A PREFERENCE OPERATIONAL GRAMMAR APPROACH TO STANDARDIZING KONGLISH PHONOLOGICAL CORPORA FOR PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSES

Abstract

This study is an investigation into the phonology of Korean-accented English, Konglish. The objective is to propose a means to extracting preferred phonological features, which would constitute a two-way standard: inner and outer standards or formal and informal standards. This research is grounded on the workings of the Preference Operational Grammar approach to the standardization of the phonological corpora of New Englishes. It is a framework that adopts ranked but violable parameters that are parallel to ‘constraints’ in the Optimality Theory mechanism to categorize variations in spoken forms into members of a bi-normative inventory. This schema is paramount in studies relating to New Englishes regarding the formalization of phonological norms. Methodological considerations involve a descriptive and non-numerical analysis of phonological choices, and cross-linguistic evidence. Konglish lexical items are gleaned from the discourse contexts of selected K-dramas on Netflix, using an Infinix Smart 5 mobile device. Several vocabularies and sound sequences are selected, isolated, and presented for illustrative purposes in tables. Results establish a prototypical phonological inventory of Korean-style English as a non-native variety of English. These findings confirm the preference for certain phonological elements or outputs which would constitute the inner standard norms or formal standard while the next in rank, the non-preferred elements would form part of the atypical category which may be considered as allophones of the accepted components and described as the outer standard norm, informal standard. The non-standard patterns are categorized under the developmental circle, reflecting the regional and sociolinguistic aspects of Konglish.