World Englishes

• Global English

  • has over 2 billion speakers, native speakers being the minority
  • Beneke estimates 80% of interactions in english are non-native
  • native = L1
  • non-native = L2
• Diaspora

  • the dispersal or spreading from a central point
• Jenkins 2015 - the first diaspora of English

  • first diaspora involved relatively large-scale migration of mother tongue english speakers from England, Scotland and Ireland to predominantly North America, Australia and New Zealand. In these places english became established as the mother tongue variety
• Leith 2007

  • ' the language of conquered people has little effect on that of it's conquerers
• Kachra's three circles of English model 1992

  • inner circle: norm providing (by which other varieties are measured against)
  • outer circle: norm developing (countries have their own variety), includes countries colonised by Britain and the USA
  • expanding circle: english used for practical purposes, norm-dependant (not an official language, but recognised as important), use of english often straightforward and direct

  Criticism

  • implied weakness/dilution of correctness as you move from the inner circle
  • doesn't address diversity in varieties
  • creates a hierarchy
• McArthur's wheel model 1987

  • moves outward from a central concept of 'world standard english' and then into 8 main regions
  • each region has a standard and then many non-standard varieties within
  • implies equality between different varieties of English

  Criticism:

  • 'world standard english' is a theoretical concept
• Streven's world map of English 1980

  • one of the first attempts to model the spread of English across the world
  • illustrates the dominance of English
  • separates American and British english showing where which varieties influenced the most

  Criticism:

  • suggests a hierarchy
  • doesn't reflect sub-varieties within each country
• Colonialism

  • taking over a territory and settling in it, exploiting it's resources
• Pidgin

  • a grammatically simplified language that is used by non-native speakers to communicate with each other
• Creole

  • a stable natural language with grammatical rules and structure that has formed from a pidgin language
• Schneider Dynamic Model (2007)

  • 5 stages of how english becomes an established language
  • Foundation - english appears in a new territory, borrowings to aid simple communication
  • exonormative stabilisation - begins to be used using outside influences, english established as the language of administration, law and education
  • Nativisation - old and new languages become more closely linked, new variety of English develops
  • endonormative stabilisation - develops new standards and norms becoming codified, new norms accepted by society and rreflected in literature, documents and so on
  • differentiation - variety develops social and regional differences leading to internal diversity
• Differences between American and British Englishes

  • -or endings
  • -er endings
  • -ize endings
  • loss of digraph -ae

  Webster believed english spellings were to complex and proposed reforms. 1806 he published his first dictionary, changes made it easier to learn. (greater grapheme-phoneme correspondence)
• Engel

  • believes americanism are causing our language to 'wither'
  • americanisms are no longer swimming to our shores as 'single spies' but as battalions
  • 'ugly and pointless new usages appear'
• Saraceni

  • 'we've lost control of english'
  • means letting go of the idea of standard British English as the 'correct variety'
• English as a Lingua Franca

  • elf = used as a contact language between speakers of a different language
• Jenkins 2005

  5 characteristics of ELF

  • used by speakers of different languages to communicate with each other
  • an alternative to EFL not a replacement
  • ELF may include innovations that characterise local varieties of English
  • Linguistic accommodation and code-switching are seen as useful in ELF
  • ELF users will have varying proficiency but the language of the proficient users will be used for codification purposes
• Babel

  • english language is largely employed as a lingua franca
  • at the turn of the 20th century it was feared that the english language dialects were dying out so projects were launched to collect and preserve endangered words
  • speakers of english are constantly trying to document and preserve the English language
  • at the moment emojis are not at risk of becoming a fully fledged language