Kachru's 3 Concentric Circles

11 Key excerpts on "Kachru's 3 Concentric Circles"

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  eBook - ePub

  World Englishes

  Rethinking Paradigms

  • Ee Ling Low, Anne Pakir, Ee Ling Low, Anne Pakir(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  7   

  Communication in English as a lingua franca

  The Kachruvian model of Three Circles reconsidered

  Yasukata Yano

  7.1 Introduction

  The global spread of English has brought diverse varieties for intranational use for the expression of local sociocultural identities of its users. Braj B. Kachru’s (1985, pp. 11–15; 1992, pp. 356–357) model of the Three Concentric Circles depicts the spread and present state of English use in the world and has been both seminal and fundamental to the field of World Englishes (WE) since its inception.

  In today’s globalized world, however, people communicate beyond national and regional boundaries and across cultures, either by travelling across the globe or by simply using the Internet. Such use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) is rapidly increasing among those who do not share common first languages or cultures. This chapter examines whether Kachru’s essentially geography-based model is able to cope with the present and future development of ELF in use.

  7.2 The Kachruvian Three Circles model

  Kachru conceptualized the Three Concentric Circles of English, viz. the Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circles. His definition of each circle of English is summarized in Table 7.1 .

  Kachru’s model rightly describes the linguistic reality that when English spreads to other regions and functions as an intranational language, it is inevitably localized, nativized, and acculturated, as well as develops into distinct varieties, reflecting the local linguistic and sociocultural climates in the new contexts of use over time.

  Localization or nativization takes place in all Three Circles of English. In the Inner Circle, sch- in schedule is pronounced [ ʃ ] in British English but pronounced [sk] in North American English. There is an absence of [r] in park in British English and presence of [r] in North American English. Lexical items such as lift, underground, and potato chips are found in British English but their North American English equivalents are elevator, subway, and French fries. Pavements in Britain are sidewalks in North America and footpaths

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  Philology and Global English Studies

  Retracings

  • Suman Gupta(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Incidentally, although Kachru went along with the term “native” here (and thereafter), in retrospect anxieties may be discerned about the higher premium that was laid on being “native” in relation to language, which tacitly resonates with notions of “nativeness” as biogenetic inheritance and citizenship by origin. But the use of the term “native” was, and in many circles still is (for example, Görlach continued to use it unabashed in subsequent decades), a matter of convention. Studies of English language had conventionally divided usage into three types since the 1960s (e.g., Quirk, Greenbaum, and Svartvik 1972, pp. 3–4): English as native language (ENL), English as second language (ESL), and English as foreign language (EFL). Those who subscribed to a need for an international norm but were uncomfortable with the characterization of “native” and “foreign” focused on the phrase “standard English” (SE) to designate a prescribed ideologically neutral norm. Later, others occasionally chose levels of proficiency (L1, L2, L3) with similar effect.

  In a 1984 conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the British Council, Kachru’s presentation (published as “Standards, Codification, and Sociolinguistic Realism,” 1985) offered the Three-Circles Model in a predominantly descriptive rather than normative vein. He didn’t draw it as a diagram. Rather, he described it in words which were visually suggestive in a section of the paper entitled “Three Concentric Circles of World Englishes”:

  The spread of English may be viewed in terms of three concentric circles representing the types of spread, the patterns of acquaintance and the functional domains in which English is used across cultures and languages. I have tentatively labelled these: the inner circle, the outer circle (or extended circle), and the expanding circle. In terms of users, the inner circle refers to the traditional bases of English […].

  The outer (or extended) circle needs a historical explanation: it involves the earlier phases of the spread of English and its institutionalization in non-native contexts. […]

  The third circle, termed the expanding circle, brings to English yet another dimension. Understanding the function of English in this circle requires a recognition of the fact that English is an international language […]. (Kachru, 1985b, pp. 12–13)

  He did, however, endow the three circles with normative functions: according to him, the inner circle offers “norm-providing varieties” of English, the outer circle uses “norm-developing varieties,” and the expanding circle uses “norm-dependent varieties” (pp. 16–17). By way of an immediate note: one of the appeals of this model was that it allowed for a departure from the uncomfortable associations of “native”/“foreign” in ENL/ESL/EFL, and many now use “inner circle,” “outer circle,” “expanding circle” instead to much the same effect and with a similar sense of acquired conventionality. The Three-Circles Model, thus described, shifted the sense of “model” away from the emphasis on standards and origins and toward an emphasis on describing a prevailing state of affairs. Its easily visualized diagrammatic form also let loose a somewhat new way of descriptively modeling English language usage. And its diagrammatic form led to a number of slippages and constructions which are of particular interest here.

