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Nativization in Brunei English: Deviation vs. Standard
Author(s) -
Svalberg Agneta M.L.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/1467-971x.00107
Subject(s) - judgement , standard english , context (archaeology) , variety (cybernetics) , standard language , repertoire , linguistics , grammaticality , test (biology) , psychology , verb , sociology , political science , history , grammar , law , mathematics , statistics , paleontology , philosophy , archaeology , biology , physics , acoustics
It has been argued that a non‐standard variety of English, Brunei English (BNE) is being spoken in Brunei (Cane, 1993). In the following paper it is suggested that BNE is still at an early stage of development and that there is still little awareness among its speakers of some of the differences between it and Standard British English (STE) but that BNE is likely to expand and stabilize. A Grammaticality Judgement test was administered to 106 first‐year students at Universiti Brunei Darussalam in an attempt to find non‐standard uses of English verb forms which were acceptable to subjects regardless of proficiency level. It was hypothesized that such uses would form part of the BNE repertoire. Three exponents which might be assigned this status were identified, two of which were subsequently found to be frequent in public texts. The paper explores the possible meanings in BNE of these non‐standard uses and argues that they serve an expressive need of BNE speakers. It is suggested that certain STE uses might even have become socially inappropriate in a Bruneian context