Bloomsbury World Englishes Volume 1: Paradigms 9781350065833, 9781350065802, 9781350072022

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 5.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 10.1 13.1 13.2 14.1 15.1 15.2 15.3 17.1

British versus American varieties of English – Adapted from Strevens (1980) McArthur (1987) and the circle model of World Englishes Three circles model – Adapted from Kachru ([1982] 1992b) World system of Standard and non-standard Englishes (Mair 2013) Ganja in GloWbE GO to APPGE bed in GloWbE Wahala in GloWbE Majorly in GloWbE The respective contribution of variety, register and an interaction between them in predicting scores for each of the ten dimensions Practicing ethnic identity and heritage culture through translingual English Mongolian-Kazakh-English translingual linguascape Affirmation of the ethnic migrant identity in Australia through home country attachments Practicing sexual identity through translingual English Gender-bending in translingual social media linguascape ‘Saturday Night at Sea’ by George Cruikshank, an illustration from Songs, Naval and National by Thomas Dibdin, published in London, 1841 Language use in song titles (Top 20, 2009–2018); raw frequencies Language use in artist names (Top 20, 2009–2018); raw frequencies Amounts of English in the transidiomatic practices of the German and Dutch communities: (a) German community and (b) Dutch community Y’all in GloWbE Dumb( )ass in GloWbE Hate on in GloWbE Picture of fieldwork: A Chinese seller with two African buyers

14 15 16 20 32 33 34 34 91 134 134 135 137 138 169 216 217 233 251 252 253 284

TABLES 1.1 1.2

Approaches to World Englishes The Five Phases of Schneider’s Dynamic Model of Postcolonial English (2003, 2007) 1.3 The English Language Complex 5.1 Dimensions of Variation Developed in Bohmann (2019) 7.1 Generational Differences 13.1 Population Numbers (Based on 2018 Estimates) and Official Languages of Five East Asian Countries 13.2 Linguistic Strategies in Song Titles and Artist Names

11 17 19 87 120 208 216

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17.1 Age Groups of the Respondents 17.2 Gender of the Respondents 17.3 Education Levels of the Respondents 17.4 Occupations of the Respondents (Top 10) 17.5 Nationalities of the Respondents (Top 10) 17.6 Native Languages of the Respondents (Top 10) 17.7 Proficiency in Chinese 17.8 Proficiency in English 17.9 Perception of English as a Common Language 17.10 Second Most Common Language (Top 10) 17.11 Frequency of Communication Problems

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

279 279 279 279 280 281 281 281 282 282 283

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Adams Bodomo is a professor at the University of Vienna, Austria, holding the Chair of African Languages and Literatures. He is also considered to be one of the world’s top experts in African diaspora studies. Being a native of Ghana, Africa, he obtained a BA degree in Linguistics, French, and Swahili, and an MA degree in Linguistics at the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, before moving to Norway where he obtained masters and doctoral degrees at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. He is currently President of the Federation Internationale de Langues et Litterature Modernes (FILLM), a UNESCO-affiliate academic organization. Axel Bohmann is Assistant Professor of English Linguistics at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. His book Variation in English Worldwide: Registers and Global Varieties (Cambridge University Press 2019), based on his 2017 University of Texas doctoral dissertation, is a feature-aggregation-based corpus study which develops ten fundamental dimensions of linguistic variation in English worldwide. He has also published research on English-German language contact in German hip-hop culture, dialect leveling in Texas English, the role of prescriptivism in written English relativizer choice, ideological debates around hyper-correct language in Jamaica, and linguistic innovation on Twitter. Britta Schneider holds a junior professorship of language use and migration at EuropaUniversität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. She has a PhD from Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main and from Macquarie University Sydney. Her general research interests are the sociolinguistics of globalization, the discursive construction of languages and language ideology research, particularly in transnational, non-ethnically constituted settings and in relation to digital environments/human-machine interaction. Camille Jacob is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Portsmouth working on discourses and practices of English in Algeria and Mauritania. She is particularly interested in how the politics of language at the global level interacts with local and national understandings of decolonization, identities, security, and ‘development’ in countries historically considered as ‘French-speaking’. Christian Mair has been a professor of English Linguistics at the University of Freiburg in Germany since 1990. His research has focussed on the corpus-based description of English grammar and on variability and change in Englishes worldwide. It has resulted in several monographs (among them Infinitival Clauses in English: A Study of Syntax in Discourse, 1990, and Twentieth-century English: History, Variation, and Standardization, 2006) and more than 100 contributions to scholarly journals and edited works. Mair’s current research focusses on the role of global English in a multilingual world, on multilingual and nonstandard language practices in computer-mediated communication, and on the sociolinguistics of diaspora and migration.

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Claudia Lange is professor of English Linguistics at the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Her main research interests are Postcolonial Englishes with a focus on Indian English, contact linguistics, discourse-pragmatic variation and change and processes of standardization. Publications include The Syntax of Spoken Indian English (Benjamins 2012) and recently the textbook Corpus Linguistics for World Englishes (Routledge 2020, with Sven Leuckert). Dewei Che is currently a post-doc researcher at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her focal research areas are theoretical linguistics, general linguistics, and international political economy. Holding a doctoral degree in theoretical linguistics from the University of Hong Kong, she is a comparative English-African-Chinese language linguist. Crossculturally, she focuses on communication patterns and sociolinguistic profiles of the diasporic communities in the Global South. She is an experienced teacher who has taught and lectured at both the University of Vienna, Austria and the University of Hong Kong, China. As a globalist and minimalist, she values mobility and simplicity of life.  Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain is Professor of German and Applied Linguistics at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is a sociolinguist whose research includes work in language, migration, and identity, language alternation/code-switching both in communities and in the language classroom, and language attitudes and ideologies. Her most recent book is called Trans-National English in Social Media Communities, and she is currently working on a comparative project about ideologies of English in and about the linguistic landscapes of two German cities. Jerry Won Lee is an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. His publications include a monograph on The Politics of Translingualism: After Englishes, coedited volumes on Translinguistics: Negotiating Innovation and Ordinariness and Korean Englishes in Transnational Contexts, along with co-edited special issues of World Englishes and the International Journal of Multilingualism. Jinhyun Cho is a senior lecturer in the Translation and Interpreting Program of the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Her research interests are primarily in the field of sociolinguistics and focus on intersections between gender, language ideologies, language policies, neoliberalism, and intercultural communication. She is the author of a book entitled English Language Ideologies in Korea: Interpreting the Past and Present. Kingsley Bolton is Professor of English Linguistics at Saint Joseph University Macao, and Professor Emeritus at Stockholm University. He has published widely on English linguistics and the sociolinguistics of the Asian region. He is co-editor of the journal World Englishes, and executive director of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE). His latest book, co-edited with Werner Botha and Andy Kirkpatrick is The Handbook of Asian Englishes (Wiley Blackwell, 2020). Lisa Jansen is a research assistant at the English Department (Chair of Variation Linguistics) of the University of Münster, Germany. She recently finished her doctoral dissertation which focuses on the perception of and attitudes toward language performances in English pop and rock music. Further research interests include the sociolinguistics of performances and/in globalization, perceptual dialectology as well as language and identity in the media.

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Michael Westphal is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Variation Linguistics at the University of Muenster, where he also received his PhD in English linguistics in 2016 for his work on language variation on Jamaican Radio (Benjamins 2017). Together with Guyanne Wilson, he coordinates the research network New Englishes New Methods. His research interests include World Englishes, language attitudes, the language of pop culture, variational pragmatics, and language in the media. Mirka Honkanen completed her PhD at the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2018. Her research on US-Nigerians’ digital multilingual language repertoires was published in the John Benjamins’ Varieties of English Around the World series in 2020. Currently, Honkanen is working as an assistant professor in Freiburg and preparing her Habilitation on the topic of affixational productivity in World Englishes. Rhonda Oliver is a professor of applied linguistics and Head, School of Education, Curtin University, Western Australia. She has researched extensively about second language and dialect acquisition, especially in relation to child and adolescent language learners in schools and universities. Her more recent work includes studies within Australian Aboriginal education settings. Sally J. Delgado is an associate professor of linguistics in the English Department of the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey. She earned her PhD in the literature and languages of the English-speaking Caribbean and explores her interests in dialectology and creole studies through research on language contact of the early colonial Caribbean. Her research and book on Ship English informs the chapter in this volume, and her scholarship on maritime culture and history, education, and sociolinguistics have been published in a range of peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (Los Angeles) and Courtesy Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. She received her PhD from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. Her books include Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Dr. Benor is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and creator of the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. Sender Dovchin is Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, Curtin University. She is a Discovery Early Career Research Fellow of an Australian Research Council. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the University of Aizu, Japan. She has authored numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals. Her single-authored monograph Language, Media and Globalization in the Periphery was published in 2018 by Routledge. Her co-authored research monograph with Alastair Pennycook and Shaila Sultana, Popular Culture, Voice, and Linguistic Diversity: Young Adults On- and Offline, was published in 2017 by Palgrave-Macmillan.   Sofia Rüdiger completed her PhD on spoken Korean English in 2017 and is now working as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Bayreuth. She is the author of Morpho-Syntactic Patterns in Spoken Korean English (John Benjamins, 2019) and, together with Susanne Mühleisen, edited the volume Talking about Food – The Social

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and the Global in Eating Communities (John Benjamins, 2020). Her research interests include World Englishes, language and food, computer-mediated communication and digital ethnography, as well as (diachronic) pragmatics. Suresh Canagarajah is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Applied Linguistics, and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He teaches courses in World Englishes, Multilingual Writing, Language Socialization, Rhetoric/Composition, and Postcolonial Studies. Suresh comes from the Tamil-speaking northern region of Sri Lanka. He taught earlier in the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, and the City University of New York. He was formerly the editor of the TESOL Quarterly and president of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. His edited book Routledge Handbook on Language and Migration (Routledge 2017) won the 2020 best book award from the American Association of Applied Linguistics. Susanne Mühleisen is Professor of English Linguistics and a member of the Excellence Cluster Africa Multiple at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Her work focuses on sociolinguistic and pragmatic issues in English and contact varieties in Africa and the Caribbean with publications such as Creole Discourse. Exploring Prestige Formation and Change across English-lexicon Creoles (Benjamins 2002) and Politeness and Face in Caribbean Creoles (ed. with Bettina Migge, Benjamins 2005). Recent research also includes explorations of Text Type and Genre in World Englishes (forthcoming). Tamara M. Valentine is Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. She has published and presented numerous research papers on topics related to World Englishes, South Asian languages and linguistics, discourse analysis, language and gender, and cross-cultural communication. She earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, focusing on the relationship between language and gender in South Asia. Theresa Heyd holds the chair in English Linguistics at Universität Greifswald. She received her doctoral degree from Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf with a thesis on digital folklore (Email Hoaxes, Benjamins, 2008). After postdoctoral stays at the University of Texas and the University of Pennsylvania, she worked with Christian Mair at Universität Freiburg in the Cybercreole project focused on digital contact varieties under globalized conditions. Her current research interests include the sociolinguistics of mobility and language use in late-modern publics.

Introduction BRITTA SCHNEIDER AND THERESA HEYD

The academic field of World Englishes (WE) was originally animated by the realization that the worldwide presence, roles and uses of English meant that the ways in which this language was understood and described needed radical re-framing. The early stages of this re-conceptualization (in the 1970s and 1980s) were characterized by discussions and debates over the pedagogy of English as an international language. The acknowledgement of the fact that English was not a monolithic entity had a direct consequence in terms of language teaching and a number of questions arose. If English was not one but many, which variety was to be taught in the language classroom? Which cultural content was to be selected in the pedagogy of English as a foreign language? To what extent was one to ensure that learners knew about different varieties of English and different cultures? Braj Kachru (1992) addressed these issues and the points he made nearly thirty years ago are still relevant today. In fact, one can say that the very roots of WE are set in discussions about the transformations that needed to occur in the pedagogy of English as an international language (Saraceni 2010: 30–41). These early debates were not exclusively about the teaching of English. In reality, they were very much driven by ideological stances towards English in the world. The recognition (or otherwise) of the validity of varieties other than British and American English was very much a matter of equality, not just linguistic (all Englishes are equal) but also social (all speakers of English are equal). Ideology has remained a strong component of the World Englishes framework. The pluralization of English cannot be described purely in terms of phonology, vocabulary or grammar. The use of English in countries such as India, Nigeria or Malaysia is not just marked by distinct linguistic features, but is implicated in complex issues of identity – national, social, ethnic –, unequal distribution of wealth and availability of opportunities, migration, social and language rights, and de-colonization. Finally, underpinning the pedagogical and the ideological aspects, there has been the realization that traditional notions associated to the concept of a language were no longer adequate. The idea that a language was naturally tied to a particular nation and territory was seriously challenged by a phenomenon whereby hundreds of millions of people used the same language across countries and continents, in different circumstances and in different forms. The fundamental shift that the WE paradigm introduced was the fact that English was best thought of in plural terms, namely as a conglomerate of distinct varieties, all with their own phonological, lexical and grammatical features, that developed principally in former British colonies. In an early theorization of this concept, Larry Smith noted: It is important to note that there is a single English language but many varieties. The language of the United States is American English. Certainly, speakers of American English are identifiable by their pronunciation, intonation, stress, rhythm, and some vocabulary

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items but the language (the general orthography, lexicology, semantics, syntax – the grammar, if you will), is English. It is the same English that is spoken in Singapore, however; Singapore English speakers are also identifiable by their pronunciation, intonation, stress, rhythm, and some vocabulary items. (Smith 1976: 38) So the plural suffix in the term ‘Englishes’ refers precisely to this plurality of worldwide varieties of English. In the 21st Century, the shift from a singular English to plural Englishes begins to show its age and the field of World Englishes is facing new theoretical and empirical challenges (Saraceni 2015: 1). One problem is that the WE framework has traditionally relied heavily on the concept of nation-state for its definition of varieties of English (see, e.g. Smith’s citation above). Indeed, contemporary changes in society and in academia have brought about critical re-evaluations of the social and of language. In particular, globalized economies, practices of mobility and digital communication, and the accompanying social and academic discourses, have increased an awareness that the territorial nation-state, typically imagined as monolingual, is only one way to frame the social. We have come to realize that national standard languages are no universals but culturally specific and historically conditioned, and that their reification through societal and academic forces has been instrumental in maintaining and reinforcing global power differentials. At the same time, there are, besides communities imagined as culturally homogeneous and territorially bound, other relationships that are relevant for understanding linguistic behaviour, the formation of linguistic prestige and framings of normativity. All this has contributed to a questioning of some of our modernist linguistic certainties, which have been crucial for our understandings of where and how to locate language and how to study it. Taken together, this also impacts on how we understand this ‘thing’ called English. Because of its colonial spread, pluricentricity and heterogeneity, English as a global linguistic resource had been poised as a prime candidate for non-national understandings of language: even before notions of late modernity, globalization or ‘superdiversity’ gained traction in linguistic reasoning, English had been a globally distributed phenomenon with linguistic realities that fell outside of traditional understandings of ‘normal’ language use in monolingual, territorially-bound communities. Understood this way, the emergence of World Englishes as a discipline was an emancipatory force in the study of English linguistics from the very beginning, and the work of many World Englishes theorists and practitioners has contributed to a destabilization of the idea of ‘natural’ monolingual nation-states, most famously probably in Kachru’s Three-Circles Model (Kachru 1985) that conceptualizes English as legitimate linguistic resource outside of traditional realms. And yet, in light of the above mentioned current social and academic processes of change, there are also critical perspectives on Kachruvian approaches as these have been mostly (but not necessarily, see Bolton, this volume) interpreted as remaining locked within the idea that languages appear in national and territorial settings. This also applies to the popular model of the developmental stages of Edgar Schneider (Schneider 2007), in which national educational elites are represented as forming ‘indigenized’ – that is national – varieties of English, and which has been criticized for inaccurately amalgamating global forms of Anglophone variation into a supposedly homogeneous trajectory of postcolonial Englishes (see D’Arcy and Denis 2018). It is therefore a central epistemological problem for World Englishes research that, despite its global outlook, [t]he main frame of reference for the identification and naming of varieties of English . . . is a geographical one and, quite simply, corresponds to the political map of the

INTRODUCTION



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world, with its ready-made names and subdivisions. So there is a Nigerian English because there is a country called Nigeria, Indian English because there is a country called India and so on. (Saraceni 2015: 125) As a consequence of the realization that such methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Schiller 2002; Schneider 2019) requires discussion, scholars engaged in the sociolinguistics of globalization have become particularly prominent in starting to question previously seemingly given linguistic axioms such as the native speaker, speech communities and also languages (see e.g. Blommaert 2010; Blommaert and Rampton 2011; Heller 2010; Makoni and Pennycook 2007, consider, however, that such questioning is not new, see e.g. Gal and Woolard 1995; Gumperz 2001 (1968); Hymes 1968; Le Page and TabouretKeller 1985). The research perspective of translingualism is a related strand of research that has successfully brought to the fore that concepts of language that assume languages to be an a priori ‘given’ are an effect of socio-historical discourses that may be deconstructed theoretically as well as in practical uses of language (see e.g. Canagarajah 2013; Creese and Blackledge 2010; García and Wei 2014). In the context of the study of English in the world, these disciplinary developments imply that it is ‘no longer simply a matter of investigating English in certain parts of the world rather than others. More profoundly, the challenge relates to a re-conceptualization of language and communication’ (Saraceni 2015: 5). One way to approach such a re-conceptualization in the context of World Englishes is to present recent studies that, for example, take as a starting point other social spaces or communicative practices than national ones. We may also examine contemporary social discourses and cultural practices that contribute to the spread of English – and that today are no longer only based on the historical colonial activities of the British. Another way of such an endeavour is to critically scrutinize the theoretical foundations of the field. With this book, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of all three perspectives. The collection of articles in this volume, on the one hand, reflects epistemological frameworks and models of the field of World Englishes. At the same time, we discuss approaches of studying English beyond traditional, that is national and territorial, paradigms. Finally, we present a sample of case studies that apply diasporic and transnational perspectives or give insight into new, non-postcolonial localizations of English that may (or may not?) produce new ‘indigenizations’. Despite the critical, discourse-oriented and mostly qualitative perspectives we develop in this book, we feel it important to note that we do not aim at throwing out the national baby with the deconstructivist bathwater. National concepts of social order remain highly relevant for understanding language use and linguistic affiliations, as discourses and institutional bodies on the national level continue to impact on practices and norms. What we know today about the English language and our perceptions of English as a ‘world language’ is founded upon crucial work that has been conducted in earlier research based mostly on national epistemologies. Similarly, the prominence of feature-based studies in the study of English as a world language is often conceptually related to the idea that language is ordered along national lines (as e.g. in many studies based on ICE corpora, see Lange, this volume, Bohmann, this volume), but it has given very relevant insight into the distribution of features of English and into the presence of linguistic elements in particular settings and into general processes of language development. In the volume we present here, we are, however, not so much focusing on analyses of linguistic features and structures but rather concentrate on the discursive foundations that shape

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our understanding of social-linguistic spaces, and on the social and historical conditions of the establishment of English in particular social contexts. In the first part of the book, this takes the form of a meta-disciplinary analysis of the field and a reflection of models, methods and potential blind spots of World Englishes research. The authors here reflect on the theoretical framings of World Englishes research that have dominated the field since the 1980s and critically re-evaluate the path that World English research has taken. This meta-scientific analysis of our understanding of English in the world helps to reflect our own epistemological foundations and, on grounds of this base, to produce new theoretical and methodological concepts to keep track with recent social and linguistic changes. The title of this first part of the book is Reflecting research paradigms of World Englishes and it contains, first of all, a reflection of models that have been developed in the field of World Englishes research, and a reflection of the role of models generally, by Kingsley Bolton in his article World Englishes: Approaches, models and methodology. This is followed by an overview of the development of the field by Christian Mair, entitled World Englishes: From methodological nationalism to a global perspective. To include the important but so far mostly neglected aspect of gender in World Englishes, Tamara Valentine’s contribution on The role of gender in the study of World Englishes reviews the studies that have been conducted in this area of research. Given the increasing prominence of corpus-based studies in the field, Claudia Lange presents a critical overview of The role of corpora in World Englishes research, in which she also discusses the interactions of corpus methodology and the reproduction of national concepts of language. Finally, this first part ends with Axel Bohmann’s elaborations on the mostly hidden role of Register in World Englishes research, which, as he demonstrates, may have a higher structural impact than national affiliations. In the second part, Postnational framings, discourses and perspectives, the authors take up theoretical developments that have arisen in linguistics and sociolinguistics within recent decades. These concepts question the idea that English ‘has spread’ from ‘the centre’ to ‘the peripheries’, or that uses of English of academic elites represent national communities and are the only forms worthy of attention – and they thus bring about new angles with which we evaluate our own research agendas. These newer theoretical perspectives on English consider language as a social practice ‘on the ground’ and do not take national communities nor ‘languages’ as unquestioned givens. This second part starts with Jerry Won Lee’s and Suresh Canagarajah’s discussion of the relationships of Translingualism and World Englishes. A discussion of non-national, namely diasporic uses of English, which have a long history in English spaces that have appeared across the Atlantic, is presented by Susanne Mühleisen in her chapter English-speaking diasporas. The more recent transnational ties that are enabled by digital communication find attention in Sender Dovchin’s and Rhonda Oliver’s article English and social media: translingual Englishes, identities and linguascapes. A consideration of non-territorial but globally impactful discourses and their role in the distribution of English, including in settings that have never been colonized by the British is found in Jinhyun Cho’s article Neoliberalism and the global spread of English: a Korean case, which concludes the second part of the volume. In the third part, Empirical cases: Transnational ties and new localizations, we combine the older and more recent theoretical discussions described above with case studies on uses of English in contemporary social settings. Instead of striving for a comprehensive enumeration and account of Englishes around the world, our focus here lies on forms of global English use ‘beyond and between the three circles’ (Mair 2016). Using English

INTRODUCTION



5

today may be based on social needs, among them national histories, but also educational demands, economic pressure, political appropriation, popular culture and music, digital communication, transnational communities or on a combination of (some of) these. The third part starts with two examples of diasporic language use that have an established historical tradition, arguing that non-territorial social ties have had an impact on language use for a long time, either through ethnic-religious affiliation or in the practices of mobility in colonialism and slavery. Thus, Sally J. Delgado introduces data on Ship English of the early colonial Atlantic, while Sarah Bunin Benor gives insight into Jewish Englishes in the United States and beyond: An ethnolinguistic repertoire approach. This is followed by perspectives on more recently established social practices that have produced transnational ties. Assuming that global popular music is particularly relevant in the distribution of English, Michael Westphal and Lisa Jansen discuss different uses of English in global pop music. A newer case of localized English in a non-postcolonial Asian setting is presented by Sofia Rüdiger in Non-postcolonial Englishes in East Asia ⁠– Focus on Korean Popular Music, where pop music also is discussed as central factor and where English appears in multilingual combinations with Korean. Digital transnational practices give another more recent example of transnational practices, which clearly interact with national social traditions. Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain, in her article Digital Englishes and transcultural flows shows how digital Englishes are produced differently in different national settings. Mirka Honkanen, in Diasporic Englishes in the United States: The case of Nigerian digital communication discusses the complex uses and indexical meanings of digital English of Nigerians who reside in the United States. Finally, the last two contributions give insight into so far not attended localizations of English, which is Camille Jacob’s discussion on the more and more prominent uses of English in the Maghreb and Dewei Che’s and Adams Bodomo’s intriguing data on English in translingual interactions between Africans and local populations in China in their chapter When Africans meet Chinese: Is calculator communication a form of World Englishes? By inspecting its historicized paradigms, and opening up to paradigms from neighboring fields and linguistic domains, World Englishes can actuate its relevance and open up to new debates of globalization, decolonization and epistemological fluidity. We hope that our collection of texts contributes to this endeavour.

REFERENCES Blommaert, J. (2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. and B. Rampton (2011), ‘Language and Superdiversity’, Diversities, 13: 1–21. Canagarajah, S. (2013), Translingual Practice. Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, London: Routledge. Creese, A. and A. Blackledge (2010), ‘Translanguaging in the Bilingual Classroom: A Pedagogy for Learning and Teaching?’ The Modern Language Journal, 94: 103–15. Denis, D. and A. d’Arcy (2018), ‘Settler Colonial Englishes Are Distinct from Postcolonial Englishes’, American Speech, 93 (1): 3–31. Gal, S. and K. A. Woolard (1995), ‘Constructing Languages and Publics: Authority and Representation’, Pragmatics, 5: 129–38. García, O. and L. Wei (2014), Translanguaging. Language, Bilingualism and Education, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Gumperz, J. (2001 [1968]), ‘The Speech Community’, in A. Duranti (ed.), Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, 43–52, Oxford: Blackwell. Heller, M. (2010), Paths to Post-nationalism. A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity, New York: Oxford University Press. Hymes, D. (1968), ‘Linguistic Problems in Defining the Concept of “Tribe”’, in J. Helm (ed.), Essays on the Problem of the Tribe. Proceedings of the 1967 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, 23–48, Washington: University of Washington Press. Kachru, B. B. (1985), ‘Standard, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle’, in R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (eds), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, 11–30, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kachru, B. B. (1992), ‘Teaching World Englishes’, in B. B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue: English across Cultures, 2nd edn, 355–65, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Le Page, R. B. and A. Tabouret-Keller (1985), Acts of Identity. Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mair, C. (2016), ‘Beyond and between the “Three Circles”. World Englishes Research in the Age of Globalisation’, in E. Seoane and C. Suárez Gómez (eds), World Englishes: New Theoretical and Methodological Considerations, 17–35, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Makoni, S. and A. Pennycook (2007), ‘Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages’, in S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds), Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, 1–41, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Saraceni, M. (2010), The Relocation of English: Shifting Paradigms in a Global Era, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Saraceni, M. (2015), World Englishes. A Critical Analysis, London: Bloomsbury. Schneider, B. (2019), ‘Methodological Nationalism in Linguistics’, Language Sciences, 76: 101–69. Schneider, E. W. (2007), Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, L. (1976), ‘English as an International Auxiliary Language’, RELC Journal, 7 (2): 38–42. Wimmer, A. and N. Glick Schiller (2002), ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: NationState Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’, Global Networks, 2 (4): 301–34.

Chapter 1

World Englishes Approaches, Models and Methodology KINGSLEY BOLTON

1  INTRODUCTION This chapter sets out to present an overview of the field of World Englishes (WE), as a field of academic research and publication, tracing the development of various approaches to World Englishes from the 1980s to the present, discussing various theoretical ‘models’ of approaches to the study of English worldwide, as well as commenting on the methodologies of WE researchers. In this context, the notion of ‘approach’ might be understood as referring to the general theoretical perspective adopted by a researcher or group of researchers in the field, whereas the term ‘model’ in linguistics might be broadly understood as referring to an abstract representation of a language or elements of a linguistic system. Since the 1980s, the World Englishes scholarship has succeeded in creating a paradigm shift in linguistics, thereby transforming English studies as an area of international research and scholarship. Before the 1980s, discussions of English worldwide usually highlighted a distinction between ‘native’ versus ‘non-native’ speakers, and employed terms such as ‘English as a Native Language’ (ENL), ‘English as a Second Language’ (ESL) and ‘English as a Foreign Language’ (EFL), in order to classify particular varieties of English. Since the early 1980s, however, ‘World Englishes’, with its inclusive plural, has increasingly become the standard term to refer to the study of varieties of English worldwide. Since the 1980s, many linguists worldwide have engaged with the study of ‘Englishes’ from a pluricentric perspective, as in ‘English languages’, ‘international Englishes’, ‘new Englishes’, ‘varieties of English’ and ‘World Englishes’. Of all these designations, the best-established term in the literature is ‘World Englishes’, and the last three decades have seen the rise of this discipline (or sub-discipline) in linguistics as a site for substantial scholarly research and publication. There are now a number of academic journals, including Asian Englishes, English Today, English World-Wide and World Englishes, devoted to this field, numerous book-length studies dealing with research in this area, as well as the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), which regularly organizes international conferences in the United States and across the globe (Seargeant 2012).

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2  APPROACHES TO WORLD ENGLISHES The term ‘World Englishes’ has both a narrower and wider application. The narrower application of the term refers to the approach to the study of English worldwide pioneered by Braj B. Kachru and a group of closely related scholars. The wider application of the concept also includes a wide range of other approaches including those of English studies, corpus linguistics, the sociology of language, features-based and dialectological studies, pidgin and creole research, ‘Kachruvian’ linguistics, lexicographical approaches, popular accounts, critical linguistics, futurological approaches as well as current work on English as a lingua franca (ELF). All these approaches are summarized in Table  1.1. The English studies approach dates from the 1960s and the work of Randolph Quirk, and is associated with the Survey of English Usage at University College London, including David Crystal and Sidney Greenbaum. Their work in the UK was complemented by the efforts of a number of German scholars including Görlach (1995) and Schneider (2007), as well as research in the field of corpus linguistics, including work on the International Corpus of English (ICE) project (ICE 2019) and the Global Web-based English Corpus (GloWbE) (Davies and Fuchs 2015). Both the English studies approach and corpus linguistics also utilise a ‘features-based approach’, where salient features of Englishes at the levels of phonology, lexis and grammar are identified and described (Trudgill and Hannah [1982] 2013; Schneider et al. 2004; Kortmann et al. 2004); which in turn has influenced Schneider’s (2003, 2007) formulation of the Dynamic Model of postcolonial Englishes. Sociolinguistic approaches to WE have included (i) ‘the sociology of language’ (Fishman, Conrad and Rubal-Lopez 1996), (ii) the ‘linguistic features’ (and dialectological) approach (Trudgill and Hannah [1982] 2013), (iii) pidgin and creole studies and (iv) ‘socially realistic’ studies of WE (Kachru [1982] 1992a: 304). However, the term ‘World Englishes’, in its plural form, is most closely associated with the work of Braj Kachru. An important aspect of the Kachruvian perspective was that the threefold distinction between ENL, ESL and EFL was ideologically loaded, and he instead proposed a diasporic model that distinguished between the ‘Inner Circle’ (including the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), the ‘Outer Circle’ (postcolonial societies such as Nigeria, Kenya, India, Philippines and Singapore) and the ‘Expanding Circle’ (for instance, Brazil, China, Germany and Japan). Popular writers publishing ‘trade books’ on English worldwide have included McCrum, MacNeil and Cram (1986), Crystal (1997, 2004) and Horobin (2016). In counterpoint to such popular studies, Phillipson’s (1992) monograph, Linguistic Imperialism, has inspired a number of critical scholars over the following years. The futurology perspective is best exemplified in the publications of Graddol (1997, 2006, 2010), while research on English as an International Language (EIL) includes the work of such scholars as Smith (1976, 1981), Strevens (1980), McKay (2002) or Matsuda (2017). The EIL framework also influenced the development of English as a lingua franca (ELF), given that these may be seen as ‘not competing but complementing paradigms’ (Jenkins 2018: 12). Finally, the last two decades have also seen a growing interest in approaches to WE utilizing insights derived from the field of cultural linguistics (Sharifian 2015).

3  WORLD ENGLISHES AND DISCIPLINARY DEBATES Over the last four decades, the World Englishes approach to English worldwide has succeeded in creating a major paradigm shift in academic English studies internationally. The study of

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TABLE 1.1  Approaches to World Englishes Approach

Focus

Timeline

English studies

The analysis of varieties of English from synchronic and historical perspectives, against a tradition of English Studies (Anglistik), dating from the late nineteenth century, for example the work of Otto Jespersen, Daniel Jones and Henry Sweet, concerned with levels of linguistic description.

1960s–present

English corpus linguistics

The accurate and detailed linguistic descriptions of World 1990–present Englishes from a features perspective.

1980s–present ‘Features-based’ The description of English through dialectological and variationist methodologies. Situated against the long approaches tradition of British and European dialectology. Research on English in relation to such issues as language 1960s–present The sociology maintenance/shift and ethnolinguistic identity. of language Kachruvian studies

The promotion of a pluricentric approach to World Englishes, highlighting both the ‘sociolinguistic realities’ and ‘bilingual creativity’ of Outer Circle (and Expanding Circle) societies.

Pidgin and creole studies

The description and analysis of ‘mixed’ languages and the 1930s–present dynamics of linguistic hybridization in language contact settings.

Applied linguistics

The exploration of the implications of World Englishes for language learning and teaching.

1960s–present

Lexicography

The codification of vocabularies of English worldwide, linked to particular post-colonial societies and issues of linguistic autonomy.

1980s–present

Popularizers

The publication of books on English worldwide aimed at a mass reading public.

1980s–1990s

Critical linguistics

The expression of resistance to the linguistic imperialism and cultural hegemony of English, in tandem with resistance to Anglo-American political power.

1990s–present

Linguistic futurology

The discussion of future scenarios for the spread of English and English language teaching worldwide.

1997–present

English as an international language (EIL)

The broad study of English as an international and/or auxiliary language. A term variously used to refer to the uses of English(es) in diverse contexts across/between/in the Three Circles worldwide.

1976–present

English as a lingua franca (ELF)

An approach to English focusing on those contexts, for example universities and international businesses, where English is used as a common language by speakers of different nationalities and linguistic backgrounds.

Late 1990s– present

Cultural linguistics

Research on cross-cultural communication and cultural schemas in the context of World Englishes.

