World Englishes

12 Key excerpts on "World Englishes"

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  eBook - ePub

  Bloomsbury World Englishes Volume 1: Paradigms

  • Britta Schneider, Theresa Heyd, Mario Saraceni(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  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 sociolinguistic studies of English around the world, but also applied linguistics scholarship, and in this way feeds into the training of language professionals, specifically TESOL practitioners and those involved in language planning. (Seargeant 2012

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  The Handbook of World Englishes

  • Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Cecil L. Nelson, Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Cecil L. Nelson(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  In a second, narrower sense, the term is used to specifically refer to the “new Englishes” found in the Caribbean and in West African and East African societies such as Nigeria and Kenya, and to such Asian Englishes as Hong Kong English, Indian English, Malaysian English, Singaporean English, and Philippine English. Typically studies of this kind focus on the areal character-istics of national or regional Englishes, with an emphasis on the linguistic description of autonomous varieties of Englishes. In a third sense, World Englishes refers to the wide-ranging approach to the study of the English language worldwide particularly associated with Braj B. Kachru and other scholars working in a “World Englishes paradigm.” The Kachruvian approach has been characterized by an underlying philosophy that has argued for the importance of inclusivity and pluricentricity in approaches to the linguistics of English worldwide, and involves not merely the description of national and regional varieties, but many other related topics as well, including con-tact linguistics, creative writing, critical linguistics, discourse analysis, corpus World Englishes Today 241 linguistics, lexicography, pedagogy, pidgin and creole studies, and the socio-logy of language (Bolton, 2002a). Underlying each of these three broad approaches is an evident concern with monocentrism versus pluricentrism, i.e., one English (with all its geographical and social varieties), or multifarious Englishes (deserving consideration and recognition as autonomous or semi-autonomous varieties of the language). This tension between the centrifugal and centripetal dynamics of international English(es) also finds expression in discussions of “world English” versus “World Englishes.” Butler (1997), for example, writing as lexicographer, claims that in most contexts where English is establishing itself as a “localized” or “new” English “[t]here are two major forces operating at the moment .

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  World Englishes

  Rethinking Paradigms

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

    (Publisher)

  Here, I have suggested that, in its widest application, the field of World Englishes includes a number of overlapping approaches, from English studies, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, etc. and a number of other branches of linguistics and language study. In a narrower sense, the term World Englishes also refers specifically to the pioneering work of Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Larry Smith, and associated scholars, who not only founded the World Englishes journal, but also established the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), both of which continue to have a major impact in this field. Research and teaching related to World Englishes is now well established at many universities worldwide, and at present this continues to be a dynamic and vibrant field of research and publications 1. The continued impact and importance of World Englishes may be seen at a number of levels within English studies and linguistics. In contrast to the early 1980s, there is now a wide acceptance of a pluricentric view of Englishes within many if not most universities worldwide. The academic discourse on variation in English and varieties of English has shifted to adopt a lexicon that now makes default reference to the Outer and Expanding Circle, and associated concepts from Kachruvian linguistics. In this enterprise, the works of Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru and Larry E. Smith have provided the theoretical and methodological foundation for a wide range of adjacent studies, including corpus linguistics, critical linguistics, ELF, and studies of language and globalization, and has also influenced a wide range of contiguous studies in linguistic landscapes, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, and much else. As I have argued elsewhere (Bolton, 2005), the strength of the WE paradigm is derived from not only its inclusivity and its pluralism, but also from its ‘ethos’, its ‘character’, and ‘spirit’

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  Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts

  A BELF Approach and its Educational Implications

  • Vildana Dubravac, Elma Dedović-Atilla(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  All of the stated facts indicate that English has become an international language, a contact language among people and nations around the globe. However, the elusive and altering character of its usage, the elusive nature of its functions, the various channels and modes through which it has established itself in different regions of the world have given birth to very complex theoretical considerations regarding English as an international language. Thus, a wide array of different concepts and terms related to its global status has stemmed from different viewpoints and given a path to the rise of divergent linguistic factions regarding the issue.

