Kiasu

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

This paper presents a study of usage patterns of the word kiasu in the GloWbE corpus of World Englishes. Kiasu has been borrowed from Hokkien into Singaporean and Malaysian English as a linguistic ‘glocalization’ process enabling speakers to verbalize an important local cultural schema. A grammatical profile is set up that draws on the techniques of grammatical profiling and constructional profiling. While patterns can be identified and linked up with specific construals of the underlying cultural schema, the study ultimately also questions the validity of the parts-of-speech classes that traditional English grammarians operate with.
Original languageEnglish
JournalNy forskning i grammatik
Volume27
Pages (from-to)22-37
Number of pages15
ISSN1902-1291
Publication statusPublished - 21 Oct 2020

    Research areas

  • Faculty of Humanities - World Englishes, Singaporean English, Malaysian English, corpus linguistics, grammatical profiling, cultural linguistics, grammar, English grammar

ID: 230907257