2000s–present

Adapted from: Bolton 2020

1980s–present

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World Englishes is now recognized as a branch of linguistics at many universities worldwide, and to a large extent has now established itself as a discipline in its own right, with its own educational programmes and discourse community. In this context, it can now be argued that there is now a stable body of knowledge that constitutes a subject entitled World Englishes studies, and . . . that there has been a paradigm shift in the way that the academic mainstream now focuses on the teaching and research of diverse varieties of English [which] affects not only sociolinguistic studies of English around the world, but also applied linguistics scholarship, and in this way feeds into the training of language professionals, specifically TESOL practitioners and those involved in language planning. (Seargeant 2012: 126–7) However, despite the relative success of the WE enterprise, the Kachruvian approach to World Englishes has not been without its critics. One important challenge to the WE paradigm in recent years has been from scholars who have highlighted the ‘linguistic imperialism’ associated with the spread of English. Phillipson’s (1992) Linguistic Imperialism was a landmark publication, which influenced the work of many others, including, to some extent, applied linguists such as Canagarajah (1999), Pennycook (1994, 2001) and Tupas (2015). While Phillipson’s perspective was supportive of the WE approach at first, by 2009, he was asserting that ‘[t]here are serious theoretical and empirical weaknesses in the way World Englishes are classified and analysed’ (Phillipson 2009: 164–5). Other critiques of the WE approach included those of Bruthiaux (2003) and Jenkins (2003). The criticisms of both these authors focused on the ‘Three Circles’ model of the Kachruvian approach, with Bruthiaux arguing that the Three Circles model ‘has little explanatory power’ and ‘has left us with a primarily nation-based model which draws on specific historical events and which correlates poorly with current sociolinguistic data’ (Bruthiaux 2003: 161). In a similar vein, Jenkins’ (2003) textbook World Englishes: A Resource Book for Students also contained a number of criticisms of the Three Circles model including (i) the assertion that this was ‘a model based on geography and genetics’, (ii) that there were ‘grey areas’ between the Inner and Outer Circle countries, and Outer and Expanding Circles, and that (iii) ‘the model implies that the situation is uniform for all countries within a particular circle’ (Jenkins 2003: 17). Kachru’s (2005) response to this explained that the notion of the Three Circles was primarily historical, and also involved a geographical (though not, in his formulation, a genetic) dimension (Kachru 2005: 213). With reference to the ‘grey areas’ issue, Kachru responded by quoting an earlier paper, where he had specifically argued that ‘[t]he Outer and Expanding Circles cannot be viewed as clearly demarcated from each other; they have several shared characteristics, and the status of English in the language policies of such countries changes from time to time. What is an ESL region at one time may become an EFL region at another time or vice versa’ (Kachru 1985: 13–4). On the third issue relating to uniformity, Kachru noted that he had consistently argued that there was ‘significant variation’ within varieties, so that, for example, no less than ten distinct varieties of Indian English had been identified by the 1970s (Kachru 1976: 234). Kachru was clearly fully aware of the dynamic nature of WE, commenting that, within his model, ‘each Circle, including the Inner Circle, is reshaping itself within fast-changing sociolinguistic ecologies in which the English language has become a vital partner and a linguistic icon with a variety of avatars’ (Kachru 2005: 219). Over the past few years, a number of commentators have repeated the Bruthiaux critique that the Kachruvian approach to World Englishes has focused only on geographically

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defined varieties of English, which is simply not true if we look at the evidence from the World Englishes journal for the years 1985–2005, when Kachru edited the journal (Bolton and Davis 2006). Indeed, even today, the WE journal (which is the official journal of IAWE) publishes an increasingly wide range of articles, not simply concerned with geographical varieties of Englishes, but instead engaging with such varied topics as literary and linguistic creativity, cultural linguistics, digital media, linguistic landscapes, media, popular culture and translanguaging. In my own view, the WE approach as it has developed has been intrinsically dynamic and remains open both to debate and to new perspectives in research, scholarship and theorisation, and I have argued that this diversity, flexibility and openness is a crucial element of the ‘ethos’ of WE (Bolton 2005). Most recently, another strand of criticism has come from advocates of a ‘global Englishes’ approach, including Galloway and Rose (2015) who have asserted that ‘Global Englishes includes the concepts of World Englishes’, thus attempting to rename the discipline, by simultaneously marginalizing and misrepresenting at least fifty years of scholarship in the WE field, not least that of Braj B. Kachru (1932–2016), Yamuna Kachru (1933–2013) and Larry E. Smith (1941–2014), who in the late 1970s and 1980s were the leading pioneers in the field, renaming the World Englishes journal in 1985 and establishing the IAWE in 1992. As mentioned earlier, the field of ‘World Englishes’ in wider perspective includes all those approaches listed in Table 1.1, while, in a narrower perspective, ‘World Englishes’ was originally associated most closely with the theorizations and publications of Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Larry Smith and associated scholars. Over the last few decades, the WE enterprise has expanded to include a large range of researchers approaching the field with diverse perspectives and methodologies. The Kachruvian pioneers have now passed on, but their humanistic vision is not forgotten.

4  MODELS OF WORLD ENGLISHES From the early 1980s to the present, there have been a number of theoretical models of World Englishes that have shaped our conceptual understanding of the status, functions and features of Englishes worldwide. These are presented in summary form in the following sections.

4.1  Early models of World Englishes Two early models of World Englishes include the Strevens (1980) model and the McArthur (1987) model, both of which are illustrated later. Strevens’s model was that of English as an international language, and drew a basic and binary distinction between varieties of English deriving from North America and those derived from the UK. His model is illustrated in Figure 1.1 . What is notable about this model of World Englishes is the derivational aspect, with Figure 1.1 highlighting the historical links between international varieties of English with either Britain or North America. Thus, the ‘second language’ varieties of English in most regions of Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia are visualized as transported Englishes from the UK, with the one exception of the Philippines, which historically owes much to US colonialism. A British influence is also visible in the Caribbean as well as in Australasia and the Pacific. What is also interesting about this 1980 map is that no recognition is given of the spread of English in other parts of the world such as South America, Europe, the Soviet Union or China. Tom McArthur’s (1987) model in Figure  1.2 is somewhat

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FIGURE 1.1:  British versus American varieties of English – Adapted from Strevens 1980.

more inclusive, as it actually gives some space to ‘foreign-language varieties’ in countries such as China and Japan. McArthur’s ‘Circle of World English’ model is designed in the shape of a circle or even, more specifically, a wheel, with a notional ‘World Standard English’ in the centre and many different varieties of Englishes listed around the rim of the wheel. This model was certainly useful for listing and illustrating the different varieties of English around the world at the time when McArthur was writing, even if the notion of ‘World Standard English’, as McArthur himself was aware, was something of an ‘idealization’, given the sociolinguistically contested nature of ‘standard’ languages.

4.2  The Three Circles Model (Kachru [1982] 1992b) Braj B. Kachru’s Three Circles model (see Figure  1.3) was intended to be a corrective of the previous tripartite distinctions between ‘English as a Native Language’, ‘English as a Second Language’ and ‘English as a Foreign Language’. It was also intended in part to be a historical representation of the diaspora of different Englishes worldwide. The Inner Circle countries are those societies where English was first established, including the traditional homeland of Britain (or the ‘UK’) and settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and even Ireland. The Outer Circle societies are typically all former colonies of Anglophone powers, specifically the United Kingdom and United States, where, over time, local varieties of English have developed and become accepted, to varying degrees, within such contexts. The Expanding Circle societies are those societies where traditionally English was learnt, taught and used as a ‘foreign language’, where the target variety was typically that of an Inner Circle society. Kachru’s Three Circles model has proved resilient for a number of reasons, but not least because it has successfully dissolved the former distinction between ‘native’ versus ‘non-native’ varieties of English, in a world where such classifications can be seen as discriminatory and misleading.

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Australian, New Zealand and South Pacific Englishes

WORLD STANDARD ENGLISH

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WORLD ENGLISHES

FIGURE 1.2:  McArthur (1987) and the circle model of world Englishes.

The earliest reference to the Three Circles model, as far as I know, is in Kachru’s (1985) chapter in a volume edited by Quirk and Widdowson, entitled English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literature, where Kachru explains that ‘[t]he spread of English may be viewed in terms of three concentric circles representing the types of spread, the patterns of acquisition and the functional domains in which English is used across cultures and languages’, noting that he had ‘tentatively labelled these’ the inner circle, the outer circle (or extended circle) and the expanding circle. He then went on to add that: In terms of the users, the inner circle refers to the traditional bases of English the regions where it is the primary language. . . . The outer (or extended) circle needs a historical explanation: . . . these regions have gone through extended periods of colonisation, essentially by the users of the inner circle varieties. . . . The third circle, termed the expanding circle, . . . requires a recognition of the fact that English is an international language, and that it has already won the race in this respect with linguistic rivals such as French, Russian and Esperanto, to name just two natural languages and one artificial

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EXPANDING

OUTER Inner Circle countries Australia Canada Ireland New Zealand UK USA

INNER

Expanding Circle countries, e.g., Brazil China Egypt France Germany Indonesia Israel

Japan Korea Mexico Saudi Arabia Spain Taiwan USSR

Outer Circle countries, e.g., Ghana Hong Kong India Jamaica Kenya Malaysia Nigeria

Pakistan Philippines Singapore South Africa Sri Lanka Tanzania Zambia

FIGURE 1.3:  Three circles model – Adapted from Kachru ([1982] 1992b).

language. . . . This circle is currently expanding rapidly and has resulted in numerous performance (or EFL) varieties of English. (Kachru 1985: 12–3) It was not until some years later that the now-familiar image of the Three Circles found its way into print. One instance of this was in a book chapter ‘The Second Diaspora of English’ (Kachru 1992c), and around the same time, Kachru also published an influential article in Language Teaching, which summarized many aspects of Kachruvian theory at the time and also included a figure to illustrate the circles (Kachru 1992d). In this latter article, Kachru (1992d: 3) further explains that the circles ‘are defined with reference to the historical, sociolinguistic and literary contexts’, so that the ‘Inner Circle represents the traditional bases of English, dominated by the “mother tongue” varieties of the language’, and in ‘the Outer Circle, English has been institutionalised as an additional language’, while the ‘Expanding Circle includes the rest of the world where English is used as the primary foreign language, and the uses of English are unpredictably increasing as in, for example, what used to be the Soviet Union, in China, and in Eastern Europe’. One key point that is often missed in discussions of Kachru’s work is that the Three Circles model was only one part of a rich theoretical approach adopted by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru and associated pioneer scholars in the field of World Englishes. One of the best guides to Braj Kachru’s pioneering theoretical work is the three-volume book set of the Collected Works of Braj B. Kachru, edited by Webster (2015). In this collection of articles, the diversity and richness of Kachru’s work is clearly visible. This three-volume set includes a total of thirty-three important journal articles and book chapters written by Kachru between 1976 and 2001, and anthologizes many of his writings on such key issues as ‘non-native varieties of English’, ‘the power and politics of English’, ‘non-native literatures’, ‘linguistic sacred cows’, ‘new Englishes’, ‘world Englishes’, ‘transcultural creativity’, ‘English as a lingua franca’ and ‘code-mixing’, ‘bilingualism’, ‘language policy’, ‘multilingualism and multiculturalism’. In addition to Webster (2015), an even wider research bibliography may be found in Bolton, Davis and Sridhar (2019), which provides a research bibliography that includes references to Kachru’s major publications on South Asian linguistics as well as World Englishes. In this context, we would again seek to highlight the range and diversity of Kachru’s scholarly writings. Kachru’s approach

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to World Englishes was not myopically concerned with a mechanistic model, but with an expansive vision that connected the WE project to such adjacent and interconnected topics as applied linguistics, bilingualism and multilingualism, code-mixing and switching, cross-cultural communication, language policy, linguistic variation, literary creativity, sociolinguistics and the politics of language.

4.3  The Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes (Schneider 2003, 2007) A fourth model of Englishes worldwide is that of the ‘Dynamic Model’, first proposed by Edgar Schneider (2003, 2007), which expanded and developed an earlier theorization of the ‘life cycle’ of Englishes suggested by Moag ([1982] 1992). The Dynamic Model focusses specifically on the transportation and nativization of English in various colonial settings, both Inner Circle and Outer Circle. According to this model, the adoption of English in colonial and post-colonial settings may typically be summarized with reference to five stages of transportation and adaptation. These five ‘phases’ are illustrated in simplified form in Table 1.2. Table 1.2 illustrates the Dynamic Model in greatly simplified form, not least because the model has not only a historical component but three other components as well, concerned with dynamics such as (i) identity construction, (ii) sociolinguistic contact and (iii) linguistic developments (including linguistic features). Schneider’s Dynamic Model was particularly designed to apply to the post-colonial development of Inner and Outer Circle Englishes. To a large extent, one might suggest that the degree of fit with Inner Circle post-colonial societies is somewhat greater than with Outer Circle countries and

TABLE 1.2  The Five Phases of Schneider’s Dynamic Model of Postcolonial English (2003, 2007) Phase

Historical development

1. Foundation

English is transported by the colonizers/settlers, to what was previously a non-English-speaking country, through colonial settlement, military conquest or trade or a combination of these.

2. Exonormative stabilization

English is regularly spoken and formally established as language of administration, education and legislation by the colonial power, and some knowledge of English spreads into the indigenous community, although the model for this English is exonormative (outwardly focussed on the prestige variety of the colonial power).

3. Nativization

Knowledge of English spreads more widely into the indigenous community. Localized forms of English (postcolonial Englishes, PCEs) and code-mixing/switching become rather common and salient within the community.

4. Endonormative stabilization

At this stage, normative standards of English associated with the local, nativized variety develop, and the acceptance of local forms of English are often associated with the independent identity of the former colonial subjects, which typically follows political independence.

5. Differentiation

In the post-independence period, localized regional and/or social dialects appear and develop within the society, so that it is possible to identify different (ethnic, regional and social) varieties of English within the post-colonial society.

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regions. One major reason for this is that Phases 4 and 5 in most Outer Circle societies are often problematic. Endonormative variation may be identifiable and describable, but typically there is little acceptance of such local varieties by the government and educational establishments in such contexts, even in societies such as India, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong which have had a long history of the use of English as an official and co-official language. Nevertheless, despite such reservations, the Dynamic Model has proved to be remarkably influential over the last decade, and many studies of World Englishes have adopted this framework in order to analyse the spread of English in their societies. In recent years, Schneider and associated colleagues have also adapted this model to account for recent trends in the globalization of English and the use of English in the Expanding Circle, with Schneider (2014: 28) suggesting that the contemporary dynamics of World Englishes, in such Expanding contexts, ‘is driven strongly by the “Transnational Attraction” of English’, given that the language widely ‘serves as a tool and symbol of modernization, globalization, and economic prosperity’. Subsequently, Schneider’s notion of ‘transnational attraction’ has also been supplemented by Buschfeld and Kautzsch’s (2017) ‘Extra- and Intra-territorial Forces Model’ (Deshors 2018).

4.4  The English Language Complex Model (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008) In their (2008) study of World Englishes, Mesthrie and Bhatt suggest that the whole field of World Englishes might also be conceptualized as an ‘English Language Complex’ which ‘comprises all subtypes distinguishable according to some combination of their history, status, form and functions’ (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 3). These subtypes thus include those listed below in Table 1.3.

4.5  The World System of Englishes Model (Mair 2013) Another influential model worth mentioning is that of Mair (2013), which characterized Standard American English as the ‘hyper-central’ variety of the World System of Englishes, and then represented other varieties of the language in a hierarchical model composed of various layers of classification (which itself was inspired by de Swaan 2001, 2010). This moves (from top to bottom) from the hyper-central variety to super-central varieties, to central varieties and to peripheral varieties. This is illustrated in Figure 1.4 (adapted from Mair 2013, 2018). A great deal might be said about Mair’s conceptualization of Englishes worldwide, not least the seemingly unproblematic use of terms such as ‘standard’ versus ‘non-standard’ in the previous model, but one similarity that this shares with Schneider’s model is the apparent desire of its author to reduce the diversity of English worldwide to a fixed and simplified representation of the World Englishes in the form of a reductive (yet highly manageable) model of linguistic variation.

4.6  Statistical Models of World Englishes A rather different approach to the ‘modelling’ of World Englishes is that provided by statistical modelling which has been becoming increasingly sophisticated in recent years. For example, Gries, Bernaisch and Heller (2018) summarize recent developments in this field in terms of three different methodological levels, which include the following: (1) zero-/ monofactorial frequency studies focusing on relative frequencies and cross-tabulations tested via chi-squared or likelihood ratio tests, (2) multifactorial classification/regression modelling

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TABLE 1.3  The English Language Complex (Meshtrie and Bhatt 2008) Subtypes

Examples

Metropolitan standards Broadcast standardized varieties of US and British English. Colonial standards

Varieties of English in such settings as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Regional dialects

The older English dialects of the United Kingdom and United States are clearly definable in regional terms, while this is less so in the case of such newer varieties in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Social dialects

Cockney, Received Pronunciation (RP) and ‘Estuary English’ in the UK. Broad, General and Cultivated varieties of Australian English.

Pidgin Englishes

English-based pidgins like West African pidgin English.

Creole Englishes

One example here is Jamaican Creole.

English as a Second Language (ESL)

Varieties that arose in former colonies, such as Kenya, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka (Outer Circle varieties).

English as a Foreign Language (EFL)

The English used in countries which were not colonized by Anglophone powers, for example, Brazil, China and France (Expanding Circle contexts).

Immigrant Englishes

One example here is Chicano English in the United States.

Language-shift Englishes

Hiberno English is today a social dialect in Ireland, but in the past could be regarded as a language-shift variety.

Jargon Englishes

A variety with great variation and instability, one of which developed into Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea.

Hybrid Englishes

‘Bilingual mixed languages’, like Hinglish, a hybrid variety of Hindi-English.

Source: (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008).

and (3) an extension of the second approach called MuPDAR(F), short for Multifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis with Regression/Random Forests. In this particular study of genitive alternation in Singapore English, the researchers adopt a corpus linguistic approach to the analysis of genitives in Singapore and British English, using corpora from the International Corpus of English (ICE). In the final analysis, their argument is that advanced statistical modelling of the kind they employ has the potential to test various theoretical models in the field, not least with reference to the structural features of varieties, and the degree to which these reflect the various stages of Schneider’s Dynamic Model (Gries, Bernaisch and Heller 2018: 275–6). The implication is that the theoretical and conceptual models of linguists are open to rigorous scientific verification and proof utilizing the tools of corpus linguistics and advanced statistical analysis. Here, one might question whether such increasingly complex techniques of statistical analysis are sufficiently comprehensible and transparent for most researchers to make a useful contribution to the field, and whether the promise of scientific rigor claimed for such techniques is realized in practice. Hundt (2019), for example, has noted that it is unclear whether quantitative models of WE are generally effective in informing theoretical models of World Englishes.

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FIGURE 1.4:  World system of Standard and non-Standard Englishes (Mair 2013).

5  METHODOLOGY IN WORLD ENGLISHES A third important aspect of World Englishes research, in addition to ‘approach’ and ‘models’, is at the level of methodology, on which surprisingly little has been published in the research literature, with the exception of a recent volume by De Costa, Crowther and Maloney (2019). In this latter work, the editors include contributions on just three types of methodology, that is, corpus linguistics, ethnographical approaches and the use of surveys and questionnaire data. Given the diverse approaches to WE research that are active in this field, it should be clear, however, that these three methodologies are not

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representative of the field in its entirety. As is clear from Table 1.1, the WE field is the inter-disciplinary character of its research, and, indeed, one difficulty in talking about WE research in any unitary sense is the diverse nature of the field. In this context, particular methodologies are typically defined by the specific field of study. For example, featuresbased studies of World Englishes at the levels of phonology, lexis, grammar and so forth owe much to earlier studies of English dialectology. Despite this, it is also a fallacy that World Englishes is only or primarily concerned with the features of national varieties of the language, as the analysis of publications in this field and in the World Englishes journal has demonstrated. For example, the study of the World Englishes journal content from 1985 to 2005 by Bolton and Davis (2006) clearly showed that many more articles during this formative period were published on discourse analysis (15.3%), sociolinguistics (13.6%) and applied linguistics (12.8%) than on areal studies (11.4%) and features-based (9.4%) approaches. In addition, there were also a sizeable number of articles on topics such as critical linguistics, bilingual creativity, lexicography and pidgin/creole studies. Again, as the list of approaches in Table 1.1 might suggest, WE methodologies may vary considerably, from those of traditional English studies, to corpus linguistics, the sociology of language, micro-sociolinguistics, pidgin and creole studies, applied linguistics, critical linguistics and cultural linguistics. In very recent years, there has been a wide diversity of research topics represented in the journal with special issues on creativity, digital media, critical discourse analysis, language contact, linguistic landscapes, translanguaging and English as a lingua franca. Again, one major problem in discussing research methodologies relates to the diversity of linguistic topics that are the subject of investigation, although one way through this is to recognize that two major source fields for WE studies have been those of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, although other areas as discourse analysis, critical linguistics, intercultural communication, literary criticism and postcolonial studies have also contributed to interdisciplinary WE research. Much of Braj Kachru’s own work was centrally concerned with researching Englishes with reference to the ‘sociolinguistic realities’ of language contact and language use worldwide. In this, a number of sociolinguistic methodologies were most relevant, including macro-level studies of societal multilingualism, as well as micro-sociolinguistic studies of language utilizing data recording, ethnographies of communication, feature analysis, linguistic transcription, social network analysis and various forms of sociolinguistic interviews. At another level, WE research has sometimes involved the analysis of written data from a wide range of sources, including language policy documents, as well as various forms of media discourse, such as advertising, the internet and popular music. WE-informed applied linguistics research has typically focused on attitudes to varieties of English within educational institutions (particularly universities), and curriculum design and teaching practices. A central feature of most WE research (whether applied or sociolinguistic, or quantitative or qualitative) is that typically it is empirical in orientation. As the World Englishes journal website itself makes clear, the journal is centrally interested in ‘empirical research on Englishes in their cultural, global, linguistic and social contexts’ (World Englishes 2020). This central commitment to original empirical research is a key feature of most research papers published by the journal, and the research methodology favoured by the journal is that of classic social scientific research, characterized by the formulation of clear research issues, the collection and analysis of primary research data and the discussion of key results with reference to the frontline of research within the WE paradigm. Nevertheless, while this emphasis may be true of most articles in the journal,

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the journal has also created the space for interpretive approaches to the subject and has published articles on bilingual creativity, language and politics, literary analysis and much else. Nevertheless, despite these exceptions, the characteristic of most WE research has been its empirical orientation towards the object of inquiry in combination with ‘the application of sociolinguistic realities to the functions of English’, an enduring and key characteristic of the most influential and relevant research in the field (Kachru 1997; in Webster 2015, Vol. 2: 175).

6  CONCLUSION This chapter has attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of the field of World Englishes, through reference to the tripartite (yet overlapping) distinction between approach, model and methodology applied to World Englishes as an academic discipline. At the level of approach, it is suggested that ‘World Englishes’ has a broader and narrower frame of reference. At the broader level, WE refers to numerous approaches to scholarship on English worldwide, while, at a narrower level, the term refers specifically to the foundational scholarship of Braj Kachru and associated scholars, who were largely responsible for the pluralization of ‘Englishes’ and the paradigm shift of the 1980s and 1990s associated with the Three Circles model. Since then, numerous research groups interested in WE studies have emerged and developed, not least in the European context, where Schneider’s Dynamic Model has been highly influential over the last two decades. In recent years, the Three Circles model has been criticized as over-simplistic and largely concerned with national varieties of Englishes, but equally the Dynamic Model itself may also be seen as overly mechanistic and reductive. Despite this, it is nevertheless the case that both models are currently most influential in the WE field today, and typically complement each other in discussions of particular contexts of use. The descriptive vocabularies of both models (with reference to ‘Outer’ versus ‘Expanding’ Circle contexts, or ‘Phase 3’ versus ‘Phase 4’ stages of development) have entered the discourse of the WE discipline, and these continue to inform and shape much of the intellectual discussion in this field. This chapter has also discussed the characteristics of research methodologies in the WE field, noting in particular the role played by empirical sociolinguistic methods, as well as the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Ultimately, it may be the diversity and interdisciplinarity of World Englishes as a field of inquiry that ensures its development and future productivity. ‘Models’ of World Englishes can be insightful representations of the field, in the sense that they serve to map our conceptualizations and theorizations of the field of inquiry, but we need to stay mindful that ‘the map is not the territory’ (Korzybski [1933] 1995: xvii), and that the sociolinguistic realities of World Englishes today are too diverse and too dynamic to be captured by a single, monolithic model of the field. For some linguists, models of this kind are seen as necessary for ‘bringing order into the apparently bewildering chaos of varieties of English (and World Englishes in particular)’ and are useful ‘because they highlight shared features and thus reduce the level of complexity which is unavoidable in observing these phenomena’ (Schneider 2017: 53). The problem with reductive models of World Englishes, of course, is that they risk reducing the scope of the field ad absurdum. One of the earliest critical discussions of ‘models’ in linguistics is that of the distinguished Berkeley professor, Yuen Ren Chao, who, in the 1960s, noted that ‘[t]he term “model” in linguistics is mainly modeled after

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models in mathematics’, although ‘the usage among mathematicians seems to be almost the exact opposite of that of the social sciences, if linguistics is called a social science’, explaining that: In mathematics a model is more concrete than what it is a model of, while in the social sciences a model is more of an abstraction. While linguists have consciously borrowed the concept of models from mathematics, they have not been uninfluenced by the use of models in the other sciences, and indeed by the various uses in everyday life, to which I will now turn for a few moments. In everyday usage a model is usually something similar to, but not quite the same as, the thing of which it is a model. . . . From an examination of the model we gain information about, or aesthetic appreciation of, the thing, as if we were dealing with the original, or in ways we could not with the original. (Chao 1966: 558) Chao further explained that, in linguistics, a model was perhaps best understood as an ‘abstraction’ and ‘representation’ of the object of study, designed to aid or expand one’s understanding of the linguistic phenomenon under examination, and warned about discriminating between the ‘model’ and the ‘thing’ (that is, the phenomenon described). In World Englishes, the distinction between model and thing is evidently sometimes lost, as with interpretations of both the Dynamic and the Three Circles models. In the case of the former, the Dynamic model appears to have become a victim of its own success, given that the many enthusiasts for applying this model automatically to each and every postcolonial Anglophone society (as well as other contexts) appear to regard the model as fact (thing) rather than an abstract representation (model). Conversely, critics of the Three Circles model often point to somewhat blurred contexts of Outer/Expanding Circle overlap as a clear reason for rejecting the Kachruvian model completely, again falling into the very same conceptual trap of confusing model and thing. If one takes a reflective step backwards, it is surely evident that the remarkable diffusion of the English language over the last one hundred years or so has, for good or ill, been one of the most important intellectual as well as linguistic issues of our times. Kachru’s own response to the ‘agony and ecstasy’ of English worldwide was to create and inspire a body of work that was rich in its academic diversity and reach, which included cultural, literary and political dimensions, as well as the discussion of linguistic issues more concerned with language contact, multilingualism and related issues than with English in any singular sense (Kachru 1996). Whatever models of World Englishes we choose, therefore, it is to be hoped that such modelling can serve to expand our thinking in this field, to accommodate a richness of diverse academic perspectives (as are represented in this volume), and, rather than narrowing our thinking and reducing the scope of study, to open the field still wider to the further innovation and expansion of intellectual inquiry and research.

REFERENCES Bolton, K. (2005), ‘Where WE Stands: Approaches, Issues, and Debate in World Englishes’, World Englishes, 24 (1): 69–83.

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Bolton, K. (2020), ‘World Englishes: Current Debates and Future Directions’, in C. L. Nelson, Z. G. Proshina and D. R. Davis (eds), The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd edn, 743–60, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Bolton, K. and D. R. Davis (2006), ‘A Content Analysis of World Englishes’, World Englishes, 25 (1): 5–6. Bolton, K., D. R. Davis and S. N. Sridhar (2019), ‘Braj B. Kachru’s Scholarly Publications: A Bibliography’, World Englishes, 38 (1–2): 340–6. Bruthiaux, P. (2003), ‘Squaring the Circles: Issues in Modeling English Worldwide’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 13 (2): 159–78. Buschfeld, S. and A. Kautzsch (2017), ‘Towards an Integrated Approach to Postcolonial and Non-Postcolonial Englishes’, World Englishes, 36 (1): 104–26. Canagarajah, A. S. (1999), Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chao, Y. R. (1966), ‘Models in Linguistics and Models in General’, Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, 44: 558–66. Crystal, D. (1997), English as a Global Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. (2004), ‘Subcontinent Raises Its Voice’, Guardian Weekly, 19 November. Available online: www​.t​​hegua​​rdian​​.com/​​educa​​tion/​​2004/​​nov​/1​​9​/tef​l (accessed 17 March 2020). Davies, M. and R. Fuchs (2015), ‘Expanding Horizons in the Study of World Englishes with the 1.9 Billion Word Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE)’, English World-Wide, 36 (1): 1–28. De Costa, P. I., D. Crowther and J. Maloney, eds (2019), Investigating World Englishes: Research Methodology and Practical Applications, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Deshors, S. C., ed. (2018), Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the Interplay of Emancipation and Globalization of ESL Varieties, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. de Swaan, A. (2001), Words of the World: The Global Language System, Cambridge: Polity Press. de Swaan, A. (2010), ‘Language Systems’, in N. Coupland (ed.), The Handbook of Language and Globalization, 56–76, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Fishman, J. A., A. W. Conrad and A. Rubal-Lopez, eds (1996), Post-Imperial English, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Galloway, N. and H. Rose (2015), Introducing Global Englishes, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Görlach, M. (1995), ‘Dictionaries of Transplanted Englishes’, in M. Görlach (ed.), More Englishes: New Studies in Varieties of English 1988–1994, 124–63, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Graddol, D. (1997), The Future of English?, London: The British Council. Graddol, D. (2006), English Next, London: The British Council. Graddol, D. (2010), English Next India, London: The British Council. Gries, S. T., T. Bernaisch and B. Heller (2018), ‘A Corpus-Linguistic Account of the History of the Genitive Alternation in Singapore English’, in S. C. Deshors (ed.), Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the Interplay of Emancipation and Globalization of ESL Varieties, 245–79, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Horobin, S. (2016), How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hundt, M. (2019), ‘On Models and Modelling in World Englishes’, Plenary Address at the 24th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), University of Limerick, Ireland, 20–22 June.

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ICE (2019), International Corpus of English. Available online: http://ice​-corpora​.net​/ice​/index​ .html (accessed 17 March 2020). Jenkins, J. (2003), World Englishes: A Resource Book for Students, London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2018), ‘ELF and WE: Competing or Complementing Paradigms?’, in E. L. Low and A. Pakir (eds), World Englishes: Rethinking Paradigms, 12–28, London: Routledge. Kachru, B. B. (1976), ‘Models of English for the Third World: White Man’s Linguistic Burden or Language Pragmatics?’, TESOL Quarterly, 10 (2): 221–39. Kachru, B. B. (1985), ‘Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle’, in R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (eds), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literature, 11–30, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kachru, B. B. ([1982] 1992a), ‘Meaning in Deviation: Toward Understanding Non-Native English Texts’, in B. B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures, 2nd edn, 301–26, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Kachru, B. B. ([1982] 1992b), ‘Models for Non-Native Englishes’, in B. B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures, 2nd edn, 48–74, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Kachru, B. B. (1992c), ‘The Second Diaspora of English’, in T. W. Machan and C. T. Scott (eds), English in Its Social Contexts: Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics, New York: Oxford University Press, reprinted in Webster (2015), Collected Works of Braj B. Kachru, 5–30. Kachru, B. B. (1992d), ‘World Englishes: Approaches, Issues and Resources’, Language Teaching, 25(1): 1–14. Kachru, B. B. (1996), ‘World Englishes: Agony and Ecstasy’, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 30 (2): 135–55. Kachru, B. B. (1997), ‘World Englishes 2000: Resources for Research and Teaching’, in L. E. Smith and M. L. Forman (eds), World Englishes 2000, 209–51, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kachru, B. B. (2005), Asian Englishes Beyond the Canon, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kortmann, B., K. Burridge, R. Mesthrie, E. W. Schneider and C. Upton, eds (2004), A Handbook of Varieties of English: Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Korzybski, A. ([1933] 1995), Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian System and General Semantics, 5th edn, New York: Institute of General Semantics. Mair, C. (2013), ‘The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the Transnational Importance of Mobile and Mediated Vernaculars’, English World-Wide, 34 (3): 253–78. Mair, C. (2018), ‘Stabilising Domains of English-Language Use in Germany: Global English in a Non-Colonial Languagescape’, in S. C. Deshors (ed.), Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the Interplay of Emancipation and Globalization of ESL Varieties, 45–76, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Matsuda, A., ed. (2017), Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an International Language, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. McArthur, T. (1987), ‘The English Languages?’, English Today, 3 (3): 9–13. McCrum, R., R. MacNeil and W. Cram (1986), The Story of English, London: Faber & Faber/ BBC Publications. McKay, S. (2002), Teaching English as an International Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mesthrie, R. and R. M. Bhatt (2008), World Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Moag, R. ([1982] 1992), ‘The Life Cycle of Non-Native Englishes: A Case Study’, in B. B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures, 2nd edn, 233–52, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Pennycook, A. (1994), The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language, London: Longman. Pennycook, A. (2001), Critical Applied Linguistics, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Phillipson, R. (1992), Linguistic Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2009), Linguistic Imperialism Continued, London and New York: Routledge. Schneider, E. W. (2003), ‘The Dynamics of New Englishes: From Identity Construction to Dialect Birth’, Language, 79 (2): 233–81. Schneider, E. W. (2007), Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, E. W. (2014), ‘New Reflections on the Evolutionary Dynamics of World Englishes’, World Englishes, 33 (1): 9–32. Schneider, E. W. (2017), ‘Models of English in the World’, in M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds), The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes, 35–57, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schneider, E. W., K. Burridge, B. Kortmann, R. Mesthrie and C. Upton, eds (2004), A Handbook of Varieties of English: Vol. 1: Phonology, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Seargeant, P. (2012), ‘Disciplinarity and the Study of World Englishes’, World Englishes, 31 (1): 113–29. Sharifian, F. (2015), ‘Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes’, World Englishes, 34 (4): 515–32. Smith, L. E. (1976), ‘English as an International Auxiliary Language’, RELC Journal, 7 (2): 38–42. Smith, L. E. (1981), ‘English as an International Language: No Room for Linguistic Chauvinism’, Nagoya Gakuin Daigaku, Gaikokugo, Kyoiku Kiyo [Nagoya Gakuin University Round Table on Languages, Linguistics and Literature], 3: 27–32. Strevens, P. (1980), English as an International Language, Oxford: Pergamon Press. Trudgill, P. and J. Hannah ([1982] 2013), International English: A Guide to Varieties of Standard English, London: Arnold. Tupas, R. (2015), Unequal Englishes: The Politics of English Today, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Webster, J. J., ed. (2015), Collected Works of Braj B. Kachru, Vols I–III, London: Bloomsbury. World Englishes (2020), Overview. Available online: https://onlinelibrary​.wiley​.com​/page/ journ​al/ 14​67971​x/hom​epage​/prod​​uctin​​forma​​tion.​​​html (accessed 21 March 2020).

