World Englishes

This article is about the classification of Englishes around the world. For Global English or World English, see International English.

World Englishes is a term for emerging localised or indigenised varieties of English, especially varieties that have developed in territories influenced by the United Kingdom or the United States. The study of World Englishes consists of identifying varieties of English used in diverse sociolinguistic contexts globally and analyzing how sociolinguistic histories, multicultural backgrounds and contexts of function influence the use of English in different regions of the world.

The issue of World Englishes was first raised in 1978 to examine concepts of regional Englishes globally. Pragmatic factors such as appropriateness, comprehensibility and interpretability justified the use of English as an international and intra-national language. In 1988, at a Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, the International Committee of the Study of World Englishes (ICWE) was formed. In 1992, the ICWE formally launched the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE) at a conference of "World Englishes Today", at the University of Illinois, USA.[1] There are two academic journals devoted to the study of this topic, titled English World-Wide (since 1980)[2] and World Englishes (since 1982).[3] There are a number of published handbooks[4][5][6][7] and textbooks[8][9][10] on the subject.

Currently, there are approximately 75 territories where English is spoken either as a first language (L1) or as an unofficial or institutionalized second language (L2) in fields such as government, law, and education. It is difficult to establish the total number of Englishes in the world, as new varieties of English are constantly being developed and discovered.[11]

  1. ^ International Association of World Englishes [1] Archived 2010-12-14 at the Wayback Machine, Retrieved on 18 November 2010.
  2. ^ "English World-Wide A Journal of Varieties of English". Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  3. ^ "World Englishes - Wiley Online Library". onlinelibrary.wiley.com. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
  4. ^ Nelson, Cecil L.; Proshina, Zoya; Davis, Daniel R., eds. (2020). The Handbook of World Englishes (2nd ed.). Malden: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1119164210.
  5. ^ Schreier, Daniel; Hundt, Marianne; Schneider, Edgar W., eds. (2020). The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1108425957.
  6. ^ Markku Filppula; Juhani Klemola; Devyani Sharma, eds. (2017). The Oxford handbook of World Englishes. New York. ISBN 978-0-19-977771-6. OCLC 964294896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ Andy Kirkpatrick, ed. (2021). The Routledge handbook of world Englishes (Second ed.). Abingdon, Oxon. ISBN 978-0-367-14439-5. OCLC 1200831762.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Schneider, Edgar W. (2020). English around the world : an introduction (Second ed.). Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-108-44226-8. OCLC 1193301209.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ^ Mesthrie, Rajend (2008). World Englishes : the study of new linguistic varieties. Rakesh Mohan Bhatt. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-40823-6. OCLC 254167348.
  10. ^ Kirkpatrick, Andy (2007). World Englishes : implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge Univ Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61687-4. OCLC 141382470.
  11. ^ Crystal, D. (2007). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press