World EnglishesAPPROACHES, 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 Learning Institute (currently the Institute for Culture and Communication) of the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA– Larry E. Smith

• Linguistics Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign, USA– Braj Kachru

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 symbolizes:– Functional & formal

variations

– Divergent sociolinguistic context

– Ranges and varieties of English in Creativity

– Various type of acculturization in parts of the Western and non-Western world.

• Emphasizes “WE-ness”, and not the dichotomy between us and them (the native and non-native speakers)

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

of English– Dominated by the “mother-

tongue” varieties of the language

• Outer Circle– English has been

institutionalized as an additional language

• Expanding Circle– Includes the rest of the world

where English is used as the primary foreign language.

Expanding Circle

Inner Circle

Outer 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 languages in multilingual and multicultural context like in the case of Africa and Asia.

• The contact varieties, as time passes, acquire stable characteristics in their pronunciation, syntax, vocabulary and discoursal and style strategies.

• Long-term contact results in Nativisation and Acculturation.

• Nativisation– Refers to the process

which creates a localized linguistic identity of a variety

• Acculturation– Gives English distinct

and local cultural identities.

Such writing can be found in 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 distinctly 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– Vocabularies of the

world have been most receptive to borrowing from English

– An example is the Japanese language wherein 81% of the borrowed vocabulary Japanese are words of English origin.

• Englishisation– In Thai, passivisation

has traditionally been used with adversative connotation (the use of thuuk). This semantic constraint is not changing due to the influence of English.

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