World Englishes and Varieties of English

World English refers to the English language as a lingua franca used in business, trade, diplomacy and other spheres of global activity, while World Englishes refers to the different varieties of English and English-based creoles developed in different regions of the world, Smith and Forman (1997), and Thumboo (2001b).

1. World Englishes and Varieties of English Present by Zahra Farajnezhad November, 2019 1

2. Key Terms English as an International Language (EIL): the umbrella term to discuss the global status and role of English; mostly associate International English (IE): inner-circle English as purveyed by the field of ELT World Englishes (WE): all varieties of English, but often really targets the new Englishes English as a Lingua Franca (ELF): English used in the expanding circles as a common tongue English as a Native Language ( ENL): Language of those born and raised in one of the countries where English is historically the first language to be spoken (i.e. mainly the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) English as a Second Language ( ESL): Language spoken in a large number of territories which were once colonized by the English (e.g., India, Nigeria, Singapore) English as a Foreign Language ( EFL): Language of those for whom it serves no purposes within their own countries. Historically , EFL was learned to use the language with its native speakers in the US and UK ~ 1 billion speakers with ‘reasonable competence ’ 2

3. World English VS World Englishes World English refers to the English language as a lingua franca used in business, trade, diplomacy and other spheres of global activity, while World Englishes refers to the different varieties of English and English-based creoles developed in different regions of the world, Smith and Forman (1997), and Thumboo (2001b). 3

4. Kachru’s “Circles” Theory For better understanding of the use of English in different countries, Kachru (1992) conceived many varieties of English across the globe. Kachru (1992) has classified these varieties as those used in the ‘inner circle’, the ‘outer circle’, and the ‘expanding circle’. 4

5. Figure. 1: Braj Kachru’s Three Circles Model of World Englishes (Crystal 1997: 54, cited in Mackay 2002: 10). 5

6. The “inner circle” represents the traditional bases of English: the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Malta , anglophone Canada and South Africa, and some of Caribbean territories. The total number of English speakers in the inner circle is as high as 380 million, of whom some 120 million are outside the United States. 6

7. The “outer circle includes countries where English is not the native tongue, but is important for historical reasons and plays a part in the nation's institutions, either as an official language or otherwise. This circle includes India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, non-Anglophone South Africa and Canada, etc. The total number of English speakers in the outer circle is estimated to range from 150 million to 300 million . 7

8. The “expanding circle” includes those countries where English plays no historical or governmental role, but where it is nevertheless widely used as a foreign language or ELF. This includes much of the rest of the world's population: China, Russia, Japan, most of Europe, Korea, Egypt, Indonesia, etc. The total number of speakers is from 100 million to one billion (mostly business English ). 8

9. The inner circle is 'norm-providing'. That means that English language norms are developed in these countries - English is the first language there. The outer circle (mainly New Commonwealth countries) is 'norm-developing'. The expanding circle (much of the rest of the world) is 'norm-dependent', because it relies on the standards set by native speakers in the inner circle . The global spread of English language is not only on linguistic based but it helps to furnish in studies, economics and politics issues The growth of China would have an impact on learning English where it was used to be learnt Countries like India in which English is used as second language can play a major role in development of global English 9

10. Varieties of English The World of Englishes : The emergence and establishment of the many varieties of English, both international and intra-national. Reasons for the ‘varieties’: (p.3, Kandiah , 1998) Development of language in ‘new and unfamiliar contexts’ Contexts marked by different ecological, cultural, linguistic, social, etc. characteristics. 10

11. Language, dialect and variety The term ‘language’ represents an idealization . Individuals do not speak a ‘language’, they speak a ‘variety’ of a language, or a ‘dialect’. We identify the national varieties by terms such as American English, Australian English and British English. Within each nation, we identify varieties by regions. In the UK, we speak of Scots, Northern, Central and Southern dialects. In the US, Wolfram (1981: 44 ff.) describes eighteen dialect areas of the Atlantic seaboard, including a distinct dialect spoken in New York City. 11

