Self-perceptions of ethnic markers in Toronto English

Ethnically marked ways of speaking have garnered increasing attention in sociolinguistics, although social meaning has largely been adduced indirectly through production data and perception experiments. Part of a larger project investigating ethnolinguistic variation in Toronto English, this paper presents a preliminary analysis of direct elicitation through focus groups. Participants of Italian and Chinese backgrounds provided responses to clips from sociolinguistic interviews used in a subjective reaction survey and discussed potentially ethnolectal linguistic features and Toronto English in general. Participants had mixed success in naming features associated with their ethnic backgrounds, although clips from speakers with a higher degree of orientation to their ethnic background elicited more comments and had more linguistic features identified. Phonetic features were picked up on most, although participants identified features unanticipated by the researchers. Labelling of some features as “Canadian” may reflect a lack of association with particular ethnicity or association with the majority (British/Irish descent) ethnic group. While this study supports some of the findings of earlier research, the use of focus groups adds another dimension to ethnolinguistic variation, allowing direct exploration of listener salience and offering insights into the relevance of social factors in the use of ethnic markers and the construction of identity.