Witsuwit’en English: language shift and First Nations English in Canada ...
Witsuwit’en English is a variety of First Nations English (FNE) spoken by the Witsuwit’en people, in several small communities in Northern British Columbia. Despite being widely spoken, FNEs in Canada remain understudied and undervalued, often dismissed as learner Englishes, or assumed to be the res...
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
2024
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.6094/unifr/244110 https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/244110 |
| Summary: | Witsuwit’en English is a variety of First Nations English (FNE) spoken by the Witsuwit’en people, in several small communities in Northern British Columbia. Despite being widely spoken, FNEs in Canada remain understudied and undervalued, often dismissed as learner Englishes, or assumed to be the result of creolization. Very few varieties have been given in-depth analysis and the state of the research in Canada lags far behind that of the USA and Australia. This book aims to provide a first and comprehensive account of Witsuwit’en English (WitEng). It starts with a review of research on FNEs in Canada, and an overview of possible linguistic features before describing the historic language contact situations that led to the Witsuwit’en variety of English. It then compares the features of WitEng to those varieties of English in the EWAVE corpus and proposes a set of stages for the development of FNEs. The development of WitEng is distinguished by unique and multi-layered contact situations, distinct from those ... |
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