Bloomsbury World Englishes Volume 1: Paradigms

Britta Schneider, Theresa Heyd, Mario Saraceni

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350418387
• eBook ISBN: 9781350065826
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Bloomsbury World Englishes offers a comprehensive and rigorous description of the facts, implications and contentious issues regarding the forms and functions of English in the world. International experts cover a diverse range of varieties and topics, offering a more accurate understanding of English across the globe and the various social contexts in which it plays a significant role. With volumes dedicated to research paradigms, language ideologies and pedagogies, the collection pushes the boundaries of the field to go beyond traditional descriptive paradigms and contribute to moving research agendas forward.

Volume 1: Paradigms analyzes the ways in which we make sense of English as a global language, its many varieties and how these come into contact and interact with other languages. It moves the field beyond existing 'models' that are no longer sufficient to describe English(es) in the era of globalization.

PART ONE

Reflecting Research Paradigms of World Englishes

Chapter 1

World Englishes

Approaches, Models and Methodology

Kingsley Bolton

1 Introduction

This chapter sets out to present an overview of the field of World Englishes (WE), as a field of academic research and publication, tracing the development of various approaches to World Englishes from the 1980s to the present, discussing various theoretical ‘models’ of approaches to the study of English worldwide, as well as commenting on the methodologies of WE researchers. In this context, the notion of ‘approach’ might be understood as referring to the general theoretical perspective adopted by a researcher or group of researchers in the field, whereas the term ‘model’ in linguistics might be broadly understood as referring to an abstract representation of a language or elements of a linguistic system. Since the 1980s, the World Englishes scholarship has succeeded in creating a paradigm shift in linguistics, thereby transforming English studies as an area of international research and scholarship. Before the 1980s, discussions of English worldwide usually highlighted a distinction between ‘native’ versus ‘non-native’ speakers, and employed terms such as ‘English as a Native Language’ (ENL), ‘English as a Second Language’ (ESL) and ‘English as a Foreign Language’ (EFL), in order to classify particular varieties of English. Since the early 1980s, however, ‘World Englishes’, with its inclusive plural, has increasingly become the standard term to refer to the study of varieties of English worldwide. Since the 1980s, many linguists worldwide have engaged with the study of ‘Englishes’ from a pluricentric perspective, as in ‘English languages’, ‘international Englishes’, ‘new Englishes’, ‘varieties of English’ and ‘World Englishes’. Of all these designations, the best-established term in the literature is ‘World Englishes’, and the last three decades have seen the rise of this discipline (or sub-discipline) in linguistics as a site for substantial scholarly research and publication. There are now a number of academic journals, including Asian Englishes, English Today, English World-Wide and World Englishes, devoted to this field, numerous book-length studies dealing with research in this area, as well as the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), which regularly organizes international conferences in the United States and across the globe (Seargeant 2012).

2 Approaches to World Englishes

The term ‘World Englishes’ has both a narrower and wider application. The narrower application of the term refers to the approach to the study of English worldwide pioneered by Braj B. Kachru and a group of closely related scholars. The wider application of the concept also includes a wide range of other approaches including those of English studies, corpus linguistics, the sociology of language, features-based and dialectological studies, pidgin and creole research, ‘Kachruvian’ linguistics, lexicographical approaches, popular accounts, critical linguistics, futurological approaches as well as current work on English as a lingua franca (ELF). All these approaches are summarized in Table 1.1.