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  The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies

  • Philip Seargeant, Ann Hewings, Stephen Pihlaja, Philip Seargeant, Ann Hewings, Stephen Pihlaja(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  World Englishes: A Resource Book for Students, also contained a number of criticisms of the Three Circles model including (i) the assertion that this was ‘a model based on geography and genetics’; (ii) that there were ‘grey areas’ between the Inner and Outer Circle countries, and Outer and Expanding Circles; and that (iii) ‘the model implies that the situation is uniform for all countries within a particular circle’. Kachru’s (2005) response to these criticisms emphasized that, for him, the notion of the Circles was primarily historical, which also involved a geographical (though not, in his formulation, a genetic) dimension (Kachru 2005: 213). With reference to the ‘grey areas’ issue, Kachru responded by quoting an earlier paper, where he had specifically argued that

  The Outer and Expanding Circles cannot be viewed as clearly demarcated from each other; they have several shared characteristics, and the status of English in the language policies of such countries changes from time to time. What is an ESL region at one time may become an EFL region at another time or vice versa.

  (Kachru 1985: 13–14)

  On the third issue of supposed uniformity of countries, Kachru’s response was that he had always argued that there was ‘significant variation’ within varieties, and indeed if we look back at one of Kachru’s earlier articles on ‘Models of English for the Third World’, he reports on no less than ten distinct varieties of Indian English identified by survey respondents at that time (Kachru 1976: 234). In his (2005) commentary on criticisms of the Three Circles model he went on to emphasize that it is important to consider the spread of English from a historical perspective for a range of rather basic reasons:

  That historical reality [of the Inner Circle] and the source of English need not be negated but has to be confronted in contextualizing the process of the spread of English and its implications. The earlier colonial designs and the resultant Imperial Raj directly impacted the Outer Circle countries (e.g. Nigeria, Kenya, India, Sri Lanka) with their distinct earlier linguistic and cultural histories, which are not necessarily the same as those of the Expanding Circle countries. The post-1950s period has created a specific dynamic and energy in the Outer Circle in terms of its identities, attitudes and creativity in the language.

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  Teaching English Language Variation in the Global Classroom

  Models and Lessons from Around the World

  • Michelle D. Devereaux, Chris C. Palmer, Michelle D. Devereaux, Chris C. Palmer, Michelle D Devereaux, Michelle D Devereaux, Chris C. Palmer(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In this theory-based phase, the students were also informed about Kachru’s (1985, 1992) Three Circle Model of World Englishes depicting a global diversity of English. The model describes the spread of English in terms of three concentric circles: the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle, and the Expanding Circle, which represent “the type of spread, the patterns of acquisition and the functional domains in which English is used across cultures and languages” (Kachru, 1985, p. 12). The Inner Circle includes countries where English is spoken as the native language of a substantial majority of the population. The United States and the United Kingdom can be given as examples. The Outer Circle primarily comprises countries where English has a colonial history and fulfills significant institutionalized roles as the language of administration and education or often as an explicitly announced “official language.” Some examples are India, Pakistan, Singapore, or the Philippines. Finally, Expanding Circle comprises countries which have no colonial history and where English is used and spreads as a foreign language. Turkey, Italy, Spain, and Japan are examples of Expanding Circle countries. Although Kachru’s (1985, 1992) model has been criticized for being more centered on geography and history than linguistic features (Jenkins, 2015), it can act as a precise and practical way to show the rationale behind Global Englishes teaching to students. That is, a great majority of English users are now within the Outer Circle and Expanding Circle, and English is no longer used exclusively by Inner Circle English users (i.e., among native English speakers or in native English-speaking settings)

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  Global Englishes

  A Resource Book for Students

  • Jennifer Jenkins(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  linguistic diversity they contain (e.g. there is far more diversity in the US than in the UK). In the Outer Circle, countries differ in a number of respects such as whether English is spoken mainly by an élite, as in India, or is more widespread, as in Singapore; or whether it is spoken by a single L1 group leading to one variety of English as in Bangladesh, or by several different L1 groups leading to several varieties of English as in India. Because of this, Bruthiaux argues that the model “conceals more than it reveals and runs the risk of being interpreted as a license to dispense with analytical rigour” (2003: 161).

