Patterns of linguistic globalization

In this paper, we present ways of relating the broad scope of typologically motivated approaches to variationist questionnaire data. We explore how descriptive and inferential statistics (such as linear regression) and exploratory techniques (such as aggregative analyses) can be combined for a more holistic investigation of variationist questionnaire data on lexical choices from British, Maltese, American and Puerto Rican English. Our analyses show that raters from the British English(-influenced) and the American English(-influenced) sphere form distinct clusters. Adopting a more fine-grained perspective, we find evidence both for the actual existence of four distinct regional varieties and for globalizing tendencies. Based on our results, we further argue that variety-internal variation is often motivated lexically rather than socially.