12. Dialect variation is generally understood to be based on geography. However, there are other factors that lead to variation, too. For example, there are differences in the speech of different classes, ethnic groups, age groups, and genders, and there are differences between educated and uneducated speech . ( Labov , 1998) In South Asia, there are dialect differences based on castes and religions, so that one speaks of a Brahmin dialect and a non-Brahmin dialect of, say, Tamil, and of Hindu versus Muslim Bengali or Kashmiri (B. Kachru , 1969; Shapiro and Schiffman , 1983: 150–76; Ferguson and Dil , 1994). 12

13. Accent Accent refers to the pronunciation of sounds, to stress and intonation , or to the rhythm of speech. Just like variety, accent also leads to controversies about which one is superior, desirable, and so on . When people talk about variation in language, they do not really make a distinction between ‘dialect’ and ‘accent’; As Strevens ( 1983) observes, ‘[s] ince dialect + accent pairs co-exist in this way, it is not surprising that most non-specialists, and even many teachers of English, habitually confuse the terms dialect and accent , and observe no distinction between them .’ 13

14. The pairing of dialect and accent, however, breaks down in the case of standard languages; e.g., the presidents of the United States in the last two decades have all had different accents, but they may all rightly be considered speakers of Standard American English. The same is true of the BBC news anchors and reporters who have regional accents, often identifiable as Irish or Scottish, but they are all considered speakers of standard or educated British English as opposed to, say, American English (B. Kachru and Nelson, 1996: 75). 14

15. 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 (Nelson, 2004 ). 15

16. EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION Students who speak their mother tongue fluently do better in English than students who studies only English and forced to leave their heritage language (see Raimes , 1992 Harklau , Cummins, Wolfram among many others) Students who read in dialect/first language first and then standard had higher scores in reading speed and comprehension of the Standard English ( Canagarajah , Kubota, Lindemann ) . 16

17. Teachers and students be aware of the sort of presence that English has in the world today, in order to keep the divergences among the extant varieties in a reasonable context. The concept of a monolithic English as the exponent of culture and communication in all-English-using countries has been a convenient working fiction that is now becoming harder and harder to maintain ( Dhillon 1994; B . Kachru , 2002 ). We believe that insight has theoretical and pedagogical significance , for both describing and teaching varieties of English and their literatures. To understand the pluralism of English , it is therefore vital to see its spread, uses , and users in sociolinguistic contexts (Phillipson, 1992: 27) . 17

18. Issues Challenges to English language teaching (ELT) from a world Englishes perspective are many. Brown’s paper (2005) in the symposium explores the basic questions of whether ‘to teach or not to teach’ world Englishes . Nelson (2006) addresses concerns raised with regard to intelligibility in teaching English composition to mixed-background students. Tawake (1995a: 296) brings out the importance of ‘cross-cultural reader response’ in assigning comprehensibility and interpretability to texts. She concludes, ‘ If readers from different cultures create vivid, dynamic, but different experiences from the same text and reach very different interpretations of the meaning of that text, our approach to teacher training in literature should be guided by that reality ’. 18

19. Range and depth Range refers to all the functions which English has in a given community context, e.g., in education at all levels, business , legal system, administration, etc., as well as in more intimate domains of family and other social networks whose members may or may not share another language. Range also comprises the shifting of varieties across or within a speech event, such that appropriate lectal and other choices are made by participants, in terms of establishing and maintaining identity, group cohesiveness , and so forth . ( B. Kachru , 1992b: 357). 19

20. Depth refers to the uses of English that are available to people with varying degrees of education who are at different socioeconomic levels , with different jobs and professions. English may be expected to be used by well-educated (perhaps Western-educated) academics. Is it also used by top-level business people, management, employees, and professionals such as doctors, nurses, engineers? Do shopkeepers, taxi-drivers, and blue-collar workers use it? A cline of proficiency may be associated with societal penetration , so that people with less contact with users of ‘fuller’ varieties of English may speak a basilectal form, with gradations up the economic and social scales to an acrolect . ( B. Kachru , 1997: 217) 20

