Variation and change in the vowels of Singapore English: a sociophonetic study based on the National Speech Corpus

Singapore English has long been identified in the Kachruvian World Englishes paradigm as an Outer Circle norm-developing second-language variety. In recent years, it has been recognized as a nativized variety, with the younger generations of Singaporeans acquiring Singapore English as their mother tongue. Tracing its development along Schneider’s Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes, Wee (2014) suggests that Singapore English has now gone into the differentiation phase and beyond, noting the emergence of smaller hybrid varieties. This thesis presents the first sociophonetic study on the variation and change in the vowels of Singapore English. Using data from the National Speech Corpus (NSC) and the analyses of vowel quality, vowel inherent spectral change and vowel duration based on acoustic measurements, the study investigates phonetic variations as differentiated by speakers’ ethnic group, educational level and age group.Doctor of Philosoph