  Several terms are used to refer to English in its international usage role. Thus, in the literature tackling this issue, we might encounter expressions that have similar and sometimes almost identical meanings. Addressing English as it is variously used across the world, linguists write about World English (WE), World Englishes, New Englishes, Global English, International English, Globish, English as an international language and English as a lingua franca (ELF) (e.g. Brutt-Griffler, 2002; Crystal, 2003; Gnutzmann, 1999; Mair, 2003; McArthur, 1998).

  Out of these, this book emphasizes two highly prominent and popular terms and concepts to describe the spread and precedence of English, World Englishes and English as a lingua franca, as these are the two relevant constructs in close relation to the topic of this book (the former is utilized as a reference point in a number of English as the business lingua franca [BELF] writings, while the latter is BELF’s conceptual kin). Although there is some overlap in the usage of the terms, over time these expressions have come to denote two separate concepts in linguistics and are categorized into two distinct research fields.

  World Englishes

  The concept of World English, later gradually altered to World Englishes/New Englishes/indigenized/nativized varieties, was coined by Braj Kachru who initially developed the Three Circle Model of World Englishes in 1985. Although this was not the only model that tried to account for the global spread of English (others include Strevens [1980]: World Map of English; McArthur [1987]: Circle of World English; Görlach [1988]: Circle Model of English; and Modiano [1999]: The Centripetal Circles of International English), it has remained one of the most dominant and most referenced models to group the varieties of English across the globe (Mollin, 2006), including the (B)ELF body of research.

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  Exploring World Englishes

  Language in a Global Context

  • Philip Seargeant(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Pride, 1982; Platt et al., 1984), though it has been mostly superseded by World Englishes now. The focus of both terms was initially predominantly on the second-language varieties which developed in former British colonies. As Kachru has pointed out, New Englishes was always a rather misleading term though, as the English spoken in India, for example, is actually older than that spoken in Australia, but the former is included in the category of New Englishes whereas the latter is not (Kachru, 1983). Another term with a similar scope is ‘Postcolonial Englishes’, which Edgar Schneider uses to cover all those varieties which have their roots in colonial activities, including American and Australian English, as well as English-related Creoles (Schneider, 2007). 6 English as multiplex There is a certain amount of overlap between this category and the preceding one in the way in which they both stress the plurality of varieties. The extremely broad scope of reference for the terms in category 6 means, however, that they are not used to conceptually divide the field for analytic purposes, but merely to highlight the diversity of the field, and to provide a name which does not imply a monolithic English. World English As used by Tom McArthur, World English is meant to imply the diverse nature of the language: “For me, world English is both shorthand for English as a world language and a superordinate term for Australian English, British English, Irish English, Nigerian English, and the like. It embraces all aspects of the language: dialect, pidgin, Creole, variety, standard, speech, writing, paper-based, electronic” (McArthur, 2004, p. 5). Used at an early stage in the academic consciousness of the field, the term served a very wide remit, drawing attention to the spread and diversity of the language

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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)

  From the 1980s to the present the WE project has contributed to a major theoretical shift in English studies worldwide, in large part through the pioneering foundational work of Braj B. Kachru, which from the outset argued for a paradigm shift of two types: (i) ‘a paradigm shift in research, teaching, and the application of sociolinguistic realities to the functions of English’, and (ii) ‘a shift from frameworks and theories which are essentially appropriate only to monolingual countries’, involving a pluralism which is ‘reflected in the approaches, both theoretical and applied, we adopt for understanding this unprecedented linguistic phenomenon’ (Kachru 1997, in Webster 2015: 175, Vol. 2). At this point in its development, the WE enterprise may be regarded as having reached a point of maturity or even orthodoxy within English studies and linguistics, but this remains a diverse and pluralistic field, and, as its ethos suggests, WE remains open for new directions, new insights, and new energies.

  Notes

    1   Interest in the diverse forms and functions of so-called ‘new Englishes’ throughout the world has been paralleled by a related interest in new literatures in English, particularly from writers originally from former British colonies, such as V. S. Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje, Timothy Mo, Ben Okri, Wole Soyinka, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, and Derek Walcott (King 2005).

