ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a framework for the presentation of varieties of English around the globe. It discusses the character and possible causes of linguistic variation and change. The chapter presents the classification of World English’s along several dimensions. In multilingual countries like Singapore or Nigeria, the choice of English as administrative language has been made for nationist reasons, and local languages may be used to arouse loyalty. Speakers of English or any other language can be classified by a psycholinguistic criterion – the type of proficiency they have. An American, an Indian or a Swede who can use English to communicate with Arabs, Singaporeans or Australians would have a proficiency of this scope. The category that has attracted most attention is the one called English as a Lingua Franca, where prototypically all participants are non-native speakers. One sociolinguistic criterion for classifying varieties would be the type of prestige the variety gives its speakers.
