ABSTRACT
For better or worse, by choice or force, English has ‘travelled’ to many corners of the globe, making some people’s lives easier, while making others’ more complex. Worldwide, English serves many purposes, including acting as a medium for international and intranational communication. English has not ‘spread’ as a monolithic code, but has become a pluricentric language: many new varieties have developed, and are still being developed, as a result of contactinduced processes, such as pidginization, creolization and decreolization. Thus, today, we speak of ‘Englishes’, rather than ‘English’. In recent years, due to the rapid expansion of globalization and the development of more and more varieties of English, many publications have appeared on World Englishes (e.g. Jenkins 2003; Kachru et al. 2006; Kachru and Nelson 2006; Kirkpatrick 2007, 2010). The phrase ‘world Englishes’ has not been used consistently by the scholars who have studied
various aspects of the varieties of the English language worldwide. Bolton (2005) finds three usages of the term ‘world Englishes’. In one sense, it has been used to refer to all varieties of English across the globe. In the second sense, it is used to refer to ‘new Englishes’ that have developed in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia (e.g. Kenyan English, Cameroon English, Singaporean English and Malaysian English). In the third sense, it refers to World Englishes (WE), capitalized, a paradigm associated with the work of Braj B. Kachru and others who associate themselves with this framework. This paradigm is affiliated with the journal World Englishes (Wiley-Blackwell) and the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE). As Bolton (2005: 240-41) mentions, this paradigm has been characterized by an underlying philosophy that argues for the importance of inclusivity and pluricentricity in approaches to the linguistic study of English worldwide, and involves not merely the description of national and regional varieties, but many other related topics as well, including contact linguistics, creative writing, critical linguistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, lexicography, pedagogy, pidgin and creole studies and the sociology of language. Bolton (2005) provides a summary of the studies that have in one way or another addressed
the issues surrounding the notion of World Englishes, or related terms such as ‘New Englishes’. In general, he identifies a number of approaches to research and publication in the field of
World Englishes including English studies, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, lexicography and critical linguistics. Bolton associates the ‘English studies’ approach with scholars such as Quirk and Crystal, and identifies the major aim of this approach as the description of varieties of English from eclectic, descriptive and historical perspectives. The work of more recent scholars in the field of English corpus linguistics, such as Greenbaum (1996) and Kortmann and Schneider (2004), is seen as an extension of this approach. Under ‘sociolinguistic approaches’, Bolton (2005) includes studies associated with (1)
‘sociology of language’ (e.g. Fishman et al. 1977), (2) ‘linguistic features’ (and dialectological) approach (e.g. Trudgill and Hannah 1982), (3) pidgin and creole studies (e.g. Romaine 1988) and (4) ‘socially realistic’ studies of world Englishes (e.g. Kachru 1983, 1986 and his many other publications). In Table 19.1, Bolton (2005) presents the aims of the scholars under the general rubric of ‘sociolinguistic approaches’. Bolton (2005) associates ‘applied linguistic’ approaches with attempts made to explore
the implications of world Englishes for language learning and teaching (e.g. Brumfit 1982; Kachru 1982; Strevens 1980). ‘Lexicographical approaches’ mainly focus on the compilation of dictionaries and glossaries, often for the expression of a national linguistic identity (e.g. Allsopp 1996; Butler 1981). Bolton (2005) also refers to the work of both linguists (e.g. Crystal 1988) and non-linguists (McCrum et al. 1986) who made attempts to ‘popularize’ studies of English. Under ‘critical linguistic’ approaches, Bolton (2005) includes the work of scholars such as
Phillipson (2000, 2003) and Pennycook (1994, 1998, 2001), who presented provocative arguments in relation to the politics of the spread of English. The last category that Bolton (2005) refers to is what he terms ‘futurology’, or the study of future trends in the spread of English and English pedagogy worldwide (e.g. Graddol 1997). It should be added here that Bolton (2005) acknowledges that there are significant overlaps between these approaches. For example, many sociolinguists, including most Kachruvian scholars, have also pursued the pedagogical implications of their findings. In general, Bolton’s (2005) review reveals the remarkable attention paid in the last 50 years to
the study of English and its varieties mainly by scholars in the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics, lexicography and applied linguistics. The growing spread of English throughout the world, particularly through technologies such as the internet, is expected to boost the amount of research on various aspects of World Englishes. In the following section, I focus on a more elaborate description of the Kachruvian paradigm of World Englishes (from now on WE), as it comprises the main body of research and scholarship about varieties of English worldwide.