    2   To some extent, studies using an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) approach may be seen as a contemporary updating of an earlier approach to research, which highlighted the role of English as an International Language (EIL). This approach was associated with linguists such as Smith (1976, 1981), Strevens (1980), McKay (2002) and Sharifian (2009). Theorists of ELF have stated that early EIL researchers may be seen as ‘precursors’ in the field of English as a Lingua Franca (Ehrenreich and Pitzl 2015).

  Further reading

  Bolton, K. and B. B. Kachru (eds) (2006) World Englishes: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol. 6. Abingdon: Routledge. This provides a definitive collection of articles on WE from a range of perspectives, including theoretical approaches, regional profiles, paradigms of description, codification, intelligibility, language contact, discourse studies, corpus linguistics, the politics of language, and globalization.

  Melchers, G. and P. Shaw (2009) World Englishes: An Introduction. 2nd edn. London: Arnold. A carefully-researched and well-designed textbook on English worldwide, which provides a detailed description of the linguistic features of varieties in many regions of the world.

  Seargeant, P. (2012) Exploring World Englishes: Language in a Global Context

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  Dialects, Englishes, Creoles, and Education

  • Shondel J. Nero(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  [S]peaking English Japanese-ly goes beyond strictly linguistic elements; it is a manner of speaking English that does not threaten the speaker nor come into conflict with this person’s identity as a Japanese. It is also the means by which a Japanese can say, ‘I’m an English speaker.’ (p. 52)

  This is what the World Englishes paradigm means by the term communicative competence.

  Resources for Curriculum Development

  Five components of World Englishes curriculum are worth considering. The topics are for both English language classrooms, depending on the level of instruction, and teacher education programs. The topics under “Pedagogical concerns” are of two types: the topics listed under both a and b are for teacher education programs whereas only the ones listed under a are for the English language classrooms.

  1. The concept World Englishes: motivations for a pluralistic model—linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, pedagogical.
  2. Historical, political, and economic background of the spread of English.
  3. Processes of acculturation, nativization and Englishization and their impact on English and local languages (for impact of English on local languages, see Kachru, 1986a; Smith, 1987; Thumboo, 2001, among others).
  4. The medium and the message: one medium adapted to varied messages conforming to local sociocultural contexts; the relevance of society and culture to linguistic structure and language use.
  5. Pedagogical concerns:

  a. Choice of norms and models. Attitudes toward varieties and norms. Issues in standards and codification. The lectal range in Englishes. Effect of attitudes and other external factors on policy decisions. Goals of instruction. Definitions of linguistic proficiency and communicative competence. Issues of intelligibility across varieties. b. Qualification of teachers.

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  Language, Society and Power

  An Introduction

  • Annabelle Mooney, Betsy Evans(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The power and prevalence of attitudes about different varieties of English are captured by Jenkins’s inclusion of governments, prescriptivists and the general public. And while Jenkins’s position is very attractive, as it acknowledges that all these varieties of English do count as ‘English’, it is nevertheless important to pay some attention to the attitudes to English that are so prevalent.

  If all varieties of English are included in a visual model of World Englishes, the possible ‘circles’ can be redrawn.

  Figure 10.2 McArthur’s Circle of World English (1987)

  Source : McArthur, Tom (1987) ‘The English Languages?’ in English Today 11: 9–11

  Figure 10.2 seems to support Jenkins’s interpretation of ‘World Englishes’ by including all varieties. Significantly, what this representation calls into question is the possibility of talking about ‘English’ as unspecified. At best, ‘English’ is a convenient abstraction which hides a great deal of variation in terms of phonology, syntax and lexis and also in terms of domains of use and power.

  What these two different representations suggest is that we can approach World Englishes from a number of perspectives. The perspective chosen depends very much on the argument one wants to make.