  ❑ The term ‘Inner Circle’ implies that speakers from the ENL countries are central to the effort, whereas their worldwide influence is in fact in decline. Note, though, that Kachru did not intend the term ‘Inner’ to be taken to imply any sense of superiority.

  For more details concerning these issues see, for example, Bruthiaux (2003), Canagarajah (1999), Graddol (1997, 2006), Holborow (1999), Kandiah (1998), Kirkpatrick (2007a), Mesthrie (2008), Modiano (1999a), Pennycook (2006, 2007), Seidlhofer (2002), Saraceni (2010), Toolan (1997), Tripathi (1998), and Yano (2001, 2009). Kachru, however, believes that his model has been misinterpreted, and has defended it robustly point by point against the problems listed in the first edition of this book (Jenkins 2003: 17–18), arguing that the model has the capacity to encompass the kinds of sociolinguistic changes observed by his critics (Kachru 2005: 211–220). He concludes that the concerns raised in Jenkins (2003) “are constructed primarily on misrepresentations of the model’s characteristics, interpretations and implications” (Kachru 2005: 220). If you have access to Kachru (2005) and to some of the above sources, you may find it useful to read their authors’ comments on the three-circle model, then Kachru’s (2005) response, in order to help you decide on your own position.

  Several scholars have since proposed alternative models and descriptions of the spread of English, sometimes in an attempt to improve on Kachru’s model by incorporating more recent developments. Tripathi (1998: 55), for example, argues that the ‘third world nations’ should be considered as “an independent category that supersedes the distinction of ESL and EFL”. Yano’s Cylindrical model (2001: 122–124) modifies Kachru’s model in order to take account of the fact that many varieties of English in the Outer Circle have become established varieties spoken by people who regard themselves as native speakers with native speaker intuition. He therefore suggests glossing the Inner Circle as “genetic ENL” and the Outer as “functional ENL”. His model also takes account of the social dialectal concept of acrolect (standard) and basilect

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  Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

  • Margie Berns(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier

    (Publisher)

  It is in such contexts that the English language acquired ‘functional nativeness.’ It is the extent of functional nativeness in terms of the range and depth of English in a society that determines its impact. The more such functions of English in-crease in a speech community, the more local identities the variety acquires. The three circles are not static, but dynamic and changing. The dynamics of the English language in terms of its status, functions, and attitudes toward it are well documented in the case studies of, for exam-ple, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even in several Francophone countries. In historical terms then, the Inner Circle primarily, but not exclusively, comprises the L1 speakers of varieties of English: It is this circle, (e.g., Britain, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), that provided the springboard for transplanting the language in other parts of the globe. The Outer Circle includes the major Anglophone countries of Africa and Asia, including India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Africa. The Expanding Circle includes China, Taiwan, Korea, and Saudi Arabia (for the dynamic nature of this circle, see Berns, 2005). The three circles model, as McArthur (1993: 334) suggested, represents ‘‘the democratization of atti-tudes to English everywhere in the globe.’’ In his view, [T]his is a more dynamic model than the standard ver-sion, and allows for all manners of shadings and over-laps among the circles. Although ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ still suggest – inevitably – a historical priority and the atti-tudes that go with it, the metaphor of ripples in a pond suggests mobility and flux and implies that a history is in the making. World Englishes Speech Communities The earlier canonical definitions of the concept of ‘speech communities’ do not capture the pragmatic and functional global realities of the English lan-guage.

