Non-standard usages in four postcolonial Asian Englishes: cross-dataset triangulation

This study introduces a novel, four-dimensional (4D) triangulation framework to investigate grammatical normativization and structural stabilization in four postcolonial Asian Englishes: Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. We cross-reference subjective evaluation data from a student questionnaire (see Paper 1) against digital vernacular data from the Global Web-based English (GloWbE) corpus, spoken/written archival data from the International Corpus of English (ICE), and expert ratings from the electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (eWAVE). To reconcile conflicting statistical scales, we introduce two non-parametric tracking metrics: the Acceptability/Usage Divergence Index (AUDI) and the Actual/Potential Divergence Index (APDI). The resulting 4D aggregated gap scores empirically validate the evolutionary pathways of Schneider’s Dynamic Model. The compressed profiles of Singapore and the Philippines demonstrate advanced endonormative linguistic security, while the wider structural gaps in Malaysia and Hong Kong uncover severe diglossic friction and reporting blind spots within expert-contributed atlases.