Theories for world Englishes

Theories for English;

Theory associated with world English’s:

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   Kachru’s circle of English (1992)

 

Expanding- EFL – English foreign language

Outer- ESL- English second language

Inner- EL1- main language English

Inner circle- the total number of English speakers in the inner circle is as high as 380million, of whom some 120 million are outside the US

Outer circle- includes countries where English is not the native tongue, but is important for historical reasons and plays a part in the nations institutions, either as an official language or otherwise. The total number of English speakers in the outer circle is estimate to range from 150 million to 300 million

Expanding circle- encompasses those countries where English plays no historical or governmental role, but where it is nevertheless widely used as a foreign language or lingua france. The total in this expanding circle is the most difficult to estimate, especially because English may be employed for specific, limited purposes, usually business English. The estimates of these users range from 100 million to one billion.

-        The inner circle (UK, US etc) is ‘norm-providing’. That means that English language norms are developed in these countries- English language is the first language there.

-    The outer circle is ‘norm-developing’

-     Expanding circle- ‘norm dependent’ because it relies on the standards set by native speakers in the inner circle

2. Edgar Schneider’s developmental stages for new varieties of English

Underlying principles

Five underlying principles underscore the dynamic model:

The closer the contact (language contact), higher the degree of bilingualism, multilingualism in a community, the stronger the effects of contact

•     The structural effects of language contact depend on social conditions. Therefore, history will play an important part

• 2)      Contact induced changes can  be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, from code-switching (occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties in the context of a single conversation) to code alternation to acquisition strategies (language acquisition usually refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants’ acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages

• 3)      Language evolution, and the emergence of contact induced varieties, can be regarded as speakers making selections from a pool of linguistic variants made available to them.

• 4)      Which features will be ultimately adopted depends on the complete ‘ecology’ of the contact situation, including factors such as demography, social relationships, and surface similarities between languages etc.

• The dynamic model outlines five major stages of the evolution of world English’s. These stages will take into account the prescriptives from the two major parties of agents- settlers (STL) and indigenous residents (IDG). Each phase is defined by four parameters

• 1.       Extralinguistic factors (e.g historical events)
• 2.       Characteristic identity constructions for both parties
• 3.       Sociolingustic determinants of contact setting
• 4.       Structural effects that emerge