Chapter 2

World Englishes From Methodological Nationalism to a Global Perspective CHRISTIAN MAIR

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘INFORMAL EMPIRE’ AND THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF ENGLISH Ronald Hyam, one of the world’s leading experts on the history of the British Empire, has made the following observation: All empires occupy simultaneously two different kinds of space: the world stage – alongside and sometimes in geopolitical competition with other empires – and alien localities over which some degree of rulership is established. They may also occupy a third arena, the historical imagination, as the Roman empire did for the British. . . . For these reasons, a global context for the empire is called for. At the same time, dynamic situations in the localities need to be examined, as European ‘bridgeheads’ in overseas territories were enlarged. Once begun, the process of interaction between European and non-Western societies never stopped. (Hyam 2010: 1–2) As a political entity, the British Empire has long vanished. One of its lasting legacies, however, is the contemporary global ‘Empire of English’. In research on varieties of English around the world (alternatively referred to as New Englishes, World Englishes, postcolonial Englishes) and on the related topic of English as a World Language (EWL) or Global English,1 many linguists have tended to chart this Empire in terms of the formal successor states of the British Empire, focussing on the emergence of new endonormative varieties and their associated local standards in geographically bounded postcolonial nation-states. As will be argued later in this chapter, this orientation still represents the mainstream in the dialectological-sociolinguistic and corpus-linguistic traditions of research on World Englishes, where it has begun to be challenged only recently. It is the aim of this chapter to draw attention to the dangers of such often unreflected ‘methodological nationalism’, which for the social sciences has been defined as a tendency to take for granted ‘the apparent naturalness or givenness of a world divided into societies along the lines of nation-states’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002: 304). Focussing specifically on linguistics, Schneider (2018: 8–9) has identified variationist sociolinguistics, pidgin and creole linguistics and World Englishes as fields open to overt or covert national biases. Even during the colonial period, the spread of English has been as much a matter of the informal empire as the formal one. By this term historians such as McLean (1976) and Osterhammel (1986) refer to the fact that at the peak of its imperial power, Britain held

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sway over far more than those parts of the world which were colonies or dependencies in a formal sense. Historians are primarily concerned with domination achieved through investment and trade, of the type established by Britain in China and South America, two major world regions in which the formal colonial presence remained minimal (Hong Kong, the Falklands and British Guyana). But it should be clear that this informal empire can also be traced in culture and language – two major factors of ‘soft power’. Such informal empires generally do not disappear together with their formal analogues and may even continue to thrive by themselves. As for the newly drawn postcolonial boundaries, it should be obvious that not all of them are enforced and policed with equal degrees of efficiency, so that their impact on people’s social and linguistic lives is bound to vary. With regard to the English language, the dynamic interplay between centre and periphery, which Hyam has described for the political Empire in the quote provided at the beginning of this chapter, has gone on to the present day – with the fascinating complication that in this informal Empire of English there are now several centres, each with their own ever shifting and evolving peripheries. Although the national level still serves as the baseline in taxonomies of varieties of English in many current models, this setting of the default may not give us the best fit when describing the full complexity of the interaction between standard and nonstandard varieties in the global ‘English Language Complex’ (McArthur 2003; Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008). Schneider’s (2007) popular ‘Dynamic Model’ of the emergence and maturation of postcolonial Englishes notwithstanding, the full elaboration of national standard varieties of English for all successor states of the British Empire and the smaller number of former US colonial dependencies is not the natural end point in the sociolinguistic evolution of all New Englishes. English is the global language for a multilingual world, and no analysis of global English is satisfactory unless it takes into account the multilingual contexts in which the global language is used. In today’s world-encompassing informal Empire of English, some of the most heated language-ideological debates revolve around lingua-franca uses of English – reflecting the fact that the global language, English, is by definition an important contact language for all other languages, and not just those which co-existed with English within the bounds of a formal colonial Empire. Throughout the world, language purists deplore the large-scale adoption of English loanwords into their languages, which they regard as an onslaught on their purity and integrity and – in extremer cases – on their very survival,2 while others endorse English as a gateway to participation in the advanced capitalist global economic system and its associated lifestyles and cultural practices. This has inspired enormous amounts of writing on the global role of English in languages other than English (which will, ironically, remain inaccessible to the monolingually handicapped native speaker of English), as is shown by the following examples from Japan (chosen as a study example here because of the absence of any formal entanglements with the British Empire). WorldCat (https:// www​.worldcat​.org/), arguably the most comprehensive bibliographical resource in the world, lists the following publications that are clearly relevant to the topic of this chapter: (1) 船橋洋一, あえて英語公用語論 [Funabashi, Yōichi. 2000. Aete eigo kōyōgoron. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū] (2) 大石俊一著 大石, 俊一, 英語帝国主義論 : 英語支配をどうするのか [Ōishi, Shun’ichi. 1997. Eigo teikoku shugi ron: Eigo Shihai o dōsurunoka. Tokyo: Kudai Bungei Sha]

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The two titles roughly translate as A humble proposal to have English as one of the official languages (Funabashi 2000) and Arguments about English language imperialism: what can be done about the way English controls the world? (Ōishi 1997). Two Japanese authors have done the ‘normal’ thing and written books chiefly intended for a Japanese audience in their national language. This strategy ensures maximum exposure for their arguments in Japan, also among readers who do not speak or understand the English language, which is the topic of the books. On the other hand, this strategy has the disadvantage of making the works inaccessible to international readers such as Christian Mair, who has an equally ‘normal’ and legitimate interest in finding out how Japan as a society handles the challenge of global English. As the titles of the two works show, attitudes towards English in Japan seem to run the whole gamut from enthusiastic endorsement to complete rejection.3 This wide range of opinion also characterizes the corresponding debate among native speakers of English, among whom the current pre-eminent status of English in the world is the subject of complacent self-congratulation as well as painful soul-searching.4 This chapter is structured as follows. After these introductory observations, section 2 will explore the extent of ‘national bias’ in research on World Englishes. The analysis will show that this bias is still deep-seated in much corpus-based descriptive work, but is often absent in research on World Englishes informed by cultural studies and critical language pedagogy. Section 3 will move on to a discussion of three related biases: colonial, vernacular and monolingual. The concluding section 4 will make suggestions for redressing these biases.

2  THE ‘ENGLISH LANGUAGE COMPLEX’ IS MORE THAN A POLYPHONY OF NATIONAL VOICES When the study of English as a world language developed into an independent subfield in the 1980s, the (postcolonial) nation-state emerged as the dominant classification criterion for varieties of English. This national bias is apparent in the two most widespread taxonomies for the classification of varieties of English around the world. The national variety of English is the default category both in Kachru’s Three Circles of English and in Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model of the emergence of postcolonial Englishes. Kachru (1990: 4) exemplifies the native-speaking (and norm-providing) ‘Inner Circle’ with the United States, the United Kingdom and three former British settler colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand). The second-language and norm-developing ‘Outer Circle’ contains an alphabetical list of eleven successor nation-states to the British Empire and one former American dependency: Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Zambia. The foreignlanguage and norm-dependent ‘Expanding Circle’ is represented by a list of eleven nation-states: China, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, USSR, and Zimbabwe. Only one of them, Zimbabwe, is a former colony of the British Empire. Several more – such as China, Nepal and Egypt – were much affected by the informal Empire. Kachru himself points out the absence of South Africa and Jamaica, explaining that in a taxonomy focussing on the Outer Circle these two cases would be too sociolinguistically complex (Kachru 1990: 3, cf. also 1985: 12–14). The inclusion of Zimbabwe in the Expanding Circle is not explained. Classification of postcolonial Englishes on national lines is also a cornerstone of Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model. The longest chapter in this book (‘Countries Along

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the Cycle: Case Studies’, 2007: 113–250) provides analyses for Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, India, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Barbados, Jamaica and Canada – all of them, with the exception of Hong Kong, postcolonial nation-states. Note that South Africa and Jamaica – the two problematical cases in Kachru’s model – are accommodated in the more fine-grained taxonomy presented by Schneider. Without the authors necessarily intending it, this preference for the national criterion of classification carries several unspoken assumptions. Coupled with the author’s mission to legitimize the new second-language standards, Kachru’s metaphor of the three concentric ‘Circles of English’ suggests a flat hierarchy among national standards. This is not the case, however, as becomes apparent in lexical borrowing across national varieties of English. On a global scale, American English vocabulary is far more likely to be taken over into all other varieties than any of them is likely to contribute vocabulary to American English. On a regional scale, Australian English tends to dominate New Zealand English in the Pacific region, much as Kenyan English dominates other national varieties, such as Tanzanian English or Ugandan English, in East Africa. The second implicit assumption is that the description of New Englishes at the supranational level (e.g. ‘West African English’ or ‘Caribbean English’) is somehow less useful and less ‘real’ than the identification and description of national varieties. This is an empirical question which in principle can be investigated in corpora. As the most widely used corpora for the study of World Englishes are themselves designed and compiled along national lines, internal variability within the national ‘container’ sub-corpora and transnational connectivity among them may sometimes be difficult to uncover. It is not that ‘national varieties’ or ‘national standards’ of English are meaningless notions. Nationally bounded linguistic features can be easily attested at the lexical level, for example, whenever institutions specific to a particular country have produced distinctive terminologies. Linguistic border-effects are also common in phonology, as has been demonstrated by research on US and Canadian English (Boberg 2000). From this it does not follow, however, that such nationally bounded linguistic variation represents the statistically most frequent or the psychologically most salient type of variability among varieties of English. In the global English Language Complex there is much variation that cuts across national boundaries. To come back to the example of Canada and the United States, the cot-caught merger is an ongoing change in North America which clearly cuts across the national border. And while most research on English in West Africa and the Caribbean follows Kachru’s and Schneider’s national approaches (by providing separate descriptions for Nigerian English, Ghanaian English, Gambian English, Sierra Leonean English, Liberian English and Cameroonian English or by cataloguing the creole-influenced Englishes of the Caribbean island by island), important supranational commonalities have been documented, too. In this view, ‘West African English’ turns out to be an empirically well-supported empirical notion. Peter, Wolf and Simo Bobda (2003: 48), for example, have described West African accents of English as showing ‘typical features associated with the whole region, but also some subregional features and, predictably, some quasi-exclusive features’. Across the entire region, speakers of English are highly likely to show th-stopping in words such as mouth, toothpaste and that, frequent word-final consonant-cluster simplification and some neutralization of the contrast between the vowels in leave-live and walk-work. Speakers from individual West African countries may be located more precisely by the presence of additional features. Thus, Gambian English –

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to mention a little studied variety – has substitution of /s/ for /ʃ/, as in /fɪnɪs/, /brɔs/ and /saʊə/ for finish, brush and shower, respectively, which has almost ‘acquired the status of a national norm’ in The Gambia (Peter, Wolf and Simo Bobda 2003: 50).5 Further criteria lead to multiple and cross-cutting groupings. Thus, five of the national varieties mentioned earlier are tied together by a shared British colonial history, whereas one, Liberian English, is set apart by its US heritage. Yet, Liberian English is connected to the other five by the same strong adstrate influence from English-lexifier pidgins and creoles which unites all West African Englishes (and distinguishes them from English in Eastern and Southern Africa). In the end, the question is how significant national boundaries remain in such a varied and interlocking web of connections across varieties. As Kachru has pointed out, sociolinguistically complex cases such as South Africa and Jamaica are difficult to integrate into nation-state-based taxonomies. However, they easily fall into their appropriate places when networks of transnational connectivity replace the national ‘containers’. The very reason which makes South African English a problem in the ‘container’ model, namely its enormous internal diversity, becomes a key to understanding its true place in the global English Language Complex. White South African English connects with the ‘Inner Circle’ varieties of Australia and New Zealand, with which it shares a history of nineteenth-century colonial settlement from England. Black South African English shows commonalities with East African Englishes. South African Indian English and Afrikaaner English introduce additional complications. The specifically national element in this truly international linguistic heritage is that all these varieties are in daily and intensive contact with each other in contemporary South Africa. The national bias in research on World Englishes is not only confined to standard models and textbooks, but also permeates the digital infrastructure of the field, for example large corpus projects such as the International Corpus of English (ICE) and the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE, Davies 2013; Davies and Fuchs 2015). Conceived in the late 1980s as a cluster of parallel corpora of spoken and written English sampled close to the prestigious end of the social spectrum (Greenbaum und Nelson 1996), ICE features eleven completed corpora today: Australia, Canada, East Africa, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Singapore. Only one sub-corpus – East Africa, with data from Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi – breaks the national mould. The national principle was carried through even more systematically in the more recent GloWbE (released in 2013), which has data from blogs and other websites from Britain, the United States, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Jamaica. To show how corpus design on national lines influences the presentation of findings, consider the results from GloWbE for two Jamaican/Caribbean and two Nigerian/West African usages. Throughout the Anglophone Caribbean the Hindi loanword ganja has become the common informal term to refer to cannabis sativa.6 GloWbE results support this claim to the extent that they show a clear peak of usage in the Jamaican sub-corpus (see Figure 2.1 ). Jamaica dominates overwhelmingly both in terms of absolute and normalized frequencies (per million words). In addition, most of the spill-over into other national ‘containers’ comprises references to Jamaican contexts. Note that the web texts providing the raw material for GloWbE have not been annotated for author ethnicity, so that we cannot pursue the interesting question of how many examples from the United States, Canada and Britain were produced by members of the Jamaican diaspora.7 Nor, in the

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FIGURE 2.1:  Ganja in GloWbE.

absence of data from other Caribbean countries, can we determine whether the word is as common throughout the rest of the Caribbean as it is in Jamaica. As there is excellent historical-lexicographic coverage of the Caribbean, it is at least possible to locate the likely point of origin of the usage. Cassidy and Le Page’s (1966) Dictionary of Jamaican English (actually a dictionary of Jamaican Creole) has no authentic attestations, but plausibly argues for borrowing from East Indian immigrants in the nineteenth century and refers to use outside Jamaica in Guyana, Belize and Trinidad. Winer’s (2009) Dictionary of the Creole/English of Trinidad and Tobago has a first attestation for Trinidad from 1872. As Trinidad received larger numbers of Indian indentured labourers than Jamaica, this makes it a likely place for borrowing. An even less satisfactory representation of the linguistic facts in the corpus is found for a second Caribbean usage, namely the lexico-grammatical variant go to my/your/her/his/ our/their bed for international Standard English go to bed. The search in the corpus was for ‘GO to APPGE bed’ (see Figure  2.2), that is any form of the verb go, followed by to, possessive pronoun and bed. The figures are low over-all, hence must be interpreted with caution. Still, it is clear that this usage, while rare, nevertheless occurs with some regularity throughout the English-speaking world. It is present in L1 varieties (Great Britain, Australia) as well as L2 varieties (Pakistan) and creole-influenced ones (Jamaica). The presentation of the facts according to the GloWbE gospel of corpus-linguistic nationalism, however, does not hold any direct clues for the analysis. Such a clue is provided by the Scots Syntactic Atlas (https://scotssyntaxatlas​.ac​.uk/), which features this use as a Scotticism. Historically, this can mean two things: either, the usage arose in Scots and started its global spread from this variety, or it was older general British English usage that has survived in Scotland and selected colonial varieties to this day. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to work out the diachronic details, but one thing is clear: As the United Kingdom and not its

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FIGURE 2.2:  GO to APPGE bed in GloWbE.

sub-region Scotland is the data ‘container’ chosen in the GloWbE corpus, any evidence in this database is diluted from the start. Turning to West Africa, a first and GloWbE-compatible study example is wahala, an originally Hausa word now widely used in Nigerian Pidgin and informal Nigerian English to mean ‘trouble’. Figure 2.3 shows a clear focus on Nigeria. That a Nigerian usage should also be found in Ghana is plausible given the demographic weight of Nigeria in West Africa, Nigeria’s internationally operating media industry (‘Nollywood’), and the strong link between Nigeria and Ghana established by a shared pidgin heritage. How much more widely the term is used in West Africa cannot be determined from GloWbE as it does not contain material from The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon. Most uses beyond West Africa are either produced by Nigerians abroad, refer to Nigerian contexts, or represent cases of homonymy.8 For the second candidate Nigerianism, the use of the adverb majorly, the raw output from GloWbE arranged in national ‘containers’ is not really very enlightening (Figure 2.4). The issue at stake here seems to be the function of this adverb. In current L1 usage, majorly is a stylistically informal intensifier, which usually collocates with emotionally charged terms (e.g. be majorly upset, someone majorly screwed up, etc.). This use is also attested in the Nigerian data (e.g. example 3), but most cases show majorly used in the sense of mainly9 (examples 4 and 5):

(3) The truth was that every system I had ever tried was majorly flawed in one way or another.



(4) The entry of the home video as an alternative to the dearth of films in the early 1990s, due majorly to the nonviable financial implications in film production as at that time, was seen as a welcome development.

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FIGURE 2.3:  Wahala in GloWbE.

FIGURE 2.4:  Majorly in GloWbE.



(5) David Osagie is a Nigerian based freelance creative. His works feature majorly a collection of digital art pieces stained in grunge and deep African style.

Taken together, these few examples show that corpora of World English that are mechanically divided into national components are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they promote a useful comparative perspective because they encourage the study

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of variables across different varieties. On the other hand, they fail the user when a particular innovation spreads from a region within a nation-state (the Scotland-Caribbean connection) or when a supra-national language area is only patchily represented (West Africa, Caribbean).10 Generally, national borders can only have an impact on language where national institutions are strong. Language standards are usually promoted by educated elites who go through a functioning educational system and have the know-how and the capital to support autonomous local publishing, media and culture sectors. This degree of autonomy is difficult to achieve even in prosperous communities if the population is very small, as is the case in very small island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific, where it is normal to ‘outsource’ higher education to other territories and to import much cultural and media content. It is also difficult to achieve in large postcolonial nation-states going through protracted warfare and economic crises. In spite of such challenges, there are many instances of broadly successful postcolonial nation-building in the English-speaking world. The list of examples is shorter if one uses economic prosperity and social equality as a benchmark; it is longer if one judges on the basis of cultural identity and pride. Taking the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI, http://hdr​.undp​.org​/en​/composite​/HDI, last available figures from 2017) as a rough yardstick, four former colonies – Australia (rank 3), Hong Kong (7), Singapore (9) and Canada (12) – outrank the United Kingdom (14). Barbados (58) makes it into the Index’s ‘very high’ band. Scores are ‘high’ for Jamaica (97), ‘medium’ for India (130) and Ghana (140), and ‘low’ for Nigeria (157). Irrespective of their internal institutional strength and level of human development, however, all nation-states today face challenges from globalization, which has unleashed an impressive economic dynamism, but also created vast inequality and political and economic risks. Mobility – physical, through travel, tourism and migration, but also textual, through the digital revolution in communication – affects and potentially undermines any national standard variety of English except Standard American English itself, which could be characterized as the default variety of Global English. In a world in which – at least in the media, but increasingly also in physical space – ‘all Englishes are everywhere’, contact between varieties of English will intensify and new types of contact will emerge. Another phenomenon which needs to be fully incorporated into models of World English is the vast expansion of English used as a lingua franca, both in prestigious domains such as politics, business and academia and among the world’s marginalized and poor, such as asylum seekers, refugees and members of transnational subcultures. Perhaps it should be added that, in spite of a dearth of empirical research on the topic, English is also very likely to be a major lingua franca for international terrorists and organized crime. Linguists are still debating the appropriate place of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in models of World English. Historians, by contrast, emphasize the seamless continuities between Empire and globalization. Northrup (2013), for example, sets out to answer the question of how English became the global language. The first three chapters of the book are devoted to the colonial and postcolonial phases of the spread of English and tell the story along geographical and national lines. Chapter 4, ‘Cultural Worlds’ (pp. 109–36), however, shifts the perspective to five crucial transnational communicative domains: international relations, scientific English, business English, Global English Literature, and popular culture. With the possible exception of Global English Literature, none of these domains has more than a tenuous relationship to the cultural heritage of the British Empire. The final chapter, ‘Tipping Points’ (pp. 137–60), emphasizes what

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has been historically unique about the past thirty to forty years, namely the fact that English developed from being one of several competing world languages (which it was even at the height of the British Empire) to becoming the single global lingua franca. The tipping points referred to are the rise of the World Wide Web as a mass phenomenon, the spread of English into the post-Soviet domain, the economic reforms in the People’s Republic of China and the expansion of English in an increasingly internationalized and marketized higher education sector. It will be noted that all these developments had their origins in the late 1980s and 1990s and that they all involve use of ELF, often for its direct economic benefit. ELF thus stands for a new balance between the cultural and economic value of English. To use the subtitle of Duchêne and Heller (2012), what we see is a realignment between ‘pride’ and ‘profit’ as motivating factors for the spread and further differentiation of World Englishes. In practice, economic motivations were important during the colonial and postcolonial periods, but on the language-ideological level the debate was mainly about ‘pride’, that is about language, culture and identity. This is also the grand narrative at the heart of Schneider’s Dynamic Model: from exonormative orientation and deference to the colonial master through symbolic rejection of (British) English, typically articulated during the struggle for independence, to appropriation and endonormative orientation. In short: from ‘their’ English to ‘our’ English. Many of the more recent stories of English, on the other hand, revolve around ‘profit’, that is about language and technological modernity, economic prosperity and transnational/global connectedness. A prime case in point for this new dynamic is the spread of English in Namibia (Buschfeld and Kautzsch 2014): Although Namibia had never been a British colony and Afrikaans had served as the dominant external lingua franca during the period of South African administration, English was adopted as the new nation’s official language from independence in 1990. Ease of communication with important neighbouring countries, with the rest of Anglophone Africa and the world at large outweighed considerations of historical and cultural continuity. Harsh and brutal causes for the spread of English in contemporary Africa are found in genocide, war and state-failure, which have destroyed links of colonial continuity. In Rwanda, French was introduced alongside the dominant local Kinyarwanda by the Belgian colonial administration. During the 1994 genocide and the ensuing turmoil, Anglophone Uganda served as a safe haven for various political exiles and guerrilla forces, some of whom pressed for the replacement of French with English as an official language on their return from exile. Since 2003, Rwanda has had three official languages, Kinyarwanda, French and English, with the latter profiting from local institutional support and its status as a default lingua franca in Africa and globally. Cameroon presents the interesting example of an as yet stable national sociolinguistic order which privileges a ‘Francophone’ majority against an ‘Anglophone’ minority. However, this order is undermined from within by hybrid urban language practices referred to as Camfranglais or Francanglais, which mix standard and nonstandard varieties of French and English with Cameroon Pidgin English and are nowadays also widely used in computer-mediated communication (Telep 2014). It is also undermined from without, by the rise in prestige of English as an African and global lingua franca. While the dialectological and corpus-linguistic communities have been rather slow to respond to this increasing subnational, transnational and postnational dynamism, the national bias in research on World Englishes was recognized as a problem long ago by scholars working in applied linguistics and critical language pedagogy. Krishnaswamy and Burde, for example, use an interesting analogy to make their point:

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Indian English, Pakistani English, Bangladeshi English, Sri Lankan English, Nepali English, Malaysian English, Singaporean English, Nigerian English, Ghanaian English, Filipino English, Fiji English, etc. Don’t these look like the airlines of new countries – Air India, Pakistan International, Singapore Airlines, etc. with the planes that are manufactured by one or two companies in the First World . . . and bought by these developing countries after getting the interior decoration done to reflect the local ‘culture’? (Krishnaswamy and Burde 1998: 10) Given this analogy it would be easy to quip and ask which national carriers can rival Singapore Airlines in terms of success and viability. On a semi-serious note, we might add another question, namely whether on the language plane it would be Standard Singaporean English or ‘Singlish’ which should be considered the metaphorical counterpart of Singapore Airlines. The most serious issue raised by the analogy, however, is the question of first-world academic domination in World Englishes linguistics: To what extent are academics from the Outer Circle countries agents in the creation of theoretical models and the definition of research agendas? More recently, Mahboob and Szenes have reminded us how tenuous the relation between national and linguistic boundaries may be in the postcolonial world: One of the widespread practices in World Englishes is to name different varieties of English according to the countries in which they are spoken. However, using names of countries as labels to classify language varieties is, arguably, imposing a nationalistic twist to linguistic realities. The result of using these labels is that researchers studying World Englishes draw boundaries between varieties of Englishes across national boundaries when the linguistic evidence may not actually justify such divisions. This is problematic because it leads World Englishes researchers into describing discrete linguistic features that are used to contrast one variety with another and that do not contribute to a theory of language or of how meaning is construed or communicated in and across these varieties. (Mahboob and Szenes 2010: 580) It is salutary to see that over the past few years the new complexities have also begun to be addressed within the dialectological and corpus-linguistic research communities. Building on de Swaan’s (2002, 2010) work on global multilingualism, Mair (2013) has proposed a systems-theoretical analysis of global English as an interlocking and hierarchically stratified constellation of varieties and styles. For de Swaan, the World Language System works as ‘a surprisingly efficient, strongly ordered, hierarchical network, which ties together – directly or indirectly – the 6.5 billion inhabitants of the earth at the global level’ (de Swaan 2010: 56). This is possible because it has a single ‘hub’, English, the ‘hyper-central’ language serving as the global lingua franca. One tier below English we find ‘supercentral’ languages, that is, major standard languages with transnational reach (many of them world languages themselves). On the third tier, there are the ‘central’ languages, usually standardized and institutionally recognized at the national level. The fourth tier comprises the ‘peripheral’ languages, spoken by small communities and often lacking a written standard, media presence and other institutional support. As we move down the hierarchy, the number of languages gets larger: one at the top, a dozen or so on the second tier, one hundred and fifty at most on the third and the vast majority at the bottom. The ‘World System of Standard and Nonstandard Englishes’ is structured analogously. Paraphrasing de Swaan, it constitutes a surprisingly efficient, strongly ordered, hierarchical network, which ties together – directly or indirectly – the 2 billion regular users of the

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language at the global level. As in the case of the World Language System, efficiency does not necessarily imply fairness. The single hub or ‘hyper-central’ variety in this system is Standard American English (for reasons spelled out in Mair 2013). British English and the major emerging postcolonial standard varieties (e.g. Australian English, Indian English, Nigerian English) occupy the ‘super-central’ level, because their demographic strength, their diaspora communities and their media presence give them transnational reach. National standards largely relevant for their own territorial home-bases are placed on the ‘central’ level, whereas the majority of traditional dialects are ‘peripheral’ to contemporary developments in World Englishes. In addition to natively spoken and second-language varieties (Kachru’s Inner and Outer Circles), the model accommodates lingua-franca uses, with those associated with global communicative domains such as business and academia achieving super-central status. Super-central status is also accorded to some nonstandard varieties of English, such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which serves as the linguistic point of reference of the globally dispersed hip-hop subculture (see also Westphal and Jansen, this volume) and has global media presence. Schneider (2014) suggests the notion of ‘transnational attraction’ to account for similar instances of the spread of English which cannot be accommodated fully in his Dynamic Model. Countries in the focus of his analysis include China, Korea, the ASEAN group, Thailand, Namibia and Rwanda, and additional attention is paid to ‘the widespread emergence of hybrid mixes between local languages and English and phenomena of “poststructuralist diffusion,” English being adopted by whatever means, in fragments and unconstrained of norm concerns, driven by strongly utilitarian considerations’ (Schneider 2014: 9). Some of these ideas are further developed in Buschfeld and Kautzsch (2017), who describe the contemporary entrenchment of English in the global language ecology as unfolding in a force-field of ‘Extra-territorial’ and ‘Intra-territorial Forces’ (‘EIF Model’). Taking the cue from a case study of Namibia, they recommend abandoning the strict division between English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL). While using the term once, this chapter does not engage with the concept of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in its technical sense. A synthesis of these ideas and Schneider’s is provided by Buschfeld, Kautzsch and Schneider (2018), which covers the function of English in countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Germany and Namibia, but also in media domains such as Facebook and multiplayer online games. Last but not least, the new dynamics in the spread of English can be observed in immigration to Britain itself. Most immigrants arriving in the two decades after the Second World War came from the Empire and the Commonwealth. Today, colonial and cultural ties to Britain have become less of a ‘pull’ factor than the informal ‘Empire of English,’ which – economic opportunities being comparable – will steer migrants towards Britain rather than Germany or Finland, because in a world in which secondary education anywhere in the world increasingly comprises at least an intermediate level of competence in English, cultural and linguistic barriers will be lower. This is a trend which has been documented empirically on the basis of OECD statistics (Adserà and Pytliková 2015).

3  COLONIAL, VERNACULAR AND MONOLINGUAL BIASES IN RESEARCH ON WORLD ENGLISHES The national bias in the study of World Englishes is closely linked to three others. The first is a colonial bias, which manifests itself in an emphasis on the linguistic legacy of direct

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and formalized colonial rule. As has been pointed out, however, the spread of English was a matter of formal and informal empire even in the case of Britain, and mainly driven by informal empire in the case of the United States. The current global presence of American English is overwhelmingly the result not of the United States’ small and transient formal colonial empire, but its informal one, based on economic, technological, scientific and cultural pre-eminence gained in the course of the twentieth century. While it is obviously unproductive to extend the scope of World Englishes to cover any and all uses of English anywhere in the world, the non-colonial pathways for the global spread of English, for example through lingua-franca use, clearly deserve more attention. Thus, Edwards (2016) uses the Dynamic Model to study functions, forms and attitudes characterizing the use of English in the Netherlands, making clear that the topic has become too big for an ‘Expanding Circle’ learner-study. In the Netherlands, as in most of Europe, English has developed from a foreign language to a new language of prestige in the national context – comparable to, but of course not identical with a traditional postcolonial second-language variety. Traditionally, World Englishes linguistics has shared a belief with first-wave sociolinguistics (Eckert 2012) that the most authentic form of a language is the vernacular, used spontaneously in closely circumscribed local speech communities. This assumption is fully justified in many cases, and studies of Jamaican Creole in local communities in the island or research on Scots in Glasgow working-class neighbourhoods will always remain valuable. But when studying second-language and lingua-franca uses of English, such a vernacular bias is too restrictive – if only because for some second-language Englishes informal spoken use is marginal, as this function is covered by indigenous languages or multilingual practices such as code-switching. Here, data from mediated performances or written and literary uses should not be neglected or dismissed as inauthentic. Third-wave sociolinguistics (Eckert 2012), with its emphasis on resources, styles and repertoires, provides the conceptual tools for analysis. The potentially most pernicious bias in the study of World Englishes, however, is the monolingual one. Just as the national bias, to which it is directly related (‘one language – one nation’), it is built into the very design of the field’s two major corpus resources. Second-language varieties of English by definition exist in multilingual contexts. Yet compilation guidelines for spoken ICE corpora suggest that it is realistic to collect monolingual spoken English data. Minor traces of other languages are considered inevitable irritants and are tagged as , for ‘indigenous’. This monolingual fiction is difficult to uphold in practice, as the compiler of ICE-Philippines suggests in a comment on the difficulty of obtaining informal spoken English data: This is the largest category in the whole of the corpus and, in the Philippine setting, it was a very difficult text type category to collect. Natural conversations among family members and friends in Manila are typically conducted in Tagalog, and, depending on the educational level attained, with little or much English and/or vernacular codemixing. For purposes of the corpus, the conversations had to be in English with minimal Tagalog insertions, and therefore the collected conversations are already less natural in that respect. (Bautista 2004: 9) The problem recurred in the collection of media samples: The discussions were lifted from television (one discussion was lifted from the radio) and therefore, in general, unless the panelists were talking at the same time, the quality

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of the recording and of the subsequent transcript is high. In many panel discussions on local television, the language would generally be a code-mixed one. Therefore an important requirement was to identify programs that used English as the matrix language with only minimal switching to Tagalog. (Bautista 2004: 10) In other words, the corpus template forces the compilers to artificially sanitize the data towards monolingualism. In a sense, it is a consolation to see how often reality defeats the best intentions of the compilers. This can be shown by a study of the adverbial subordinator because (cf. Mair 2018: 88–9). Like practically all other varieties of English, Philippine English distinguishes a formal-neutral variant because and an informal cause. Given the collection procedures outlined earlier, it is not surprising that the former (2,336 tokens) far outnumbers the latter (374) in a total of around 600,000 words. But this is not the whole story. In addition to (be)cause (and semantically and functionally similar forms such as since, as or the formal-archaic coordinating for), the corpus regularly attests two functional equivalents from Tagalog, namely kasi (159 tokens) and dahil (23). Dahil is a traditional Tagalog form and confined to longer code-switches into this language. Kasi, on the other hand, occurs both in such code-switches (example 6) and as a single-word borrowing in an otherwise English passage (example 7):

(6) Siguro come to think of it siguro in this case a hidden camera is uh is is good enough kasi walang ano e walang

(ICE-PHI, S1B)



(7) A: Like what bad things B: Well you know like uhm you know before kasi it was him and Bianca e A: Yeah B: Okay they were an item and then suddenly James came into the picture and started telling bad things (ICE-PHI, S1A)

Examples such as (7) show that in addition to an informal variant with international currency (cause), Philippine English has a local informal variant, kasi. Contrary to the compiler’s assertions, ICE-Philippines also contains long stretches of bilingual discourse:

(8) Ngayong hapon mga kaibigan nakita niyo po yung medal tally mukhang magiging exciting yung labanan ng US at China dahil tatlong gold medals na lang ang uh lamang ng US sa China so any time any moment ay pwedeng uh mapantayan or malampasan ng China ito dahil on-going pa rin po ang mga gold medal matches dito po sa twenty-seventh Olympiad (ICE-PHI, S2A)

Within the current template for ICE corpora, this is an accident which should not have happened. Perhaps future corpora of English in second-language contexts should be multilingual from the start, giving such code-switching the place in the corpus which it has in the community.

