After outlining recent developments and surveying various perspectives, I argue that scholars should adopt the notion of Philippine ‘Englishes’ to acknowledge all substrate-influenced ‘regional’ (e.g. Iloilo English), social, and hybrid varieties (e.g. Hokaglish). Beginning with a brief overview of the current situation, I examine literature hinting for the invalidation of a standard Philippine English, identifying some evidence of variation due to (socio)linguistic factors through a concise survey of local Englishes. The study asserts that the Philippine Englishes model is more encompassing and forward-looking; it also shows some evidence that Philippine English is at the dawn of stage 5 (differentiation) of Schneider’s dynamic model. Although this model might raise more questions, it hopes to challenge researchers to embark on new-wave investigations on local Englishes while encouraging them to utilize existing research and frameworks. Ultimately, what this study hopes to provide is a fresh perspective on the preponderance of literature on Philippine English by introducing the said model.

This study examines nominal derivational affixes in a multilingual practice in the Philippines involving Hokkien, Tagalog, and English called Lánnang-uè. A feature of this practice is the systematic combination of affixes and roots (henceforth, ‘system’). Certain morphological combinations (e.g. Tagalog prefixes + English root) are used frequently and are regarded by Lánnang-uè users as well-formed, while others are not. This paper seeks to examine the spread, stability, and possible patterns of sociolinguistically-conditioned variation involving this system in the Lánnang-uè-speaking community. I conducted an acceptability judgment experiment involving 65 users in Manila and found high rates of spread and stability within my sample. Factors such as age, sex, and attitudes towards mixing selectively conditioned how some speakers adhered to system. For example, older users tended not to follow the affix source language, length, and position condition of the system whereas male users only tended not to follow the first condition. Based on the findings, I argue that the derivational affixation system exhibits conventionalisation, and that it emerged due to identity negotiation practices led by younger and female users. I also argue that conscious positive attitudes towards mixing help shape the stable development of multilingual practices.

Discourse particles are among the most commented-upon features of Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). Their use has been shown to vary depending on formality, context, gender and ethnicity, although results differ from one study to another. This study uses theCorpus of Singapore English Messages(CoSEM), a large-scale corpus of texts composed by Singaporeans and sent using electronic messaging services, to investigate gender and ethnic factors as predictors of particle use. The results suggest a strong gender effect as well as several particle-specific ethnic effects. More generally, our study underlines the special nature of the grammatical class of discourse particles in CSE, which is open to new additions as the sociolinguistic and pragmatic need for them develops.

This paper highlights a language and sign-based computational solution to the problem of missing social metadata on Twitter (now, ‘X’): demographic prediction using Deep Learning. It aims to apply this method to variationist sociolinguistics research, illustrating how the approach can facilitate analyses with missing metadata (i.e. stylistic age and sex/gender) by deriving this metadata solely from publicly available linguistic and semiotic resources on Twitter profiles (e.g. display pictures and biographies). I use my investigations of English tweets from the Philippines and Hong Kong as case examples, examining the extent to which the use of the copula and the use of will-shall modals on social media are conditioned by diachronic factors as well as factors internal and external to language (e.g. social factors). The results reveal the influence of stylistic gender and age as well as other factors on patterns of variation. They offer a glimpse into the nuanced sociolinguistic aspects of language usage on social media, highlighting the advantages of utilizing AI-powered Deep Learning to tackle data-related challenges. The discoveries and methodology hold the possibility of influencing other fields and practical situations beyond the study of language and society.

Aims and objectives: What exactly happens to a mixed language’s system in a multilingual contact setting? This study aims to investigate the interactions between speakers’ exposure to, frequency of, and proficiency in four languages (English, Tagalog, Hokkien, and Mandarin) and their influences on the why-fronting only wh-question system of Lánnang-uè, a mixed language used by the metropolitan Manila Lannangs. It also aims to test the validity of the assertion that symbiotic mixed languages are more likely to be in flux. Methodology: The Lánnang-uè speakers participated in production and acceptability experiments. Data analysis: Likelihood to front (production) and responses to a 7-point Likert-type scale (acceptability) were the dependent variables for several Bayesian linear mixed-effects models with age, frequency of language use, and language proficiency as primary fixed effects, sociolinguistic factors (e.g., attitudes, identity) as covariates, and participant (and when appropriate, item) as a random effect. Findings: Both production and acceptability results showed that the effects of contact are numerous and far from homogeneous. They vary depending on the source language, wh-phrase type, and degree of consciousness. They corroborate the widely held belief that mixed languages are less stable in symbiotic contexts. However, this paper goes an extra step to show that this “instability” or variability is not always a consequence of contact-induced transfer. It demonstrates that when the source languages influence the stability or development of the mixed language, the effects can be diverse, encompassing aspects such as identity processes, language attitudes, structural transfer, and/or other sociolinguistic innovations. Originality: This article is one of the first studies to examine the effects of contact between multiple languages on a mixed language variable using both production and acceptability experimental data in a five-language context. It is one of the very few variationist works in the Philippines that considers the effects of multilingualism on variation and change.