such as age or speaker status, under consideration of local social realities. It analyses linguistic phenomena traditionally associated with genderlectal research, such as hedges, intensifiers or quotatives, as well as those associated with World Englishes, like the dative or genitive alternation. A truly innovative approach to the subject, this book is essential reading for researchers and advanced students with an interest in language, gender and World Englishes.
1. Introduction: genderlectal variation in the English-speaking world Tobias Bernaisch; 2. Localisation, globalisation and gender discourse: pragmatic variation in Ghanaian English Beke Hansen; 3. Sociolinguistic variation in intensifier usage in Indian and British English: gender and language in the Inner and Outer Circles Robert Fuchs; 4. Tag questions and gender in Indian English Claudia Lange and Sven Leuckert; 5. Hedges and gender in the Inner and Expanding Circles Tobias Bernaisch; 6. The role of gender in postcolonial syntactic choice-making: evidence from the genitive alternation in British and Sri Lankan English Stefan Th. Gries, Benedikt Heller and Nina Funke; 7. Social constraints on syntactic variation: the role of gender in Jamaican English ditransitive constructions Melanie Rothlisberger; 8. Linguistic colloquialisation, democratisation and gender in Asian Englishes Lucia Loureiro-Porto; 9. Gender, writing and editing in South African Englishes: a case study of the genitive alternation Melanie A. Law and Haidee Kotze.
Tobias Bernaisch is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Justus Liebig University, Giessen. He has compiled corpora for, and worked extensively on, World Englishes with a particular focus on Asian Englishes.
