The BE-passive in Gibraltar English: A variationist analysis

Abstract

[eng] Gibraltar English (GibE, henceforth) is a lesser-known variety of English that has recently been incorporated into the field of ‘World Englishes’ (Levey, 2015; Suárez-Gómez, 2020). It has been described at the phonological and lexical level (Krug et al., 2019; Suárez-Gómez, 2012; Weston, 2011), as well as from the perspective of code-switching (García-Caba, 2022; Goria, 2020, 2021). However, its grammar has received limited attention, with Loureiro-Porto and Suárez-Gómez’s (2017) preliminary study being the main exception. Therefore, this thesis aims to partially fill this gap in the research of GibE, by analyzing the BE-passive as a useful information rearranging device (Arnold et al., 2013; Seoane, 2000) and an indicator of formality and academic style (Biber et al., 1999). By using the Gibraltarian component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-Gibraltar, henceforth ICE-GBR), this thesis aims to (i) examine the frequency of the passive in this variety of English; (ii) contrast the results with those from the British component of the corpus (ICE-Great Britain, henceforth ICE-GB); (ii) describe the syntactic and semantic characteristics of the construction; and (iii) evaluate the influence of extralinguistic factors on its usage. The findings indicate that the BE-passive is significantly less frequent in ICE-GBR compared to ICE-GB, which could be attributed to sociocultural phenomena such as language contact with Spanish, or the desire to assert local identity, among other factors. However, the construction does not exhibit any overt differences in its grammatical usage with respect to traditional manuals.