Chapter published in:
The Dynamics of English in Namibia: Perspectives on an emerging variety
Edited by Anne Schröder
[Varieties of English Around the World G65] 2021
► pp. 135–168

Chapter 7
Broadcasting your variety

Namibian English(es) on YouTube

| 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
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.YouTube and World Englishes
    • 2.1Digital perspectives in World Englishes research
    • 2.2YouTube and World Englishes
  • 3.Navigating YouTube for linguistic research
  • 4.Namibia on YouTube
    • 4.1YouTube in Namibia and Namibian YouTubers
    • 4.2A sample corpus of Namibian YouTuber data
  • 5.Case study: Acoustic analysis of Namibian YouTube data
    • 5.1Data collection
    • 5.2Methodology
    • 5.3Results
      • 5.3.1Speaker NAM1
      • 5.3.2Speaker NAM2
      • 5.3.3Speaker NAM3
      • 5.3.4Speaker NAM4
      • 5.3.5Summary of results of NAM data
      • 5.3.6NBC reporters
    • 5.4Discussion of acoustic analyses
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
    • 6.1Discussing YouTube and World Englishes
    • 6.2Conclusions for the Namibian context
    • 6.3Outlook
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g65.07zah
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