ABSTRACT

This article explores the notions of indexical order and indexical field of Thai English based on 30 interviews conducted with students at a public university in Thailand. The analysis of these interviews examine an indexical field of Thai English where in many cases students perceive Thai English to be spoken by certain types of people, including: tour guides, restaurant workers, street vendors and the prime minister. This indexical field emerged even though many respondents had features of Thai English in their idiolect. The findings shed light on how we classify global varieties of English as the present study illustrates how the features of Thai English are not uniform, nor is the community of speakers who make up this variety. It is argued that a variety of English may be enregistered despite lacking a status of variety directly attributable to a community of speakers.

摘要

本文基于对泰国一所公立大学学生的 30 次采访，探讨了泰语英语的索引顺序和索引域的概念。对这些访谈的分析考察了泰语英语的一个索引领域，在许多情况下，学生认为泰语是由某些类型的人说的，包括：导游、餐馆工作人员、街头小贩和总理。尽管许多受访者在他们的方言中具有泰语英语的特征，但这个索引领域还是出现了。这些发现揭示了我们如何对全球英语变体进行分类，因为本研究说明了泰语英语的特征是如何不统一的，构成该变体的说话者社区也不统一。