ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the labels and the criteria that sociolinguists use to distinguish between different varieties or codes in multilingual communities. In a multilingual speech community, the many different ethnic or tribal languages used by different groups are referred to as vernacular languages. The term vernacular generally refers to the most colloquial variety in a person's linguistic repertoire. Standard languages developed in a similar way in many other European countries during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The codification process, which is part of the development of every standard variety, was accelerated in the case of English by the introduction of printing. The terms 'World Englishes' and 'New Englishes' have been used to emphasise the range of different varieties of English that have developed since the nineteenth century. The local varieties of English which have developed in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA, where most of the populations are monolingual English speakers, are examples of inner-circle English varieties.