21. Speech community and speech fellowship S peech community refers to a wide-ranging ‘association’ of varieties which would be conceded to be different from one another in particulars, but which are subsumable as ‘sub varieties’ under a broad label. For example, American, British, Australian and New Zealand English are different from each other and are being codified as distinct varieties, but all these speech fellowships are members of the same English-speaking speech community . (B. Kachru , 1985: 23 ) There is an American English speech community, with speech fellowships representing regional speakers from the Northeast (Maine), the Southwest (New Mexico), the Northwest (Oregon), or Southeast (South Carolina). The speakers from these regions exhibit noticeably distinct dialectal features of pronunciation , lexicon, and so on. Despite their differences , all of them would be labelled members of ‘the US speech community ’. (B . Kachru , 1985: 23 ) 21

22. Looking at varieties of English in terms of speech communities and fellowships, B. Kachru says, ‘brings us closer to the real world of English users, their underlying distinct differences, and also their shared characteristics’ (1995b: 16 ). 22

23. Monolingual attitudes and bilinguals' creativity ‘ Bilinguals’ creativity ’ is perhaps most readily thought of as ‘creative writing’, whether of prose in stories or novels, poetry, or plays for the theatre. It is certainly the case that, following the first public attempt at such creativity in the early nineteenth century, Outer-Circle writers have made names for themselves across the English-using world. B. Kachru (1997: 222–3) gives this representative list of world-class literary prize winners: Nobel Prize in Literature — Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), 1986; Derek Alton Walcott (Trinidad), 1992; V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad), 2001; Neustadt Award — Raja Rao (India), 1988; Booker Prize — Salman Rushdie (India), 1995; Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), 1987; Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lanka), 1992; Ben Okri (Nigeria), 1991; Arundhati Roy (India ), 1997. 23

24. Journalists in many countries ply their trade in English; there are over 3,600 English-medium newspapers in India (B. Kachru in McArthur, 1992 : 510), and 21 in Pakistan ( Baumgardner , 1993: 255). English sometimes takes on new functions (as, the often-cited matrimonial advertisements in South Asian periodicals), and in every case exhibits the characteristics that define a particular regional or national variety . English also plays a significant role in broadcast media in many contexts. As K . Sridhar (1989: 7) observes, although radio news bulletins and special-topic programming in India are offered in many minority languages, the major emphasis is on English and Hindi for pan-Indian programs. 24

25. Language teachers can use such examples to illustrate bilingual writers creativity in English, including paradigm examples of stylistic experimentation, mixing of codes, and acculturation of English in various other cultural settings. Interpretations of such literary work that is based in the old canons as reference points and in old paradigms as analytical devices cannot account for the great cultural and social diversities that readers will encounter in these literatures. (K. Sridhar, 1991) 25

26. Power and ideology English has created a culture for itself wherever it has assumed importance in business, education, and so on, across the countries of the Outer and Expanding Circles. As the medium of expression of various sorts of overt power, for example, the power of the law or of educational gatekeepers, language may become identified with power and take on a power of its own. This is exactly what has happened with English in its many geographical and national contexts . Like any sort of power, linguistic power may be positive or negative, beneficial or exploitative. One group or faction within an Outer Circle country may view English as an exponent and tool of national identity (as opposed, say, to fragmentary regional identities) , whereas an opposing view may hold that English is a colonial remnant and, as such, has no place in the national culture. The power of English globally shows in many ways, including its very spread and its giving access to modernity in terms of technology and many forms of knowledge , as well as a certain connoted liberalism and progressiveness (for detailed discussions, see B. Kachru , 1986; Kandiah , 1984; and Phillipson, 1992). 26

27. B . Kachru (1986): "[T]he study of linguistic power is not exactly of the same type as is the study of the use of power by the state, in the legal system, for religious commands, and so on. Linguistic power has to be understood essentially through symbols and manipulation of the symbols" (p. 123). It involves the addition of a language or language variety to the already available codes of a society, or the elevation of a variety to the detriment of another. 27

