Ethnic variation in its social context: Evidence from the English of Chinese Australians

Abstract

Ethnicity has been a longstanding factor in studies of language variation and change (Labov, 1966), including in pioneering work in Australia with Australians of Greek and Italian background (Horvath, 1985). This thesis focuses on linguistic variation among a community that has received less attention, Cantonese-background Chinese Australians. Drawing from the Sydney Speaks project (Travis, 2014-2022), I compare spontaneous spoken English of Chinese Australians with the Anglo majority, to examine the role of ethnicity and other social factors, particularly social class, in conditioning variation.

Analyses centre around three linguistic variables, which exhibit varying degrees of change, social salience, and typological differences across English and Cantonese: the realisation of the vowel in pre-vocalic definite article the (non-glottalised FLEECE vs. glottalised FLEECE vs. schwa); future temporal reference (will vs. be going to); and existential there's + plural argument (THERE'S vs. THERE ARE). Multivariate analyses reveal little in the way of ethnic differences, including for broad measures of ethnicity and for more fine-grained measures considering ethnic orientation. Furthermore, comparisons with a corpus of English spoken in Hong Kong (Bolton, 2002), reveal differences in the linguistic conditioning in Hong Kong English, further supporting that Chinese Australians are conforming to Australian norms. However, differences do emerge for social class, and comparisons across social class reveal a strong alignment with middle class Anglo Australian norms among Chinese Australians.

These findings highlight the importance of considering social context in understanding ethnic differentiation in sociolinguistic patterns, and taking account of the intersection between language and social structures. Show more