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4  CONCLUSION This chapter has started from an apparent paradox. Colonial languages usually spread very easily beyond the formal political boundaries of empires. In spite of the importance of informal routes of expansion, however, it is postcolonial nation-states, that is the formal successors of colonial empires, which serve as the baseline category for the classification of varieties of English in many standard models. As I hope to have shown, regarding World English as a pluricentric constellation of national varieties fails to do full justice to the complexity and continuing dynamism of the spread of English. In this process, English has become an interlocking constellation of varieties which spans the globe and is hierarchically stratified – an insight which is well conveyed by the term ‘English Language Complex’, coined by McArthur (2003) and subsequently popularized by Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008). In the past few years a number of proposals – for example Mair (2013), Schneider (2014), Buschfeld and Kautzsch (2017), Deshors and Gilquin (2018) – have spelled out this insight in considerable detail. One way of raising and maintaining awareness of the new complexities is for researchers in the dialectological/corpus-linguistic and applied-linguistic/pedagogical traditions to pay more attention to each other’s methods and results – all the more so as the two approaches complement each other very well in their respective strengths and weaknesses. Scholars who work with data from vernacular communities and nationally bounded corpora need to be reminded of the importance of transnational linguistic connections and flows (Canagarajah 2013). World Englishes research in applied linguistics, which is often qualitative and case-study based, may find the empirically broader and quantitative corpus approach helpful for at least some of its research problems. The following are just three questions among many that would clearly benefit from such cooperation: ●●

●●

●●

What is the global linguistic profile of ‘Caribbean English’, above and beyond what can be described as the Jamaican, Trinidadian, Barbadian, etc. national standards – in the region itself as well as in the diaspora, in face-to-face interaction as well as in the written mode and in media representations? What is the role of English as a lingua franca in non-colonial contexts such as Russia, China, Japan or Germany – not only in the relatively well-studied elite domains of diplomacy, business and academia, but also in non-elite domains such as asylum and migration in the European Union? How does the contemporary Empire of English, history’s first truly global language empire, encroach on other transnational language spheres (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, but of course also Arabic, see e.g. Jacobs, this volume, and Chinese)?

Thanks to the research of the past half century, we know a lot about culture and identity as factors in the spread and transformation of English. Where English is adopted as a lingua franca, with hopes of economic gain and inclusion in the global order, other factors may be at play: access to linguistic resources through education, individual and community language rights and linguistic justice. To explore them, it will be useful for sociolinguistics and World Englishes studies to enter into new alliances, for example with the economic sciences (cf. Ginsburgh and Weber 2016, Vigouroux and Mufwene 2020) or the law (Van Parijs 2011).

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NOTES 1. The italicized terms are listed in the chronological order in which they became current and fashionable. They all are broadly synonymous, with minor nuances in semantic extension and connotation that cannot be elaborated within the bounds of this chapter. 2. Obviously, there are hundreds of historical precedents showing how language shift to English has undermined the ethnolinguistic vitality – and ultimately the survival – of speakers’ L1, from Irish and Gaelic in Ireland and Scotland to numerous indigenous languages in North America and Australia. When similar concerns for the future of their languages are voiced by speakers of German or Arabic, however, they are definitely exaggerated. These languages may be replaced by English in a limited number of prestigious communicative domains (in the case of German, for example, as language of international academic communication), but English will not replace them as community languages in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, both German and Arabic pose an immediate threat to the survival of minority languages in their own territories. 3. As the colonial and postcolonial history of English has shown, rejection of English is an option which has usually been exercised on the language-ideological level rather than in actual communicative practice. As is well known, the most powerful arguments against British rule in Ireland or British colonialism in India have been made in English, and cultural conservatives in Germany who deplore the massive borrowing of English words are not opposed to the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language. 4. For a – relatively recent – example of the first, compare the following extract from a speech by former British prime minister Gordon Brown: ‘The English language, like football and other sports, began here [in England] and has spread to every corner of the globe. Today more than a billion people speak English. It is becoming the world’s language . . . the pathway of global communication and global access to knowledge. And it has become the vehicle for hundreds of millions of people of all countries to connect with each other, in countless ways. Indeed, English is much more than a language: it is a bridge across borders and cultures, a source of unity in a rapidly changing world’ (2008, quoted in Hewings and Tagg 2012: 9–10). An articulate champion of the opposing view, arguing that the spread of English is a ploy to ensure continuing political, economic and cultural domination of the world by the United Kingdom and the United States, is Robert Phillipson (e.g. 1992). 5. The authors relate it to the absence of such a distinction in Wolof and Mandinka, the two major local contact languages. 6. The relevant OED entry has a number of nineteenth- and twentieth-century attestations from Britain, most with direct reference to India and the three most recent ones from the 1950s with a connection to Caribbean immigration to the UK. Contemporary British slang uses of the term are not recorded in this entry taken over unchanged from the last printed edition of the dictionary (1989). 7. This is possible in the ‘Corpus of Cyber-Jamaican’ (CCJ), compiled in Freiburg with the aim of documenting the use of Jamaican Creole in a globally dispersed community of practice that has emerged around the web-forum www​.jamaicans​.com. See Mair (2011) and Moll (2015). 8. The four examples from Sri Lanka (LK) refer to a proper name. 9. This use was brought to my attention by Adeyemi Adegoju (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria). 10. The national and monolingual biases noted in important corpora of World Englishes are not restricted to this sub-field, but seem to affect corpus-linguistics as a whole, as is proved

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by the many corpora bearing the word national in their name. The Hungarian National Corpus, the Polish National Corpus and the Czech National Corpus are clear cases in point. The terms British National Corpus and Russian National Corpus even gloss over the complication that British English is influential beyond the UK and Russian is widely used outside the Russian Federation.

REFERENCES Adserà, A. and M. Pytliková (2015), ‘The Role of Language in Shaping International Migration’, The Economic Journal, 125 (586): F49–81. Bautista, M. L. (2004), ‘An Overview of the Philippine Component of the International Corpus of English’, Asian Englishes, 7 (2): 8–26. Boberg, C. (2000), ‘Geolinguistic Diffusion and the U.S.-Canada Border’, Language Variation and Change, 12 (1): 1–24. Buschfeld, S. and A. Kautzsch (2014), ‘English in Namibia: A First Approach’, English WorldWide, 35 (2): 121–60. Buschfeld, S. and A. Kautzsch (2017), ‘Toward an Integrated Approach to Postcolonial and Non-Postcolonial Englishes’, World Englishes, 36 (1): 104–26. Buschfeld, S., A. Kautzsch and E. W. Schneider (2018), ‘From Colonial Dynamism to Current Transnationalism: A Unified View on Postcolonial and Non-Postcolonial Englishes’, in S. C. Deshors (ed.), Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the Interplay of Emancipation and Globalization of ESL Varieties, 15–44, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Canagarajah, S. (2013), Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, London: Routledge. Cassidy, F. G. and R. B. Le Page (1966), Dictionary of Jamaican English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies, M. (2013), Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 Billion Words from Speakers in 20 Countries (GloWbE). Available online: https://corpus​.byu​.edu​/glowbe/. Davies, M. and R. Fuchs (2015), ‘Expanding Horizons in the Study of World Englishes with the 1.9 Billion Word Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE)’, English World-Wide, 36 (1): 1–28. de Swaan, A. (2002), Words of the World: The Global Language System, Cambridge: Polity. de Swaan, A. (2010), ‘Language Systems’, in N. Copland (ed.), The Handbook of Language and Globalization, 56–76, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Deshors, S. and G. Gilquin (2018), ‘Modeling World Englishes in the 21st Century: New Reflections on Model Making’, in S. C. Deshors (ed.), Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the Interplay of Emancipation and Globalization of ESL Varieties, 281–94, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Duchêne, A. and M. Heller, eds (2012), Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit, London: Routledge. Eckert, P. (2012), ‘Three Waves of Variation Study: The Emergence of Meaning in the Study of Sociolinguistic Variation’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 41: 87–100. Edwards, A. (2016), English in the Netherlands: Functions, Forms and Attitudes, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ginsburgh, V. and S. Weber, eds (2016), The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Greenbaum, S. and G. Nelson (1996), ‘The International Corpus of English (ICE) Project’, World Englishes, 15 (1): 3–15.

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Hewings, A. and C. Tagg, eds (2012), The Politics of English: Conflict, Competition, Coexistence, London: Routledge. Hyam, R. (2010), Understanding the British Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kachru, B. B. (1985), ‘Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle’, in R. Quirk and H. Widdowson (eds), English in the World: Teaching and Learning of Language and Literature, 11–30, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kachru, B. B. (1990), ‘World Englishes and Applied Linguistics’, World Englishes, 9 (1): 3–20. Krishnaswamy, N. and A. S. Burde (1998), The Politics of Indians’ English: Linguistic Colonialism and the Expanding English Empire, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mahboob, A. and E. Szenes (2010), ‘Construing Meaning in World Englishes’, in A. Kirkpatrick (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes, 580–98, London: Routledge. Mair, C. (2011), ‘Corpora and the New Englishes: Using the “Corpus of Cyber-Jamaican” (CCJ) to Explore Research Perspectives for the Future’, in F. Meunier, S. De Cock, G. Gilquin and M. Paquot (eds), A Taste for Corpora: In Honour of Sylviane Granger, 209–36, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mair, C. (2013), ‘The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the Transnational Importance of Mobile and Mediated Vernaculars’, English World-Wide, 34 (3): 253–78. Mair, C. (2018), ‘When All Englishes Are Everywhere: Media Globalisation and Its Implications for Digital Corpora and World English Studies’, in A. Zwierlein and J. Petzold (eds), Anglistentag Regensburg 2017: Proceedings, 83–90, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. McArthur, T. (2003), ‘World English, Euro-English, Nordic English?’, English Today, 19 (1): 54–8. McLean, D. (1976), ‘Finance and “Informal Empire” Before the First World War’, Economic History Review, 29 (2): 291–305. Mesthrie, R. and R. M. Bhatt (2008), World Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moll, A. (2015), Jamaican Creole Goes Web: Sociolinguistic Styling and Authenticity in a Digital ‘Yaad’, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Northrup, D. (2013), How English Became the Global Language, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Osterhammel, J. (1986), ‘Semi-Colonialism and Informal Empire in Twentieth-Century China: Towards a Framework of Analysis’, in W. J. Mommsen and J. Osterhammel (eds), Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities, 290–314, London: Allen & Unwin. Peter, L., H.-G. Wolf and A. Simo Bobda (2003), ‘An Account of Distinctive Phonetic and Lexical Features of Gambian English’, English World-Wide, 24 (1): 43–61. Phillipson, R. (1992), Linguistic Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schneider, B. (2018), ‘Methodological Nationalism in Linguistics’, Language Sciences, 76. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2018.05.006 Schneider, E. W. (2007), Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, E. W. (2014), ‘New Reflections on the Evolutionary Dynamics of World Englishes’, World Englishes, 33 (1): 9–32. Telep, S. (2014), ‘Le Camfranglais sur Internet: Pratiques et Représentations’, Le Français en Afrique, 28: 27–145. Van Parijs, P. (2011), Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Vigouroux, C. and S. Mufwene, eds (2020), Bridging Linguistics and Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, A. and N. Glick Schiller (2002), ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: NationState Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’, Global Networks 2 (4): 301–34. Winer, L. (2009), Dictionary of the English / Creole of Trinidad & Tobago: On Historical Principles, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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Chapter 3

The Role of Gender in the Study of World Englishes TAMARA M. VALENTINE

1  INTRODUCTION World Englishes (WE) has developed into a multidisciplinary field that has provided far-reaching insights into the varied formal and functional realizations of English as a global language. As such, a wide range of different perspectives on the worldwide spread of English have adopted their own body of theories and methodologies and research assumptions (Berns 2013; Bolton 2017). However, for most of the history of WE, descriptive approaches have controlled the direction of the field of study approaching the plurality of Englishes through the classification of the formal aspects of English varieties in the norm-providing inner circle countries and the norm-developing outer circle countries. Grounded in structuralism, descriptive accounts in WE research have largely been of interest to linguists to establish similarities across varieties of English based on geographic and historical factors: systematically describing distinctive linguistic characteristics and pointing out relationships and differences between native and nonnative English varieties (Davis 2020). Approaching the study of WE with grammatical descriptions, frequency counts, features-based analyses and variationist methods, however, has come under attack as limited and limiting (Saraceni 2015; Pennycook 2001). Accordingly, due to the changing contexts and multiple forces of globalization, diversity and mediums of communication, a rethinking of the WE paradigm might be in order (Low and Pakir 2017). Related concerns directed at WE research involve the need to expand the scope of the study of World Englishes to include the intersection of multiple cultures, multiple ethnicities, multiple genders and multiple languages and their interconnectedness with each other (Saraceni 2015: 6). For at the center of research sites on language and social constructions such as gender, class and ethnicity lies a history of traditional monolingual, monocultural and monocentric approaches; fundamental social and linguistic assumptions based on static, absolute and monolithic models and norms; and social and linguistic inequalities embedded in the social order. Focusing on the study of the role of gender in WE contexts, this chapter reviews how the field of WE has addressed gender in local and global practices worldwide, and discusses the relevance of gender-based research to the study of WE. Examining gender and WE from different scholarly perspectives opens future inquiry to newer trends, challenges and research practices related to social variables and cultural assumptions in local and global contexts around the world.

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2  PERSPECTIVES ON WE RESEARCH AND GENDER That said, to better manage the existing body of gender-based research in WE, I arrange the chapter into three sections centred around influential research approaches in WE. Each section reviews gender-based research in the context of the use and usage of English in the WE contexts. The descriptive study of gendered WE covers the research that describes the linguistic and structural features of English and their relationship to the social variable gender through features-based, variationist and corpus-based perspectives. The socially realistic study of gendered WE comprises the research that examines the sociocultural and sociolinguistic nature of the multilingual’s creativity and the contextualization of discourse and pragmatic variation in constructing gender identity in WE contexts. And the hybridity approach to gendered WE takes into account the research that regards the multiplicity of genders and the multiplicity of English contexts as the bases for constructing new blended gendered identities. Within the contexts of bilingual and bicultural hybrid identities, recent WE research analyses the relationship between multiple gendered styles and English in digital communication, online social media and popular culture. Not an exhaustive appraisal of gender in WE scholarship, the limited body of literature on the role of gender in WE that currently exists is reviewed within the context of these research perspectives. Such a review raises questions about the future of the study of gendered research in WE, and the need for developing a theoretical orientation to the study of the role of gender in World Englishes.

3  UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF GENDER IN LANGUAGE STUDY Research perspectives to the study of language and gender have crossed linguistic, feminist and sociocultural boundaries. From the continued attention paid to offering primarily descriptive structural accounts of individual English language varieties associated with gender, to the sociolinguistic emphasis on contextualizing language locally and recognizing hybridity as a fundamental condition in gender construction, research on language and gender has repositioned itself from looking at gender as a stable, reified variable to investigating gender as a social construction as the basis for gender identity. Descriptive in nature, the influential work of Lakoff (1975) set forth to describe the language of and for women in American English; the collection of variationist studies (Labov 1972; Trudgill 1972) quantified selected English linguistic variants associated with the social variable gender; and the dominance and differences approaches ascribed gendered language styles to the male-dominated societal practices (Thorne and Henley 1975) and to social and cultural backgrounds (Tannen 1990). Where early language and gender research assumed an essentialist view in describing power relations in language, critical thinking shifted perspective from binary, dualistic gender categories to a ‘social, cultural, and psychological phenomena attached to sex’ in social interaction and social practice (McConnell-Ginet 1988: 76). Early attempts at examining gender-based ideologies in the study of language generated a mountain of socially relevant research centring on the notion of power in language content and use, and the systematic oppression of women in the world (Cameron 1985) – a focus that continues to be of interest to current studies on language and gender. Consideration of intersectionality and identity, and the interweaving and overlapping of gender identities and experiences helps to explain the mechanisms of social and political

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inequity, societal divisions and experiential disadvantage. Research in WE, too, describes power relations in the global spread of the English language not only in terms of a world system of linguistic imperialism, but also in terms of the self-serving interest to impose all the cultural, social, emotional and linguistic norms associated with the norm-providing inner circle English speaking countries (B. Kachru 1986b, 1996; Pennycook 1994; Phillipson 1992). Important to developing a theoretical perspective to language and gender in the study of WE, then, is a feminist model that extends the shared power dimension relationship to include the sociolinguistic studies on social identity and gender-based practices in WE research. To quote Elizabeth de Kadt (2002: 83): One central theme in feminist approaches to language . . . has been the analysis of the ways in which gendered language both facilitates and perpetuates power configurations in society. It is around this issue that a focus which is common to both the feminist study of language and the world Englishes project emerges. Yet this common focus has . . . not yet led to a gendered approach to a world English. It is surely cause for some surprise that world Englishes research, given its interest in power dimensions among the myriad emerging varieties of English, has hitherto largely neglected to thematise gender issues. On that note, this chapter is an attempt to draw attention to the challenges and the neglect to developing a theoretical orientation to the study of the role of gender in World Englishes. For the English language and all its forms is a way that speakers construct different local and global identities, and gendered language deserves recognition in the study of WE.

4  DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF GENDERED WE Under the descriptive approaches of WE that spotlight gender, I include works that use features-based approaches, variationist methods or corpus-based analyses. The gender and WE research that involves features-based studies identifies and classifies particular phonological, lexical and syntactic features associated with male and female linguistic styles in individual WE varieties whose data come from a large language base of English written texts and spoken language samples; variationist studies quantify distinctive linguistic and grammatical characteristics and correlate one or more of the linguistic variants to the social variable gender; and corpus-based descriptive research identifies, quantifies and interprets linguistic patterns in gendered discourses of usage, use and representations from large computerized electronic and online data sets. Adopting a ‘multidimensional concept of gender’, Hellinger and Bußmann (2001) present a collection of descriptions of ‘the linguistic representation of women and men’ in forty-two world languages in the four-volume set Gender across Languages. Drawing from a diverse spectrum of languages, the volumes show particular concern with the structural properties of individual world languages, that is the phonological, morphological and lexical features of gender assignment and agreement forms; sexist language research of grammatical, lexical and referential gender; and historical factors that lead to linguistic change. Four of the chapters address world Englishes and gender research. Although Hellinger (2001) acknowledges that English is a global language and varieties of English share structural properties, the works on the English language that are included in these volumes focus on comparative analyses of inner circle English varieties and use traditional

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empirical methodologies to explain the phenomenon of gender expression. For example, Holmes (2001) compares the use of gendered address terms, occupational titles and morphological markings in written and spoken corpora of New Zealand English to Australian English, British English and American English. To support language variation and change in Australian English, Pauwels (2001a) presents the findings of a study that involve interview and questionnaire techniques with Australian women on the use of the courtesy title Ms and concludes that the implementation of planned feminist language reform has made some positive impact on Australian English usage patterns. And Romaine (2001) assesses the research on international gender reform to describe the current state of affairs of inner circle Englishes in their national forms as fully gendered. Romaine provides examples from British, American, Australian and New Zealand Englishes to illustrate gender indexing in language, then compares the tendencies of language change and the successes (and failures) of language reform in British English and American English. The sizeable work of these authors, which falls under WE inner-circle research, is evident in other descriptive gendered accounts on the relationship between language and gender in Australian and New Zealand Englishes. Holmes (1987, 1993, 1997) compares strategies in conversation in women’s and men’s talk, and credits women as the initiators of sound changes in New Zealand English. Pauwels (1987) investigates the issue of sexism in Australian language use and the role of gender in the maintenance of aboriginal languages in contact with Australian English. It appears that work on language and gender in the field of WE continues to be primarily descriptive in nature analysing distinctive linguistic features, writing descriptive grammars and identifying gender stereotypes and representations in the inner circle varieties of speakers. Adopting Labov’s (1972) and Trudgill’s (1972) sociolinguistic framework of social and stylistic variation, early language and gender studies applied a correlational analysis to specific patterns of speech variation in English that reflected gender identities. Cheshire (1997) shows that the frequency with which adolescent male and female speakers use nonstandard morphological and syntactic features of English in Reading, England, is correlated with the extent these speakers observe the norms of the vernacular cultures. Overall, gender plays a role in Reading English style shifting. The use of nonstandard speech forms is more frequently used by male speakers, but different nonstandard features function as markers of vernacular loyalty for both female and male speakers. Pathak (1985), too, examines gender differentiation among Hindi-English bilinguals in North India and affirms the variationist assumptions of women’s sensitivity to the linguistic norms of conservatism, status insecurity and social solidarity. The study concludes that, first, Indian women are more self-conscious and careful in their speech, and, second, bilingual women are more receptive to the social significance of linguistic codes, using English and code-mixed Hindi-English more regularly in domains of family, friendship, neighbourhoods and transactional encounters. More recently, considerable sociophonetic work on gender is underway investigating particular phonetic features that index gender. After analysing the single syllable-initial /t/ among adolescent girls of Pakistani heritage in Glasgow, Alam and Stuart-Smith (2014) find the emergence of a local ethnic accent in different communities of practice for Asian students. Their analysis on Pakistani English phonetic patterns in adolescent girls in Glasgow suggests that sociophonetic differences separate modern-focused female speakers who adopt a Glaswegian dental pronunciation from conservatively focused female speakers who adopt the Indian English retroflex/post-apical pronunciation of /t/. In another study, Mesthrie (2017) examines the linguistic variables of vowel lengthening and

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schwa among black South African students, features that differentiate older black South African English (SAE) from newer crossover varieties. Mesthrie finds that the gender and class effects among young black students result in the use of crossover varieties of English with young middle-class black female students leading the way. Middle-class females show a greater investment in new forms of status and set the example of distancing themselves from the norms of traditional black SAE, whereas middle-class male speakers are invested in solidarity and language loyalty. Relevant to linguistic description and language variation is the increased interest in corpus-based research to describe the lexicon and grammar in present-day world English varieties. Seen as outside the scope of sociolinguistic variation, corpus compilation is often criticized as merely a method of quantitative analysis and is ineffective in dealing with diatypic variation, discourse-based phenomena and socially relevant factors in WE (Y. Kachru 2008). However, a few corpus-based descriptions do examine the social variable gender in the world Englishes contexts. For example, both Holmes (2001) and Pauwels (2001b) take a corpus-based analysis in Australian English and New Zealand English, respectively. Drawing data from Wellington Written and Spoken Corpora of New Zealand English, Holmes (2001) examines the frequency of certain lexical and semantic categories of gender: the occurrences of the term ‘Ms’, the male generic language form -man, inclusive forms such as -person, and female-marked suffixes. The study concludes that overall the instances of sexist forms are in decline in New Zealand English, and the use of the English neutral respect title Ms is on the rise. Holmes suggests that users of New Zealand English are challenging the prescribed gender-marked identities in New Zealand society and accepting efforts for gender-neutral language forms. Pauwels’ data (2001b), on the other hand, are part of a database of public speech collected from radio and television broadcasts that focuses on generic pronoun use in Australia. The results indicate that the use of masculine generic has waned in favor of the new singular use ‘they’. Broadening the scope of their work on gender-inclusive language planning and reform in the educational domain, Pauwels and Winter (2004) examine Singapore English and Philippine English, two varieties from the outer-circle Englishes. Drawing data from the International Corpus of English (ICE), this study describes and illustrates the use of gender inclusive pronouns in the student writing and published educational texts in Singapore English (ICE-SIN) and Philippine English (ICE-PHI). The authors observe that student and academic writings in these two varieties of English reveal limited evidence of gender-inclusive language reform. Although there are slight indications that language change is occurring, the presence of gender-inclusive forms in these outer-circle varieties lags behind the widespread use of gender-inclusive language in the educational domains of inner-circle Englishes as characterized in the WE descriptions in Hellinger and Bußmann (2001). Using qualitative analysis of corpus data to analyse language use associated with gender, Murphy (2010) examines a data set of 90,000 words of casual Irish-English conversations from the corpus of age and gender to isolate Robin Lakoff’s (1975) gendered linguistic features of hedges, vague language category markers, taboo language, intensifiers and boosters. Some of the corpora contain metadata with information on social factors such as gender, age, native language and ethnicity that allow more in-depth study to show a multidimensional analysis of linguistic variation and gender. Overall, Murphy finds strong evidence of gender-related variation in female discourse. Hedging, amplifying and boosting are more common in female conversations, and taboo words are prevalent in

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male conversations. It appears, then, that the inclusion of gender as a social phenomenon in WE research is characterized by the frequency or distribution of use of single linguistic feature items and lexical representations of women and men. It is not surprising, then, that the multiple varieties of English and their billion plus users can boast massive computerized corpora of written and spoken language data and mounting evidence of formal descriptions in English studies that correspond to empirical and quantitative analyses of usage in a range of contexts and genres in the development of WE research. But there is a clear shortage of representation by the outer and expanding circles of English language users (Nelson and Ozon 2017). And it is apparent that the gender-based corpus research in WE primarily focuses on the standard features-based analyses, frequency counts and correlational methods in the use of particular linguistic features in the ‘native’ varieties of English. In general, the scope of research on gender in WE has largely centred on distinctive linguistic variants related to lexical use and reference, sexist language, semantic derogation and language reform. Using empirical methodologies in analysing the written and spoken corpora of varieties of English, such studies focus on describing gendered linguistic features, language usage and language attitudes. Primarily descriptive in nature and influenced by the early deficit, difference and dominance positions of Jespersen (1922), Lakoff (1975), Thorne and Henley (1975) and Tannen (1990), WE research on gender has been restricted to the scope of past descriptive approaches and investigative methods to report the language of and for women in the standard inner-circle varieties of Englishes. In the words of Nelson and Ozon (2017: 203), ‘the static, feature-based descriptions of world Englishes [in corpus design, collection and annotation] . . . are unable to capture the richness and dynamic nature of these uses of English.’ Moving beyond the description of Standard English varieties, Bautista (1982, 1996) offers a linguistic account of the syntactic and lexical features of feminized contact speech in Philippine English (PhE). Bautista identifies three sub-varieties of PhE: Yaya English, used by the yaya caretakers of children in Filipino households, and characterized by specific Yaya English deviations from the prescribed grammatical features of Standard English; bargirl English, used by women of the red-light district whose speech is peppered with unschooled features of Yaya English and non-Filipino linguistic qualities; and colegiala English, spoken by convent school girls whose English is highly influenced by syntactic features and lexical items characteristic of Tagalog. Using a features-based approach, Bautista draws distinctions between the linguistic aspects of these varieties in the Filipino contexts, and identifies a gendered language in the structural characteristics of these three English varieties used by the working underclasses of Filipino society. Bautista’s extensive work on PhE (1982, 1996, 2000) challenges WE research for its narrowly focused attention to descriptions of the standard educated varieties of English. Both Bautista’s work on Yaya English in metro-Manila and Rowanne and Delfin’s (2011) account in Cebu City present non-dominant local WE varieties as examples of the polarized gender stratification in the Philippines as reflected in the stratification of the English-speaking society. Contributing to the discussion of the effects of globalizing English on speakers of lower social status and limited educational achievement who live on the fringes of mainstream society, authors such as Tupas (2015) and Tinio (2013) propose a critical study of WE in the context of the social ideologies of power embedded in the unequal linguistic distribution of world Englishes. The notion of unequal Englishes associated with their works calls

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into question not only the relationship between the prevailing standard PhE and the non-dominant PhE varieties associated with underclassed women, but the relationship of PhE varieties in general to the dominant varieties of English within the larger social order. In the case of Yaya English, the critical approach attributes the three-tiered varieties of the developing Filipino Yaya variety to the unequal global structures that position countries like the Philippines on the edges of the PhE standard. To reflect the inequalities of Englishes, the range of knowledge of Englishes among Filipino women, say, who work in service industries as domestic workers or as call centre agents exposes the gendered nature of such social encounters to display a hybrid gender identity: the PhE users simultaneously assume the empowering effect of privilege that English conveys and the disempowering effect of gender subordination (Tupas and Salonga 2016). Hybridity thinking such as this focuses on the multiplicity of genders and the multiplicity of Englishes in the global service economy, and demonstrates the relevance of gender in understanding how women and men construct genders differently in the new world settings.

5  SOCIALLY REALISTIC STUDY OF GENDERED WE The bulk of studies on gender and WE adopt a socially realistic view directed at the relationship between the spread of English in the outer and expanding circles, the creative nature of language and the multiple social identities of gender in both spoken and written discourse. This approach factors in multiple identities and the processes associated with understanding bilingual creativity – linguistic, discoursal and literary acts of creativity that represent the multiple bilingual/bicultural grammars in world contexts (B. Kachru 1985; Valentine 2015, 2020; Gargesh 2018). Conceived within a contextual, sociolinguistic framework to explain language variation, socially realistic linguistics, as it is often called, promotes a pluricentric and inclusive approach to the study of the indigenous varieties of WE to describe the functions, status and attitudinal realities of distinctive varieties of WE and its users (B. Kachru 1982a, 1983, 1986a, 1990). Through the lens of the ‘context of meaning’, multilingual speakers perform language according to the social and cultural contexts in which English is used. Although the Kachruvian approach has been criticized for its simplicity and lack of keeping up with the effects of multiculturalism and globalization (Saraceni 2015; Bolton 2017), Wolf and Polzenhagen (2009) find strength in the ‘sociolinguistic realities’ of Englishes as the driving force behind the current challenges and trends in WE research facing multilingual creativity, language contact, discourse pragmatics, applied linguistics and new internet-based communications.

6  GENDER AND PRAGMATIC VARIATION IN WE To illustrate the process of bilingual creativity in the sociolinguistic context of WE at the local and societal levels, several studies have addressed pragmatic variation in speech acts and politeness, conventions of verbal communication and forms of discourse (Y. Kachru 1991, 1993, 2017; Y. Kachru and Nelson 2006; Y. Kachru and Smith 2008). In terms of research on the role of gender in WE, most work has been directed at the English-speaking contexts of South Africa and India. Within the context of Zulu speakers in South Africa, for example, studies have examined the role that politeness plays in the construction of gender identities among male and female Zulu university students when they use English (de Kadt 1994; Ige 2010; Ige and de Kadt 2002; Bharuthram and de Kadt 2003). The authors

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focus on the extent to which politeness and the speech act of apologies construct male and female identities in the increasing pluralistic linguistic environments of South Africa. Investigating the speech act of apologies in Zulu English discourse, the researchers argue that the dominance of traditional Zulu masculinity is being challenged by female students who favor less tradition-oriented identities associated with norms of politeness. The Zulu English pragmatic strategies employed by Zulu women suggest that these users are rejecting traditional Zulu femininity in favor of more Westernized identities. Zulu women’s use of apologies in Zulu English to show consideration and display positive femininity expands their social space to construct the changing female identities in South Africa. Language and cultural contact are illustrated in gender-based politeness in a Hindu community of South Africa (Bharuthram and de Kadt 2003). Here the authors shed light on the gendered nature of politeness norms among the Hindu members of the Indian English (IndE) speaking community where there is the expectation that Indian Hindu women conform to the traditional gender role of polite behaviour. Gendered politeness or the assumption that ‘Hindu women speak more politely’ is evidenced in the IndE use of apologies, requests and directives that conforms to the native Indian politeness norms. The authors find that female speakers in this Hindu community produce in IndE more indirect requests, use more mitigating supportive moves and use more semantic formulae in apologies; these women, in general, use more indirect requests towards women than towards men. The authors conclude that prescribed community norms of politeness help to uphold female gender subordination in this Hindu English-speaking community of South Africa. Expanding the understanding of bilingual creativity, additional evidence from the Indian context illustrates the cultural constructions of politeness in WE in general, and the gendering of pragmatic and discourse practices in IndE, in particular. Research sites are available to support that gender identity is signaled in conversational interactions. Approaches in interactional sociolinguistics act as the force to investigate gendered discourse in the outer and expanding circles of English. Drawn from spoken and written IndE and African English discourse, Valentine (1985, 1992, 1995, 1996, 2001b) examines certain speech acts in IndE cross-sex and same-sex conversations and in literary works written by writers from outside the inner circle to illustrate the process of nativizing gender and associations of local gender identity into spoken and written English discourse. Additional studies suggest that gender is a determining factor in nativizing the speech functions and conversational norms characteristic of the bilingual creativity exhibited in female and male writing styles in IndE, WestAE, BrE, Anglo-American English and Mexican American English (Baker 2001; Baker and Eggington 1999). Sridhar (1996), too, demonstrates how certain speech acts such as requests and directives are displayed by female college students in the indigenized English varieties of India to express culture-specific social values and language variation. And Remlinger’s (1994) work on language choice and use among English bilingual female speakers from India looks at how language choice is influenced by the gender role relationships of women, topic selection and situational setting. Code choice is influential in reinforcing cultural values, maintaining traditional gender roles, and expressing power and solidarity in private versus public contexts.

7  GENDERING LANGUAGE CHOICE AND ATTITUDE The bilingual’s creativity is expressed in the language attitudes of users in new English contexts. In multilingual speech communities, speakers have available to them a range of codes from which to choose. The question becomes what pragmatic considerations

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are observed when multilinguals choose one language, say English, over another, say the local regional language. Attitudes towards language choice are based on the formal and functional features of the codes, the contexts of use and the styles of speaking that are often attitudinally marked for aestheticism, correctness, education and religion (B. Kachru 1982b). English claims the cultural expression of globalization, and it carries linguistic capital in the local context where English lives alongside other resident language varieties that carry the weight of tradition, tribalism and culture. As we have seen in the linguistic descriptive studies earlier, the choice of code in the multilingual’s linguistic repertoire intersects with the construction of gender identity in noteworthy ways. In the studies that follow, expressions of bilingual creativity are captured in the language attitudes and language choice of female and male speakers. Elizabeth De Kadt has written extensively on gendered language practices and the spread of English in urban and rural communities in South Africa where the cities and towns have experienced an increased spread in the use and domains of English. Examining language choice patterns among Zulu-speaking youth in South Africa, de Kadt and others have investigated language choice patterns among male and female students amid the emergence and spread of Zulu-English bilingualism in both urban and rural communities. Although the communities are moving towards bilingualism, not all speakers use English, the language that holds status and prestige, equally. In terms of gender identities, de Kadt (2002) and other South African sociolinguists find that in the rural context, English proficiency alongside the local language Zulu is expected of male students, yet such bilingual expectations are not demanded of female students. Male students actively participate in both cultural and language shift towards English, whereas female students retain their use of Zulu to a much greater extent to maintain the traditional Zulu feminine identity. In contrast, in the urban context, there appears to be little difference in the choice of the English code between male and female speakers. De Kadt argues that although the selection of English might not be gendered in the urban setting, the manner in which English is used in specific situations may contribute to the construction of gendered identities (de Kadt 1993, 2002, 2004; Appalraju and de Kadt 2002). Zulu-speaking females display a more positive attitude towards English than Zulu-speaking males and consider the language more desirable and important than the local language. Additionally, female speakers claim to use English in more social environments and contexts than male speakers. In rural areas it appears that gendered language perpetuates the male dominant power structure, whereas in urban areas, the use of English opens up communicative space to ‘construct changing female identities’ (de Kadt 2002: 92). Parmegiani’s work (2017) on the ownership of English in South Africa supports the conclusions of earlier Zulu English studies. Language choice characterizes varying degrees of gender identity. Female students, too, are positioning themselves to claim ownership to English and appropriating its associations with power, equity and gender equality, cultural norms in direct opposition to the patriarchal gender system associated with Zulu language and culture. Stubbe and Holmes (2000) provide additional evidence from Maori English in New Zealand to show how gender and ethnicity markers distinguish the conflicting Maori and Pakeha cultural identities. Maori English is the marked variety in relation to Pakeha, the Maori term for New Zealanders. Speakers of Pakeha have developed distinct identities that conform to the inner circle English sociocultural norms, while Maori English is characterized by distinctive phonological, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic features rooted in the shared indigenous cultural norms of behaviour. Although the primary focus of

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this study is on Maori ethnic identity, the researchers find that gender identity plays a role in the use of Maori English. Particular among Maori men, Maori English serves as a form of masculine solidarity, reinforcement of cultural identity, and shared linguistic and Maori ‘space’ within the pervasive, widespread, dominant Pakeha system. Male Maori speakers expressly manifest their gender and ethnic identities in their distinctive style of ‘Bro talk’ exemplified by aspects of discourse structure, topic choice, narrative structure, humour and code-switching in their higher frequency of rising intonation, endtag eh, addressee-oriented pragmatic devices, patterns of repetition and vernacular grammatical features serving as a means to engender solidarity between speaker and hearer. Studies in IndE, as well, support the positive attitude of female students towards the local varieties of IndE (Bernaisch and Koch 2016). In fact, drawing from the conversation files of the ICE-India data set, Lange (2012) correlates syntactic features associated with standard IndE with the social variable gender. Female Indian speakers appear to be leading linguistic change with their more frequent use of particular pan-Indian syntactic structures of IndE such as indigenous no-tags, existential-there, focus markers only/itself and topicalization than male speakers. With clear understanding of the social and cultural forces that take part in the process of language change and linguistic innovation, women from rural India are instrumental in influencing the linguistic landscape of their local communities where English is robustly represented in the multilingual setting. In Goa, for example, Catholic women act as agents to marginalize and displace the mother tongue Konkani and intentionally extol the virtues of Western and modern languages of English and Portuguese (Mascarenhas-Keyes 1994). In the village of Totagadde in Karnataka, women are the primary guardians of the vernacular caste dialect, Havyaka, yet knowingly advance and motivate the learning of English, Hindi and Kannada to their children to strengthen social status in the community (Ullrich 1992). Language attitudes have a strong influence on language choice and behaviour. Women hold a different relationship to the English language and to the local languages in their communities. The diaspora of English has altered the linguistic behaviour of bilingual women and their attitudes towards the languages in their WE speech communities (Valentine 2001a, 2008).