28. In earlier days, English was something that belonged to "us” and was to be made available to "them." This notion gave the Inner Circle countries a great deal of real and imagined power over the users and use of English. However, many nonnative users of English employ it as a common language to communicate with other nonnatives, while the interactional contexts in which nonnative and native speakers use English with each other are fast shrinking. This is true at every level, including that of acquisition, which may be the hardest notion to relinquish . (see Asante, 1987; Gee, 1986; Y. Kachru , 1997b; Lisle and Mano, 1997) 28

29. Teaching English across the world Monolingual English teachers with little if any cross-cultural experience may have to stop and think about the situations in which English is acquired across the world. I t is taught to nonnative speakers by nonnative speakers, neither teachers nor students ( who themselves become the next generation of teachers ) ever having any contact with a native user ( Smith and Nelson, 1985 ). In terms of identity, people's language affiliations are a significant part of themselves, and of their images of themselves. Crystal (1987) notes: “Language shows we 'belong; providing the most natural badge, or symbol, of public and private identity" (p. 18). In more specific terms, "language can become a source of pleasure, pride, anxiety, offence, anger, and even violence." There is no a priori reason to think that the development of one variety is any stranger than the other. Most learners of English in Outer Circle and Expanding Circle contexts never have any serious contact with an Inner Circle speaker; and, as anyone who has ever tried it can testify, it is not possible, in any complete and active sense, to learn a language from a book ( Smith and Nelson, 1985 ). 29

30. communicative competence ‘communicative competence ’— the ability to use a community’s language in appropriate ways to achieve goals and to operate in the society in an intended manner. Notions of communicative competence are analogous to, for example, knowing and acting in accordance with the sociocultural knowledge that if an Indian person hands you something, you should not accept it in your left hand , or that it is unthinkable to go into a Japanese home with your shoes on . Similarly, there are conventions about who speaks when with whom and how ; it is not reasonable to assume that what is polite or de rigueur , etc., in one community will hold for another. A person’s being born in a native-English speaking country does not make for a more competent communicator in any other context ( Brown, 1995: 233; see Chapter 9 ). 30

31. intelligibility Smith (1988) proposes the idea that any text is received by a reader or hearer on three levels - intelligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability . Each level is more comprehensive than the preceding one and may comprise its information, although it does not necessarily rely upon it Intelligibility consists of word-level recognition . If you recognize that you are hearing (or reading) English, then the language is intelligible to you (Smith and Rafiqzad , 1979). Interpret ability refers to the apprehension of intent, purpose, or meaning behind an utterance. It is the capacity to take "Gee, it's hot in here” as the equivalent, as far as appropriate response is concerned, of the direct request "Please open the window .” Smith (1988) points out that , contrary to what we might think initially, contrary to what we teach students from grammar textbooks , " interpretability is at the core of communication and is more important than mere intelligibility or comprehensibility ” (p. 274). 31

32. comprehensibility To the degree that a recipient finds a text meaningful, it has comprehensibility . If someone says, "Please open the door ,” and if the words are intelligible to you and you can assign referential meaning to them, then that bit of text is comprehensible to you. Further, if you interpret the utterance "Please open the door " as a request for a particular activity which you may carry out, ignore , object to, or otherwise react to in ways, in their turn, elicit another round of interpretation and response from the other participants in the situation, it is comprehensible to you . ( cited in B. Kachru , 1992b, p.311 ). 32

33. Nativization and Englishization Nativization refers to the adaptation of English in particular social-cultural settings, and leads to qualifying descriptors such as ‘US English’, ‘Indian English’, ‘ Singaporean English ’, and so on (B. Kachru , 1983 ). Englishization refers to the manifest influences of English on other languages in a given repertoire; levels of languages from pronunciation through literary genres may be affected in discernable ways (B. Kachru , 1979 ). 33

