1

Review of Related Literature

There is a vast body of literature that involves Philippine Englishes in the written

and oral discourse. There is, however, no existing research done which specifically

pertains to the occurrence of Filipinisms in campus publications as observed in published

opinion columns. It is vital, therefore, that researches on Filipinism in the written

discourse be included, as well as the different word formation processes involved in the

creation of a word, and the semantic changes these words undergo. The question guiding

this research is the occurrence of Filipinisms in the opinion columns of six leading

college and university publications in Bacolod City, and the different word formation

processes and semantic changes these Filipinisms have undergone.

This section reviews literature on the following subtopics: (1) Philippine English,

(2) Philippine English as a New English, (3) The Codification of PE Vocabulary, (4)

Intelligibility, Acceptability and Standardization of PE, (5) Implications for Language

Teaching, (6) Word Formation Processes, (7) Word Formation Processes in Filipinisms,

(8) Semantic Change, (9) Column Writing, and (10) Related Studies in Philippine

English.

Philippine English

Porciuncula (2012) says that English is one of the most widely-spoken languages

in the world today. With a huge number of first language users and an ever-growing

number of second language users, English has been dubbed as the language of

international communication, in a world that seems to be getting smaller, with the onset

of global travel, business, and communication. Porciuncula specified that the use of
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English in many countries where it has “landed” eventually led to the study of how it is

used in these places. A short history of English in the Philippines notes that it was first

introduced by the American colonial power in 1898 after 333 years of Spanish rule.

Through the public school system established by the Americans in 1901, English began to

spread throughout the islands. The 1987 Constitution recognized it as an official language

together with the national language, Filipino. The 1974 Bilingual Education Policy also

mandated its use as the medium of instruction for various subjects taught in schools.

Scholarly work and discussion of Philippine English began in the late 1960s,

when Teodoro Llamzon described what he called “Standard Filipino English” (Bautista as

cited by Porciuncula, 2012). Philippine English (PE) is referred to as the indigenized

variety of English spoken in the Philippines. In 1978, spoken and written English in the

Philippine mass media, described divergences of PE from Standard American English in

terms of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. Since then, other scholars have

continued the study, description and codification of what came to be known as

“Philippine English.” (Gonzales and Alberca as cited by Porciuncula, 2012). Therefore,

PE is defined as “the type of English that educated Filipinos speak and which is

acceptable in educated Filipino circles” (p. 15). Notably, it is considered as part of the

“World Englishes” paradigm, which states that “the English language now belongs to all

those who use it” (Brown, in Bautista, 2000). Various studies have resulted in evidences

that representative speakers of this variety of English could be identified, and that their

speech was intelligible to native speakers of English. Descriptions of PE phonology and a

listing of some of its expressions have also been compiled in experiments and researches

involving phonological and grammatical features of PE.

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Notable studies in Philippine English, as stated earlier, included that of Llamzon’s

1969 monograph whose discussion of grammar was mainly a listing of Filipinism,

defined as “English words and expressions, that are neither American nor British, which

are acceptable and used in Filipino educated circles, and are similar to expression patterns

in Tagalog”, such as “close the light” for “turn off the light”, and “my head is painful” for

“I have a headache”. On the other hand, the first detailed study of Philippine English

grammar was done by Alberca (1978). The written corpus used by Alberca consisted of a

number of publications which presented findings on the different features of PE, namely,

word order, article usage, noun subcategorization, pronoun-antecedent and subject-

predicate incongruence and tense-aspect usage. The study done by Alberca is mainly just

one of the studies of PE’s features, among others including phonological, lexical and

discourse features.

Philippine English as a New English

Kachru’s World Englishes perspective, according to Brown, is characterized by a

belief in three key elements: that there is a “repertoire of models for English”, that “the

localized innovations [in English] have pragmatic bases”, and that “the English language

now belongs to all those who use it”. Kachru makes the point that English is no longer

the exclusive possession of users in the Inner Circle (those countries that use English as

the primary or native language, such as America or Britain); English belongs to all those

who have acquired or learned it and used it widely in their everyday lives.

