ABSTRACT
The World Englishes research paradigm focuses on processes of globalization and the linguistic change and variation resulting from the new contexts of use and the multitude of different backgrounds its speakers today have. Importantly, taking different levels of variation – intra-linguistic, regional, and social variation, as well as stylistic variation – into account offers us an opportunity for a more comprehensive understanding of both stable variation and the linguistic change springing from it. While each of the types of variation merits research on its own, in order to better understand their nature, it is beneficial to bring these different strands of linguistics together to match and compare findings and techniques.
