Trinidadian English

This book offers a large-scale sociophonetic study of standard English production and perception in Trinidad – with a focus on the secondary school context. It addresses the question of whether and to what extent an endonormative standard is emerging. Drawing on speech data from 100 teachers and advanced students as well as evidence on accent attitudes from 485 students, it examines variation at the vocalic, consonantal, and prosodic levels and explores how local and non-local accents of English are evaluated. The findings reveal a complex pattern of norm orientation. Speech production shows endonormative tendencies. At the same time, production and perception are shaped by the interaction of local and non-local linguistic forces. The results demonstrate that standard English in Trinidad is characterized not only by sociophonetic differentiation but also by the coexistence of different norms. The book thus provides evidence of multinormativity in Trinidadian English. It contributes not only to research on English in the Caribbean but also to work on sociophonetic variation in World Englishes and evolutionary models of postcolonial varieties.