Platt, Weber, and Ho (1984) identify four criteria that validate a variety of English

as a New English:
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a. It has developed through the educational system, that is, it has been taught as a

subject and, in many cases, also used a s a medium of instruction;

b. It has developed in an area where a native variety of English was not the language

spoken by most of the population;

c. It is used for a range of functions among those who speak or write it in the region

where it is used, for example, in letter writing, in the writing of literature, in

parliament, in communication between friends and family. It may be used as a

lingua franca among thoe speaking different native languages or even among

those who speak the same native language but use English because it is felt to be

more appropriate for certain purposes, and

d. It has become ‘localized’ or ‘nativized’ by adopting some language features of its

own, such as sounds, intonation patterns, sentence structures, words, expressions.

The Codification of Philippine English Vocabulary

As in other contexts to which English was transported, new words and

expressions were coined by English speakers in the Philippines as they encountered

unfamiliar flora and fauna, strange peoples, and the rather different social institutions

indigenous to the islands or the legacy of Spanish colonialism. In fact, the process of

lexical innovation and vocabulary creation dates back to the early years of colonization.

Evidence of this is available from a number of sources, including the letters and journals

of the American ‘Thomasite’ teachers who were dispatched to every province in the

islands between 1901 and 1910.

The experience of the early Thomasite teachers in their cultural and linguistic
 5

contact with the country was perhaps representative of that of many of the early

American colonists who arrived in the Philippines, the texture of which can be observed

in the memoirs that were left by those teachers, many of which were subsequently

published in various forms (Freer, 1906; Marquadt, 1943; Perez, 1974).

Although previously there was relatively little research on the

contemporary Philippine English lexicon, some linguists have carried out studies in this

area, notably Tabor (1984), Cruz and Bautista (1995 and 1997). In this latter study,

Bautista’s analysis of Philippine English vocabulary items recognizes four major

categories of localized vocabulary:

(i) Items derived from ‘normal expansion’ of reference, such as bath, blow-out,

brown-out, fiscalize, motel, province, and topnotcher;

(ii) The ‘preservation of items’ lost or infrequent in other varieties of English, e.g.

city folk, solon, viand;

(iii) ‘Coinage’, with neologisms such as awardee, carnapper, cockfighter,

masteral, and studentry, as well as clippings, abbreviations, innovations, and

compounds as in aircon, promo, supermart; DH, NIC, TY; Taglish, trapo,

pomdi; blue-seal, dirty kitchen, macho dancer.

(iv) ‘borrowings’, e.g. items borrowed from Philippine languages (such as lapu-

lapu, pasalubong, Pinoy, etc.) as well as Spanish (despedida), China (feng

shui) and other languages.

The linguistic research of Bautista and others in this area underpinned one recent

attempt by the Philippine publisher Anvil, in conjunction with the Macquarie

organization, to produce a dictionary with a genuine Philippine perspective for use in the
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nation’s high schools. The result of this collection was the Anvil-Macquarie Dictionary of

Philippine English for High School (Bautista and Butler, 2000), although this might be

regarded as only an initial step toward producing a fuller national dictionary of Philippine

English. The ethos of the dictionary was explained in a brochure produced by Anvil-

Macquarie to introduce the volume to teachers and to the public, where it is noted that:

“The words that are peculiar to a particular variety of English are developed from the

context, both physical and social, of that language community. They are significant

because they go to the heart of the local culture and mark out that community as different

from others in its history, its way of life, its attitudes and its traditions’ (Anvil-Macquarie,

2000: 2).