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  Varieties of Modern English

  An Introduction

  • Diane Davies(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Territories in which English has become or is becoming the most important foreign language. Though these countries do not have historical colonial links with the Inner Circle, they increasingly support the learning of English as an international language. These territories include China, Japan, Brazil, Israel, Poland and Russia. Naturally, to have a picture of the total numbers of people who speak English as a foreign language, we would also need to take into account those countries in which English has been taught as the main foreign language for a longer time, such as Germany, France and Mexico. The number of people who have acquired some competence in English in the Expanding Circle has already overtaken the number of people that speak it in the Outer Circle.

  The three circles model attempts to represent the spread of English without encouraging over-simplified categorisation of users according to the native versus non-native yardstick. However, the model needs to be used flexibly. While it encourages us to equate the Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles with the use of English as a first, second and foreign language respectively, these are often less than accurate labels. Not everyone in an Inner Circle territory speaks English as a first language; not everyone in the Outer Circle speaks it as a second language and those who use English routinely in the course of their work in Expanding Circle countries might not consider themselves to be speakers of English as a ‘foreign’ language at all.

  It is important to remember that the Inner Circle does not have limitless power over the development of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles. Indeed, Graddol (1997) and Crystal (1997) have both emphasised that English is moving into an era where speakers of English as a first language will lose influence as most communication will be among those using it as a second or foreign language. Today the Inner Circle’s influence still emanates outwards, yet the exact nature and extent of this influence are sometimes difficult to determine. Attitudes towards the status of British or American English in postcolonial and multilingual cultures can be complex and unpredictable (English may of course be less favoured in some contexts than an indigenous language). Even where English is an official and preferred language, the development of new Englishes (a process sometimes referred to as x-isation, e.g. Indianisation, Africanisation) has enabled speakers and writers in the Outer Circle to challenge the traditional supremacy of Inner Circle Standard Englishes. Similarly, recent research suggests that some countries in the Expanding Circle have also begun to develop distinctive ways of using English, with the result that the language has an increasingly important functional range in these countries and is also a marker of identity in some contexts.1

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  Interactions across Englishes

  Linguistic Choices in Local and International Contact Situations

  • Christiane Meierkord(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  In fact, Kachru (1986: 42) himself prefers to talk of English as ‘an important pan-South Asian link language’ (my italics). 1 We will con- tinue to use the term as introduced in Chapter 2, that is, to refer to IaEs. This section describes IaEs in the different areas of the world which have traditionally been placed in the Kachruvian Outer Circle. Figure 5.1 indi- cates these in grey shade. The uses of English as a lingua franca in the Outer Circle ecologies have been studied from a descriptive as well as from a sociolinguistic perspective. Excellent compilations of the sociolinguistic histories of the various coun- tries are available in Cheshire (1991), Melchers and Shaw (2003), Hickey (2004), and Schneider (2007). But, as has been explained in Chapter 2, 70 Intranational IaEs in the Outer Circle English is not a language spoken by vast majorities in post-colonial nations. As Bamgbose (2006: 646) reminds us: Statistics of estimates of L2 speakers in such countries are no more than ‘guesstimates.’ For example, Crystal ( 1997: 59 ) credits Nigeria with 43 mil- lion speakers of English out of a population of 95 million. As someone who is professionally involved in language studies in Nigeria, I do not know where these millions of speakers are to be found. It is truer to say that in Nigeria, as in all other former British colonies, English remains a minor- ity, but powerful, language used by an elite. Given the fact that literacy in English is acquired through formal education, and that a sizable percentage of children have no access to formal education, it is not surprising that the English-using population is not a large one. Similarly, Mufwene (2010: 57) explains that ‘in most countries of the Outer Circle, the proportion of actual speakers of English remains very small (at best between 20% and 30% of the total population)’.

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  English in East and South Asia

