Dissertation project

Standard accents in the Grenadian secondary and tertiary educational system: A study of attitudes and usage

While British English served as the norm in the British colonies, independence and a growing sense of national identity and cultural autonomy have led to an increased awareness of a national standard of English in many large postcolonial countries (cf. Schneider 2007). In the Anglophone Caribbean, first evidence in support of emerging endonormative standards of English has been reported for the largest island countries by population (Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago), based on the description of grammatical and phonological features as well as on attitudes (e.g., Deuber 2013; Deuber & Leung 2013; Irvine 2004, 2008; Leung 2013; Mair 2002, 2009; Wilson 2014).
This dissertation addresses the issue of whether endonormative standards are also emerging in the small independent island countries of the Caribbean by using the educational system in Grenada as an example context. The degree of endonormativity of Standard English in Grenadian secondary and tertiary educational institutions will be evaluated based on an analysis of the accents of students, teachers, and lecturers as well as on an investigation of students’ attitudes toward the accents used by their educators. Recordings of instructors will provide the data for an acoustic and auditory accent analysis and attitudes will be elicited by means of a verbal guise survey and interviews. By shedding light on the question of whether endonormative national standards are emerging in the small Caribbean island nation, the proposed dissertation will contribute to the discussion of the situation of standards in the Caribbean as well as to the question of whether emerging standards are generally national in nature.