It appears doubtful, however, that the Philippine community is ready to respond

positively to the introduction of locally-compiled and locally-edited dictionaries in the

way that Australian schools and colleges have done since the 1980s. Although the Anvil-

Macquarie dictionary project described above drew strong support from many academics

and educators, versions of the Merriam-Webster’s dictionaries continue to dominate the

market despite the archaic and scanty coverage of Philippine English they include. The

prospects for alternative approaches at present seem poor, despite rater favorable attitudes

to Philippine English vocabulary among many academics and high school teachers, as

shown in studies by Bautista 2001 and Bolton and Butler, 2004. One major problem is

that, while the study of this localized Philippine lexicon provides a rich research field for

sociolinguists and scholars of English varieties, the compilation an officially-sanctioned

dictionary of Philippine English seems to hold little attraction for government officials

and most publishers. One reason for this is undoubtedly the continuing power and
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prestige of forms of American English within Philippine society and the era of the

expanding call center industry. A fuller understanding of the place of the Philippine

English lexicon also needs to incorporate the history of the lexicography of the

indigenous languages of the Philippines.

Intelligibility, Acceptability and Standardization of PE

In addition to linguistic descriptions of PE, several studies have considered the

attitudes of different groups or respondents to these linguistic features and even to the

variety itself. The Aquino et al. (1996) study concerning pronunciation showed that

regardless of contact status, educational level, and language background, American

English was the most intelligible of the varieties. Nevertheless, the Aquino et al. study

had a limitation in its narrow focus—it considered the question of intelligibility only in

terms of eleven vowel and consonant contrasts in minimal word sets.

On the other hand, a study done by Bautista (forthcoming), also focused on the

attitude towards PE consisting of two parts: attitudes towards PE as a variety in

comparison with American English (AE) and attitudes towards specific lexical items and

phrasal constructions. The general result is that the respondents display very positive

attitudes towards Philippine English as a variety. However in sharp contrast to their

strong support for PE is their negative reaction towards individual PE lexical items and

phrasal expressions—“Filipinisms”—which appear quite regularly in Philippine English

texts (Bautista, 2001).

Furthermore, the question has been asked many times and in fact Gonzalez

famously asked in the title of a 1983 paper: “When does an error become a feature of
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Philippine English?” In a later publication, Gonzalez (1985:199) had a more definite

answer for the question he raised in 1983. This investigation has worked on the

assumption that if any sector of the society can influence the shift, it will be the speakers

of the mass media who are assumed to set the standard and who have the opportunity to

function as models, whether by design or not.

In effect, a case can be made for newscasters and TV hosts as well as interlocutors

on talk shows, for the most part recruited from the educated elites of Philippines society,

as the pace setters for spoken Philippine English, and for daily writers of newspapers and

periodicals as the pace setters for written Philippine English.

McArthur (1992:982) likewise underscores the importance of print and broadcast

media as well as the elite, in determining the standard. While pointing out the difficulty

of defining Standard English, he discusses what he considers the less controversial points

regarding the concept of Standard English. Linguists generally agree on three things:

(1) The standard is most easily identified in print, whose conventions are more or

less uniform throughout the world, and some use the term print standard for

that medium.

(2) Standard forms are used by most presenters of news on most English-

language radio and television networks, but with regional and other variations,

particularly in accent.

(3) Use of Standard English relates to social class and level of education, often

considered (explicitly or implicitly) to match the average level of attainment

of students who have finished secondary-level schooling.

In summary, then, Philippine English, is not English that falls short of the norms
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of Standard American English; it is not badly learned English as a second language; its

distinctive features are not errors committed by users who have not mastered the

American standard. Instead, it is a nativized variety of English that has features which

differentiate it from Standard American English because of the influence of the first

language, because of the different culture in which the language is embedded. Philippine

English has an informal variety, especially in the spoken mode, which may include a lot

of borrowing and code-mixing, and it has a formal variety which, when used by

educated speakers and found acceptable in educated Filipino circles can be called

Standard Philippine English.

