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Article published In: English World-Wide
Vol. 40:3 (2019) ► pp.241–268

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The interplay of the national, regional, and global in standards of English

A recognition survey of newscaster accents in the Caribbean

 | University of Münster
 | University of Münster
Published online: 24 September 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00031.han
Abstract
An accent recognition survey was designed and distributed among respondents from the anglophone Caribbean with the aim of finding out whether they can recognize different standard accents of English as spoken by newscasters from five Caribbean countries, namely Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. The results revealed that there is a general difficulty in placing Caribbean newscaster accents in the correct country. The only exception was a Trinidadian accent that was recognized in 60 per cent of all cases. The results suggest that in the context of newscaster accents, recognizable national standard varieties are the exception. This paper also introduces the idea that to some extent, standard accents of English in the Caribbean might be recognizable on a subregional level.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and method
    • 2.1Accents included in the survey
    • 2.2The survey
    • 2.3Background information on the respondents
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1General recognition rates
    • 3.2Rates of placement in the Windward Islands and in St Lucia and Dominica vs Grenada and SVG
    • 3.3Identification of newscasters with foreign-influenced accents
    • 3.4Erroneous identification of the newscasters as coming from the participant’s country
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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