  The idea that there is a global English that is the same all over the world is unfounded. If it could be developed, it is unlikely that it would remain unchanged. As Mufwene remarks, ‘If WSSE [World Standard Spoken English] were to arise spontaneously, or could do so at all, it would be the first such evolution toward linguistic uniformity in the history of language spread and contact’ (2010: 46). In a sense, there is no such language as English – at least, it exists only in the most abstract of conceptions. And if we focus on speakers of English, it is also extremely difficult to place individuals in any of these models (see Galloway and Rose, 2015: 23).

  10.3 Learning English

  Learning English or any language as a second or additional language will usually mean that speakers will be found wanting when compared to the L1 standard. As we discuss here, linguists have argued that to use inner circle English norms as the ‘standard’ that all speakers should aim for is to create a goal that is both impossible and stigmatising.

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  Intelligibility in World Englishes

  Theory and Application

  • Cecil L. Nelson(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Americans and Australians today generally do not think of having to look beyond their own borders for their language models and editing. This is not a new argument, nor are the assertions of independence for varieties that differ from the one in the “motherland” of the English, as this passage by Butler (2005, p. 534) illustrates:

  In the 1940s, Professor Alex Mitchell had deliberately provoked an argument in the press about the Australian accent. … Mitchell set the cat among the pigeons by saying, very publicly in The ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] Weekly article of 1942, that:

  The Australian pronunciation of English takes its place among the national forms of English as much entitled to respectful consideration as any other. It has its own history and is not a corrupt derivative of anything. Development does not of necessity imply degeneration.

  This way of viewing and interpreting the situation of Englishes across the world and of sociolinguistics and language contact generally was given a material and lasting presence in the landscape of professional investigation by the establishment of the journal World Englishes in 1985 (see above) and by the founding of the International Association for World Englishes (not “ … of …,” as it is often misstated) in 1992 (B. Kachru, 1997, p. 212).

  In earlier issues of the journal World Englishes , there appeared on the publication information page (on the inside of the front cover) a statement of “Policy and Scope” which is no longer printed in each issue, but which remains in force as the “mission statement” of the publication. It reads, in the relevant part (taken from World Englishes 5(1), 1986):

  World Englishes: Journal of English as an International and Intranational Language (WE) is devoted to the study of the forms and functions of varieties of English, both native and non-native, in diverse cultural and sociolinguistic contexts. … WE

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  The Relocation of English

  Shifting Paradigms in a Global Era

  • M. Saraceni(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Referring to the newly rebranded journal World Englishes in 1985, Tom McArthur commented that World Englishes and its acronym WE highlighted the idea of “a club of equals” and of “the democratization of attitudes to English everywhere on the globe” (1987, p. 334). It was clear that the suffix -es attached to English was not a purely descriptive grammatical item, but was accompanied by the idea that these Englishes should be seen as equal to one another. In outlining the aims of their book, Platt et al. stressed that they hoped to show “above all, the legitimacy” of new Englishes (1984, p. vii, my emphasis). Such statements were indicative of a clear will to achieve an objective above and beyond mere language description. Indeed, the idea was that language description could be used as a vehicle to the demonstration of language equality. In part, that objective has been achieved, at least within academic circles, where the necessity to affirm the legitimacy and equality of non-British and non-American varieties of English stemmed from an antipathy towards dismissive attitudes that had been expressed towards such varieties in certain quarters of applied linguistics. But language per se was not the real problem. Languages are not ‘things’ that can be objectified and assessed on the basis of non-existent intrinsic qualities; they cannot be the subject of value judgements. All languages are integral to the lives of those who use them. Therefore, anything said about the ‘value’ or the ‘quality’ of any language can- not escape being, really, about its users. Even a seemingly harmless or positive comment such as ‘Italian is a musical language’ implies the presumed existence of certain characteristics of Italian people (e.g. a spe- cial innate artistic disposition). So, as language is never divorced from the people who use it, the “club of equals” did not refer only to vari- eties of English as such but also, and primarily, to users of English.