Implications for Language Teaching

One lesson communicated clearly in Bautista’s study of the attitudes of English

Department faculty of the three leading universities in the Philippines, is that PE is a

respectable variety, it is not “mistakes made by people who speak poor English”, and it is

not a variety where anything goes. Educated PE is a legitimate form of Standard English

that can be used as a model for English language in the country. Bamgbose (1998) states

that “non-native English is used in a wide range of domains, and it is not a transitional

and unstable code striving for perfection”. Bamgbose (1998) further adds that, “non-

native English is a suitable model for all English language users”. However, the fact that

PE can be a model for language teaching does not mean that teachers should start

accepting—and perhaps teaching—non-standardisms which have been found to occur in

printed materials of educated PE. The study by Bautista (2001), as mentioned earlier,

posits one clear finding that English teacher respondents were quite strict with idiomatic
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and grammatical constructions. Although they had very positive attitudes towards PE as a

variety, they were not favorably disposed towards the Filipinisms containing

ungrammatical features. A finding of the study by Tan (1982) states that acceptability

presupposes comprehensibility, but comprehensibility does not presuppose acceptability.

In other words, being intelligible is easy to achieve but speaking or writing acceptably is

not. For example, “open the light” is obviously comprehensible but it is not always an

acceptable construction to educated PE users, even in spoken form.

It is in the area of grammar that educated PE should attempt to keep closely to the

standard of American English. Even if English teachers accept the deviations in PE

pronunciation and lexicon, they cannot afford to be tolerant of grammatical mistakes.

Bautista (2001) believes that teachers should enforce the observance of categorical rules.

As several writers, like Gupta 1993, have pointed out, Standard English is a range and

even within the more established standard varieties such as American and British English,

there are disputed usages. Clearly, some branches of grammatical rules are serious while

others are less so. A 1997 study by Bautista made the point that the different productive

processes of lexicon build-up have implications for speakers of different varieties of

English. She suggested that coinages and borrowings—because they call attention to

themselves as “new” or “different” words—may not cause as much inter-variety

misunderstanding and miscommunication as the use of ordinary words that are used

differently in different varieties of English. Exemplifying the potential for

misunderstanding is to cite PE salvage (with its meaning to “summarily execute” in PE)

and motel (with its connotation of illicit sex in PE). Thus, language teachers in the

classroom must alert their students to the new meanings being given to certain commonly
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used words in the Filipino context.

On the other hand, The Assessment Handbook by Borlongan & Lim 2012,

discusses the pedagogical implications while the World Englishes paradigm recognizes

PE as a much more acceptable variation. In the interim, it states that “what can be done

should be done”. Teachers in service must be informed of this emerging, liberating

paradigm. They must be made aware that English is not a monolithic entity, and the

norms have become “pluricentric”, that is, it does not only constitute of a single unit. This

should first and foremost be reflected in their teaching philosophies, and then translated

into action. Teachers could start teaching Philippine English, not necessarily as the target

variety but simply to increase awareness on the existence of such a legitimized new

English, thereby also helping students improve their sociolinguistic competence.

Classroom evaluation schemes must reflect this reinvigorated philosophy and enhanced

content. This can be easily applied in less objective assessment tools like essays and

research papers, which should be common in English language classes. Teachers may

point in class how Philippine English textual patterns may differ from other Englishes

and may instruct their students to be aware of how these differences and variations may

be used appropriately. The findings of corpus-based studies of Philippine English with

reference to internal stylistic variation may help in pointing out when Philippine English

discriminates between the use of the subjunctive mood, for example, and so the teacher

must try to make the most out of this kind of resource. Given this, teachers can likewise

rate submissions without judging those works that make use of Philippine English

patterns as inferior. Regardless of the difficulty of putting up a world Englishes

paradigm-informed language assessment in the Philippines, Borlongan 2011 states that

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sacrifices must be done as to develop English language teaching in the Philippines and to

realize Philippine English as a legitimate English.