8  HYBRIDITY AND GENDERED WE Hybridity is a fundamental sociolinguistic, sociocultural notion to understanding language variation and bilingual creativity. Hybridity, ‘the ways in which language choice represents varying degrees of multiple identities and mixed cultural origin,’ is a basic quality in gender construction in WE (Rubdy and Alsagoff 2014: 3). As a result of a blended identity, women as speakers find themselves in a liminal space where multiple identities collide and are renegotiated (Bhatt 2008). Bilingual creativity, then, can be characterized as a push-pull struggle between the pull of the native culture and the push towards the new English associations and the coexistence of hybridized sociolinguistic systems (Bhatt 2014). To demonstrate that hybridity is linked to gender identity, a number of studies have explored the notion of a gendered third space in the expression of new hybrid multilingual identities in WE. Bhatt’s (2014) examination of the representation of women through English-Hindi code-switching in IndE newspapers supports how the local-traditional and global-modern constructions of gender are portrayed in the hybrid discursive gendered practice of English-Hindi code-switching in different genres of the IndE newspaper register.

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Modern bilingual Indian women simultaneously and strategically negotiate the modern gender identity through English and the traditional gender identity by code-switching to Hindi. Kathpalia’s (2019) examination of gender stereotyping in mixed Hindi English TV commercials shows that the messages are gendered in language choice: the use of Hindi reflects tradition, the use of English reflects modernity and the use of Hinglish language mixing reflects the in-between glocalized hybrid identity. Kamada’s (2014) investigation of the speech of mixed-ethnic adolescent girls in Japan illustrates the construction of a third ethnogender identity as English-knowing bilinguals. Performing English through their spoken narratives and social interactions, these mixed-ethnic speakers construct their hybrid identity by linking their local access to Japanese with their global access to English. Bolton (2010) widens the scope of language and gendered practices to examine the ideology of sexuality in the communication of call centres in the Philippines. Where the typical Filipino call agent is an English-speaking female graduate in her mid-twenties, Bolton interviews the underrepresented Filipino group of self-identified gay males about their attitudes towards English. The study suggests that Filipino gays in the English call centre industry exist in an ambiguous or transitional space, one where their expressions of sexuality coexist with the construction of cultural meaning through language. These studies challenge the traditional understanding of bilingual creativity to include how language use is embedded in new social and cultural contexts to capture the emergence of the hybridization of new gender identities in the circle settings of WE.

9  GENDER IN WE IN MULTIMEDIUMS AND BEYOND Research shows that the cultural and linguistic repertoires of English multilinguals are expanding due to the construction of new linguistic forms and hybrid identities in popular culture and on social networking sites. As a result of these new cultural exchanges and social media platforms, the formal and functional contexts of English are widening and new social identities are forming (Clark 2013). A dynamic piece of this identity transformation is the changing gender roles and role relations of users in this digital world who have a different relationship to and greater contact with the English language. The new linguistic forms of linguistic mixing become part of the sociolinguistic repertoires of WE speakers. As culturally mixed speakers draw on the global nature of English, they make language decisions based on the local to produce alternate identities globally and a range of cultural hybridities (Rubdy and Alsagoff 2014: 8). For example, from the music world, Higgins’s (2014) work on Tanzanian hip-hop shows how social, political and economic forces act on English to form new hybrid identities and produce innovative codes. Viewed through a social lens, hip hop in East Africa, for instance, has become altered through underlying spatial flows producing new localized formations of Tanzanian English. Although the hip-hop lyrics are usually sung in English, the style, sounds and language patterns are localized to retain the Swahili meaning. Higgins illustrates the flows of the reterritorialization of English-derived female-specific terms such as sista sung in hip-hop lyrics through musical, political and educational scapes. Gender hybridity and bilingual creativity, too, is evident in the context of matrimonial proposals in the English newspapers of India – the traditional matchmaking practice to find suitable marriage partners for ‘girls’ and ‘grooms’ in all socioeconomic classes of Indian family circles. Extensive cross-cultural and cross-linguistic work on gender and identity in the area of personal and matrimonial ads illustrates the nativized use of English and gender in newspapers across India and abroad (Pandey 2004; Bhatt 2014; Nair 1991;

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Ramasubramanian and Jain 2009). Prominent in these published printed marriage advertisements are culturally bound gendered descriptors and intensifiers in English. A highly specialized, distinct written discourse type, matrimonial ads embed gender ideologies through the use of distinctive lexical, syntactic, discoursal and pragmatic features. The culturally specific English terms vary from the outer to inner circle of users, and are often unintelligible and incomprehensible to speakers of English in the inner circle. In the case of IndE matrimonials, gendered terms such as boy (unmarried adult), girl (unmarried adult), biodata (height, weight, caste, complexion, one’s horoscope, habits), fair (light-complexioned), issueless (childless), homely (good homemaker), clean-shaven (short-haired), decent family (cultured, respected), Reddy (a sub-caste), working girl and Brahmin underscore the desirable physical appearance and personal attributes of the potential bride and groom. Traditional gender roles and the social institutions of matchmaking, marriage and family organization are recreated in Indian-specific English expressions to convey traditional gender roles, relationships and cultural and religious expectations within the South Asian speech communities. According to Pandey (2004) the descriptors ‘slim’, ‘tall’, ‘family oriented’, ‘cultured’, ‘attractive’, ‘homely’, ‘issueless’, ‘valuing Indian culture’ and ‘(very) fair’ are exclusive IndE terms used to describe only desirable Indian girls. The following excerpt is an actual matrimonial advertisement pulled from the IndE Hindustan Times newspaper written by the ‘girl’s’ family seeking a groom. It is clear from this example that the use of gender-specific terms in Indian matrimonials is evidence of the hybrid cultural space that contextualizes gender identities to convey a culturally specific meaning to the South Asian audience distinct from the inner circle English users. Hindu match, around 30 with high professional qualifications, well settled in a fast-track career and from a cultured forward looking family for a beautiful, highly accomplished, convent educated executive Mathur girl, 158 cm/30 (looks hardly 2223)/4600 from a very decent family; advertisement for wider choice, those previously married or having chronic health problems not considered. (Write Box 123456, Hindustan Times New Delhi - 110001) Expanding the scope of WE to include online communications, Daud and Mclellan (2016) examine networked multilingualism among Bruneian English users of Facebook, a social networking site. The authors analyse the content of the corpus of 240 Facebook status updates to investigate the relationship between gender and code choice (English only, Malay only, English and Malay), gender and use of emotive language and emoticons, and gender and use of nonstandardized spelling forms. The results suggest that Bruneian male and female participants negotiate their online identities primarily through their language choices of English and Malay English. Male users prefer the use of English only, female users prefer the use of code-mixed Malay English. Women display more emotive language and emoticons on Facebook than men, and men use more non-standardized, innovative orthographic forms than women. Brown and Jie (2014) explore online stylizing or the online verbal art of orthographic conventions in Singapore English among Singaporean youth in online forums to perform the identity of an Ah Beng, the cultural stereotype of a hustler or gangster in Singapore, a term gendered for men. The study concludes that stylizing Ah Beng enacts gendered identities by lexical and orthographic variants. Although minimal, earlier work on gay English has addressed the intersection of gender and sexuality as structures that affect cultural practices. Most notably the early works of Chesebro (1981) and Leap (1996, 1998) have described the linguistic features of the

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English language used by gay men in the style of Lakoff’s (1975) ‘women’s language’; in Leap and Boelstorff’s (2004) later collection of essays, the authors address globalization and gay English in France, Canada, urban African America, Cuban American Miami, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia and New Zealand; and the special issue of the journal World Englishes presents a medley of papers on bilingual’s creativity in LGBT discourse (Frenck 1998). I will not discuss these studies here, but it is worth noting that the globalization process of English has impacted gay linguistic practices through online networking services throughout regions of the world. For example, Jones (2013) examines the construction of gay identity on the discussion boards of the popular gay website gayhk​.c​om in Hong Kong. Although the posts are primarily in Chinese, talk revolves around gay users’ attitudes towards the English language. Jones finds that gay users’ posts that address English verbal hygiene are used not only as a negotiation strategy to jockey for status and power in the exchanges, but also as a means to position users in the gay Hong Kong community. Imparting such attitudes towards English in the Hong Kong gay community helps to construct queer identities in relation to local straight culture and to foreign gay culture. The rise of new multimedia forums uncovers multiple gender and sexual identities coexisting in the sociolinguistic landscapes of world Englishes.

10  CONCLUSION This chapter is an attempt to draw attention to the neglected research on the role of gender in WE. It is directed at the study of the spread of English with reference to gender and gender identity and its users who represent a distinct speaking community in the multilingual settings of the world. While not a focused strand in the research study of WE, attention to the varying degrees of gender identification and gender involvement with the new Englishes is growing. Although limited, the body of research on the role of gender in the changing contexts of WE has demonstrated the significance of the intersection of gender identity and other social factors to contribute to a better understanding of sociolinguistic variation in the developing world English varieties. WE research is slowly expanding its scope to accept the representation of multiple linguistic and social identities, including gender and sexuality, and acknowledging ‘widening the lens of language and gender research’ (Remlinger 1999) to deconstruct traditional concepts about English and not only adopt a critical approach to language practice, but accommodate the complex forces of globalization and mediatization, multilingual hybridization and future trends related to the spread of English and the emergence of new English identities (Bolton 2017). In fact, Pandey (2019) advocates for a fourth circle of English called the hybrid circle of English to account for the new varieties of world Englishes emerging in the global marketplace. Providing the formal and functional contexts of bilingual creativity and the impact of globalization on the cultures and languages of the world, Pandharipande (2019), too, advocates for the need to expand the world contexts to include bilingual and bicultural hybrid identities and new patterns of use that include online communications and indigenous and migrant linguistic contexts. Interdisciplinary and integrative approaches, new and different methodologies and theoretical frameworks and expanding viewpoints have helped to expose the limitations of the traditional monolingual, monocultural and monocentric approaches; the dominant fundamental social and linguistic properties of static, absolute and monolithic models and norms; and the social and linguistic

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inequalities among the new Englishes. Adopting a critical gender-based approach to the study of WE, along with other social factors, as a research strand in new WE landscapes offers the opportunity to move beyond established descriptive and formal explanations to examine the interconnectedness of language and gender identity at multiple levels of interaction, the cultural and linguistic hybridity of the multilingual local-global experiences, the rise in new cultural contexts and forms of discourse and the production of multiple gender meanings through language use. Research focus of this kind ‘can uncover individual local experiences and linguistic practices that reveal fresh new insights into World Englishes as well as the locally negotiated dynamics of language and globalization’ (Bolton 2010: 562).

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Mascarenhas-Keyes, S. (1994), ‘Language and Diaspora: The Use of Portuguese, English and Konkani by Catholic Goan Women’, in P. Burton, K. K. Dyson and S. Ardener (eds), Bilingual Women, 149–66, Oxford: Berg. McConnell-Ginet, S. (1988), ‘Language and Gender’, in F. J. Newmeyer (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey IV: Language; the Sociocultural Context, 75–99, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mesthrie, R. (2017), ‘Class, Gender, and Substrate Erasure in Sociolinguistic Change: A Sociophonetic Study of Schwa in Deracializing South African English’, Language, 93 (2): 314–46. Murphy, B. (2010), Corpus and Sociolinguistics: Investigating Age and Gender in Female Talk, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nair, R. B. (1991), Critique of Deconstructing Gender in a Cross-Cultural Context: The Matrimonial Advertisement as a Discourse, Paper presented at the 5th Annual International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 4–6 April 1991. Nelson, G. and G. Ozon (2017), ‘World English and Corpus Linguistics’, in E. L. Low and A. Pakir (eds), World Englishes: Rethinking Paradigms, 149–64, London: Routledge. Pandey, A. (2004), ‘Culture, Gender, and Identity in Cross-Cultural Personals and Matrimonials’, World Englishes, 23 (3): 403–27. Pandey, A. (2019), ‘A Fourth Circle of English’, World Englishes, 38 (1–2): 185–99. Pandharipande, R. V. (2019), ‘Bilinguals’ Creativity and an Argument for Paradigm Shift’, World Englishes, 38 (1–2): 219–32. Parmegiani, A. (2017), ‘Gender and the Ownership of English in South Africa’, World Englishes, 36 (1): 42–59. Pathak, R. S. (1985), ‘Language Variation in a Bilingual Setting: A North Indian Case Study’, Indian Linguistics, 46 (1–2): 9–24. Pauwels, A. (1987), Women and Language in Australian and New Zealand Society, Sydney: Australian Professional Publications. Pauwels, A. (2001a), ‘Spreading the Feminist Word: The Case of the New Courtesy Title Ms in Australian English’, in M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds), Gender Across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Volume 1, 137–51, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pauwels, A. (2001b), ‘Non-Sexist Language Reform and Generic Pronouns in Australian English’, English World-Wide, 22 (1): 105–19. Pauwels, A. and J. Winter (2004), ‘Gender-Inclusive Language Reform in Educational Writing in Singapore and the Philippines: A Corpus-Based Study’, Asian Englishes, 7 (1): 4–20. DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2004.10801128 Pennycook, A. (1994), The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language, London and New York: Longman. Pennycook, A. (2001), Critical Applied Linguistics, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Phillipson, R. (1992), Linguistic Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramasubramanian, S. and P. Jain (2009), ‘Gender Stereotypes and Normative Heterosexuality in Matrimonial Ads from Globalizing India’, Asian Journal of Communication, 19 (3): 253–69. Remlinger, K. (1994), ‘Language Choice and Use: Influences of Setting and Gender’, in L. H. Turner and H. M. Sterk (eds), Differences That Make a Difference. Examining the Assumptions in Gender Research, 163–73, Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Remlinger, K. (1999), ‘Widening the Lens of Language and Gender Research: Integrating Critical Discourse Analysis and Cultural Practice Theory’, Linguistik Online, 2 (1). DOI: 10.13092/lo.2.1042

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Romaine, S. (2001), ‘A Corpus-Based View of Gender in British and American English’, in M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds), Gender Across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Volume 1, 153–75, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Rowanne, M. and C. A. Delfin (2011), ‘Phonological and Syntactic Features of Yaya Speech in Cebu City’, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 39 (2): 132–48. Rubdy, R. and L. Alsagoff, eds (2014), The Global-Local Interface and Hybridity. Exploring Language and Identity, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Saraceni, M. (2015), World Englishes: A Critical Analysis, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Sridhar, K. (1996), ‘Pragmatics of South Asian Women’, in R. J. Baumgardner (ed.), South Asian English: Structure, Use, and Users, 141–57, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stubbe, M. and J. Holmes (2000), ‘Talking Maori or Pakeha in English: Signalling Identity Discourse’, in A. Bell and K. Kuiper (eds), New Zealand English, 249–78, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tannen, D. (1990), You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Thorne, B. and N. Henley, eds (1975), Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Tinio, M. T. (2013), ‘Nimble Tongues: Philippine English and the Feminization of Labour’, in L. Wee, R. B.H. Goh and L. Lim (eds), The Politics of English. South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific, 205–24, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Trudgill, P. (1972), ‘Sex, Covert Prestige and Linguistic Change in the Urban British English of Norwich’, Language in Society, 1 (2): 179–95. Tupas, R., ed. (2015), Unequal Englishes: The Politics of Englishes Today, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Tupas, R. and A. Salonga (2016), ‘Unequal Englishes in the Philippines’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 20 (3): 367–81. Ullrich, H. (1992), ‘Sociolinguistic Change in Language Attitudes: A Karnataka Village Study’, in Edward Dimock, Braj Kachru, and Bh. Krishnamurti (eds), Dimensions of Sociolinguistics in South Asia, 113–27, New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing. Valentine, T. M. (1985), ‘Cross-Sex Conversation in Indian English Fiction’, World Englishes, 4 (3): 319–32. Valentine, T. M. (1992), ‘The Nativizing of Gender: Speech Acts in the New Englishes Literatures’, World Englishes, 11 (2–3): 259–70. Valentine, T. M. (1995), ‘Agreeing and Disagreeing in Indian English Discourse: Implications for Language Teaching’, in M. L Tickoo (ed.), Issues and Attitudes: An Anthology of Invited Papers, 227–50, Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre. Valentine, T. M. (1996), ‘Politeness Models in Indian English’, Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 3: 279–300. Valentine, T. M. (2001a), ‘Reconstructing Identities and Gender in Discourse: English Transplanted’, Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 31 (1): 193–212. Valentine, T. M. (2001b), ‘Cross-Cultural Discourse in World Englishes’, in A. Abbi, R. S. Gupta and A. Kidwai (eds), Linguistic Structure and Language Dynamics in South Asia, 223–40, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Valentine, T. M. (2008), ‘Language and Gender’, in B. B. Kachru, Y. Kachru and S. N. Sridhar (eds), Language in South Asia, 429–49, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Valentine, T. M. (2015), ‘A Socially Realistic View of World Englishes: Reflections on Gendered Discourse’, World Englishes, 34 (1): 149–63.

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Valentine, T. M. (2020), ‘Creative Acts of Gender in World Englishes’, in C. L. Nelson, Z. G. Proshina and D. R. Davis (eds), The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd edn, 578–93, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. Wolf, H. G. and F. Polzenhagen (2009), World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Chapter 4

The Role of Corpora in World Englishes Research CLAUDIA LANGE

1  INTRODUCTION In a sense, World Englishes and corpus linguistics have been intertwined with each other from the very inception of the latter: the first corpora of English now collectively known as the BROWN family already catered for a comparative perspective on British and American English. Corpus linguistic research on World Englishes was given an unprecedented boost by the ICE-project (International Corpus of English), set in motion in the 1990s, currently comprising over a dozen national varieties, more than twenty ICE-teams and still growing. The comparatively small but well-balanced ICE-corpora are now being complemented by large web-derived corpora such as the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE). This chapter will explore the role of corpora in World Englishes research by outlining the rationale behind the creation of pioneering corpus projects and by focusing on their corpus design, which in turn impacts upon the kind of research that can be pursued on their basis. The next section will then offer a – necessarily highly selective – glimpse at the vast body of corpus-based World Englishes research, with three main foci: first, comparative studies in the vein of Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic model, then studies exploring the notion of ‘linguistic epicentre’ (Hundt 2013) and finally studies tracing globalization and/or Americanization of World Englishes. Another section will be devoted to relevant developments in the Expanding Circle: there is a growing body of research probing into the connection between ESL and EFL, based on integrating data from learner corpus research into the World Englishes paradigm. Moreover, the conceptual boundary between the Outer and the Expanding Circle seems to be in flux, arguably necessitating an expansion of the ICE-project beyond its original coverage (Edwards 2017). A final section will attempt to evaluate the achievements of corpus linguistic research within the field of World Englishes and to hint at future challenges arising from increasingly transnational, multilingual speech communities.

2  WORLD ENGLISHES CORPORA: FROM STANDARD TO GLOBAL ENGLISHES The first machine-readable corpora of varieties of English predate the emergence of World Englishes as a new, more inclusive perspective on varieties of English around the

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world. As sketched in section 2.1, the first wave of English language corpora comprised American and British English, two national varieties of English which were generally considered the legitimate standard varieties at the time. The ICE-corpus project, described in section 2.2, marked the beginning of the second wave which coincided with a notable shift in the World Englishes paradigm. The very existence of Postcolonial Englishes in their multilingual settings challenged the notions of ‘standard language’ and ‘native speaker’, exposing a monolingual bias in linguistic theorizing. The headline ‘From Standard to Global Englishes’ pays tribute to this development: away from the idealization of ‘a single monochrome standard form that looks as good on paper as it sounds in speech’ (Quirk 1985: 6) and towards the recognition of English as a pluricentric language. A third wave in the joint fields of corpus linguistics and World Englishes may emerge in connection to the ubiquity of the World Wide Web. Section 2.3 is devoted to large web-derived corpora which still give centre stage to national varieties of English but are no longer necessarily tied to a specific territory: internet country domains do not expire at a physical border.

2.1  The BROWN Family of Corpora The pioneering Brown corpus was compiled by W. Nelson Francis and Henry Kučera and comprised around 1 million words of written American English, covering a range of genres and drawn from sources published in 1961. The Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) corpus, compiled by a team around Geoffrey Leech and Stig Johansson and released in 1976, matched the original sampling date as well as the structure of Brown to become the first corpus of British English. Each corpus contained 500 texts of around 2,000 words each, adding up to around 1 million words. The first main division in terms of text categories was made between informative and imaginative prose; the former contained the majority of texts and was further subdivided into ‘press’, ‘general prose’ and ‘learned’, that is, scientific texts. The original Brown manual describes the sampling procedure for each text as follows: Once these categories, subcategories, and numbers of samples had been decided upon, the choice of the actual samples was made by various random methods, chiefly the use of a table of random numbers applied to the total list of available publications in the subject field in question. The page on which to begin the sample was also selected by the random number table. Each sample begins with the first complete sentence on the page so selected. Titles and running heads have been omitted, also footnotes, tables, and picture captions. A rough count of 2,000 words was made and the sample was terminated at the next sentence-break. (http​:/​/cl​​u​.uni​​.no​/i​​came/​​manua​​ls​/BR​​OWN​​ /I​​NDEX.​​HTM) ‘We could say that by 1976, with the availability of Brown and LOB, the stage was set for the birth of the corpus-based approach to world Englishes’ (Nelson and Ozón 2017: 150). The scope became broader when the Kolhapur Corpus of Indian English and the Australian Corpus of English (ACE) were compiled along the same lines, comprising texts from 1978 and 1986, respectively. The metaphorical corpus ‘family’ patterns with the family tree model of language relationships and came to be used for the Brown ‘family’ with the release of the next generation of corpora thirty years later. A team at Freiburg University recreated Brown and LOB with material from 1991, naming the corpora Frown and FLOB and thus adding

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a diachronic dimension to the original project.1 There are also plans to extend the ‘family’ backwards in time with the compilation of B-Brown and BLOB (before-LOB), sampling texts from 1931, but these corpora have not been released yet.2 Among the work based on the Brown family of corpora, the monograph Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation and Standardization by Christian Mair (2006) stands out for its broad scope. Investigating a wide range of features in Brown/ LOB and their parallel Freiburg versions, Mair finds evidence for ‘colloquialization’, that is – away from a written norm which is elaborated to maximal distance from speech and towards a written norm that is closer to spoken usage, and – away from a written norm which cultivates formality towards a norm which is tolerant of informality and even allows for anti-formality as a rhetorical strategy. (Mair 2006: 187) Now that another thirty years have passed since Frown and FLOB, and with new corpora and new registers around, there is ample scope for investigating whether the twin tendencies of colloquialization as well as ‘democratization’ (Leech et al. 2009: 259–63) continue to have an impact on twenty-first-century English.

2.2  The ICE Project A sketch for an International Corpus of English (ICE) project was first made public in 1988 by the late Sidney Greenbaum (1988), promising a further boost to the intertwining of corpus linguistics and World Englishes. Greenbaum noted that the technological progress since Brown would allow for far more sophisticated corpora. Further, he envisaged the new corpus having as its components regional corpora sampling the standard varieties in countries where English is a first language and the national varieties in countries where it is an official additional language. All the components would be assembled along parallel lines and would include spoken and manuscript English as well as printed English. The material would be collected within the same period and analysed in similar ways. Data from the component corpora could then be used for research into the English of the various regions and would also contribute to comparative studies. (Greenbaum 1990: 79–80) From its inception, the ICE project was set up with a specific sampling frame in mind which also impinged upon the choice of informants/contributors: ‘The authors and speakers of the texts are aged 18 or above, were educated through the medium of English, and were either born in the country in whose corpus they are included, or moved there at an early age and received their education through the medium of English in the country concerned’ (https​:/​/ww​​w​.ice​​-corp​​ora​.u​​zh​.ch​​/en​/d​​​esign​​.html​). All ICE components thus capture standard(izing) national varieties, and they do so with a uniform corpus design which has itself become an informal standard for subsequent corpus projects. In countries where English has the status of institutionalized L2 and where access to English is unevenly distributed, the English that is sampled tends to be highly acrolectal (Lange and Leuckert 2020: 120; Lange 2017b: 19). Each ICE corpus comprises around 1 million words in 500 text files, divided into 300 spoken and 200 written texts, which is then further subdivided into a range of registers covering different degrees of formality.3 The ICE-project’s sampling frame thus goes beyond what was possible for the Brown corpus

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pioneers and comes much closer to being representative of a speech community member’s linguistic experience, even though the question of a corpus’ ‘representativeness’ must remain open (Leech 2007). Many studies now explicitly acknowledge ‘register’ as a potential explanatory parameter alongside ‘national variety’ (see also Bohmann, this volume). The ICE-corpora are also still unique in offering access to that most elusive register of spontaneous face-to-face interaction, captured in the text category S1A 1-100 ‘direct conversation’ and comprising around a fifth of the overall corpus material. Studies which turn their attention explicitly to the direct conversations do so for two related reasons: First, spontaneous spoken interaction generally comes closest to the sociolinguistic ideal of the vernacular as the least monitored form of speech: ‘speech is the primary hub of variation and change and the primary carrier of indexical stances and values’ (D’Arcy 2020: 437). In postcolonial multilingual speech communities, this lack of monitoring may also extend to a greater tolerance for contact-induced innovations (Lange 2012: 236). In both cases, the direct conversation files are more likely to showcase variety-specific innovative features which may well represent incipient language change from below. Unfortunately, only a few of the first-generation ICE corpus releases also include speakers’ metadata, which precludes a sociolinguistic perspective on the varieties represented. This has largely changed with and for the ICE components being compiled in the new millennium. The label ‘ICE-Age 2’ for the second generation ICE projects covers a range of issues that are discussed in the community of ICE compilers and users; Kirk and Nelson (2018) provide an overview of the current state of the art concerning the ICE project. First, the very success of the ICE project has inadvertently introduced an unwanted diachronic dimension: while ICE components such as ICE-GB or ICE-India sampled texts from the early 1990s, more recent ICE projects such as ICE-Nigeria, ICE-Scotland or ICE-Fiji collected their data in the late 2000s. Especially spoken language is bound to display significant change over twenty years, as comparative studies based on the British National Corpus releases of 1994 and 2014 have shown (Brezina, Love and Aijmer 2018). The postcolonial multilingual societies in Africa, South and Southeast Asia with their population dynamics are arguably even more prone to fast-paced innovations in the spoken domain. Secondly, new text types have emerged in the wake of the internet and the new forms of electronic communication that it offers. Current ICE compilers now have to ponder whether it still makes sense to retain the text category ‘social letters’ or whether to replace it with emails or data from messengers such as WhatsApp. The current website of the ICE-project at https://www​.ice​-corpora​.uzh​.ch​/en​.html displays the ongoing work and the future prospects of the ICE-project. The ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) publishes the open source ICAME Journal (https​:/​/co​​ntent​​ .scie​​ndo​.c​​om​/vi​​ew​/jo​​urnal​​s​/ica​​me​/ic​​ame​​-o​​vervi​​ew​.xm​l), which also features progress reports on individual ICE-corpora as well as papers discussing general ICE-related concerns.

2.3  Web-derived Corpora It was only natural that the sprawling World Wide Web with its unprecedented and unbridled accumulation of a wide range of text types old and new came into the linguists’ spotlight. Even before the release of the 1.9 billion-word Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE) in 2015, researchers had devised tools and methods for mining the

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web. Sedlatschek (2009), for example, complemented his small balanced corpus of Indian English (180,000 words) with what he called ‘internet snapshots’, that is ‘frequency measurements of competing lexical and grammatical variants returned by Google-based search queries that were conducted across selected domains and websites’ (Sedlatschek 2009: 44), thus combining his own ‘small’ with ‘big’ data. The contributions to the volume Corpus Linguistics and the Web edited by Hundt, Nesselhauf and Biewer (2007) cover the two different ways in which the web has been used in corpus-linguistic research:

a) With the help of commercial crawlers or internet-based search engines such as WebCorp, the web can be used as a corpus itself (‘Web as corpus’) – as a heuristic tool but also in a more systematic way. The heuristic use could be referred to as ‘data sniffing’, the systematic application as ‘data testing’.



b) The www can alternatively be used as a source for the compilation of large offline monitor corpora (‘Web for corpus building’). (Hundt, Nesselhauf and Biewer 2007: 2)

An example for a rough-and-ready data-sniffing application is the Google n-gram viewer (https://books​.google​.com​/ngrams), which allows to compare the frequencies of two or more forms over time (from 1800 to 2008), based on the scanned material collected by Google books. Searches can be run on English in general or on British and American English separately, and there is a small set of part of speech (POS)-tags which can be used. A brief example that illustrates the uses of this tool is the sample search for ‘critique_VERB, criticize’, which reveals that critique as a verb is on the rise from the 1960s onwards in both varieties, but that it overtakes the verb criticize in the mid-1980s in American English. Sedlatschek’s (2009) ‘internet snapshots’ represent a more controlled approach and thus ‘data-testing’, restricting his search frame to selected internet country domains as well as to the websites of specific South Asian newspapers (Sedlatschek 2009: 45). Hoffmann’s (2007) contribution to Corpus Linguistics and the Web exemplifies ‘Web for corpus building’: his paper presents the methodology and the rationale behind the creation of a 172 million words corpus of transcripts from the website of the American news station CNN. In a sense, GloWbE can be seen as a combination of the two corpuslinguistic approaches towards the web. The corpus comprises internet language from general web pages and blogs, distributed over twenty-country domains.4 The basic structure of the ICE-corpora was also taken into account for GloWbE: Recall that with the ICE corpora, about 60 percent of the total number of words for each country comes from transcriptions of spoken language, and the other 40 percent consists of more formal, written texts. In the creation of GloWbE, we followed roughly the same approach. About 60 percent of the words for each country come from informal blogs, whereas the other 40 percent come from a wide variety of (often) more formal genres and text types. (Davies and Fuchs 2015: 3–4) A special issue of English World-Wide (36 [1]: 2015) featured a descriptive account of GloWbE by Davies and Fuchs (2015), which was followed by a lively debate in various peer commentaries. While most researchers welcomed GloWbE as an important new point of departure for future research, many others also sounded a note of caution against too much unquestioning faith in big data. Generally, ‘[w]ith respect to corpus size, the

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bigger is not necessarily always the better’, as Hundt (2020: 508) points out: depending on the research question, the 1 million-word ICE corpus components may already yield more data than can be reasonably handled. And while it is certainly true that ‘the size of a corpus required for a particular study always depends on the specific research question(s) and the level of granularity that the analyses aim to provide’ (Hundt 2020: 509), it does not follow that very large corpora such as GloWbE are automatically better suited for the investigation of low-frequency features. Mair (2015) illustrates this nicely with a sample search for the Jamaican Creole preposition inna, which occurs 2,213 times in the Jamaican subcorpus, but surprisingly also 263 times in the Pakistani English subsection. On closer inspection, none of those Pakistani inna-tokens turn out to be relevant examples: they all occur in passages transliterated from Arabic. While it is only to be expected that manual proofreading is not feasible in the compilation of large web-derived corpora, ‘the problem remains that the more informal and nonstandard the language sampled in the corpus is, the less reliable the tagging will become, with the expected negative impact on precision and recall’ (Mair 2015: 30). A search for the Singaporean English particle lah yields a similarly unexpected result, with a similar explanation for the frequency of the form in Pakistani English: lah is very often part of the Arabic formulaic expression la ilaha illal lah (Lange 2017a). Further, Loureiro-Porto’s (2017) comprehensive case study pits ICE versus GloWbE and concludes that ‘the differences between GloWbE and ICE are too pervasive to consider these two corpora equivalent alternatives for any linguistic study’ (Loureiro-Porto 2017: 468). This is not to deny the intrinsic value of GloWbE as a very large resource for web-based registers, as she stresses: This, of course, does not mean that big data cannot be used to make carefully compiled corpora more representative. The linguistic registers used in the World Wide Web are too significant to be overlooked in any study of language variation. . . . For this reason, we might conclude that the future of ICE should include web registers alongside the text types included so far. This would provide a more comprehensive representation of the national varieties of English than current versions of both ICE and GloWbE. (Loureiro-Porto 2017: 468)

3  WORLD ENGLISHES AND CORPUS LINGUISTIC RESEARCH Even a cursory glance at the main journals serving the field of World Englishes reveals the impact of corpus linguistics: there is hardly any issue of English World-Wide or World Englishes which does not feature a range of corpus-based articles. Handbooks devoted to World Englishes regularly refer to corpus linguistic approaches (e.g. Mair 2017; Nelson and Ozón 2017; Bernaisch and Deshors 2019b; Hundt 2020) and vice versa (e.g. Hundt 2015). Bernaisch and Deshors (2019a) as well as Lange and Leuckert (2020) provide some of the basics for students and researchers entering the field. The ever-increasing ICE-family continues to offer ample material for research projects, often complemented by big data drawn from the web or new corpora of learner Englishes as well as English as a lingua franca (ELF). Some of the pertinent research questions that have been widely pursued in recent years on the basis of World Englishes corpora will be discussed later.

