‘Uhh I’m not trying to be racist or anything’: exploring an indexical field of Thai English

ABSTRACT

This article explores the notions of indexical order and indexical field of Thai English based on 30 interviews conducted with students at a public university in Thailand. The analysis of these interviews examine an indexical field of Thai English where in many cases students perceive Thai English to be spoken by certain types of people, including: tour guides, restaurant workers, street vendors and the prime minister. This indexical field emerged even though many respondents had features of Thai English in their idiolect. The findings shed light on how we classify global varieties of English as the present study illustrates how the features of Thai English are not uniform, nor is the community of speakers who make up this variety. It is argued that a variety of English may be enregistered despite lacking a status of variety directly attributable to a community of speakers.

KEYWORDS:

• Thai English
• indexical field
• indexical order
• varieties of English
• expanding circle varieties
• post-varieties of English
• enregisterment

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express sincere thanks to Joseph A. Foley Associate Professor in the ELT program at Assumption University, Thailand for comments on a version of this article. All responsibility for any shortcomings remain solely with the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Liberal Arts Research Funds, Thammasat University, fiscal year 2019 [Grant # 13/2561].