Word Formation Processes

Word Formation is where words are made through different processes that result

to the expansion of English vocabulary, for these processes include the utilization of old

words in forming new ones or coming up with an entirely new term (Naeem, 2010). This

comes in line with what Bloomfield, 1933 has stated that “language changes in the course

of time.” Word Formation covers a vast expanse of processes that contribute to language

change processes namely blending, clipping, derivation, acronym formation, coinage,

affixation, borrowing, compounding, backformation and conversion.

An easily observable law governs the progress of words through history, that is,

with time, they get shorter and shorter (Liberman, 2005). For example, “within the past

century, blending has become popular in English and accounts for a significant portion of

new words in the language, many of which we may not even recognize as blends. Though

many portmanteaus arise facetiously, the process of blending is useful in creating words

for interrelated ideas and processes, especially those that have a technical or scientific

link” (Arnold, 2013).

New processes and products require new words, and everything of importance in

our new technological world needs a name (Wray and Bloomer, 2012). There has been an

abundance of new formed words over the last twenty years, but by no means all of them

have caught on: chatterati, soccerati, glamourati, bloggerati for example, words which

were not really that familiar to us but have caught on due to global acceptance
 13

(Delahunty, 2011). It just goes to show how dynamic language is.

Word Formation Processes in Filipinisms

To consider a more specific reference, Bautista 1997 has provided a provisional

list of the morphological processes present in the Macquarie Asian Corpus she has

compiled with Butler in 1992. Butler 1996 states that a lexicon develops in various ways,

namely, (a) normal expansion, (b) preservation of items which have been lost or become

infrequent in other varieties, (c) coinage, and (d) borrowing). However, Bautista calls

attention to the fact that the first three processes—expansion, preservation, and coinage—

produce words that are English in form, while the last process, borrowing, produces

words that are non-English in form.

i. Normal Expansion

Under normal expansion, there are two processes, namely, (1) extensions or

adaptations of meaning and (2) shift in part of speech. The most transparent examples of

extension of meaning would be the brand names that have been generalized in the

Philippines to cover the whole category, like, pampers for disposable diapers, and

Colgate for toothpaste. Less transparent examples of adaptations of meaning would be

words that many Filipinos take for granted. Here would fall words like brown-out to refer

to a temporary stoppage of electric current, province for anywhere outside Manila, and

topnothcer for anyone who tops a contest, an election or an exam. Other examples of

normal expansion are open and close the light for standard “turn on and turn off the

light”. There are also instances where a word means almost the exact opposite of its

American or Australian counterpart. Salvage, for example, usually means to kill in cold
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blood in Philippine English, as opposed to its standard meaning “to save”.

Another normal expansion process is changing the part of speech of an existing

word. Most commonly, nouns turn into verbs. For example, the verb fiscalize, to call

attention to abuse, comes from the noun fiscal and does not appear in either the standard

English dictionaries. Also included is the shift in the categorization of the part of speech,

like change from mass noun to count noun. For example, many educated Filipinos say

equipments, furnitures, and faculty. There is also change from transitive to the intransitive

verb for such verbs as enjoy (“Did you enjoy?” or, as a parting expression, “Enjoy!”) and

afford (“We wanted to air-condition the place but we couldn’t afford.”).

ii. Preservation of items which have become lost or infrequent in other

varieties

Under preservation of items which have become lost or infrequent in other

varieties, Butler 1995 has pointed out that solon appears in more headlines and newscasts

in the Philippines than in Australia. This may be because solon is defined as a lawmaker

in the PE while it is defined in standard dictionaries as a wise legislator. Also, Filipinos’

frequent recourse to the use of wherein is also another example, which is now limited

mainly to legal documents and to prose with lofty tone in other Englishes. Another

example is by-and-by, which is a term probably acquired from late nineteenth century

textbooks (Gonzales, 1983), but is now no longer in use.

iii. Coinage

Another very productive way of expanding the lexicon is by coinage—inventing a

new word or phrase, a neologism—and there are several ways of doing it, namely, (1)

analogical constructions, (2) clippings, (3) abbreviations, (4) total innovations, (5)
 15

English compounds, and (6) combinations of one English element with one borrowed

element.