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3.1  Corpus Linguistic Research and the Dynamic Model (Schneider 2007) Edgar Schneider’s (2007; see also Bolton, this volume) Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes has by now informed a vast body of research and continues to do so. The basic premise of the model concerns the changing identity constructions of indigenous populations (IDG strand) in contact with settlers (STL strand), which in turn are driven by the four ‘parameters of the developmental stages’ (Schneider 2007: 56). The model postulates a unilateral implication, that is, a monodirectional causal relationship, between four core parameters: The sociopolitical and historical background in colonial expansion shapes the identity constructions of the two main parties involved, the English-speaking settlers in a new region and the locals. These identities (i.e. who feels associated with whom) are decisive for the sociolinguistic conditions which shape the communicative settings, and on these, in turn, the resulting linguistic effects, the evolving distinctive structural properties of new varieties, are dependent. (Schneider 2014: 11, emphasis by original author) The latter parameter of ‘linguistic effects’ naturally lent itself to empirical corpus-based investigations, unlike the other parameters which are much harder to pin down. A lot of research has been dedicated to aligning one or several varieties with the evolutionary trajectory of the model: a variety could be placed in stage 3, ‘nativization’, ‘the most vibrant and interesting of all the phases’ (Schneider 2017: 49) when it could be shown to display stable patterns of divergence from its historical input variety (i.e. British English, with the exception of the Philippines with American English as input variety). What exactly makes a linguistic feature ‘stable’ or ‘nativized’ is a question that can only partially be answered on the basis of corpus linguistic evidence. On the one hand, a predilection for standard or acrolectal usage was part of Greenbaum’s original vision for the ICE project. He noted with particular reference to countries where English is an L2 that ‘[t]he standard language, as elsewhere, would tend to be non-regional and represent the consensus of educated speakers’ (Greenbaum 1990: 82). That is, if a specific feature occurs quite frequently and is neither restricted to specific registers nor to speakers of a specific regional language background, then it is a promising candidate for an innovation on its way to becoming part of an emerging standard. However, corpora cannot show us the degree of acceptance of a particular feature in the speech community, regardless of its frequency. As long as there are no reference dictionaries for the variety in question, we have no firm evidence for stage 4 of Schneider’s model, ‘endonormative stabilization’. A host of studies have analysed the frequency and distribution of linguistic features in a specific variety or group of varieties, with the aim of establishing a ranking matching the stages of Schneider’s model. Intra-varietal descriptive accounts may either focus on highly variety-specific features or on common-core features; inter-varietal studies typically focus on the latter. Schneider’s theoretical framework has in fact encouraged the quest for quantitative rather than qualitative differences: while words fluctuate relatively easily, the grammar of a language tends to be much more stable and resistant to change. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that grammatical innovations, also in the process of structural nativization, typically start out where the regular meets the chaotic, i.e. at the intersection of grammar and lexis. Therefore, many of the characteristic innovations of PCEs [Postcolonial Englishes] can be located at this boundary; they concern the co-occurrence potential of certain

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words with other words or specific structures. . . . Of course, it takes a long while for such innovations to spread and get established, to proceed through the stages of individual preference to habit formation and cognitive entrenchment in the speech community. During the transition phase we therefore find variability, the coexistence of old and new forms, with the latter typically spreading in the S-curve fashion which sociolinguists have described. (Schneider 2007: 86) Schneider’s own comprehensive overview of research based on his model up to 2014 indeed shows that many projects cluster at the interface of grammar and the lexicon (Schneider 2014), and more recent studies are no exception.5 A study by Mukherjee and Gries (2009), for example, focused on verb complementation patterns in the three postcolonial varieties Hong Kong English, Indian English and Singapore English, and found ‘a steady cline of dissimilarity to the historical input variety. . . . Thus, the picture at large is that the more advanced a New English variety is in its evolution, the more dissimilar it is to British English at the level of collostructions’6 (Mukherjee and Gries 2009: 47–8). However, a follow-up study by the same authors on n-grams in the same three varieties failed to replicate the neat correlation of diverging frequencies with a specific evolutionary stage, leading them to the following conclusion: It seems to us that the grouping of New Englishes into evolutionary stages is a categorization at a very high level of abstraction; against this background it is obvious that a neat alignment of evolutionary stages on the one hand and linguistic features, their frequencies and their distribution on the other can only be found at the level of rather abstract linguistic configurations based on a wide range of linguistic forms. (Gries and Mukherjee 2010: 542) This important point will be taken up again in section 3.5.

3.2  Corpus Linguistic Research and the Notion of ‘Linguistic Epicentre’ (Hundt 2013) The term ‘epicentre’ with respect to varieties of English has been used by Leitner (2004: 1) for Australian English as ‘an epi-centre of English inside the Asia-Pacific region. It is starting to act as a regional player there and may eventually compete with American and British English.’ Hoffmann, Hundt and Mukherjee (2011) applied the concept to Indian English, and Biewer (2015) devotes a whole chapter to a detailed assessment of the notion, discussing the role of New Zealand English within the larger South Pacific region. Hundt (2013: 185) has provided a more rigorous definition: ‘[A] variety can be regarded as a potential epicentre if it shows endonormative stabilization (i.e. widespread use, general acceptance and codification of the local norms of English) on the one hand, and the potential to serve as a model of English for (neighboring?) countries on the other hand.’ Corpus linguistic studies in search of evidence for the epicentre status of a specific variety typically compare the frequencies of selected nativized features within neighbouring varieties, assuming that the variety with the higher frequency acts as the source for the surrounding varieties. However, in the absence of diachronic data, proving that a feature actually spread from one variety to another is fraught with the general difficulties of unambiguously establishing contact-induced language change (Lange 2017b: 23–4). Biewer (2015: 305) underlines the difficulty of proving epicentre status and suggests to let go of the concept: ‘It may be better to use the term norm competition rather than

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epicentre, (a) to focus on the process rather than suggesting a solid final outcome and (b) to get away from the underlying assumption that this might be a particularly strong factor in the formation of New Englishes.’

3.3  Globalization of Variation In the popular imagination, ‘globalization’ is often used as a synonym for ‘Americanization’, typically with negative connotations when it comes to the putative influence of American English not only on other varieties of English, but on language(s) and culture(s) in general. This particular strand within the complaint tradition has been put into perspective by Mair’s research results based on the Brown family of corpora: American influence operates selectively. As has been shown, it is pervasive in the lexicon, modest in the grammar, and almost nonexistent in pronunciation. Also, it tends to be restricted to communicative domains with a global reach – from international science and research to entertainment and mass culture. It is less in evidence in local communicative domains. . . . At least in the popular perception, the American influence on the changing and future structure of English tends to be exaggerated. American influence on changing discourse conventions, on the other hand, is generally underestimated. . . . American norms of usage have presented important and attractive models to users of English outside the United States. (Mair 2006: 194) D’Arcy (2020) approaches the basic question of how linguistic variables spread in and beyond speech communities from a state-of-the-art sociolinguistic perspective. Her main witness, quotative be like, has long been considered the prime example of a feature originating in US American English and then travelling the globe. However, ‘[t]he structural conditions to support the emergence of be like were in place prior to its development and it arose in parallel across major national varieties of English. In other words, its candidacy as a case of globalization is in doubt’ (D’Arcy 2020: 443). Both this chapter and Sharma (2017) demonstrate that sociolinguistics and World Englishes have a lot to gain from acknowledging each other.

3.4  ESL and EFL in Corpus Linguistic Research As alluded to earlier, the debate about who counts as a native speaker was at the core of the emergent field of World Englishes. Quirk (1990: 5–6) pitted L1 varieties of English against all others, stating that ‘[t]he problem with varieties in this branch [i.e. nonnative Englishes] is that they are inherently unstable, ranged along a qualitative cline, with each speaker seeking to move to a point where the varietal characteristics reach vanishing point, and where thus, ironically, each variety is best manifest in those who by commonsense measures speak it worst.’ Kachru then claimed that this perspective revealed a monolingual bias and insisted on a special status for what he called ‘institutionalized non-native varieties of English’ (e.g. Kachru 1991: 6), a distinction he incorporated into his model of the Three Circles of English. That is, for Postcolonial Englishes in multilingual settings to be taken seriously as varieties in their own right, they first had to be detached from the label ‘learner Englishes’. However, as early as 1986, Sridhar and Sridhar (1986) called for ‘bridging the paradigm gap’ that had thus opened up between the field of World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Their follow-up paper (Sridhar and Sridhar 2018) provides an updated assessment of the impact of World Englishes research on SLA and vice versa.

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Even if rejecting the designation ‘learner English’ for L2 Englishes was instrumental for establishing World Englishes as a legitimate field of study together with the emancipation of their speakers from Inner Circle norms, insights from the field of SLA have a lot to offer to World Englishes scholars. After all, both learner Englishes and World Englishes are ‘a product of a different, yet not entirely dissimilar language-acquisition process’ (Hundt and Mukherjee 2011b: 1), as discussed further, for example, in E. W. Schneider (2012) or Percillier (2016: 22–36). The reconciliation of the two approaches was given a boost when a larger range of learner corpora became available as a basis for comparison.7 The design features of learner corpora typically address their specific purpose both in their content and in their metadata. Learners’ text productions are frequently organized around a specific replicable task, for example a written essay on a set topic to ensure comparability. Further external variables such as level of proficiency in the foreign language and context of acquisition are provided for each contributing learner. Studies such as Nesselhauf (2009), the contributions in Mukherjee and Hundt (2011), Gilquin (2015) as well as the special issue of the journal World Englishes on World Englishes and SLA (World Englishes 37 [1]: 2018) all testify to the growing interest in ‘bridging the paradigm gap’. The last chapter in the volume edited by Mukherjee and Hundt (2011) provides a comprehensive overview of the conceptual issues arising from the individual studies: while some authors query the validity of the ENL-ESL-EFL distinction on the basis of their data, others find evidence in support of a native-nonnative differentiation. The editors’ conclusion calls for methodological pluralism: ‘Future studies are likely to profit from a methodologically integrated approach that combines corpus-based description with sociolinguistic data on the one hand and psycholinguistic evidence on the other hand’ (Hundt and Mukherjee 2011a: 216).

3.5  Limitations and Challenges Corpus linguistics and World Englishes represent a success story that is highly likely to continue in full swing in the foreseeable future. To refer to ‘limitations’ is not to cast away the numerous important insights, but to reflect critically on how our data influences our research questions. Some of the following concerns can (and probably will be) alleviated by more corpora and/or more and better corpus tools, while others call for a broader discussion. As already noted in section 3.2, there are to date no historical corpora of World Englishes that could be queried to shed light on the emergence and spread of variety-specific features. A corpus of historical Ghanaian English (Brato 2019) is under way; more are hopefully to follow. The ICE-project as a whole incorporates a – largely unwanted – diachronic dimension as noted in section 2.2. Recreating the ICE-Age 1 corpora with contemporary material would provide the same diachronic depth as in the Brown family of corpora. Finally, some varieties seem to hover on the fringe of the ICE-project forever: despite being listed with their national ICE-teams on the ICE website, not much is known about their progress (cf. Kirk and Nelson 2018: 712–14). One large gap in corpus coverage concerns ICE-USA, where only the written part is available. South Asia is only represented by ICE-India and now also ICE-Sri Lanka; African Englishes are now represented by a broader range of corpora (Nelson and Ozón 2017: 153). However, gaps in corpus coverage lead into a vicious circle: work on those varieties that are easily accessible via corpora piles up, while varieties which are not included in a

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corpus remain marginalized. By default, the corpus linguistic approach has also privileged specific levels of language over others: ‘Morpho-syntax is the structural level that has benefitted the most’ (Bernaisch and Deshors 2019b: 29). The most obviously neglected area of research concerns the pragmatics of World Englishes. The only pragmatically annotated ICE-corpus so far is ICE-Ireland, but the annotation scheme has not been replicated by other ICE-teams. Weisser (2017) has suggested a uniform automatic pragmatic annotation system. Still, the only corpus-based pragmatic studies of World Englishes deal with discourse markers such as well, which are easy to retrieve in a lexical corpus.8 It is then only natural that K. P. Schneider’s (2012) overview of variational pragmatics research on World Englishes opens up with research devoted to discourse markers, before turning to speech acts. The latter are frequently elicited by written discourse completion or discourse production tasks, a method pioneered by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), further refined and applied on a larger scale by Barron and Schneider (2005) with a focus on Irish English. Such questionnaire-based research requires a much higher degree of interaction with the speech community in focus, ideally an ethnographic approach. However, World Englishes corpora have facilitated decontextualized research on structural aspects of varieties, at the expense of more time-consuming research methods. ‘[T]he armchair corpus linguist . . . can now write a corpus-based monograph about a variety of English without ever having talked to a member of the targeted speech community, let alone visited the country where the variety is spoken’ (Lange 2017a: 40). Bernaisch and Deshors (2019a: 25) argue that even if ‘quantitative approaches have started to dominate WE research, corpus-based qualitative approaches should not be underestimated’; whether this should also apply to non-corpus-based qualitative approaches is up for the research community to negotiate. One overarching question deserves wider consideration, namely that of the status of the corpus linguistic variables within the relevant speech communities. Varieties of English may differ systematically from their historical input variety with respect to the higher or lower frequency of a specific feature, but does this feature carry sociolinguistic meaning for the speakers themselves? Corpus linguistic research can uncover patterns of which the speech community is unaware, but only the speech community can imbue a specific realization of a variable with the kind of indexical meaning that might lead from variation to change.

4  OUTLOOK: BEYOND BOUNDARIES The new millennium has already given rise to technological and social developments which need to be addressed by World Englishes research paradigms. People and peoples have always travelled and migrated (both voluntarily and involuntarily); but the sheer size of population movements around the globe in the last two decades has prompted new conceptualizations such as ‘superdiversity’ (Vertovec 2007) and ‘transnationalism’ (see e.g. Mair or Lee and Canagarajah, this volume). Both concepts include an emphasis on the relevance of multilingual resources for both individuals and societies, and they imply rather than spell out the further spread of English as the world’s uncontested lingua franca. Schneider (2014) has discussed the repercussions of globalization and transnationalism with respect to further developments in Postcolonial Englishes and beyond. He explicitly acknowledges the dynamism of grassroots and hybrid Englishes in Expanding Circle contexts. He further concedes that these uses of English fall outside

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of the descriptive framework of his Dynamic Model and suggests ‘that the current rush towards and the multiple applications of Englishes on a global scale represent a process best conceptualized as “Transnational Attraction” – the appropriation of (components of) English(es) for whatever communicative purposes at hand, unbounded by distinctions of norms, nations or varieties’ (Schneider 2014: 28). Buschfeld and Kautzsch (2020) probe further into the issue of Englishes in new contexts, proposing to incorporate them into a unified model, the Extra- and Intraterritorial Forces (EIF) Model. The coming years will show whether this model will spark as much corpus linguistic research on World Englishes as its predecessor. However, globalization and transnationalism do not only become manifest with the physical movement of people(s). We can now communicate instantly regardless of national boundaries and physical distance in general; media products and social media platforms are equally instantly accessible, transcending their source contexts and being made available for global consumption. Speech communities or communities of practice emerge online, inhabiting a shared space between the global and the local and negotiating their own norms. Again, the future will show whether the increasingly sophisticated corpus linguistic toolkit can rise to the challenge of increasingly diversified contexts for World Englishes.

NOTES 1. See http:​/​/www​​.hels​​inki.​​fi​/va​​rieng​​/CoRD​​/corp​​​ora​/F​​LOB/ as well as http:​/​/www​​.hels​​inki.​​fi​/va​​ rieng​​/CoRD​​/corp​​o​ra​/F​​ROWN/​ for more information on the two corpora. 2. See http:​/​/www​​.hels​​inki.​​fi​/va​​rieng​​/CoRD​​/corp​​ora​​/B​​-BROW​​N/ as well as http:​/​/www​​.hels​​ inki.​​fi​/va​​rieng​​/CoRD​​/corp​​ora​/B​​​LOB​-1​​931/ for updated information on the availability of the corpora. The Corpus Resource Database (CoRD) has an entry for a 2009 update to the Brown family, named CLOB and Crown: http:​/​/www​​.hels​​inki.​​fi​/va​​rieng​​/CoRD​​/corp​​​ora​/C​​ LOB/ (however, at the time of writing this text, the links to these corpora seemed to be out of date). 3. For the corpus design, see https​:/​/ww​​w​.ice​​-corp​​ora​.u​​zh​.ch​​/en​/d​​e​sign​​.html​. 4. The corpus can be accessed via https://www​.english​-corpora​.org​/glowbe/ (registration required). 5. See also Deshors and Bernaisch (2019b: 33–40) for an annotated timeline of selected research up to 2018. 6. The term ‘collostruction’ is ‘a blend of collocation and construction’ (Mukherjee and Gries 2009: 36). 7. See Lange and Leuckert (2020: 170–5) for a brief overview of available learner corpora, their accessibility and their design features. 8. See Aijmer (2015) for a general introduction to the corpus-based study of pragmatic markers.

REFERENCES Aijmer, K. (2015), ‘Pragmatic Markers’, in C. Rühlemann and K. Aijmer (eds), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook, 195–218, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barron, A. and K.-P. Schneider, eds (2005), The Pragmatics of Irish English, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Bernaisch, T. and S. C. Deshors (2019a), ‘Applying Corpus Methods to Explore World Englishes: A Practical Perspective’, in P. de Costa, D. Crowther and J. Maloney (eds), Investigating World Englishes: Research Methodology and Practical Applications, 85–103, London: Routledge. Bernaisch, T. and S. C. Deshors (2019b), ‘Corpus Approaches to World Englishes: A Bird’s Eye View’, in P. de Costa, D. Crowther and J. Maloney (eds), Investigating World Englishes: Research Methodology and Practical Applications, 21–43, London: Routledge. Biewer, C. (2015), South Pacific Englishes: A Sociolinguistic and Morphosyntactic Profile of Fiji English, Samoan English and Cook Islands English, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Blum-Kulka, S., J. House and G. Kasper, eds (1989), Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies, Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Brato, T. (2019), ‘The Historical Corpus of English in Ghana (HiCE Ghana): Motivation, Compilation, Opportunities’, in A. U. Esimaje, U. Gut and B. E. Antia (eds), Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes, 120–41, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brezina, V., R. Love and K. Aijmer, eds (2018), Corpus Approaches to Contemporary British Speech: Sociolinguistic Studies of the Spoken BNC2014, New York and London: Routledge. Buschfeld, S. and A. Kautzsch (2020), ‘Theoretical Models of English as a World Language’, in D. Schreier, M. Hundt and E. W. Schneider (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, 51–71, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D’Arcy, A. (2020), ‘The Relevance of World Englishes for Variationist Sociolinguistics’, in D. Schreier, M. Hundt and E. W. Schneider (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, 436–58, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies, M. and R. Fuchs (2015), ‘Expanding Horizons in the Study of World Englishes with the 1.9 Billion word Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE)’, English World-Wide, 36 (1): 1–28. Edwards, A. (2017), ‘ICE Age 3: The Expanding Circle’, World Englishes, 36 (3): 404–26. Gilquin, G. (2015), ‘At the Interface of Contact Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition Research: New Englishes and Learner Englishes Compared’, English World-Wide, 36 (1): 91–124. Greenbaum, S. (1988), ‘A Proposal for an International Computerized Corpus of English’, World Englishes, 7 (3): 315–5. Greenbaum, S. (1990), ‘Standard English and the International Corpus of English’, World Englishes, 9 (1): 79–83. Gries, S. T. and J. Mukherjee (2010), ‘Lexical Gravity across Varieties of English: An ICE-Based Study of N-Grams in Asian Englishes’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15 (4): 520–48. Hoffmann, S. (2007), ‘From Web Page to Mega-Corpus: The CNN Transcripts’, in M. Hundt, N. Nesselhauf and C. Biewer (eds), Corpus Linguistics and the Web, 69–85, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Hoffmann, S., M. Hundt and J. Mukherjee (2011), ‘Indian English – An Emerging Epicentre? A Pilot Study on Light Verbs in Web-Derived Corpora of South Asian Englishes’, Anglia Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 129 (3–4): 258–80. Hundt, M. (2013), ‘The Diversification of English: Old, New and Emerging Epicentres’, in D. Schreier and M. Hundt (eds), English as a Contact Language, 182–203, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hundt, M. (2015), ‘World Englishes’, in D. Biber and R. Reppen (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics, 362–80, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Hundt, M. (2020), ‘Corpus-Based Approaches to World Englishes’, In D. Schreier, M. Hundt and E. W. Schneider (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, 506–33, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hundt, M. and J. Mukherjee (2011a), ‘Discussion Forum: New Englishes and Learner Englishes – quo vadis?’, in J. Mukherjee and M. Hundt (eds), Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap, 209–18, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hundt, M. and J. Mukherjee (2011b), ‘Introduction: Bridging a Paradigm Gap’, in J. Mukherjee and M. Hundt (eds), Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap, 1–6, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hundt, M., N. Nesselhauf and C. Biewer, eds (2007), Corpus Linguistics and the Web, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kachru, B. B. (1991), ‘Liberation Linguistics and the Quirk Concern’, English Today, 7 (1): 3–13. Kirk, J. and G. Nelson (2018), ‘The International Corpus of English Project: A Progress Report’, World Englishes, 37 (4): 697–716. Lange, C. (2012), The Syntax of Spoken Indian English, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lange, C. (2017a), ‘“Mine Is Bigger Than Yours” or rather “Small Is Beautiful”? (Re) Contextualizing Postcolonial Englishes’, Anglistik, 28 (1): 31–42. Lange, C. (2017b), ‘Indian English or Indian Englishes? Accounting for Speakers’ Multilingual Repertoires in Corpora of Postcolonial Englishes’, in A. Nurmi, T. Rütten and P. Pahta (eds), Challenging the Myth of Monolingual Corpora, 16–38, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Lange, C. and S. Leuckert (2020), Corpus Linguistics for World Englishes: A Guide for Research, London: Taylor and Francis. Leech, G. (2007), ‘New Resources, or Just Better Old Ones? The Holy Grail of Representativeness’, in M. Hundt, N. Nesselhauf and C. Biewer (eds), Corpus Linguistics and the Web, 133–49, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Leech, G., M. Hundt, C. Mair and N. Smith (2009), Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leitner, G. (2004), Australia's Many Voices: Australian English, The National Language, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Loureiro-Porto, L. (2017), ‘ICE vs GloWbE: Big Data and Corpus Compilation’, World Englishes, 36 (3): 448–70. Mair, C. (2006), Twentieth Century English: History, Variation and Standardization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mair, C. (2015), ‘Response to Davies and Fuchs‘, English World-Wide, 36 (1): 29–33. Mair, C. (2017), ‘World Englishes and Corpora’, in M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds), The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes, 102–22, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mukherjee, J. and S. Gries (2009), ‘Collostructional Nativisation in New Englishes: VerbConstruction Associations in the International Corpus of English’, English World-Wide, 30 (1): 27–51. Mukherjee, J. and M. Hundt, eds (2011), Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nelson, G. and G. Ozón (2017), ‘World Englishes and Corpus Linguistics’, in E. L. Low and A. Pakir (eds), World Englishes: Rethinking Paradigms, 149–64, London: Routledge. Nesselhauf, N. (2009), ‘Co-Selection Phenomena across New Englishes: Parallels (and Differences) to Foreign Learner Varieties’, English World-Wide, 30 (1): 1–25.

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Percillier, M. (2016), World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition: Insights from Southeast Asian Englishes, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Quirk, R. (1985), ‘The English Language in a Global Context’, in R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (eds), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, 1–10, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.tea​​ching​​engli​​ sh​.or​​g​.uk/​​sites​​/teac​​heng/​​files​​/F044​​%20EL​​T​-60%​​20Eng​​lish%​​20in%​​20the​​%20Wo​​rld​%2​​0-​ %20​​Teach​​ing​%2​​0and%​​20Lea​​rning​​%20th​​e​%20L​​angua​​​ge​%20​​and​%2​​0Lite​​ratur​​es​_v3​​_1​.pd​f (accessed 19 March 2020). Quirk, R. (1990), ‘Language Varieties and Standard Language’, English Today, 6 (1): 3–10. Schneider, E. W. (2007), Postcolonial English. Varieties Around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, E. W. (2012), ‘Exploring the Interface between World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition – And Implications for English as a Lingua Franca’, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1 (1): 57–91. Schneider, E. W. (2014), ‘New Reflections on the Evolutionary Dynamics of World Englishes’, World Englishes, 33 (1): 9–32. Schneider, E. W. (2017), ‘Models of English in the World’, in M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds), The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes, 35–62, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schneider, K. P. (2012), ‘Pragmatics’, in R. Hickey (ed.), Areal Features of the Anglophone World, 463–86. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Sedlatschek, A. (2009), Contemporary Indian English: Variation and Change, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sharma, D. (2017), ‘World Englishes and Sociolinguistic Theory’, in M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds), The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes, 232–51, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sridhar, K. K. and S. N. Sridhar (1986), ‘Bridging the Paradigm Gap: Second Language Acquisition Theory and Indigenized Varieties of English’, World Englishes, 5 (1): 3–14. Sridhar, S. N. and K. K. Sridhar (2018), ‘Coda 2 A Bridge Half-Built: Toward a Holistic Theory of Second Language Acquisition and World Englishes’, World Englishes, 37 (1): 127–39. Vertovec, S. (2007), ‘Super-Diversity and Its Implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30 (6): 1024–54. Weisser, M. (2017), ‘Annotating the ICE Corpora Pragmatically – Preliminary Issues & Steps’, ICAME Journal, 41 (1): 181–214.

Chapter 5

Register in World Englishes Research AXEL BOHMANN

1  INTRODUCTION This contribution takes stock of the role of register in World Englishes research (WE in the following) and argues that register is an under-appreciated category at present. In a field fundamentally concerned with relations among varieties of English, these are usually circumscribed at the level of the nation state. The structure of both the most influential theoretical WE models (Kachru 1985; Schneider 2007) and the available corpora (ICE, Greenbaum and Nelson 1996; GloWbE, Davies and Fuchs 2015) reflects such a national orientation. The influence of register, while recognized in principle in many studies, is treated both as uniform across varieties and as clearly secondary to the geographicnational dimension. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate what can be gained from a more register-attuned perspective as well as to present a concrete methodology for crossvarietal register analysis. Starting with Strevens’s (1980) recognition of the influence US English exerts on a global scale, WE research has engaged in a decomposition of the English language into separate varieties. Whereas fragmentation has at times been perceived as a threat to mutual intelligibility (Greenbaum 1991: 4), endonormative developments today are generally regarded as signs of linguistic emancipation. Still, the focus on differences and similarities among varieties remains. Yet, how to quantify the extent to which two varieties of English are similar or different is anything but clear. Complex processes of normative (re-)orientation, internal developments and general drifts operate simultaneously, leading to a large array of different attested developmental patterns (Hundt 2009), depending on which linguistic feature a researcher considers. There remains a tension between this complexity and the standard theoretical models within WE research, which all suggest unidimensional stratification of varieties, either within one of three circles of norm development (Kachru 1985) or along a pathway of postcolonial linguistic emancipation (Schneider 2007). The importance of the political-territorial dimension of individual nation states as the fundamental structuring category has also often gone unchallenged (pace such critiques as Pennycook 2007). This tendency is in the process of being amended in recent theory-building, which focuses more explicitly on the dynamics of mutual influence among different Englishes (Mair 2013; Schneider 2014); but the most productive empirical bases

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for research in the field, the large-scale corpus projects ICE and GloWbE, still privilege a national perspective. The present contribution regards the individual text, understood as any coherent stretch of discourse irrespective of modality, as the fundamental unit of analysis. It casts a critical eye on the role of national provenance in structuring linguistic variation by systematically comparing this aspect to another category, register. A recent debate about the decline of modal verbs serves as the starting point for the discussion, followed by a clarification of the terms ‘register’ and ‘genre’. An overview of register-focused research in WE leads to a summary of empirical results from one particular study (Bohmann 2019), which are developed further and contextualized within broader theoretical debates in WE. I argue that register should not only be taken seriously in its own right, but that it is in fact a better predictor of variation in the textual ecology of global English than national variety. Analyses that do not account for register differences run a high risk of producing distorted findings; but even such research that controls for register effects partly misses the point if it treats register as a mere confounding influence. Instead, whatever processes of convergence, divergence, mutual influence, etc. occur in English worldwide always occur in specific registers. The most productive perspective for inter-varietal comparison is thus not that of the language as a whole, but one that situates linguistic variation in the specific registers in which it circulates.

2  CHANGE AND DIFFERENTIATION IN ‘THE LANGUAGE AS A WHOLE’ As a starting point, it is instructive to review a debate between the late Geoffrey Leech and Neil Millar about change in the English modal system. Although the discussion initially concerns the English language in general, its implications for WE research are particularly salient, as will become clear. On the basis of the core quartet of the Brown corpora – 1 million words each, representing published American and British English writing from the 1960s and the 1990s – Leech (2003) documents a decline in the use of modal verbs, which he frames as part of ‘a general and long-lasting trend’ (Leech 2003: 96). Millar (2009) presents criticism of both the empirical basis and some specific findings in Leech (2003). In regard to the former, he opts for an analysis of the TIME Magazine Corpus (Davies 2007), which samples every issue of that publication between 1926 and 2006. The strengths of this approach, according to Millar (2009: 193), lie in greater corpus size, internal consistency, representativeness as well as diachronic depth and resolution. Millar’s findings show a great amount of fluctuation in frequency counts from one point in time to another. This observation invites skepticism when considering findings from the Brown corpora, which only represent two separate time points and consequently might be susceptible to similar, largely random fluctuation. When measuring frequency developments yearly, Millar argues, individual deviations even out and more meaningful diachronic patterns can be established. In a table reporting the total counts for all modal verbs from 1961 to 1991, Millar (2009: 207) reports a slight overall increase, in contradiction to Leech. Leech (2011) is a direct response to Millar’s argument, focusing especially on the representativeness of TIME Magazine in relation to ‘the English language as a whole’ (Leech 2011: 550). To somewhat oversimplify the picture, the issue becomes one of small-and-balanced versus large, single-genre corpora. Millar bases generalizations about

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overall language change on an empirically well-supported analysis of one specific kind of text, whereas Leech argues for including the broadest range of registers possible in order for individual, text-type-specific tendencies not to occlude general trends. The relevance of this discussion for WE research is made explicit by Mair (2015), who shows that within a sixty-year time frame, many developments in individual modals reverse direction mid-way, and apparently significant differences between British and American English are diachronically highly unstable. A large proportion of the fluidity and instability in the data is attributed to the effect of ‘genre variability as a confounding factor’ (Mair 2015: 141). Mair’s conclusion for WE is somewhat disillusioning. He maintains that ultimately ‘any claims about the existence of stable regional contrasts in the use of modals and semi-modals in the New Englishes should be viewed skeptically’ (Mair 2015: 123). The implications of this statement go well beyond one specific set of features. Modal auxiliaries are among the highest-frequency phenomena studied in written corpora, with frequencies of occurrence consistently above 10,000 per million words (see Mair 2015: 134). But if even trends established on the basis of hundreds or thousands of tokens are as ephemeral as the analyses above demonstrate, what hope is there that anything meaningful can be said about most other features? Hundt’s (2009) findings that individual developments in different varieties of English can assume at least six patterns, from colonial lag to extraterritorial innovation to more complex processes, such as resurrection of obsolescent forms and ‘kick-down developments’ (Hundt 2009: 33), point in a similar direction. Each attested pattern provides a good fit for the phenomenon it applies to, but in conjunction Hundt’s typology is descriptive rather than explanatory. It offers no criteria for predicting what developments a given feature will undergo, and the author is skeptical about the possibility of such predictions in general (Hundt 2009: 35). The question, for WE, becomes on what basis any comparison between varieties can be made, and whether the whole enterprise is not ultimately pointless. The perspective taken in this chapter is not quite as disheartening, though it does call into question some of the established corpus-based research in WE. What I would suggest is that neither Millar’s nor Leech’s position is entirely ideal for capturing linguistic variation and change in full detail. Millar restricts his analysis to one specific register and consequently reaches conclusions that are ‘very robust in telling us about the English of TIME magazine’ (Leech 2011: 550). Yet any extrapolation beyond this narrowly defined context is subject to serious question. Leech, on the other hand, has his sights firmly on the general picture of the language as a whole. Developments in individual registers are treated as secondary at best. Neither author takes seriously the notion I wish to propose here, namely: that differences in register might reveal some of the most valuable information about the patterns of differentiation and change that characterize the language.

