President rodrigo duterte’s UN speech: An analysis on L1’s phonological influences on L2

Abstract

This study examined the L1’s phonological influences on segmental and suprasegmental traits in the selected speech of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte using a descriptive qualitative research approach, using Bautista and Gonzales’s (2006) framework on the phonological features of Philippine English. It was revealed that the speaker rarely used the unaccented schwa; the speaker is devoid of stop aspirations and has realized cluster simplification at the final position and lack of aspiration; the speaker makes a series of replacements where he substitutes “[a] for [æ], [כ] for [o], [ɪ] for [i], and [ε] for [e].” Moreover, the speaker made a series of substitutions where the speaker realizes “[s] for [z], [ſ] for [ʒ], [t] for [θ], [d] for [ð], [p] for [f], and [b] for [v],” although “[p] for [f] and [b] for [v]” were rarely committed. Moreover, the speaker follows a syllable-timed rhythm rather than a stress-timed rhythm, which pertains that the speaker’s regular American English accent results in fewer erroneous word utterances and adjusts variations in accent location. The mother tongue (L1) influences the second language (L2) in creating speech sounds. The phonologically influenced segmental and suprasegmental features show that the speaker strongly prefers his mother tongue but it is not an indication that the Philippine variation is incorrect but rather a variant of the English language that supports the concept of World Englishes that recognizes the variety of English language which is brought and influenced by the first or native language of the speaker.