On the analogy of employee, examinee, grantee, Philippine English has awardee,

honoree, mentee—words that do not appear in the usual English dictionaries. PE has

jubilarian, which does not appear in standard dictionaries; Octoberian for a student who

finishes his or her degree at the end of the first semester (i.e. October), rather than at the

end of the school year (i.e. March). Reelectionist and rallyist do not appear in other

Enlgish dictionaties, nor do the words bedspacer, carnapper, cockfighter, and holdupper.

Carnap is used in replacement of carjack, studentry for student body.

For clippings, ball pen is used instead of ball point or ball point pen. Other

clippings include aircon (for air-conditioning unit), kinder for kindergarten, promo for

promotion for a product, sem for semester, and supermart for supermarket.

Some abbreviations might belong only to PE. CR for comfort room, which has the

standard counterpart of toilet or rest room; DH for domestic helper, DI for dance

instructor, GRO for guest relations officer, KJ for kill joy, PX for post exchange, and the

currently ubiquitous TY for thank you said very informally.

Meanwhile, compounding is one of the biggest contributors to the lexicon of PE.

English compounds include American time (being punctual), bar girl, bar hostess,

bedsheet, behest loan, blue-seal (imported cigarettes), captain ball, colonial mentality,

dirty ice cream, dirty kitchen, domestic helper, eat-all-you-can, face towel, Filipino time,

green joke, landgrabbing, macho dancer, dental clinic (where American English says

dental office), and streetlamp (streetlight in standard dictionaries). There is also the use of

compounding forms –mate and boy. In addition to American or Australian English

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classmate, roommate, schoolmate and soul mate, PE has batchmate, dormmate, office

mate, provincemate, seatmate, and even boardmate for someone you live in the same

boarding house with. The need to identify a common bond, manifested through –mate,

comes out strongly in the Philippine context. Johnson (n.d.) has also remarked on the

productivity of boy in forming compounds. In addition to other Englishes’ newsboy, there

is house boy, gasoline boy, room boy, and watch-your-car boy in PE.

On the other hand, examples of combinations of one English element with one

borrowed element are bakya crowd (crowd from the lower socio-economic classes),

balikbayan box (a box which Filipinos returning from abroad put in all the things they

shopped), bomba movie (pornographic movie), buco juice (juice from young coconut),

collegiala English (English spoken by students studying in exclusive girls’ schools),

common tao (ordinary Filipino), polo barong (barong Tagalog with short sleeves), pulot

boy (the boy who picks up tennis balls for the players), sari-sari store (small variety store

usually found in a residential neighborhood), turo-turo restaurant (fast-food place where

one points to the dishes one wants to order.

Semantic Change

As cited in Maxilom 2013, Bloomfield (1933) and Campbell (1998) defined

semantic change as a change in the concepts that were associated with a term and the

innovations that change the meaning of words.

With regard to the types of semantic change, Campbell (1998) and Crowley

(1997) have the following classifications: First, widening or broadening refers to the

increase of the meaning of words (Campbell, 1998) and a change in meaning which could
 17

result in a word processing additional meanings while retaining the original meaning

(Crowley, 1997). For example, the English word ‘dog’ had a specific meaning of ‘a

powerful breed of dog’ which has a broader meaning that includes ‘all breeds of dog’.

Second, narrowing involves the change of meaning that decreases its range of

reference into a fewer context (Campbell, 1998) and occurs when a word refers to only

part of the original meaning (Crowley, 1997). For instance, the word ‘starve’ (to suffer or

perish from hunger) came from the Old English word ‘steorfan’ (to die).

Semantic weakening of meaning frequently occurs when the deviation in meaning

implies a lesser impact compared to the original meaning of a word. For example, our

word soon used to mean ‘immediately’ but now simply means ‘in the near future’. Other

examples are wreak which used to mean “avenge or punish”, now means “to cause,

inflict”; quell which meant “kill, murder”, now means “to put down, pacify”.