3  REGISTER AND GENRE IN TWO RESEARCH TRADITIONS Register is a long-established concept in (socio)linguistics, but one that is recently enjoying renewed currency, as reflected, for instance, by the launch of the journal Register Studies in 2019. The closely related term genre, often used synonymously, is more common in other disciplines, but has also been systematically discussed in relation to register from a linguistic perspective. I restrict my discussion of register and genre here largely to the

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research tradition of multidimensional (MD) analysis (Biber 1988; Biber and Conrad 2009). Another approach to register that is of particular importance in WE, systemicfunctional linguistics (SFL, see Matthiessen 2019), is represented by Neumann (2012, 2014), which I discuss later in this chapter. For a more varied overview, the reader is referred to the inaugural issue of the aforementioned journal, in which leading figures from five fields present their respective approaches to register. In MD research, register is defined as ‘a variety associated with a particular situation’ (Biber and Conrad 2009: 6). Situational context is understood in a relatively open-ended fashion as a catalogue of potentially relevant aspects eclectically sampled from a range of research traditions (Biber and Conrad 2009: 39–47). These include, for instance, participant constellations, communicative purpose, channel of communication and discourse topic. Whether and to which extent any of the individual aspects of context is relevant for a given analysis is a matter left for the individual researcher to decide. Here, an important difference between MD and other approaches becomes clear: rather than a comprehensive theoretical framework with a closed set of categories invested with considerable theoretical importance, MD research is primarily a methodological approach that proceeds inductively, drawing connections between linguistic aspects of texts and their situational contexts as motivated by the data and without further a priori theoretical commitments. An MD study follows a relatively fixed series of methodological steps. Corpus texts are selected to represent the registers under study. From each text, frequency information is extracted for a large number of individual linguistic features. Based on co-occurrence patterns of features across texts, and drawing on the statistical tool of exploratory factor analysis, features are grouped into bundles that behave similarly in similar contexts. These bundles are referred to as dimensions of variation, and each corpus text receives a score for each dimension, representing its behaviour in respect to that aspect of variation. The dimensions themselves are interpreted both with respect to their associated features and in terms of what kinds of texts receive particularly high or low dimension scores. To provide a concrete example, an MD analysis comparing academic writing and science journalism would first collect a corpus of texts from both registers, usually comprising at least several hundred individual texts. In each text under consideration it would measure, for instance, the frequency of passive-voice constructions, of personal pronouns and the average sentence length. The finding that longer sentences are typical for texts with more passive-voice constructions, and that such texts show comparatively few personal pronouns would be reflected statistically in that all three features would be subsumed under the same dimension of variation. In the present example, this dimension might be functionally interpreted as reflecting a cline between informational and involved production, and academic texts would pattern toward the more informational end of the continuum compared to science journalism. The MD method was introduced in Biber (1988) and has been consolidated into a stable paradigm in numerous publications since, with varying degrees of modification to the original parameters. These were a set of sixty-seven individual linguistic features, developed into seven dimensions of variation (for a closer discussion and adaptation, see section 5). The original intention was to break down the dichotomy between spoken and written language into a more realistic, empirically motivated set of textual distinctions. The method has been extended to contrastive comparison of American and British English (Biber 1987), to historical developments (Biber and Finegan 1989) and to sociolinguistic questions (Biber and Finegan 1994). Among the languages that have been analysed from

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an MD perspective are Nukulaelae Tuvaluan (Besnier 1988), Somali (Biber and Hared 1992) and Brazilian Portuguese (Sardinha, Kauffmann and Acunzo 2014). Out of this diverse body of research, a small number of dimensions have emerged that consistently appear relevant across different languages and situational contexts. Biber (e.g. 2014) in particular has emphasized the universal appeal of MD research and the direct, causal connection between situational parameters and linguistic variation. Genre is a much less central term in linguistics. Within SFL, the most systematic treatment of genre can be found in Martin (1992; see also Martin and Rose 2008). From an MD perspective, Biber and Conrad (2009) directly contrast register and genre as two analytical windows into textual variation. In both accounts, genres are sequentially organized communicative activities that derive their status from a sociocultural understanding of the activity at hand. In Biber and Conrad’s terms, this sociocultural understanding takes the form of rhetorical conventions, whereas for Martin (1992: 505) the notion of a ‘goal-oriented social process’ is central. Culturally specific ways of organizing such processes are the central motivation for the separate status genre is given in his account compared to register. Given their emphasis on sequential organization, both perspectives also agree that genres refer to texts as wholes rather than isolated linguistic aspects or frequency aggregates. Analysing texts in terms of genre points outwards to larger social configurations, culturally mediated understandings of communicative goals and the appropriate means to achieve them. I mention genre here because the concept offers a useful perspective to place quantitative, feature-based register analyses into larger perspectives, a point I return to in section 7.

4  ATTENTION TO REGISTER IN CURRENT WE RESEARCH Turning attention to how register has figured in WE, it is opportune to adopt Neumann’s (2014) three types of studies involving register. The first are register-monolithic approaches that bypass situational variation by considering one register only. Much of the initial descriptive work on specific varieties follows this paradigm for practical reasons, as do studies at the intersection of WE and variationist sociolinguistics, which tend to focus on conversations as their source of data (e.g. Davydova 2015; Palacios Martínez 2016). Another register that has been studied comparatively across varieties from such a monolithic vantage point is news writing (Noël and Van der Auwera 2015; Hackert and Deuber 2015). In the debate over the development of the English modal system introduced in section 2, Millar (2009) exemplifies a ‘type 1’ study. Neumann’s second type of study considers multiple registers simultaneously in the analysis of a linguistic feature, but does so in order to make claims about the feature itself rather than registers. The advent of the ICE corpora with their detailed and closely matched text category stratification has made this type of analysis a staple in WE research. Both Leech (2011) and Mair (2015) in the discussion of the English modal system introduced earlier can be termed ‘type 2’ studies. It is fair to say that controlling for register has become standard practice in (corpus) research in WE, often as a simple reflex invited by the ICE sampling framework. However, the focus is clearly on controlling rather than theorizing register. Such a theoretical orientation towards register as the central object of study is the hallmark of the third type of study Neumann (2014) discusses. On the whole, WE is

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characterized by a relative dearth of such research. One notable contribution is Hundt and Mair (1999), who distinguish different registers according to their agility, that is their openness to linguistic innovations. Beyond acknowledging that register differences exist, this research leads to a better understanding of the relationships between registers and the expectations one might have about how processes of linguistic change are actualized in them. The most systematic ‘type 3’ studies in WE have emerged out of the SFL and MD paradigms. An example of the former is Neumann (2012), who studies aspects of field, tenor and mode in five registers for six varieties of English. Her results indicate that not all registers show the same amount of cross-varietal differentiation, with timed exams displaying the most marked divergences. Neumann advances the tentative proposal that ‘registers marking a middle ground of social distance might be more likely to highlight socio-culturally conditioned differences between varieties’ (Neumann 2012: 92). Xiao (2009) is the first WE study to apply an MD approach, engaging in comparisons across five varieties represented in ICE. The study is descriptively insightful, but frames its contribution largely in methodological terms, by adding a semantic dimension to register studies. Differences and similarities across varieties and registers are noted, but ultimately no explanation for these differences and similarities is proposed. Also worth noting is van Rooy et al.’s (2010) comparison between register differentiation in East African English (EAE), British and American English. The authors attest a similar degree, but a different nature, of register differentiation between EAE and the reference varieties. Specifically, EAE registers are found to be more oriented towards formality and explicit elaboration. This difference is attributed to the fact that in East Africa, as in many post-colonial settings, languages other than English fulfil private, interpersonal communicative functions, shifting the character of local English towards the more formal. Whether this pattern holds on a more general level, however, remains to be determined. Finally, the most direct comparison of register and variety influences on linguistic variation in English worldwide is presented by Kruger and van Rooy (2018), who analyse a corpus of written texts from sixteen varieties of English as well as an additional translated component. The material is stratified into the six categories of published writing represented in ICE. Going beyond the descriptive work of establishing dimensions of linguistic variation in an MD framework, the authors also run regression models to predict each corpus text’s dimension scores on the basis of its variety and text category. This method enables them to gauge the extent to which variety and text category explain the linguistic variation expressed in the dimensions they develop. They also consider an interaction term between the two predictors, expressing the notion that what variety a text is from may influence how text category shapes variation, that is that relations among text categories are variety-specific rather than globally uniform. The results are consistent across the four dimensions in the study and can be summarized as follows:

1. Both text category (six types of published writing) and variety type (eight levels, categorized by a mix of contact situation, geography and developmental phase according to Schneider’s 2007 Dynamic Model) are significant predictors of variation.



2. None of the models selected as optimal includes an interaction term between variety and category and consequently the effects of these two predictors are interpreted to be independent of each other.



3. The effect size for text category exceeds that for variety in all models.

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According to this study, then, while register certainly plays a role in structuring global English variation, it appears that researchers primarily interested in cross-varietal differences need not be unduly troubled by its effects. The independence of the two predictors means that once register is controlled for (by concentrating the analysis on a specific text category or by including a broad range of categories, as exemplified by Millar and Leech, respectively), any differences between varieties that emerge as statistically significant can be taken as robust and general. In the following section, I present results from a large-scale MD study that complicate this picture and draw attention to a need for more explicit modelling of register.

5  A TEN-DIMENSIONAL SPACE OF VARIATION The results reported below derive from a register-centred attempt to deal with some of the issues presented in the beginning of this chapter. To recapitulate, these are:

1. Variation in individual features can be internally volatile: a single feature or narrow sub-system of the grammar may show significant frequency differences across varieties, registers or sampling points in time, but these differences are often ephemeral rather than systematically meaningful.



2. Two features may behave entirely differently when compared across the same set of varieties. Consequently, generalizing from one feature or a small number of features to cross-varietal relations on the whole is problematic.



3. Even where cross-varietal tendencies appear robust across a larger number of linguistic features, the relative importance of variety compared to other predictors of variation, specifically here: register, is not fully appreciated at present.

To address these problems, a wide-angle solution is needed that is able to detect general tendencies obtaining across a large range of linguistic phenomena. The analysis presented later rests on a detailed, book-length MD description of variation in English worldwide (Bohmann 2019), the details of which are beyond the scope of this chapter. Here, I restrict myself to outlining the data and methods as well as the general findings required as background to the analysis in the following section. In Bohmann (2019), ten dimensions of variation are developed on the basis of frequency profiles for 236 linguistic features measured in 7,309 corpus texts. These texts represent the full breadth of the ICE sampling framework for ten national standard varieties of English (AmE,1 BrE, CanE, HKE, PhilE, IndE, IrE, JamE, NZE, SgE) as well as a custom collected corpus of Twitter messages from across the English-speaking world. This is a larger empirical basis, both in terms of extracted features and of varieties and registers considered, than any previous MD study of global English. Table  5.1 gives a summary of the dimensional structure developed in Bohmann (2019). Biber’s (1988) original, six-dimensional structure is often cited as a point of reference for newer MD analysis, and for this reason, Table 5.1 includes a column that expresses each of the new dimensions’ relationship to this work. Qualitative interpretation of each dimension is not the focus here. However, what can be seen from Table 5.1 is that, for most of the ten dimensions developed in Bohmann (2019), a relatively clear correspondence to those found in Biber (1988) can be established. Given the higher number of measured linguistic variables and texts under analysis, it is not surprising that more dimensions were found, with more than one sometimes

first person and indefinite pronouns, wanna, gonna, gotta, ain’t

Colloquial markedness

reference

preposition sequences, time and place adverbials

third person pronouns, past perfect, standardness, could, reporting verbs

standardness, agentless passives, prepositions

word length

–

– conjuncts, often, prepositions, indefinite articles, emphatics, adjectival comparatives

contractions, private verbs, word length discourse-organizing so, because, pronoun it, personal pronouns, multiple negation, actually, standardness, HAVE (to), WANT to, will (contracted)

Twitter

spontaneous monologue

creative writing

student writing

private dialogue

personal and academic prose indefinite pronouns, contractions, negator not, private verbs, high-frequency adjectives

prepositions, passive constructions, nominalization suffixes, Latinate prefixes, definite articles, conjuncts, long words, hyphenation

High scores

Negative features

Positive features

Situational anchoring of

canonical narrative focus

focus

concrete informational

Conceptual versus

communicative orientation

Collaborative

informational production

involved versus

Dimension

TABLE 5.1  Dimensions of Variation Developed in Bohmann (2019) Relation to Biber (1988)

involved versus informational production

news reports, instructional writing

student writing, academic prose

–

(Continued)

explicit versus situationdependent reference

Twitter, academic narrative versus nonprose narrative concerns

news reports, abstract versus nonprivate dialogues abstract information

informational writing

private dialogue, involved versus Twitter informational production

Low scores

87

Addressee-orientation

second-person pronouns, if, unless, can

main verb BE, standardness, demonstrative pronouns, existential there, definite articles, conjuncts, complementizer that

Relation to Biber (1988)

Twitter

academic prose

–

overt expression of persuasion

–

instructional overt expression of writing, academic persuasion prose

Low scores

s-genitives, nominal instructional writing scripted monologue suffixes, word length

public dialogue, student writing

validity

assertion of factual

–

persuasive writing

–

correspondence writing

standardness, epistemic markers of certainty, would, present perfect

Explicit stance-marking

High scores

Negative features

Future-oriented discourse will (uncontracted), reporting – verbs, progressive aspect

Positive features

Dimension

TABLE 5.1  (Continued)

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corresponding to a single one in Biber (1988, for example overt expression of persuasion) or, in the case of colloquial markedness, the new register of Twitter accounting for a previously unattested aspect of variation. Further, each dimension has received a functionally meaningful label, addressing commonalities among its salient linguistic features as well as its association with particular kinds of text. Plausible interpretations for each dimension can be obtained, despite the fact that the statistical analysis itself proceeds unsupervised and without any functional information beyond frequency counts. Taken together with the parallels between the present factor solution and Biber’s (1988) as well as many other similar studies, these observations attest to both the internal and external validity of the statistical method in general as well as the particular findings reported here. The ten-dimensional space of variation circumscribed in Table 5.1 is descriptively interesting in many ways, but does not in itself indicate problems with the way register is treated in most WE research to date. To ascertain whether this is the case, a further analysis is required. Accepting the assumption that whatever systematic variation exists in the corpus under study is expressed in the joint behaviour of the ten dimensions, it becomes possible to ask what factors account for this systematic variation, and specifically: whether national variety or register exerts a greater influence. In Bohmann (2019: 180–90), this question is briefly addressed with a relatively coarse approach. For each dimension, all texts’ scores on that dimension’s score continuum are predicted with two simple linear models, one with variety and the other with text category as predictors. The R2 value for the models, representing the amount of variance explained by either predictor, are compared directly as to their size. The consistent result is that register is disproportionally more effective at predicting dimension scores. The exception is the dimension explicit stance-marking, for which variety is a marginally more effective predictor (R2 = 0.22) than register (R2 = 0.16). Leaving aside this interesting particular dimension, the overall picture is clear: by far the larger amount of systematic variation in the data can be explained with reference to register rather than by appealing to cross-varietal differentiation.

6  THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF REGISTER AND VARIETY The abovementioned findings carry relevance for research in WE as a cautionary reminder that there may be more important predictors of variation than the country a text sample is from. However, a skeptical reader might argue that this fact is well established and is indeed the reason for the carefully stratified sampling framework of ICE. It may be entirely justified to focus on geography rather than on register for reasons of theoretical interest. As long as register is controlled for, as in the type 2 study typical of ICE-based research today, the results should still be valid. Such a line of reasoning rests on the assumption that national variety and register are fundamentally independent predictors of variation. That is the notion that whatever influence register exerts in one variety will be constant in another. In order to establish whether this is the case, multivariate regression models for dimension score prediction are required, with the possibility of including an interaction term between register and variety. A regression model estimates the influence of a number of predictor variables, here: variety and register, on the predicted value of an outcome variable, here: dimension score. The effect of each predictor is estimated while holding the effect of the other constant. If, however, the influence of one predictor depends on the other, that is if the influence of register is fundamentally different in one variety than another, this needs to

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be captured by an interaction term between the two predictors. To decide whether any predictor, including a possible interaction term, is relevant, formalized methods of model comparison can be employed. If model comparison shows models without an interaction term to be superior to those which include an interaction term, this can be taken as evidence in favour of the assumption of independence. If the opposite is the case, the situation becomes more problematic from a WE perspective. Kruger and van Rooy (2018) take this kind of multivariate approach, the results of which were summarized in section 4. Like Bohmann (2019), they find a consistently larger effect size for text category than for register as predictors of a text’s score on all of their dimensions. They do not find, in any of their models, that inclusion of an interaction term is justified. However, care is required when considering the scope of this claim. First, while they sample a maximally broad range of variety types (going beyond the national standard varieties considered in most research to include sub-divisions such as native South African as well as Afrikaans English and also translated texts), the selection of text categories is more restricted. Not only are half of the categories in ICE excluded from the study. The ones that are included represent precisely the kind of discourse under the most immediate levelling influence of the written standard: published writing. Such a design gives any variety effect a much greater chance of being detected than a register effect. Also, the registers in which inter-varietal differences are most likely to occur are not included, therefore hampering the chances of any interaction effect to be detected. Arguably, the data in Bohmann (2019) present a better testing ground for the question whether register and variety influence linguistic variation independent of each other. These are more comprehensive in their coverage, including the entire ICE sampling framework and Twitter discourse, and restrict inter-varietal comparison to the national level. The varieties included comprise BrE as well as stages 3–5 of Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model, equally divided into L1 and L2 varieties. The study considers thirteen distinct registers and ten varieties. Consequently, neither category is at an a priori advantage in terms of its predictive power and the full range of variation within each is considered as best possible. For the present analysis, model comparison akin to that in Kruger and van Rooy (2018) is performed on the data from Bohmann (2019), for models predicting each of the ten dimensions represented in Table 5.1. Since the relevant contrast is between a model with and one without an interaction term, and since the predictors in the latter model are a subset of those in the former, direct comparison via likelihood ratio tests was chosen as the appropriate selection procedure. Figure  5.1 summarizes the models selected for predicting each dimension’s scores. Each predictor is represented with a bar, the height of which represents its contribution to the model’s total R2 value, to be read as the amount of variance in dimension scores that can be accounted for with this predictor. The fact that there are bars for register, variety and an interaction between the two for all ten dimensions means that all these terms were kept in the best model in all cases. The dark grey bars representing register surpass the light and medium grey ones in height, once again with the exception of explicit stance-marking. This is in line with the findings from both Bohmann (2019) and Kruger and van Rooy (2018) that register is generally a stronger predictor of variation than national variety. The difference between the results reported here and Kruger and van Rooy’s (2018) study lies in the fact that the medium grey bars, representing interactions between register and variety, are in the figure at all. What is more, they generally account for as much of the variance in dimension scores as does variety on its own. For four dimensions (Conceptual versus concrete informational focus, canonical narrative focus, Addressee-orientation and

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FIGURE 5.1:  The respective contribution of variety, register and an interaction between them in predicting scores for each of the ten dimensions.

Future-oriented discourse), the interaction accounts for notably more variance than variety on its own, whereas only in the case of Explicit stance-marking the opposite is the case. For none of the ten dimensions was the interaction term excluded in model comparison. What this means for comparative studies of varieties of English is that stability of register relations in different national contexts cannot be taken for granted. A newspaper report, a broadcast discussion and a piece of personal correspondence may relate to each other in very different ways in India compared to Jamaica. Simply controlling for register to develop a picture of the language as a whole may not be enough, since the register ecologies may take on different shapes in different societies. Even in single-feature studies that are not otherwise interested register differences, treating register as uniform across varieties may lead to omitted variable bias (Gorman and Johnson 2013: 216), resulting in erroneous predictions about the relationships between varieties with regard to the feature under analysis. In the worst but not entirely unlikely case, comparative WE research that does not explicitly model register relationships may produce the kind of ephemeral and spurious findings Mair (2015) cautions against.

7  DISCUSSION: PROMISES AND PITFALLS OF REGISTER ANALYSIS The purpose of the previous sections has been to establish the centrality of register differences – and differences in register ecologies – across varieties of English, to demonstrate some of their effects for WE research empirically and to introduce MD

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as a useful method for handling register in a systematic way grounded in observable usage. In this section, I aim to widen the scope beyond the specific context of the studies reported earlier and make a few remarks about register (and genre) in WE more generally. The first concerns the question whether an MD study such as Bohmann (2019) can claim to offer an exhaustive account of meaningful linguistic variation in World Englishes. Such claims are made in MD research, at least implicitly, by reference to the large number of features and texts that are typically considered, by stressing the direct link between situational properties and feature variation, and not least by the recurring patterns found in numerous MD studies. While these are compelling arguments for the validity of the findings themselves, they tend to sidestep the issue of how MD research generalizes to larger theoretical questions. Which linguistic variables are locally meaningful and what kinds of text should be considered are issues outside the quantitative scope of an MD analysis itself. In Neumann’s (2012: 75–6) words, ‘dimensions of variation obtained with the help of factor analysis completely rely on the quality of the available data set and the chosen features’. In the WE context, the quality of the available data is often synonymous with the ICE sampling framework. This can be seen as a blessing in that it has prompted many studies to control for register by default and as a curse in that this default is static and insensitive to individual register ecologies. ICE requires the inclusion of texts that may not occur naturally in a given variety. Mair (2009: 20, see also Mair, this volume), for instance, notes that ‘[w]hether it is possible to have a conversation in English and remain informal is an open question in the Indian sociolinguistic context’, and Alexander Laube (p.c.) reports difficulties in finding natural instances of personal correspondence writing in the Bahamas. On the other hand, dynamic and potentially variety-specific registers remain outside the scope of ICE-based research. In an ideal situation, a register analysis should not rely on whatever corpus material is available, but should motivate its sampling of different registers independently. In order to complement the rigorous empirical methodology offered by MD with a dynamic and context-sensitive understanding of what texts to include in the analysis, the notion of genre, so far only discussed as a side note, becomes a necessary addition. Taking seriously the groundedness of genre in local understandings of communicative purposes and conventions, and borrowing Martin’s (1992) notion that genre can be seen as the way cultures organize their available registers, serious attention to genre developments has the potential of pointing the MD analyst to the right corpus basis for drawing meaningful comparisons across varieties of English. To take one example, Blommaert (2010) documents email fraud as a relevant context for the study of globalizing English, and specifically the unequal access to genre conventions from a transnational perspective. Arguably, such considerations should play a role in contrastive analysis. Martin (1992: 573–88) defines differences in access to communicative resources as ideology, situated at yet a higher organizing level above genre, leading to an ideology > genre > register > language cline. The connections between these levels are currently not fully explored, but doing so seems a productive endeavour. Similar observations apply for the individual features that enter into an MD analysis. There may be quite a large set of features not included in Biber’s (1988) original list that are locally very important, first and foremost loanwords, instances of code-switching, L1-transfer effects and similar phenomena arising out of societal bi- or multilingualism or creole continuum situations. Bohmann (2019) does present a significantly larger

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set of features, including non-standard items, but the list certainly only scratches the surface of what variables may become relevant in the individual varieties. Moreover, more features do not necessarily guarantee a better analysis. A linguistic element needs to be represented across a sufficiently large number of individual texts or else will simply not contribute to any dimension of variation, despite its potential salience from a local perspective. Addressing this bias towards pervasive features, like the decision about what genres to consider, requires a level of familiarity with specific varieties best developed in fieldwork. The less familiar a variety and/or register is to a researcher and the more removed linguistically they are from the core contexts in which MD has been applied, the more relevant an explicit theoretical motivation of individual features in an MD analysis will be. The analysis presented in sections 5 and 6, consequently, is not to be viewed as the answer to all questions, but rather as a useful way for answering some questions and producing even more new ones. All the problems mentioned earlier, in fairness, are hardly unique to MD research, but are equally relevant to single-feature studies on the basis of ICE. The point here has been to demonstrate one way in which such research can be centred around a more realistic and explicit understanding of register. I see the utility of such register-awareness in three ways: first, in providing a measure of control for research that otherwise is not interested in register per se; second, in helping to produce a more nuanced description of individual varieties; and third, in contributing to the explanation of dynamic developments across the English-speaking world. The control aspect is relevant in connection to omitted variable bias (Gorman and Johnson 2013: 216), where failure to operationalize register may lead to seriously distorted findings. Most research to date controls for register at the level of ICE text categories, but it may be advantageous to use more direct measures that are sensitive to differences in the register ecologies of individual varieties. MD provides one tool for producing such measures. However, theoretically motivated, less computationally complex choices may be plausible alternatives (Neumann 2012). At the level of description, focus on register invites attention to how different societies organize relations among the situationally conditioned text varieties at their disposal. In Schneider’s (2007) account, attention is given to the types of situation in which English is used at different stages of the developmental trajectory, and register developments such as the formation of a native literary tradition figure importantly in determining what phase a variety can be situated in. Studies that employ the Dynamic Model synchronically to individual varieties may benefit from incorporating a description of a society’s register ecology in addition to analysis of linguistic features. Finally, when it comes to explaining dynamic processes across the English-speaking world, it is useful to consider that these always occur in the contexts of specific registers and genres. Changes do not happen in the neutral space of the language on the whole but are mediated by register. The global spread of linguistic forms associated with hip hop (Pennycook 2007) provides an obvious example, but the observation applies even in more established, less standard-distant contexts. The Americanization of global English has been observed repeatedly (e.g. Gonçalves et al. 2018). However, it is doubtful whether this process is homogenous across situational contexts. Which registers in what varieties are particularly receptive to American influences, to local innovations, to prescriptive tenets, and so on are questions that can and should be addressed in more detail from the perspective advanced earlier (on American influences – and opposing reactions to it – in global pop music, see also Westphal and Jansen, this volume).

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8  CONCLUSION This chapter has started from the observation that register is often either ignored or treated as a source of statistical error in WE research, a point illustrated on the basis of the English modal system. As a complementary perspective, the notion of register as developed in SFL and MD research was presented. The chapter proposed a quantitatively based model of register in English worldwide, developing ten dimensions of linguistic variation on the basis of 236 features in 7,309 texts from 10 varieties of English and representing 13 text categories. In a summary of models for predicting each text’s dimension scores, it was shown that the interaction between the predictors variety and register contributed at least as much to explaining the variance in the data as variety alone. This was interpreted as an indicator of differences in individual varieties’ register ecologies. Such differences motivate a need for modelling register more explicitly than by simply controlling for corpus text category in ICE-based research. Multidimensional analysis was presented as one well-established, empirically grounded approach to register variation, but not necessarily as a privileged theoretical vantage point. Precisely its theoretical agnosticism makes MD research applicable to a wide range of research contexts. For more fully developed theoretical accounts of register variation, reference was made to ethnographically informed analyses. The notion of a cline from ideology via genre and register to individual instances of language (Martin 1992) appears worth exploring in more detail. Such a perspective is especially relevant under conditions of globalization in a World System of Englishes (Mair 2013), where particular discourses – which can themselves be conceptualized as genres with their associated registers – permeate global communicative networks in increasingly complex patterns.

NOTE 1. ICE-US only includes the written portion of the ICE sampling framework.

REFERENCES Besnier, N. (1988), ‘The Linguistic Relationships of Spoken and Written Nukulaelae Registers’, Language, 64 (4): 707–36. Biber, D. (1987), ‘A Textual Comparison of British and American Writing’, American Speech, 62 (2): 99–119. Biber, D. (1988), Variation Across Speech and Writing, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D. (2014), ‘Using Multi-Dimensional Analysis to Explore Cross-Linguistic Universals of Register Variation’, Languages in Contrast, 14 (1): 7–34. Biber, D. and S. Conrad (2009), Register, Genre, and Style, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D. and E. Finegan (1989), ‘Drift and the Evolution of English Style: A History of Three Genres’, Language, 65 (3): 487–517. Biber, D. and E. Finegan, eds (1994), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Biber, D. and M. Hared (1992), ‘Dimensions of Register Variation in Somali’, Language Variation and Change, 4 (1): 41–75.

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Blommaert, J. (2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Bohmann, A. (2019), Variation in English Worldwide: Registers and Global Varieties (Studies in English Language), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies, M. (2007), TIME Magazine Corpus (100 Million Words, 1920s–2000s). Available online: https://www​.english​-corpora​.org​/time/ (accessed 25 February 2020). Davies, M. and R. Fuchs (2015), ‘Expanding Horizons in the Study of World Englishes with the 1.9 Billion Word Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE)’, English World-Wide, 36 (1): 1–28. Davydova, J. (2015), ‘Linguistic Change in a Multilingual Setting: A Case Study of Quotatives in Indian English’, in P. Collins (ed.), Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, 297–334, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gonçalves, Br., L. Loureiro-Porto, J. J. Ramasco and D. Sánchez (2018), ‘Mapping the Americanization of English in Space and Time’, PLoS ONE, 13 (5): e0197741. Gorman, K. and D. E. Johnson (2013), ‘Quantitative Analysis’, in R. Bayley, R. Cameron and C. Lucas (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 214–40, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Greenbaum, S. (1991), ‘ICE: The International Corpus of English’, English Today, 7 (4): 3–7. Greenbaum, S. and G. Nelson (1996), ‘The International Corpus of English (ICE) Project’, World Englishes, 15 (1): 3–15. Hackert, S. and D. Deuber (2015), ‘American Influence on Written Caribbean English: A Diachronic Analysis of Newspaper Reportage in the Bahamas and in Trinidad and Tobago’, in P. Collins (ed.), Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, 389–410, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hundt, M. (2009), ‘Colonial Lag, Colonial Innovation, or Simply Language Change?’, in G. Rohdenburg and J. Schlüter (eds), One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English (Studies in English Language), 13–37, Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. Hundt, M. and C. Mair (1999), ‘“Agile” and “Uptight” Genres: The Corpus-Based Approach to Language Change in Progress’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 4 (2): 221–42. Kachru, B. (1985), ‘Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle’, in R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (eds), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, 11–30, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Kruger, H. and B. van Rooy (2018), ‘Register Variation in Written Contact Varieties of English: A Multidimensional Analysis’, English World-Wide, 39 (2): 214–42. Leech, G. (2003), ‘Modality on the Move: The English Modal Auxiliaries 1961–1992’, in R. Facchinetti, M. G. Krug and F. R. Palmer (eds), Modality in Contemporary English, 223–40, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Leech, G. (2011), ‘The Modals ARE Declining: Reply to Neil Millar’s “Modal Verbs in TIME: Frequency Changes 1923–2006”, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14:2 (2009), 191–220’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 16 (4): 547–64. Mair, C. (2009), ‘Corpus Linguistics Meets Sociolinguistics: Studying Educated Spoken Usage in Jamaica on the Basis of the International Corpus of English’, in T. Hoffmann and L. Siebers (eds), World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects: Selected Papers from the 13th IAWE conference (Varieties of English Around the World 40), 39–60, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Mair, C. (2013), ‘The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the Transnational Importance of Mobile and Mediated Vernaculars’, English World-Wide, 34 (3): 253–78. Mair, C. (2015), ‘Cross-Variety Diachronic Drifts and Ephemeral Regional Contrasts: An Analysis of Modality in the Extended Brown Family of Corpora and What it Can Tell Us about the New Englishes’, in P. Collins (ed.), Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, 119–46, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Martin, J. R. (1992), English Text: System and Structure, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Martin, J. R. and D. Rose (2008), Genre Relations: Mapping Culture, London: Equinox. Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2019), ‘Register in Systemic Functional Linguistics’, Register Studies, 1 (1): 10–41. Millar, N. (2009), ‘Modal Verbs in TIME: Frequency Changes 1923–2006’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 14 (2): 191–220. Neumann, S. (2012), ‘Applying Register Analysis to Varieties of English’, in M. Fludernik and B. Kohlmann (eds), Anglistentag 2011 Freiburg: Proceedings, 75–94, Trier: WVT. Neumann, S. (2014), ‘Cross-Linguistic Register Studies: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations’, Languages in Contrast, 14 (1): 35–57. Noël, D. and J. Van der Auwera (2015), ‘Recent Quantitative Changes in the Use of Modals and Quasi-Modals in the Hong Kong, British and American Printed Press: Exploring the Potential of Factiva® for the Diachronic Investigation of World Englishes’, in Peter Collins (ed.), Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, 437–64, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Palacios Martínez, I. M. (2016), ‘“He Don’t Like Football, Does He?” A Corpus-Based Study of Third Person Singular Don’t in the Language of British Teenagers’, in E. Seoane and C. Suárez-Gómez (eds), World Englishes: New Theoretical and Methodological Considerations (Varieties of English Around the World 57), 61–84, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pennycook, A. (2007), Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, London and New York: Routledge. Sardinha, T. B., C. Kauffmann and C. M. Acunzo (2014), ‘A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Register Variation in Brazilian Portuguese’, Corpora, 9 (2): 239–71. Schneider, E. W. (2007), Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, E. W. (2014), ‘New Reflections on the Evolutionary Dynamics of World Englishes’, World Englishes, 33 (1): 9–32. Strevens, P. (1980), Teaching English as an International Language: From Practice to Principle (Language Teaching Methodology Series), Oxford: Pergamon. van Rooy, B., L. Terblanche, C. Haase and J. J. Schmied (2010), ‘Register Differentiation in East African English: A Multidimensional Study’, English World-Wide, 31 (3): 311–49. Xiao, R. (2009), ‘Multidimensional Analysis and the Study of World Englishes’, World Englishes, 28 (4): 421–50.

Chapter 6

Translingualism and World Englishes JERRY WON LEE AND SURESH CANAGARAJAH

1  INTRODUCTION Translingualism can be understood as an orientation that recognizes that (1) boundaries between labelled languages are ideological inventions, (2) such invented demarcations are not reflective of everyday language practice and (3) communication transcends the very notion of ‘language’ in that people draw on more than ‘linguistic’ resources alone to achieve communicative success. At first glance, translingualism would appear to be in opposition to some orientations to world Englishes (WE) that tend to document English usage in various national contexts and the emergence of discrete national varieties of English. Indeed, these approaches have been subject to critique by scholars aligned with translingualism. Critiques have centred on epistemological concerns about political and ideological disagreements with the varieties stream of WE scholarship or WE scholarship that documents features of a particular local variety of English (see Parakrama 1995). In spite of this assumed conflict, this chapter demonstrates how WE and translingualism are not diametrically opposed scholarly paradigms in their original conception. They have both been interested in language diversity that goes beyond dominant linguistic models based on territorialization and native speaker-hood. They still share some common research and pedagogical concerns. This is evident through a careful and critical rereading of key literature in WE and translingualism. This chapter first provides an overview of how scholars have recently aimed to differentiate translingualism from WE. Next, it revisits WE scholarship, focusing on the earlier work of Kachru from the 1970s through to the 2000s, to identify parallels to translingual thought, decades prior to the popularization of the notion of translingualism. Afterwards, it provides an analysis of recent scholarship on translingualism to identify key overlaps with and differences from WE. It concludes with a series of recommendations for researchers interested in focusing on the compatibility and convergence of WE and translingualism.

