Intra-continental parallels of new Englishes in climate change discourses: A corpus-based appraisal (original) (raw)

The spread of the English language to new contexts is the bedrock of most studies on new Englishes. This has informed new patterns of usage quite different from what obtains in the traditional seats of the language. Over the years, studies (e.g., Kachru, 1985; Simo Bobda, 1994) have revealed significant linguistic variations across English-speaking cultures, and this has inspired such phrases as Cameroon, Nigerian, Indian and Chinese Englishes. Even with such cultural differences, the language seems to enjoy a certain level of macro convergence in environmental discourse. From a corpus-based perspective, four stance markers-hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions-in an African (Cameroon and Nigeria) and Asian (India and China) corpus of climate change speeches were analysed. After the identification of most recurrent stance markers, the corpora were then saved in plaintext format and later subjected to the 2019 AntConc software for statistical analyses. Each linguistic variable was assessed in relation to frequency, concordance and implications, and later compared to other corpora in terms of frequencies and usages. The results revealed remarkable intra-continental similarities, with significant inter-continental disparities in stance preferences and usage which led us to the conclusion that there are certain parallels in the way politicians, from the same continent, write and talk about environmental issues, irrespective of the variety of English they speak.