The Projectin collaboration with Dr. Irene Taafaki, University of the South Pacific.
The project aims to put an entirely undescribed variety of World English on the dialectological map: The English spoken in the Marshall Islands, an archipelago in the Southern Pacific. Some Pacific Islands Englishes have received much scientific attention (Hawaiian Pidgin English, Bislama, Solomons Pijin) and research on others (Kiribati, Kosrae, Palau and Guam) is under way. The varieties that resulted from contact between English and Marshallese, on the other hand, are as of yet dialectologically unchartered. Lesser-known varieties, such as those in the Southern Pacific, can provide some of the “most interesting and diachronically revealing varieties of the language in existence”, primarily because they tend to be relatively unaffected by the process of standardization (Watts and Trudgill 2002:27). The overall objective of this collaboration is to conduct exploratory research on Marshallese English in order to on chart the linguistic history and current sociolinguistic situation of this variety. We aim to (i) access resources hosted at the University of the South Pacific, including archival materials, and (ii) collect data (audio recordings and attitudinal surveys) from speakers from different islands and age ranges. The resultant data feeds into language planning and the development of teaching resources. The project proposes to enrich our testing pool for models of World Englishes by adding a rare US-lexified variety; it contributes to typological research on contact-induced language change and “angloversals”. |
My storyPartly because I have always had a soft spot for the Pacific (and a strong research interest in Pacific Englishes) but also because the North-East of England is not exactly my preferred climate zone, I decided to apply to the German Research Foundation to spend a few months of my sabbatical in the Marshall Islands (see the proposal on the left).
Checking the Marshall Islands on the internet brings up a bewildering mix of contrasting information, including tourism images of immense beauty (snorkelling, diving, sunbathing) or apocalyptic articles on nuclear testing or climate change. human suffering and some of the highest levels of diabetis. Also geographically, the atolls are rather interesting, stretching over an area of thousand square miles but encompassing very little land. As you can see in the picture above, the atoll I am staying on, Majuro, is only a few meters broad but several miles long. All of this really spiked my interest and when my application was successful, I decided to spend June till September in the Marshall Islands. The fastest route to Majuro, in case you were wondering is BER-AMS-LAX-HNL-MAJ (only 4 hops!) |