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  Available until 4 Dec |Learn more

  English in the World

  History, Diversity, Change

  • Philip Seargeant, Joan Swann, Philip Seargeant, Joan Swann(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • The Open University

    (Publisher)

  lingua franca (i.e. as a means of communicating with people with whom they do not share a first language) than have it as their native language (Seidlhofer, 2001). In this respect, English already has a distinctly global profile, and while globalisation processes are facilitated by the spread of English around the world (people use it for communicating across national and linguistic boundaries), globalisation then further propels this spread (English is actively promoted as an international language in policy initiatives and education curriculums). As such, the spread of English can be seen as a key element in what we understand by globalisation.

  English as a local language

  The emergence of English as a code for international communication is not, however, the be all and end all of linguistic globalisation. With the spread of one language comes contact between that language and different contexts, cultures and communities. And this in turn results in different forms, functions and beliefs for the language. So, for example, rather than one standard form of English spreading inexorably across the globe, different varieties (or New Englishes) emerge as the language is shaped by the new communities which adopt it.2 As was discussed above, one of the main consequences of globalisation has been the reconfiguration of communities and the development of new cultural practices by these communities. So although the spread of English is a result (and facilitator) of globalisation, the phenomenon that produces the spread (i.e. increased mobility in the world) also produces a continued diversity in the way that the language itself alters as it adapts to the emergent cultures of the diverse communities using it.

  One notable consequence of this – which illustrates how the spread of English results in new forms of diversity – is that we can no longer assume things about the culture of the people we are talking to even when we are superficially speaking the same ‘language’. Two and a half centuries ago, Dr Johnson wrote in his preface to his book A Dictionary of the English Language that ‘it is incident to words […] to change their manners when they change their country’ (1755, p. v). He was referring to the way in which a word that is adopted into English from a different language may change its original meaning once it is established as part of the vocabulary of English. An example would be ‘mutton’, derived from the Old French mouton meaning ‘ram’ or ‘sheep’, but once integrated into the English language being used to refer only to the ‘meat’ from sheep.3 This same process occurs in the everyday use of the language in globalised contexts, as English forms are now constantly changing context and country and, in the process, changing their ‘manners’. The result is that an item of vocabulary might have one shade of meaning in British English, but a quite different shade in one of the New Englishes. For example, the word ‘dresses’ in British English refers to a particular type of clothing, but in Cameroon English it is used to mean clothes in general. A global language such as English thus becomes multiplex

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  The Idea of English in Japan

  Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language

  • Philip Seargeant(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3Language Ideology and Global English

  Politics and the Emergence of the World Englishes Paradigm

  It is since the outset of the 1990s that politics has become an overt concern for research into world English. Prior to this, it was more specifically linguistic concerns that initially dominated the discipline. These concerns were then recalibrated with the injection of sociolinguistic sensibilities into the research agenda, until the ‘critical turn’ in applied linguistics arrived to foreground the ubiquity of the political. At present, the discipline appears to be seeking a balance between these two poles, attempting to retain a linguistic focus on the affordances and constraints of the language faculty, while also plotting the effects within the social environment of language and language-related social practices. And it is here that a ‘language ideologies’ approach can offer great potential, as it takes as its site of inquiry the mediating forces between language form and language function, and places linguistic behavior firmly within an animating cultural context. This chapter will therefore examine theoretical precepts from this approach that might productively be applied to the global English question, and it will consider specifically how these can offer support in the development of a methodology for the analysis of the conceptualization of the English language in Japan. Firstly, though, I will briefly recite the stages of emergence of the World Englishes paradigm, and consider how the concept of ideology has hitherto featured within the genealogy of the discipline.

  In his review of the development and diversification of approaches to the study of English within globalized contexts, Bolton (2005) traces a narrative which begins in the 1960s with Randolph Quirk (e.g. 1968) and University College London's Survey of English Usage. This had as its brief the description of diverse varieties of the language, specifically in terms of syntactic structure and historical change. It took a predominantly linguistic approach, with the object of study being linguistic form rather than sociolinguistic function, and the concept of variety being formulated as (syntactic) divergence from a central standard. Ideological evaluation of language practices was thus encoded within the methodology (in the hierarchical ordering of central standard versus peripheral variety), but there was no explicit engagement with the political nature of either language practice or linguistic research.

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