Lastly, semantic shift is a process in which a word loses its former meaning and

takes on a new, but often related, meaning. For example, the old meaning of immoral is

“not customary”, while changes in meaning would refer to it as “unethical”. More

recently, the word gay has undergone a dramatic and unusually rapid set of shifts. Just a

few generations ago this word was typically used in the sense of “lively, happy.” It then

came to designate “homosexual,” and a phrase such as “a gay film” would be interpreted

in this sense. (Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, n.d.)

Column Writing

Naveed 2011 states that the column is the personal opinion of the writer that

would not be tolerated in any other kind of story. The columnist can pass judgments,
 18

make recommendations, talk about himself or herself and otherwise violate most of the

accepted tenets of news writing. The style and approach in writing columns is neither

serious nor deductive. Columns can be humorous, can report on local life and people or

can deal with a range of specific topics like politics or finance. The feature, the column

and the editorial are sometimes hard to distinguish; qualities of each cross over and

intermingle. But columns offer an opportunity for variety in content that no feature or

editorial can approach.

The column always carries the writer’s by-line and in some cases, the writer’s

photograph. Columns appear at regular intervals and usually in the same location in the

publication; so loyal readers will know where to find them. Columns may be subject

oriented, such as those in hobbies or crafts, or the columns can be a reflection of the

writer’ s personality, offering humor, opinions, and anecdotes. Unlike feature or editorial,

which usually require considerable background and experience, columns can be written

by the newest member of the staff. Pointing out different structures of columns may seem

a useless exercise, since column writing is so individual and personalized. 

Editorializing in L2: Pedagogical Implications

A paper submitted by Dayag 2004 examined the discourse structure of newspaper

editorials in Philippine English in terms of their macrostructure and their lexico-

grammatical features. Data were taken from three leading English-language newspapers

in the Philippines. Toulmin’s framework is used in analyzing the macrostructure of the

editorials. The study posits that the discourse features of editorials manifest the

interactive nature of these texts.

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Findings of the present study have implications for second language teaching.

First, as Connor (1996) puts it, although L2 speakers seldom write newspaper editorials,

there is a need to study editorials because they reflect norms of persuasion. Besides,

while they seldom write editorials, students especially in the tertiary level need to analyze

and examine these texts since “they set standards for written persuasion” and “students

do read them” (Connor, 1996).

Second, in current approaches to second language teaching, a persistent call is for

the use of authentic instructional materials. Opinion articles such as columns are

examples of such materials. As a written genre, columns are real texts that are at the

disposal of the L2 learner. As media texts, they are intended for public consumption and

are therefore not intended for language teaching. This may translate to a more context-

dependent and meaningful teaching of the L2. In addition, the use of editorials may be a

good strategy in developing analytic and critical thinking in the language classroom since

editorials are usually commentaries on real events in the life of a nation or community,

thus raising the consciousness of the L2 learner, at the very least. This awareness of

current events as articulated in editorials may then lead to an informed position on issues

confronting a nation.

Third, as an advocate of text-oriented, genre-based approaches to L2 teaching,

Dayag argues for the teaching of text structure, especially that of argumentative texts like

editorials, which is essentially an aspect of the broad definition of analytic and critical

thinking, the development of which is the primary concern of reading and writing classes.

Fourth, in relation to the third implication, it may be good to teach the

macrostructure of editorial texts to show students how they are structured. The quality of
 20

the claim or thesis statement should also be assessed along with the quality and quantity

of supporting evidence. All this should be done to discourage our students from

submitting argumentative papers that are “hot air” or just empty rhetoric.

Finally, lexico-grammatical signals to show both speaker’s and writer’s attitude to

a proposition or information should be taught in class. These include evaluative reporting

verbs, conditional clauses, concessive clauses, Hypothetical-Real clauses, which

normally appear in argumentative texts. This is aimed at helping students to write essays

that are not only interactive but more importantly, interactional. In addition, teaching

these lexico-grammatical points will have the advantage of addressing the need to teach

grammar in context rather than in isolation, thus underscoring their function alongside

other utterances in texts under consideration.

