Brunei English: an Acoustic Investigation of the Segmental Features

There is a dearth of publications on the phonetics and phonology of Brunei English (BrunE). To date, there have only been four published works investigating the sounds of this English variety and out of the four, only one incorporated the use of acoustic measurements. The present study provides an in-depth instrumental investigation of the segmental features of educated BrunE speech. Its objectives are three-fold: first, it contributes to the literature on the phonetics of BrunE; second, it aims to investigate the extent of the reliability of acoustic measurements in describing a language variety; and third, it examines the feasibility of describing an emerging English variety on its own terms without reference to an inner circle variety such as British English (BrE). Comparison is, however, made to Singapore English (SgE). This is because it has been suggested that an English lingua franca with shared pronunciation features is developing in the Southeast Asian region. Comparison to SgE, therefore, allows an assessment of the relationship between these two English varieties, and thereby place BrunE within the context of the Southeast Asian Englishes and also the World Englishes.