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Linguistic variation and ethnicity in a super-diverse community: The case of Vancouver English by Irina Presnyakova M.A. (English), Marshall University, 2011 MA (Linguistics), Northern International University, 2004 BA (Education), Northern International University, 2003 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Irina Presnyakova 2020 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Fall 2020 Copyright in this work rests with the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation. Declaration of Committee Name: Irina Presnyakova Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Thesis title: Linguistic variation and ethnicity in a super- diverse community: The case of Vancouver English Committee: Chair: Dean Mellow Associate Professor, Linguistics Panayiotis Pappas Supervisor Professor, Linguistics Murray Munro Committee Member Professor, Linguistics Cecile Vigouroux Examiner Associate Professor, French Alicia Wassink External Examiner Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics University of Washington ii Ethics Statement iii Abstract Today, people with British/European heritage comprise about half (49.3%) of the total population of Metro Vancouver, while the other half is represented by visual minorities, with Chinese (20.6%) and South Asians (11.9%) being the largest ones (Statistics Canada 2017). However, non-White population are largely unrepresented in sociolinguistic research on the variety of English spoken locally. The objective of this study is to determine whether and to what extent young people with non-White ethnic backgrounds participate in some of the on-going sound changes in Vancouver English. Data from 45 participants with British/Mixed European, Chinese and South Asian heritage, native speakers of English, were analyzed instrumentally to get the formant measurements of the vowels of each speaker.
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