Philippine English Vocabulary: A Semantic Study

A study by Porciuncula 2012 aimed to compile examples of Philippine English

words, and their meanings, their comparison to “standard” English usage, and to draw

inferences from this comparison using a semanticist’s point of view. Words and

expressions were taken from the Anvil Macquarie Philippine English Dictionary

(Revised Edition, 2010) and classified into six categories, namely: people, places and

things, descriptive words, actions, expressions, and abbreviations. Definitions of

Philippine English words and expressions were compared with those from several

“standard” references like The New International Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary

of the English Language (Deluxe Encyclopedic Edition, 2011); Dictionary.com and

 21

Merriam-Webster.com, which are dictionaries on the Internet, and UrbanDictionary.com,

an Internet archive of contemporary American slang.

Philippine English words and expressions that were found to have exactly the

same form and definition as those contained in the above standard references were not

included. This is because their existence in other dictionaries would mean that they are

also used in other English-speaking countries, and hence are not unique to Philippine

English. Philippine English words and expressions were analyzed from a “semanticist’s”

perspective, specifically focusing on the concepts of lexical ambiguity, polysemy,

homonymy, utterance, and context, and universe of discourse.

Comparisons across Philippine English and Standard English references were

done, in an attempt to describe differences and similarities in meaning. Some words were

found to have closely related senses (polysemy), while others had entirely different

senses (homonymy). Still, there were those who were somehow “in between,” not closely

related and yet not too different, either. In addition, there were words that are not

contained (or have counterparts) in Standard English dictionaries, and hence can be

considered as unique to Philippine English.

Likewise, the role of context was also mentioned in some of the explanations.

Here, Philippine culture and practice appears to play a significant role in the development

and use of Philippine English expressions. Indeed, only time can tell what the future

holds for this “Filipino” variety of English. For the moment, it is good to see scholars

who are interested and doing research on the subject, especially in describing the various

aspects of Philippine English.

 22

Synthesis

The discussions included in this chapter show that there is indeed a great deal of

studies pertaining to Philippine English in an attempt to explain its various features. A

foreign scholar once remarked, “of the Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines has

perhaps produced the most comprehensive research on an indigenized variety of English”

(Tay, 1991, p. 323). Llamzon’s 1969 monograph would tell us that the use of Philippine

English “is acceptable in educated Filipino circles.” The use of PE also corresponds to

Kachru’s World Englishes Paradigm which states that “English belongs to all those who

use it”. Though intelligibility and acceptability of PE as a variety, as well as the use of

standardized dictionaries in PE may vary, this area of study continues to have a

significant implication for language teaching. The study by Bautista (2001), as mentioned

earlier, posits one clear finding that English teacher respondents were quite strict with

idiomatic and grammatical constructions. Although they had very positive attitudes

towards PE as a variety, they were not favorably disposed towards the Filipinisms

containing ungrammatical features. These findings are significant and relevant for all

English language teachers to realign their thinking and to consider in planning out their

strategies and pedagogies.

Furthermore, a morpho-semantic analysis provides a deep understanding of the

linguistic nature of these naturally-occurring Filipinisms, helpful in the succeeding

language researchers about this variant of English.

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REFERENCES

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Bautista, M. L. S. (2000). Defining standard philippine english: Its status and

grammatical feature. Manila, Philippines: De La Salle University Press, Inc.

Bautista, M. L. S. (2000c). Studies of philippine english in the philippines. Philippine

journal of linguistics, 31(1), 39-65.

Bautista, M. L. S. (2001). Studies of philippine english: Implications for english language

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Llamzon, T. A. (1969). Standard filipino english. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de

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Naveed, F. (2011, October ). Retrieved from http://mass.pakgalaxy.com/column-

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