34. Scientific thought and method P ragmatic examination of the facts and issues of world Englishes leads one — teacher and student alike — to come to grips with observed phenomena and inferred hypotheses, as opposed to defending closely held beliefs blindly. One can defend to the death the notion of "one model and standard" (or two, or perhaps three) for all would-be English users, but that will not stop the wide world from using English for conversing, bargaining, studying, and trading ( McArthur,1992). 34

35. English as medium of multiculturalism One of the important, vehicles of implementing and experiencing multiculturalism is English, in its many multicultural incarnations . It is the vehicle of cross-cultural awareness that can be used not only to teach but to learn, in bidirectional ways, multicultural literatures , customs, and acceptance . If teacher trainees are not exposed to multicultural ideas and examples, they go out into the world in very much the same state of mind as a certain zealous sort of religious missionary who seeks to show "the lost" the error of their ways - without knowing anything about their ways (B. Kachru , 1982b; Bamgbo·se , 1971; Sey , 1973 ). 35

36. Leading students (or leading teachers to lead students) to discover language differences as a way of laying a foundation for examining the differences and their importance should not be difficult. The major American and British newspapers are available at school and public libraries. News magazines, popular magazines, and fiction are also ready sources of language data. An easy first exercise might be to gather lists of unfamiliar lexical items; differences exist among Inner Circle varieties, their next assignment would be to extend the search into texts from the Outer Circle ( Seidlhofer,2001). The immediate benefits of such exercises would be (1 ) the students would move beyond an abstract belief in the existence of world Englishes to a hands-on, if limited, familiarity with them, and (2) that they would overcome a reluctance to approach another variety once they found that the texts in these other varieties were accessible to them . (Seidlhofer,2001). 36

37. International business and English for special purposes Englishes for special purposes (ESP ), including aviation English ( Airspeak ) and Seaspeak , have been extensively discussed and analyzed; McArthur (1992). An increasing number of ESP practitioners live and work in English-speaking/medium countries, preparing curricula for VESL or English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) programs for new immigrant and refugee populations or in classrooms emphasizing academic (EAP) or business preparation (English for Business Purposes) for students and professionals McArthur (1992). ESP also continues to be common to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts, where an increasing number of individuals are eager to learn business or academic English in order to pursue their careers or studies in English or in English-medium contexts. One remarkable example of the explosion of ESP programs in EFL contexts has taken place in China, but ESP continues to be strong in the Middle East and Latin America, as well McArthur (1992). 37

38. English for Business and Economics (EBE) and English for Professional Purposes (EPP) programs are the most popular ESP areas in the EFL world and in much of the ESL world, as well. Business professionals and students require instruction in negotiation, correspondence, proposal and report writing, uses of technology, and in supervising bilingual and ESL/EFL workers. Business students in academic programs need preparation for passing examinations, such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS); and later, they may need support in their coursework or assistance in understanding the cultures of business English classrooms McArthur (1992). 38

39. Expanding “lingua franca” studies As additional native speakers of other languages use English as a lingua franca or language of wider communication, more research and pedagogies will focus those many situations in which none of the participants are native speakers of English, examining how ESP as a second (third, fourth) language is researched, produced, and taught by L2 speakers ( Mauranen , 2011). 39

40. Successful English teachers do not need to be content experts; however, they do need to have a solid linguistics background, to be skilled at various approaches to needs assessment and target situation analysis, be adept at working with a variety of stake-holders in a variety of cultures, and be open, observant, and flexible as their curriculum and instruction evolves (McArthur, 1992). 40

41. Summary We believe that world Englishes provide paradigm examples of the relationships between linguistic and language-teaching theory, methodology, and application. The preceding sections have shown that anecdotal statements regarding the global spread of English are not empirically sound or functionally valid. The spread of English provides a language teacher with an abundance of data for relating second language issues to pedagogical concerns. This can be done in several ways: through the study of variation, the pragmatics of variation, varieties and culture, and varieties and creativity . These assumptions reflect at least three most powerful sets of pedagogical tools: curriculum, testing, and resource materials. For achieving positive goals, it is most important in teacher training to create teacher awareness of the status and functions of Englishes in the world today and in the future. 41

42. 42