Chapter published in:
The Dynamics of English in Namibia: Perspectives on an emerging varietyEdited by Anne Schröder
[Varieties of English Around the World G65] 2021
► pp. 135–167
Broadcasting your variety
Namibian English(es) on YouTube
Frederic Zähres | Bielefeld University
This chapter investigates the viability of
YouTube data for the World Englishes research context by introducing
a Namibian YouTuber community and presenting challenges and
opportunities of this mostly uncharted medium. An acoustic phonetic
case study of Namibian English is conducted with a small sample
corpus of YouTube data from 2018, in which vowels relevant to the
Southern African context (e.g. nurse, kit, dress, trap) of
two groups of content creators are analyzed. While researchers face
methodological challenges on YouTube during data collection and
analysis, the results of the acoustic analyses presented show that
the formal and informal speech styles found on YouTube constitute an
accessible and rich type of data that can reaffirm and complement
findings based on traditional approaches.
Keywords: YouTube, digital ethnography, phonetics, phonology, vowels
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