  Policy, Features and Language in Use

  • Ee Ling Low, Anne Pakir, Ee Ling Low, Anne Pakir(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Collectively, these regions are characterised by high population density and vast ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity. English plays a dynamic and significant role in both intra- and international communication, politics, education, science and economics in both East and South Asia. Kachru categorises the Englishes in East Asia as being part of the Expanding Circle varieties and English in South Asia as part of the Outer Circle varieties (Kachru, 1985, 1992). The Outer Circle countries were former colonies or protectorates of an English-speaking power (e.g. India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) while in the Expanding Circle countries, English is used mainly as a foreign language (e.g. in China, Japan and Korea). In the Outer Circle countries like India, English has been the main medium of education in schools, and there are now native speakers of Indian English, whereas in the Expanding Circle varieties, students learn English as a foreign language in schools and English is being used in relatively limited domains such as education, foreign trade and tourism, among others. The range and depth of penetration of English in the Outer Circle countries have been observed in Singapore, also a former colony, which embraced its legacy of English instead of discarding it as most other Outer Circle countries did upon gaining their independence from a powerful colonial power. Singapore, where the editors are from, is really tiny compared to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. China, Japan and Korea, which are major East Asian entities, are also huge, and it is of interest to understand whether and how deeply English, the global language, has penetrated into the layers of their societies. Our volume intends to push the boundaries of our understanding of the sociolinguistic realities of English in both regions of Asia by commissioning contributions focusing on history, language planning and policy features of East and South Asian Englishes and in so doing hopes to unearth the richness in linguistic features brought about by bi- and multilingual, and multicultural backgrounds of its speakers and to also devote a final section on present-day language in use in order to make sense of the multi-modalities of expression and the multi-canonity of the evolving varieties in these regions.

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  World Englishes

  • Gunnel Melchers, Philip Shaw, Peter Sundkvist(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The varieties conventionally regarded as The outer circle 129 resulting from decreolization in the Caribbean (see Section 4.11) may occupy a mid-dle position, sharing some but not all of the features to be listed later (Platt et al. 1984). 5.2.1 Some sociolinguistic features Outer-circle varieties are usually spoken as part of a multilingual repertoire which may include two or three other languages spoken in different circumstances: English at work, one local language at home, another with one’s peer group, for example. Hence it used to be the case that outer-circle varieties were not as well developed in some registers as others. One can imagine that Indian English baby language or even love language is less frequently used than scientific or administrative Indian English, for example. Increasingly, however, urban elites in many countries and the bulk of the pop-ulation in a few, like Singapore, are using English for almost all purposes, and thus have registers for them. In some scholars’ view, this blurs the distinction between native and non-native to the extent that it is not very useful, particularly as more and more speakers in outer-circle countries are English-dominant, have been bilingual from infancy or are even monolingual in English. Furthermore, because of this multilingualism, the outer-circle varieties are charac-terized by internal variation of proficiency. In an inner-circle region like Yorkshire, there will be a wide variation among speakers (and within a speaker for different situa-tions) from strongly local speech features to completely standard or nonlocal ones. Some members of the community will have difficulty in expressing themselves in formal or written Standard English. But most (excepting recent immigrants, for example) will have full proficiency in some kind of English. Outer-circle speakers will vary not only in the degree to which their English (in a given situation) has local features, but also in their proficiency in English at all.

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  Global Englishes in Asian Contexts

  Current and Future Debates

  • K. Murata, J. Jenkins, K. Murata, J. Jenkins(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  For instance, the two Asian giants India and China, which have large rural populations, can be reached most economically and effectively through non-conventional media form called ‘wall advertis- ing’. This media form is practically inaccessible in the West and in some Asian countries due to government regulation and association with graf- fiti. The choice of such a modality not only makes an economic sense, but is imperative for the limited reach of TV in rural areas. (For more details about the non-conventional media such as wall advertising and video van (dubbed ‘magic media’), see Bhatia 2000, Chapter 3.) Outer and expanding circle advertising As pointed out earlier, in order to come to grips with the distinct char- acter of Asian advertising, Kachru’s Three Concentric Circle typology of English users is instructive. According to this typology, Asian Englishes belong either to the Outer Circle (e.g. India) or to the Expanding Circle (as in China and Japan). In the Outer Circle, English evolved in the multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic environment and is the by-product of the colonialism and socio-political environment of those countries. In multilingual countries such as India, where 22 offi- cial languages exist along with scores of dialects, English serves as a link language and enjoys an official status, particularly in domains such as education and regulation. Therefore, unlike the Inner Circle where English is spoken either as the first or the more dominant lan- guage, in the Outer Circle, on the other hand, English is acquired as an additional language, i.e. second, third or even fourth language. In 158 Englishes in Asian Academic and Business Contexts the Expanding Circle countries, however, English serves primarily as a foreign language, as in the case of Japan and China.

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