This issue of Asian Englishes puts together seven research articles and three essays that delve on the use and variation of English in different contexts and cultures. These works focus on how English is used and perceived in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Brunei, China, and Jordan.
Ong, Mckenzie, & Amand open the issue with analyses of news articles and public attitudes about an air tragedy. In comparing UK and Malaysian news reports, the authors found significant differences in that UK newspapers tended to provide simplistic binary classifications, while Malaysian news reports highlighted expert management of the air tragedy. Attitudinal responses to the crisis were found to be the same for both UK and Malaysian participants of the study in that both groups made use of affective language in emotionally engaging with the tragic event.
Sharbawi’s research on English use in Brunei focuses on the contemporaneous use of English use vis-à-vis Malay among Generation Z Bruneians. A most interesting finding for the author is the young Bruneians’ association of English with their identity, even to the point of claiming the language as their mother tongue. Such is not the case in Japan, where Japanese speakers of English feel anxiety towards the language. In this issue, Hiramoto refers to the Japanese speakers of English as “the monolingual borrowers,” who “live with a dilemma of not being able to use English despite having learned it for many years.”
The works in this issue also focus on the specific linguistic features and patterns that are used in these different contexts, such as the use of certain accents, words, and grammatical structures. Sewell, in his work on the Hong Kong English accent continuum, describes six key consonant features that follow an implicational pattern in a statistically significant manner. Yamaguchi & Petursson, in their study of voiceless fricatives, disclose facts about what Japanese speakers do when speaking English. In investigating the vowel inventory of China English, Wang’s study provided empirical evidence for the existence of a Chinese English vowel system. Another Asian variety of English, Singlish, was explored by Lai & Tan, focusing specifically on Singlish particles that were found to address positive face needs in informal settings.
Additionally, some of the topics addressed in this issue explore the relationship between English and other languages, such as multilingualism, and the impacts of English on other languages. These are seen in the work of Alomoush, who focused on the linguistic landscape of the ancient city of Jerash (Jordan), as well as in Fayzrakhmanova’s description of the sociocultural profile of Koreanized English words. Yano aptly closes this issue of Asian English with a call for the Japanese to “not be ashamed of using English with the Japanese linguacultural flavor.” It is a call that resonates with us.
In the end, no matter what the context of the study is, the methodology employed, or aspects of English that are investigated, the works in this issue demonstrate the reality that linguistic, cultural and social factors shape the use of English in the different regions of the world.