Hamburg Talks on Current Issues in World Englishes

23. Mai 2022, von JH

Exploring the linguistic democratization of Englishes: Small vs. big corpora

Dr. Lucía Loureiro-Porto (University of the Balearic Islands, Spain)

Tuesday, May 31, 2022
2.15 ‐ 3.45 pm CET ‐ Webinar
Register under
https://bit.ly/3lxM2Wc

- All are welcome -

Linguistic democratization is a process of language change that implies “[t]he phasing out of overt markers of power asymmetry with the aim of expressing greater equality and solidarity” (Farrelly and Seoane 2012: 393). As such, it is deemed responsible, for example, for the decline of modal must (and the corresponding increase of semi-modals have (got) to, need to, want to). Another example of democratization is the use of gender-neutral pronouns such as they (and the avoidance of generic he). In this talk I will explore these two features in several varieties of English world-wide, and will show how both small and big corpora are excellent resources for the study of this linguistic process.