American or British? A corpus-based analysis of Asian Englishes' orthographical norms

• Main Authors: Antonio, Abigail F., Bacang, Bernardita G., Rillo, Richard M., Alieto, Ericson O., Caspillo, Warrelen D.C.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: English language > Asia—Orthography and spelling; English Language and Literature; Language and Literacy Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/3391
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study is one of the pioneers in investigating and analyzing the orthographical conventions/norms of the outer circle Asian Englishes using one of the largest databases of English corpus, the Global Web-based English (GloWbE). This study extends the analysis of the current orthographical norms of the new varieties to their colonial parents. Results of this study indicate that there is an evident Americanization in some of the orthographical norms of the outer circle Asian Englishes, even though all of them, except for Philippine English, have British English as parent English. The results can be accounted for the emergence and proliferation of technology, as initiated by the United States as a superpower country today. This huge global influence enables American English to accelerate in indirectly colonizing the orthographical norms of these new English varieties. © 2019 Asian E F L Journal Press. All rights reserved.