The English studies approach dates from the 1960s and the work of Randolph Quirk, and is associated with the Survey of English Usage at University College London, including David Crystal and Sidney Greenbaum. Their work in the UK was complemented by the efforts of a number of German scholars including Görlach (1995) and Schneider (2007), as well as research in the field of corpus linguistics, including work on the International Corpus of English (ICE) project (ICE 2019) and the Global Web-based English Corpus (GloWbE) (Davies and Fuchs 2015). Both the English studies approach and corpus linguistics also utilise a ‘features-based approach’, where salient features of Englishes at the levels of phonology, lexis and grammar are identified and described (Trudgill and Hannah [1982] 2013; Schneider et al. 2004; Kortmann et al. 2004); which in turn has influenced Schneider’s (2003, 2007) formulation of the Dynamic Model of postcolonial Englishes. Sociolinguistic approaches to WE have included (i) ‘the sociology of language’ (Fishman, Conrad and Rubal-Lopez 1996), (ii) the ‘linguistic features’ (and dialectological) approach (Trudgill and Hannah [1982] 2013), (iii) pidgin and creole studies and (iv) ‘socially realistic’ studies of WE (Kachru [1982] 1992a: 304). However, the term ‘World Englishes’, in its plural form, is most closely associated with the work of Braj Kachru. An important aspect of the Kachruvian perspective was that the threefold distinction between ENL, ESL and EFL was ideologically loaded, and he instead proposed a diasporic model that distinguished between the ‘Inner Circle’ (including the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), the ‘Outer Circle’ (postcolonial societies such as Nigeria, Kenya, India, Philippines and Singapore) and the ‘Expanding Circle’ (for instance, Brazil, China, Germany and Japan). Popular writers publishing ‘trade books’ on English worldwide have included McCrum, MacNeil and Cram (1986), Crystal (1997, 2004) and Horobin (2016). In counterpoint to such popular studies, Phillipson’s (1992) monograph, Linguistic Imperialism, has inspired a number of critical scholars over the following years. The futurology perspective is best exemplified in the publications of Graddol (1997, 2006, 2010), while research on English as an International Language (EIL) includes the work of such scholars as Smith (1976, 1981), Strevens (1980), McKay (2002) or Matsuda (2017). The EIL framework also influenced the development of English as a lingua franca (ELF), given that these may be seen as ‘not competing but complementing paradigms’ (Jenkins 2018: 12). Finally, the last two decades have also seen a growing interest in approaches to WE utilizing insights derived from the field of cultural linguistics (Sharifian 2015).

3 World Englishes and Disciplinary Debates

TABLE 1.1 Approaches to World Englishes

Approach	Focus	Timeline
English studies	The analysis of varieties of English from synchronic and historical perspectives, against a tradition of English Studies (Anglistik), dating from the late nineteenth century, for example the work of Otto Jespersen, Daniel Jones and Henry Sweet, concerned with levels of linguistic description.	1960s–present
English corpus linguistics	The accurate and detailed linguistic descriptions of World Englishes from a features perspective.	1990–present
‘Features-based’ approaches	The description of English through dialectological and variationist methodologies. Situated against the long tradition of British and European dialectology.	1980s–present
The sociology of language	Research on English in relation to such issues as language maintenance/shift and ethnolinguistic identity.	1960s–present
Kachruvian studies	The promotion of a pluricentric approach to World Englishes, highlighting both the ‘sociolinguistic realities’ and ‘bilingual creativity’ of Outer Circle (and Expanding Circle) societies.	1980s–present
Pidgin and creole studies	The description and analysis of ‘mixed’ languages and the dynamics of linguistic hybridization in language contact settings.	1930s–present
Applied linguistics	The exploration of the implications of World Englishes for language learning and teaching.	1960s–present
Lexicography	The codification of vocabularies of English worldwide, linked to particular post-colonial societies and issues of linguistic autonomy.	1980s–present
Popularizers	The publication of books on English worldwide aimed at a mass reading public.	1980s–1990s
Critical linguistics	The expression of resistance to the linguistic imperialism and cultural hegemony of English, in tandem with resistance to Anglo-American political power.	1990s–present
Linguistic futurology	The discussion of future scenarios for the spread of English and English language teaching worldwide.	1997–present
English as an international language (EIL)	The broad study of English as an international and/or auxiliary language. A term variously used to refer to the uses of English(es) in diverse contexts across/between/in the Three Circles worldwide.	1976–present
English as a lingua franca (ELF)	An approach to English focusing on those contexts, for example universities and international businesses, where English is used as a common language by speakers of different nationalities and linguistic backgrounds.	Late 1990s–present
Cultural linguistics	Research on cross-cultural communication and cultural schemas in the context of World Englishes.	2000s–present

Adapted from: Bolton 2020

Over the last four decades, the World Englishes approach to English worldwide has succeeded in creating a major paradigm shift in academic English studies internationally. The study of World Englishes is now recognized as a branch of linguistics at many universities worldwide, and to a large extent has now established itself as a discipline in its own right, with its own educational programmes and discourse community. In this context, it can now be argued that

there is now a stable body of knowledge that constitutes a subject entitled World E nglishes studies, and . . . that there has been a paradigm shift in the way that the academic mainstream now focuses on the teaching and research of diverse varieties of English [which] affects not only sociolinguisti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• Introduction
• PART ONE REFLECTING RESEARCH PARADIGMS OF WORLD ENGLISHES
• PART TWO POSTNATIONAL FRAMINGS, DISCOURSES AND PERSPECTIVES
• PART THREE EMPIRICAL CASES: TRANSNATIONAL TIES AND NEW LOCALIZATIONS
• INDEX
• Copyright