World Englishes

APPROACHES, ISSUES, AND RESOURCES

Braj B. Kachru – University of Illinois

Kanlapan, Mela & Velasco, Joseph

 World Englishes
We can no longer
simply view
English as a
worldwide lingua
franca; rather, as
many nonnative
varieties of
English become
standardized.
Braj B. Kachru
University of Illinois
Conferences that moved the concept of World Englishes

• East-West Culture • Linguistics Institute

Learning Institute of the Linguistic
(currently the Society of America,
Institute for Culture hosted by the
and Communication) University of Illinois
of the East-West at Urbana –
Center, Honolulu, Champaign, USA
Hawaii, USA – Braj Kachru
– Larry E. Smith

Participants from Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the

Philippines, New Zealand, Great Britain and Germany.
Results of the Honolulu Conference
• Teaching of English should be reflected in all cases
of sociocultural contexts and the educational policies
of the countries concerned.
• No organization exist that takes account of any
language in the light of this fundamental distinction
• It is not for us to define the policies to be adopted,
but the conference identified a number of
fundamental issues. These issues can be considered
under four headings:
– (a) Basic research,
– (b) Applied research,
– (c) Documentation, dissemination, and liaison
– (d) Professional support activities
Why use the term Englishes?
• The term • Emphasizes “WE-
symbolizes: ness”, and not the
– Functional & formal dichotomy between
variations us and them (the
– Divergent native and non-
sociolinguistic context native speakers)
– Ranges and varieties
of English in Creativity
– Various type of
acculturization in
parts of the Western
and non-Western
world.
The Spread and Stratification of English
• Functionally
uninsightful &
linguistically
questionable
– when discussing the
functions of English
in multilingual
societies
The Spread and Stratification of English
• This earlier
distinction has come
under attack
• Quirk rejects this
terminological triad
– “I doubt its validity
and frequently fail to
understand its
meaning.”
Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English
Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English
• Inner Circle
– Represents the traditional bases Inner Circle

of English
– Dominated by the “mother-
tongue” varieties of the
language
• Outer Circle
– English has been Outer Circle
institutionalized as an additional
language
• Expanding Circle
– Includes the rest of the world
where English is used as the
primary foreign language. Expanding Circle
Characteristics of the Stratification
• The study of the spread and stratification of English
in the non-Western world is a post-1960 phenomenon

• Consequence of the theoretical and methodological

insights gained by what are termed “socially realistic
linguistic” approaches to language study

• The exponents of stratification in the Outer Circle

have been interpreted in two ways: as a lectal range
and as a cline in English bilingualism
Interactional Contexts of World Englishes
• The shift of the focus on to the functions of English in
various types of interactional contexts, both in the
Inner and Outer Circles.
• The study and analysis of English in interactional
contexts has resulted in the studies such as the
following:
– Discourse strategies
– Speech acts
– Code-mixing
Descriptive and Prescriptive Concerns
• Sacred cows of
theoretical and applied
linguistics are under
aggression as an outcome
of two major
development:
– the impact of description,
analysis, methodology, and
relevance shown in
sociolinguistic models, and
the research initiatives
– ideas provided by scholars
from the outer circle
The Bilingual’s Creativity and Literary Canon
• Bilingual Creativity
– “Those creative linguistic processes which
are the result of competence in two or more
languages.”
– Not used for acquisitional inadequacies in a
language
– Refers to the designing of a text which uses
linguistic resources from two or more
related or unrelated languages
Contact Literatures in English
• Result of the contact of
English with other
• Nativisation
languages in multilingual – Refers to the process
and multicultural context which creates a
like in the case of Africa localized linguistic
and Asia. identity of a variety
• The contact varieties, as
time passes, acquire stable • Acculturation
characteristics in their – Gives English distinct
pronunciation, syntax, and local cultural
vocabulary and discoursal
identities.
and style strategies.
• Long-term contact results
in Nativisation and
Such writing can be found in
Acculturation.
South Asia, West Africa, the
Philippines and Southeast Asia.
Three facts on the Bilingual’s Creativity in English
• The institutionalized nonnative varieties have an
educated variety and a cline of sub-varieties.
• Writers in contact literature in English engage in
lectal mixing
• In such writing, there are style-shifts which are
related to the underlying sociolinguistic and cultural
context

The result of such style-shifts, appropriate to non-Western contexts, is new

discourse strategies, use di
stinctly different speech acts, and development of new registers in English
Issue’s on the Bilingual’s Creativity in English
• Question of language deficiency vs. difference
• Recognition of Innovations used for stylistic effect as
“foregrounding”
• Recognition of various text types – code mixed or
noncode mixed – which are internationally meant for
bilingual readers who share the bilingual’s linguistic
repertoire and cultural and literary canon.
• Recognizing functional appropriateness of lacalized
sublanguages and registers
• Providing contrastive typologies of linguistic and
cultural conventions
• Describing the formal and functional characteristics
of bilingual’s language mixing and switching
Multicanons of English
• The results of this
extensive use of
English over a
long period has
resulted in
multicanons of
English and a
“shift of the
canon”
The Two Faces of English: Nativisation and Englishisation

Two processes have developed, as it were, two faces of English.

•One showing what the contact has formally done to various varieties of
English.
•The other showing what impact the English language and literature have had
on other languages of the world
The Two Faces of English: Nativisation and
Englishisation
• Nativisation • Englishisation
– Vocabularies of the – In Thai, passivisation
world have been has traditionally been
most receptive to used with adversative
borrowing from connotation (the use
English of thuuk). This
– An example is the semantic constraint
Japanese language is not changing due
wherein 81% of the to the influence of
borrowed vocabulary English.
Japanese are words
of English origin.
Fallacies Concerning Users and Uses
The Power and Politics of English
• A number of recent studies address issues related to the
ideological, cultural and elitist power of English

• Related to such power is the immense economic advantage

of English to the countries in the Inner Circle, particularly
Britain and the United States.

• “The world wide market for EFL training is worth a massive

₤6.5 billion a year according to a new report from the
Economic Intelligence Unit” (EFL Gazette. March, 1989).

• The very existence of their power thus provides the Inner

Circle with incentives for devising ways to maintain
attitudinal and formal control.
Teaching World Englishes
Why teach World Englishes?
• It is obvious that World Englishes provide a
challenging opportunity to relate three academic
areas– language, literature, and methodology.

• The approach to World Englishes has to be cross-

cultural and cross-linguistic.

• The sources involve diverse cultures, languages, and

literatures in contact with English.

• One has to have interdisciplinary perspectives

focusing on the linguistic face of World Englishes.
What Motivates the Paradigm Shift?
What are the Resources for Teaching?
• In the 1970’s, this question would have been difficult
to answer. One would have had to depend primarily
on papers from journals and selected notes.

• However, as Gorlach (1991) rightly observes, “the

books published in 1982-84 make up a particularly
impressive list: It is no exaggeration to say that the
following ten books more or less suffice to teach a
full academic course on the topic.”
Conclusion