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BIO
Guyanne Wilson is Quirk Lecturer in English Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Literature at UCL, where she is a member of the Survey of English Usage. She received her MPhil in English Linguistics from the University of Cambridge and her PhD in English Philology and Applied Linguistics from the University of Munster. Prior to joining UCL, Dr Wilson worked as Lecturer in English Linguistics at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, University of Ghent, University of Muenster, University of Duisburg-Essen, Ruhr University Bochum, University of Bremen and Technical University Dortmund. Her main research interests lie in the field of World Englishes, with a focus on grammatical variation and normative orientations, English in Africa and the Caribbean, World Englishes in diaspora, and World Englishes on social media. Her publications include New Englishes, New Methods: Methodological considerations for the study of New Englishes (co-edited with M. Westphal for John Benjamins, 2023), The Sociolinguistics of Singing: Dialect and Style in Choral Singing in Trinidad (for Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2014), as well as articles and book chapters in journals such as English World-Wide, English Today, World Englishes, and The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes. She is also a research associate contributing to compilation of the International Corpus of English.
Further information:
Language identities and ideologies on social media: Focus on Caribbean TikTokers
Social networking sites such as Instagram and TikTok provide an important space for the development and maintenance of a diversity of linguistic identities. In World Englishes research, important work examining how identities are performed on social media has already been done (e.g. Bhatia 2020; Heyd 2014; Honkanen 2020; Kathpaila 2022; Lee 2019), though the focus has been mostly on written language found in chatrooms (e.g. Honkanen 2020) and comments’ sections (e.g Chau 2021). Moreover, except for research done on Jamaican English Creole in blogs and chatrooms (e.g. Hinrichs and White-Sustaita 2011; Moll 2015) and a single article by Oenbring (2013) on Bahamian English Creole, Caribbean Englishes in computer-mediated communication (CMC) have been overlooked. This study examines how ideologies about language use in the southern Caribbean (Barbados, Trinidad, and Guyana) are circulated on social media, and how language in social media posts indexes elements of identity. Specifically, it looks at language ideologies and identities among Caribbean social media users, paying particular attention to TikTok videos generated by Trinidadian, Guyanese and Barbadian TikTokers in the Caribbean Alphabet series. The data were examined using a multi-modal, mixed methods approach that drew upon qualitative content and semiotic analytic approaches. Initial results suggest that in online spaces at least, speakers draw upon Creole to do quite sophisticated identity work: posters use language to distinguish themselves as a community distinct from other Caribbean and non-Caribbean English-speaking communities by highlighting lexical items unique to their territories, but also by using phonological and grammatical features associated with the respective territorial varieties. Moreover, they distinguish themselves from groups of speakers within their own communities. The study shows how data from social media can be productively used to study language ideologies and identities in the Caribbean and problematises contemporary understandings of language prestige in Caribbean contexts.
References
Bhatia, A. (2020). Vlogging and the discursive co‐construction of ethnicity and beauty. World Englishes, 39(1), 7-21.
Chau, D. Spreading language ideologies through social media: Enregistering the ‘fake ABC’ variety in Hong Kong. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 2021; 25: 596– 616.
Heyd, T. (2014). Doing race and ethnicity in a digital community: Lexical labels and narratives of belonging in a Nigerian web forum. Discourse, Context & Media, 4, 38-47.
Hinrichs, L., & White-Sustaíta, J. (2011). Global Englishes and the sociolinguistics of spelling: A study of Jamaican blog and email writing. English World-Wide, 32(1), 46-73.
Honkanen, M. (2020). World Englishes on the Web: The Nigerian diaspora in the USA. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Kathpalia, S. S. (2022). Satiric parody through Indian English tweets in Twitter. World Englishes. Early View.
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PID 041/2022-2023
PID ID2022/085
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