2  TRANSLINGUALISM VERSUS WORLD ENGLISHES? Translingualism has come to be associated with recent scholarship that makes explicit use of the trans- prefix, including translanguaging (García 2009; Li Wei 2011), transidiomatic practices (Jacquemet 2005, 2013), translingual practice (Canagarajah 2013), or transglossia

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(Sultana, Dovchin and Pennycook 2015; Dovchin, Pennycook and Sultana 2017). It is also associated with other academic constructs that do not explicitly rely on the trans- prefix but nonetheless are mindful of the fluidity and negotiability of language boundaries, such as polylingualism (Jørgensen 2008; Jørgensen and Møller, 2014), metrolingualism (Pennycook 2010; Otsuji and Pennycook 2010; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015) or truncated multilingualism (Blommaert 2010). Irrespective of the trans- modifier, it is perhaps more productive to understand translingualism as more broadly an orientation to language that conceptualizes pluralistic language practices across global space, which in many cases predate the recent popularization of trans- scholarship (Canagarajah 2013; Khubchandani 1997; Lee 2018; Makoni 2003; May 2014; Pennycook 2019; Sugiharto 2015). It is easy to understand why many view translingualism and WE as oppositional paradigms. In general, the WE paradigm has been subject to considerable critique, with many such critiques centring on the assumption that national imaginaries do indeed share a uniform variety of English. This is implied by the very effort to conceive of English in a particular nation (e.g. ‘English in India’) or to conceive of a particular nation’s English (e.g. ‘Indian English’) as a discrete codifiable entity. For instance, Krishnaswamy and Burde (1998: 63) note that, insofar as the very ‘notion of “nation-India” is insecure’, the idea of ‘“Indian English” is “fundamentally insecure”’. The potential problem is especially salient for a national context characterized by ethnolinguistic diversity such as India. The case of India is particularly complicated not only because it is constituted by countless ethnolinguistic groups, but also because of the porosity between different ‘languages’. Against this sociolinguistic backdrop and in such a national context, is it possible to conceptualize a uniform variety of English being used? This being said, even in national contexts that are considered to be ethnolinguistically ‘homogeneous’, conceptualizations of a homogeneous national variety can be limited. For instance, in examining the South Korean context, which conceives of itself as ethnolinguistically homogeneous, Jenks and Lee (2016) argue that nation-based paradigms of WE are unable to account for the range of demographic, social, political and ideological variables that shape English language use in Korea; a reality that is further complicated by the realities of transnational cultural flows, as will be discussed later in this chapter. While many of the aforementioned scholars are associated with translingualism, it is important to note that many have in their earlier work focused on an orientation to the diversity of English that is neither discrete from nor oppositional to WE. As a case in point, Pennycook’s earlier writings, which were more explicitly concerned with English language teaching, consistently critiqued sedimented Western ideals of homogeneity and epistemological hierarchies. In an earlier article in TESOL Quarterly, for instance, Pennycook (1985) noted the importance of paralanguage (i.e. kinesics, proxemics and paraverbal features) for the purposes of intercultural communication in a language such as English (and not merely ‘English’ itself). Meanwhile, Canagarajah’s earlier scholarship demonstrated the potentials of a translingual orientation to discourse in Sri Lankan poetry, even if the term ‘translingual’ was not explicitly used (Canagarajah 1994). But Canagarajah also examined English-Tamil ‘bilingualism’ in the Sri Lankan context, relying on terminology such as ‘code switching’ or ‘code choice’ (see Canagarajah 1995a, 1995b). Earlier scholarship by Li Wei also relies on the notion of languages as ‘codes’ in the context of bilingualism (see McGregor and Li Wei 1991; Li Wei, Milroy and Ching 1992). At first glance, such terminological choices may seem contrary to the idea of translingualism, which questions the very notion of ‘codes’. However, the point is not to expose scholarly or terminological inconsistency nor is it to suggest that, prior to the

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popularization of trans- terminology, scholars were unable to attend to the fluidity of language boundaries. The reality is that the aforementioned scholars, as is common, have been evolving, progressively diversifying their perspectives on language, yet at the same time engaged in deconstructing English at earlier stages of their careers. Some scholars have raised concerns that WE inadvertently privileges particular kinds of English varieties. For instance, by relying on spoken or written English from educated users alone, supposedly non-standard usage within periphery variants are left understudied and remain unrepresented and unrecognized. As Parakrama (1995: 26) writes, in his critique of the Kachruvian paradigm of WE, ‘[t]he smoothing out of struggle within and without language is replicated in the homogenizing of the varieties of English on the basis of “upper-class” forms. Kachru is thus able to theorize on the nature of a monolithic Indian English.’ Parakrama argues that WE, under the guise of pluralism and inclusivity, in fact results in new forms of classism and elitism. He insists that the ‘non-standard’ usages in periphery contexts are actually representative of a more dynamic and anti-hegemonic English that can subvert even the limitations of WE logic. While focusing on diversifying English by demonstrating the norms in postcolonial communities, WE unwittingly creates new locally privileged norms that are unfair to different local communities. By contrast, translingualism problematizes norms. Rather than treating existing norms as the starting point of analysis, it asks how norms are co-constructed, resisted and renegotiated in all interactions. While a considerable portion of translingualism scholarship does indeed also examine creative language practices in formal educational contexts, including in postsecondary institutional contexts (see Canagarajah 2013), there is also strong representation of language in everyday contexts in the translingual scholarly tradition (see Dovchin, Pennycook and Sultana 2017). Scholars have also focused their critiques on the inability of WE to account for the fluidity of language practices in the context of globalization. The WE paradigm, according to Pennycook (2007: 21–2), ‘does little more than pluralize monolithic English. The notion of WE leaves out all those other Englishes which do not fit the paradigm of an emergent national standard, and in doing so, falls into the trap of mapping centre linguists’ images of language and world on to the periphery.’ As Pennycook (2007: 13) argues, transculturation, or ‘the fluidity of cultural relations across global contexts’, results in a decentring and destabilization of rigid linguistic boundaries suggested by previous scholarship on WE. Drawing on analyses of global hip hop, Pennycook notes that such practices transgress conventional expectations of ‘authentic’ cultural boundaries (is global hip hop merely derivative of an ‘authentic’ African American cultural practice?) and linguistic boundaries (where does one language end and the other begin?). This line of inquiry is further developed through the notion of metrolingualism (Pennycook 2010; Otsuji and Pennycook 2010; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015) in which questions of language boundaries and, by extension, questions of varietal boundaries (e.g. WE varieties) are even further obviated by attending to the co-constitutive potential of language and space (i.e. does geographic context shape language use or the other way around?). Canagarajah’s (2013: 58) work on translingual practice provides further problematization of the WE paradigm, noting that it ‘doesn’t go far enough in pluralizing English or reflecting the dynamic changes in communicative practices’ of linguistically diverse contexts. In addition to the critiques outlined earlier, Canagarajah argues that the paradigm is based on arbitrary categories that neglect internal plurality. For instance, in an Inner Circle context such as the United States, multilingual speakers (e.g. Latinx populations) and language minority speakers (e.g. speakers of African American English)

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are frequently disregarded. Some exceptions in the journal World Englishes include Wolfram, Christian and Hatfield (1986) on Vietnamese refugees in the United States, Torres (1989) on Puerto Rican Americans in New York and a symposium, edited by Pandey (2000), on the Ebonics debate and African American language. Some WE scholars have also gone beyond the nation-state to consider supranational varieties, such as ‘Asian Englishes’ (Bolton 2008). It is further argued that WE also does not account for contact between speakers of different circles. Canagarajah (2013: 61) thus asks, for instance, ‘Whose norms apply when a member from the Expanding Circle talks to one from the Outer Circle?’1 Further, the varietal features that comprise an interlocutor’s English are secondary to what Canagarajah (2013) terms ‘performative competence’, reflective of the appropriate procedural knowledge (Byram 2008) and a cooperative disposition necessary to achieve communicative success through the negotiation of meaning in diverse contexts. Lee (2018) argues that efforts to codify national varieties of English are problematic in that they subject peripheralized Englishes to dominant epistemologies of ‘difference’, resulting in a condition in which all Englishes can be recognized as ‘legitimate’ only after they are acknowledged as such by dominant evaluators (e.g. language scholars). This potentially produces new hierarchies that are both unintended and irreconcilable. Lee proposes that WE can be reconceptualized beyond dominant expectations of legibility by better accounting for the realities of transnational migration and linguistic superdiversity (Arnaut et al. 2016). In conditions of linguistic superdiversity, it is no longer feasible to quantify and conceptualize the types of languages and varieties in use in a given geographic region (Heller 2011; Pennycook 2012). Of course, superdiversity is by no means a new social phenomenon (Faist 2013; Pavlenko 2018). In fact, analogous questions regarding WE have been raised prior to the popularization of superdiversity as an academic construct, as suggested earlier. However, it has been proposed that in the context of such realities, whether emergent or longstanding, it is instructive to think not in terms of ‘World Englishes’ or even ‘global Englishes’, but instead ‘wayward Englishes’ (Lee 2018). Such Englishes are not only reflective of the realities of transnational migration in which peoples and thus their languages are always on the move, but are, more importantly, ‘inscrutable’ (Lee 2018). They are inscrutable, or not evaluable, whether as positive or negative, through extant epistemologies that scholars have relied on to conceptualize ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’. Having made these distinctions, we must take a step back and ask if there is a place for labelled languages in academic and social discourse. Translingual scholars do offer a theoretical explanation for labelled languages such as English (see Canagarajah 2013). First, labelled languages are a social fact. Speech communities hold language ideologies that treat a corpus of lexical items (however mixed and diverse in etymology) as constituting their named language. Though English might be considered a creole language, with appropriations from contact with diverse communities through history, people will nonetheless continue to claim a pure and standardized identity for English – this is the power of language ideologies. It is not surprising then that translingual scholars refer to English in their analysis of language interactions. It also presents a phenomenological dilemma in the sense that the object of critique (a named language) must be summoned and thus gets reified in the very attempt to critique and move beyond it. Secondly, translingual scholars do acknowledge the sedimentation of features into larger patterns through repetitive use in situated interactions. That is, certain typical language tokens might cohere around broader patterns such as registers, discourses and grammars. They have to be named for analysis (e.g. legalese, academic discourse, ‘edited American

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English’). Though translingual scholars will treat these features as always emergent through situated interactions, they acknowledge their reality. From this perspective, it is not a contradiction for them to adopt the labels pertaining to different English varieties to represent their analysis. As Li Wei (2018: 27) clarifies, ‘[t]ranslanguaging has never intended to replace code-switching or any other term, although it challenges the code view of language. It does not deny the existence of named languages, but stresses that languages are historically, politically, and ideologically defined entities’. Whether we take English varieties offered by WE for analytical consideration will also depend on the scale of analysis. The geographical metaphor of scales has been adopted in applied linguistics to analyse how language practices and analyses might change according to relative local and translocal levels of consideration (see Canagarajah and De Costa 2016). A Jamaican who meshes diverse contact language features in a local context (calling it Patois) might label it Jamaican English when she travels to the United States for education and interacts with non-Jamaicans there. Similarly, linguists might study interactions at different scales, such as markets, where the nation-state English may not be relevant or at different geopolitical levels, where they might want to describe the Englishes of speakers from different countries, adopting WE labels. This explains how translingual scholars such as Canagarajah and Pennycook have adopted the label ‘Global Englishes’ in their past publications to describe the lingua franca status of English. In light of the previous considerations it is not surprising that many scholars have recently aimed to dissociate themselves from WE. This is evident, for instance, in the decision to rename Jenkins’s (2003, 2009) widely used World Englishes textbook to Global Englishes for the third edition. As Jenkins (2014: xiii) explains in the preface to the third edition: The term ‘World Englishes’ was appropriate for a book focusing on Englishes as nationbound varieties. However, with the recent massive growth in the use of English as an international lingua franca among people from different nations and first languages, the focus has been adjusted to include newer non-nation-bound developments. The book’s overall focus is therefore better represented by the more inclusive term, ‘Global Englishes’. As suggested by Jenkins, WE does not account for ‘newer non-nation-bound developments’ as opposed to ‘Global Englishes’, which is more ‘inclusive’. Jenkins is not entirely inaccurate insofar as both Pennycook (2007) and Canagarajah (2013) also avoid World Englishes in the titles of their books. Pennycook (2007) opts for Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows while the subtitle for Canagarajah’s (2013) book is Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. We are thus in a position where we must consider whether WE is indeed concerned primarily with the documentation of varieties or whether it is a characterization that results, at least in part, from select scholars rejecting a particular strand of variety-based approaches to WE. In spite of the characterization of WE in the critique by scholars, it is important to clarify that the sociolinguistic study of WE is not limited to simply identifying and categorizing different national varieties of English. Numerous presentations at the annual conference of the International Association for World Englishes centre on research that is not limited to investigating national varieties of English. Further, the journal World Englishes regularly publishes articles that are broader in their scope. Topics range from multilingual creativity (e.g. Ahn 2018; Lou 2012; Rivlina 2015; You 2011), language attitudes (e.g. Ahn 2014; Bernaisch 2012; Crismore, Ngeow and Soo 1996; Hyrkstedt

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and Kalaja 1998) and pedagogical implications (Chew 2013; Cook 1981; Kubota 2001; Kumaravadivelu 2003; Martin 2014; Matsuda 2002), among numerous other topics. In addition, influential articles have been published using the expression ‘World Englishes’ in a broader sense (e.g. Canagarajah 2006, which is written for a US composition studies readership, who typically do not have a specialized knowledge of WE and its connotations). Regardless of the cause for this potential mischaracterization of WE, the reality is that WE and translingualism are not diametrically opposed scholarly paradigms in their original conception. This point will be demonstrated by an engagement with the work of Kachru, who may be considered the founding father of WE.

3  COGNATE LINES OF INQUIRY IN WORLD ENGLISHES AND TRANSLINGUALISM In Kachru’s earlier theorizations of WE, there is evidence of a scholar who was attentive to the politicization of language boundaries and to the subversive potential of postcolonial communities appropriating the linguistic resources of their colonial occupiers. In one publication from the 1970s, Kachru (1976: 236) offers the following declaration: ‘The strength of the English language is in presenting the Americanness in its American variety, and the Englishness in its British variety. Let us, therefore, appreciate and encourage the Third World varieties of English too.’ Kachru was responding to what today may not seem so paradoxical in eyes of many scholars: that peoples of the so-called Third World can be competent and legitimate users of English. Kachru’s earlier proposal to ‘appreciate and encourage’ peripheralized Englishes is in fact a useful way to begin thinking about translingualism. Indeed, Kachru’s argument echoes a central premise of translingualism, which is that linguistic and cultural boundaries are subject to bottom-up reconstitution by everyday users, including those who are not traditionally imagined to be ‘native’, ‘proficient’ or ‘legitimate’ users of a given language. Almost a decade later, Kachru (1985) would introduce his influential concentric model, featuring the Inner Circle (i.e. nations in which English is a ‘native’ language), Outer Circle (i.e. nations in which English is a ‘second’ language) and the Expanding Circle (i.e. nations in which English is a ‘foreign’ language). As suggested earlier, this framework has been expanded on and reconceptualized numerous times by Kachru and other scholars of WE, including, for instance, Schneider (2007). Nonetheless, the core foundational assumption of Kachru’s original work has been the subject of considerable critique by scholars associated with the translingual turn. The model, even if potentially rigid, nonetheless enables scholars to understand the evolution of English within discrete sociohistorical and ideological contexts. Further, while some scholars have criticized Kachru and subsequent scholarship on WE for their tendency to reify monolithic understandings of English in a given national imaginary, it is important to note that Kachru (1985: 13) specified that ‘English has a wide spectrum of domains in which it is used with varying degrees of competence by members of society’ and that ‘there is significant variation within such institutionalized varieties’ (see also Kachru 1986). By insisting that scholars attend to geopolitical particularities while recognizing the realities of language beyond what is merely documented in scholarly publications, Kachru’s work aligns with the focus of translingualism on the ideological constructedness of grammatical and pragmatic conventions and the unpredictability of language when understood as a social practice.

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Throughout his career, Kachru remained committed to emphasizing the legitimacy of so-called nonnative Englishes and would stress the ownership of English by users from periphery contexts. In his later work, for instance, Kachru (2005), in discussing the native speaker idealization endemic to the conceptualizations of ‘foreign’ English usage, continued to problematize the nationalistic and ethnocentric tendency to view ‘nonnative’ English usage as inherently inferior to ‘native’ usage. As Kachru (2005: 3) notes, despite the number of ‘native’ speakers of English in Asia, there is the prevailing view of English as a language ‘in’ Asia as opposed to a language ‘of’ Asia, suggesting that Asians may never claim to ‘own’ English. The question of ownership has significant implications for the discourse of translingualism, which recognizes language resources as able to be mobilized beyond their presumed geographic origins. While translingualism is admittedly less interested in the question of who does or does not own a particular language resource for it acknowledges the regular relocalization of language resources (see Pennycook 2012; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015), it simultaneously recognizes that narrow notions of language ownership based on ideologies of birthright privilege need to be rejected in order to facilitate translingual communication. Translingualism, in other words, is skeptical of nationalistic understandings of language ownership in a manner not entirely different from that presented in the work of Kachru throughout his career. Further, both WE and translingualism share perspectives on the process of language diversification. Though both orientations may not use these terms, they are sensitive to how words acquire ‘new indexicality’, how languages and semiotic resources are ‘appropriated’ in relation to local interests and values and how language relates to one’s ‘voice’ (Canagarajah 2013). Both movements have also conducted research on similar areas of concerns. They are concerned about language creativity, the emergence of new registers and genres and the power of certain varieties in gatekeeping situations related to academic publishing, professions and education.

4  ARE THERE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WORLD ENGLISHES AND TRANSLINGUALISM? In the previous section, we have demonstrated how the work of Kachru, even if understood in the context of the varieties stream of WE scholarship, is guided by premises that are in alignment with translingualism. Proceeding from the vantage point that WE is indeed a multifaceted scholarly orientation and not merely about the documentation of varieties, further facilitates our ability to see key overlaps between WE and translingualism. Nonetheless, many key differences remain between the two constructs. While WE has contributed to staple sociolinguistic topics such as code switching and code mixing (or borrowing), translingualism has added to these with other language practices that add to language diversity. They are code meshing, crossing, truncated multilingualism, receptive multilingualism and emblematic uses (see Canagarajah 2013 for definitions). Having observed these, we have to acknowledge a key difference in the way both movements look at language diversity. WE talks about the ‘spread’ of English and adopts the view that diverse communities are appropriating features from an originary (well formalized) English that emanates from England (Pennycook 2007). Translingualism starts at a more basic level and adopts a ‘mobility’ orientation (Blommaert 2010; Pennycook 2012). It treats all languages as fluid and floating verbal resources which people take up and use for their purposes. These mobile resources become sedimented into labelled languages after

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the fact. In this perspective, diversity is the starting point for translingualism, while WE considers diversification as following a homogeneous construct. One key difference is perhaps obvious and irreconcilable: WE focuses on English, while translingualism is not limited to communication involving English. Certainly, it needs to be acknowledged that a vast majority of scholarship on translingualism published in English focuses on the blending of English with another language. This being said, there are some exceptions, including the following: Jørgensen (2008): Danish and Turkish Dovchin (2017): Mongolian with Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese Lee and Lou (2019): Chinese and Korean Li Wei and Zhu Hua (2019): Chinese and numerals Pennycook and Otsuji (2019): Bangla and Japanese As such scholarship demonstrates scholarly inquiry that looks at linguistic fluidity irrespective of English is instructive. It foregrounds how the boundaries between languages other than English are also tenuous and negotiable in diverse contexts. It also illustrates that translingualism exists beyond contexts in which English is used, and serves as a reminder that translingualism has always existed in communicative contexts worldwide (Makoni 2003; Makoni and Pennycook 2005). Admittedly, it can be reasonably argued that scholarship that does not attend to the question of English in the world is beyond the scope of WE, so it would be misguided to present this as a critique of the intellectual priorities of WE scholars in the first place. This being said, while translingualism is guided by an ambivalence toward named language boundaries more generally, WE is contingent on the constructedness of English as a fixed language. This contingency presents something of a hurdle for WE, for translingualism foregrounds English as always already being translingual (Canagarajah 2013; Pennycook 2008) and that continued and uncritical insistence on the reality of all language boundaries, that of English included, presents serious epistemological and conceptual limitations. As Canagarajah (2013: 11) notes, ‘the assumption of separately systematized languages prevents scholars from accommodating the full range of meanings and practices which inform translingual orientation’. This is not to suggest that WE scholars are simply ignorant to questions of ideology and the ideological constructedness of English. Indeed, it needs to be acknowledged that the very pluralization of English into ‘Englishes’ and its subsequent enregisterment within academic discourse is not only the result of the scholarly work and advocacy of WE scholars but also reflective of an ongoing effort to deconstruct English. But are we presented with a similar phenomenological paradox as described in this chapter in which the very usage of English, even in a deconstructive sense of ‘Englishes’, results in a reification of English nonetheless? A key implication to the trans- prefix, as noted earlier, is the idea of going beyond not only named language boundaries but going beyond language as such. While a majority of scholarship in WE has focused on English in relation to geopolitical particulars (how the use of English is shaped by local context), translingualism seeks to upend such premises. Pennycook and Otsuji (2015), for instance, confront the dominant tendency in sociolinguistics, dating to the foundational variationist paradigm of Labov (1972), to view space as the mere contextual background that shapes a speaker’s discrete linguistic patterns. Pennycook and Otsuji (2015: 33) argue, instead, that language and space, using the example of urban settings, are rather co-dependent and co-constitutive of one

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another: ‘Language is bound up with all of this – it does not just happen against an urban backdrop, it is part of the city, the barber shop, the market garden, the networks of buying and selling.’ In the spirit of looking beyond language as such, translingualism scholars focus not only on language but on questions of embodiment, semiotic resources and repertoires, guided by scholarly orientations such as new materialism and posthumanism (Canagarajah 2018; Pennycook 2018). Finally, there are philosophical differences. This is understandable, as WE works within the structuralist orientation to linguistics, which was dominant in the 1970s when Kachru started his work. Translingualism adopts a poststructuralist orientation. This philosophical difference can be explained as follows. Structuralism treats language as a representation system made up of an abstract grammatical structure that is self-defining and autonomous. From this perspective, each language has a structure of its own that differs from the structure of other languages. Hence, whatever the difference in different locations, WE still treats these varieties as part of an underlying grammatical structure belonging to English. Translingualism rejects the notion that each language has an autonomous structure. It adopts a material and spatial orientation in treating verbal resources as working together with diverse other semiotic resources and ecological conditions to generate meanings. These meanings always emerge in practice, as social actors engage with each other and their environment. Therefore, meanings don’t emerge from an abstract structure but in activity. This post- or anti-structuralist orientation of translingualism is also counter to the understanding that variable situated performance emerges from an abstract homogeneous competence. Translingualism rejects the competence/performance distinction and treats communication as always emerging in practice, with a ‘competence’ characterized by people’s ability to work with diverse semiotic resources and material conditions in situated interactions.

5  CONCLUSION: COMPATIBILITY, CONVERGENCE AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS In this chapter, we have demonstrated how WE and translingualism have considerable overlaps in the sense that they both remain guided by language diversity that goes beyond dominant linguistic models based on territorialization and native speaker-hood. It is from this point that we wish to conclude with a series of recommendations for researchers interested in focusing on the compatibility and convergence of World Englishes and translingualism. One important point is that translingualism should not be limited to merely adding the modifier ‘translingual’ to descriptions and conceptualizations of linguistic phenomena in WE that follow extant paradigms such as bilingualism, multilingualism, code-mixing and the like. There is something of an emergent culture of using the trans- prefix in superficial and uncritical ways (Lee 2018; Pennycook 2019). While insisting on a specific usage of trans- terminology in scholarship may seem paradoxical to the philosophy of translingualism, it is even more important for scholars to be self-reflexive so they are not merely using terminology for the sake of following academic trends (Matsuda 2014; Pavlenko 2018). The philosophical clarifications we have provided earlier should help teachers and scholars to be mindful of the differences. While it is undeniable that there have been considerable and productive intersections between WE and translingualism, it is also important to consider whether it is possible to decentre ‘English’ from the discourse of translingualism. As noted earlier, the scholarship

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on translingualism beyond the purview of hybridity with English is somewhat limited. However, in the context of exploring intellectual intersections between translingualism and WE, we are inevitably bound to something of a paradox: namely, is it possible to research WE without English? One way forward is offered in the work of Tupas (forthcoming) who forces readers to contend with the implications of ‘Philippine’ in ‘Philippine English’. Continuing this line of research by interrogating the premises of ‘World’ in ‘World Englishes’ could offer productive and meaningful ways of bridging potential ideological or methodological gaps between WE and translingualism. In spite of any potential divides, it is important to note that WE and translingualism have always had a shared interest in legitimacy of historically marginalized language practices. This is a powerful overlap that can be further harnessed in terms of further research on pedagogical practices and implications and on the language practices of underrepresented populations. However, both approaches require careful consideration so as to not inadvertently reinforce or even exacerbate inequitable hierarchies. In terms of pedagogy, WE has had a profound impact on the teaching of English in global contexts, helping to inform teachers at all levels of instruction to teach beyond an arbitrarily valorized monolithic ‘native speaker’ norm. Can these developments help shape the pedagogical practices of the translingual turn, which have thus far focused primarily on the accommodation and encouragement of conspicuous or superficial translanguaging (Lee 2018)? Regarding research on the language practices of underrepresented populations, scholars of both WE and translingualism need to be mindful of and continuously interrogate their positionality as researchers so as to avoid exoticizing the language of the Other (Dovchin and Lee 2019). This can effectively lead to dehumanizing research subjects in the interest of pursuing opportunities for publication and career advancement with little to no return to the individuals or communities who are being studied. In both cases, if both WE and translingualism are indeed invested in promoting the legitimacy of historically marginalized language practices, a question that needs to be asked repeatedly is, who actually benefits from proposed scholarly pursuits or pedagogical innovations, and according to whose understandings of gain and at what costs? These are no simple questions but they are posed as problematic and as a reminder that, as we have suggested throughout this chapter, terminological considerations and allegiances to schools of thought are secondary to and perhaps even gratuitous in relation to the larger and more immediate concerns beyond the pages of published scholarship. The good news is that both orientations are still evolving. There are possibilities of greater convergence or cross-pollination at some point in the future. To begin with, we must not think of translingualism as a settled body of scholarship. Canagarajah (2018) has recently defined the ‘trans’ in translingualism as evolving beyond the original perspective of ‘beyond labelled languages’. He defines ‘trans’ as also beyond language itself to accommodate diverse semiotic resources, beyond the language/context divide to accommodate contextual and material features entextualizing talk/text and beyond settled language norms to transforming norms. The WE paradigm is also showing signs of change. Sridhar and Sridhar (2018) have recently reflected on new developments such as superdiversity and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). They embrace these developments as evolving from the early work by Kachru to diversify English. The journal World Englishes is also open to featuring conversations with other models of language diversity. The 2018 special issue on second language acquisition features studies from different theoretical paradigms. The journal is also planning to publish a special topic issue on World Englishes and translingualism in 2020. It is possible that junior scholars will draw

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from new theoretical and research paradigms to move beyond the labels in their analysis. Consider how the ELF paradigm has recently moved closer to the translingual paradigm in Jenkins’s (2015) formulation of English as a Multilingua Franca. When Canagarajah (2007) originally proposed this way of looking at lingua franca interactions, ELF was still in search of a lingua franca core of grammatical features shared by all English speakers. Now ELF has abandoned that search and redefined its orientation in convergence with translingualism. Analytical paradigms do change!

NOTE 1. Admittedly, such questions are attended to in depth by scholars associated with the ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) paradigm (e.g. Jenkins 2000, 2009; Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011; Seidlhofer 2009), though Canagarajah raises questions about the ELF paradigm for other reasons elsewhere in his work (see Canagarajah 2013: 62–8).

REFERENCES Ahn, H. (2014), ‘Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Korean English in South Korea’, World Englishes, 33 (2): 195–222. Ahn, H. (2018), ‘Modelling the Englishization of Vocabulary in Contemporary Korean’, World Englishes, 37 (4): 570–89. Arnaut, K., J. Blommaert, B. Rampton and M. Spotti (2016), ‘Introduction: Superdiversity and Sociolinguistics’, in K. Arnaut, J. Blommaert, B. Rampton and M. Spotti (eds), Language and Superdiversity, 1–17, London: Routledge. Bernaisch, T. (2012), ‘Attitudes Towards Englishes in Sri Lanka’, World Englishes, 31 (3): 279–91. Blommaert, J. (2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bolton, K. (2008), ‘English in Asia, Asian Englishes, and the Issue of Proficiency’, English Today, 24 (2): 3–12. Byram, M. (2008), From Foreign Language Education to Education for Intercultural Citizenship: Essays and Reflections, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.  Canagarajah, A. S. (1994), ‘Competing Discourses in Sri Lankan English Poetry’, World Englishes, 13 (3): 361–76. Canagarajah, A. S. (1995a), ‘Functions of Codeswitching in ESL Classrooms: Socialising Bilingualism in Jaffna’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16 (3): 173–95. Canagarajah, A. S. (1995b), ‘The Political Economy of Code Choice in a “Revolutionary Society”: Tamil-English Bilingualism in Jaffna, Sri Lanka’, Language in Society, 24 (2): 187–212. Canagarajah, A. S. (2006), ‘The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued’, College Composition and Communication, 57 (4): 586–619. Canagarajah, A. S. (2007), ‘Lingua Franca English, Multilingual Communities, and Language Acquisition’, Modern Language Journal, 91 (5): 921–37. Canagarajah, A. S. (2013), Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, London: Routledge. Canagarajah, A. S. (2018), ‘Translingual Practice as Spatial Repertoires: Expanding the Paradigm beyond Structuralist Orientations’, Applied Linguistics, 39 (1): 31–54.

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Canagarajah, A. S. and P. De Costa (2016), ‘Introduction: Scales Analysis, and Its Uses and Prospects in Educational Linguistics’, Linguistics and Education, 34: 1–10. Chew, P. G. L. (2013), ‘The Use of Singlish in the Teaching of Islam’, World Englishes, 32 (3): 380–94. Cook, V. J. (1981), ‘Teaching Functional English’, World Englishes, 1 (1): 46–9. Crismore, A., K. Y.-H. Ngeow and K.-S. Soo (1996), ‘Attitudes Toward English in Malaysia’, World Englishes, 15 (3): 319–35. Dovchin, S. (2017), ‘The Ordinariness of Youth Linguascapes in Mongolia’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 14 (2): 144–59. Dovchin, S and J. W. Lee (2019), ‘Introduction to Special Issue: The Ordinariness of Translinguistics’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 105–11. Dovchin, S., A. Pennycook and S. Sultana (2017), Popular Culture, Voice and Linguistic Diversity: Young Adults On- and Offline, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Faist, T. (2013), ‘The Mobility Turn: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36 (11): 1637–46. García, O. (2009), Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Heller, M. (2011), Paths to Post-Nationalism: A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hyrkstedt, I. and P. Kalaja (1998), ‘Attitudes Toward English and Its Functions in Finland: A Discourse‐Analytic Study’, World Englishes, 17 (3): 345–57. Jacquemet, M. (2005), ‘Transidiomatic Practices: Language and Power in the Age of Globalization’, Language & Communication, 25 (3): 257–77. Jacquemet, M. (2013), ‘Transidioma and Asylum: Gumperz’s Legacy in Intercultural Institutional Talk’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 23 (3): 199–212. Jenkins, J. (2000), The Phonology of English as an International Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2003), World Englishes: A Resource Book for Students, London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2009), World Englishes: A Resource Book for Students, 2nd edn, London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2014), Global Englishes: A Resource Book for Students, 3rd edn, London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2015), ‘Repositioning English and Multilingualism in English as a Lingua Franca’, Englishes in Practice, 2 (3): 49–85. Jenkins, J., A. Cogo and M. Dewey (2011), ‘Review of Developments in Research into English as a Lingua Franca’, Language Teaching, 44 (3): 281–315. Jenks, C. J. and J. W. Lee (2016), ‘Heteroglossic Ideologies in World Englishes: An Examination of the Hong Kong Context’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 26 (3): 384–402. Jørgensen, J. N. (2008), ‘Polylingual Languaging Around and Among Children and Adolescents’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 5 (3): 161–76. Jørgensen, J. N. and J. S. Møller (2014), ‘Polylingualism and Languaging’, in C. Leung and B. V. Street (eds), The Routledge Companion to English Studies, 67–83, London: Routledge. Kachru, B. B. (1976), ‘Models of English for the Third World: White Man’s Linguistic Burden or Language Pragmatics?’, TESOL Quarterly, 10 (2): 221–39. Kachru, B. B. (1985), ‘Standards, Codification, and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle’, in R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (eds), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, 11–30, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Kachru, B. B. (1986), The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions, and Models of NonNative Englishes, Oxford: Pergamon Press. Kachru, B. B. (2005), Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Khubchandani, L. M. (1997), Revisualizing Boundaries: A Plurilingual Ethos, Thousand Oaks: Sage. Krishnaswamy, N. and A. S. Burde (1998), The Politics of Indians’ English: Linguistic Colonialism and the Expanding English Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kubota, R. (2001), ‘Teaching World Englishes to Native Speakers of English in the USA’, World Englishes, 20 (1): 47–64. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003), ‘A Postmethod Perspective on English Language Teaching’, World Englishes, 22 (4): 539–50. Labov W. (1972), Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lee, J. W. (2018), The Politics of Translingualism: After Englishes, New York: Routledge. Lee, J. W. and J. J. Lou (2019), ‘The Ordinary Semiotic Landscape of an Unordinary Place: Spatiotemporal Disjunctures in Incheon’s Chinatown’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 187–203. Li Wei (2011), ‘Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space: Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain’, Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (5): 1222–35. Li Wei (2018), ‘Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language’, Applied Linguistics, 39 (1): 9–30. Li Wei and Zhu Hua (2019), ‘Tranßcripting: Playful Subversion with Chinese Characters’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 145–61. Li Wei, L. Milroy and P. S. Ching (1992), ‘A Two-Step Sociolinguistic Analysis of CodeSwitching and Language Choice: The Example of a Bilingual Chinese Community in Britain’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2 (1): 63–86. Lou, J. J. (2012), ‘Chinatown in Washington, DC: The Bilingual Landscape’, World Englishes, 31 (1): 34–47. Makoni, S. (2003), ‘From Misinvention to Disinvention of Language: Multilingualism and the South African Constitution’, in S. Makoni, G. Smitherman, A. F. Ball and A. K. Spears (eds), Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas, 132–52, London: Routledge. Makoni, S. and A. Pennycook (2005), ‘Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages’, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 2 (3): 137–56. Martin, I. P. (2014), ‘English Language Teaching in the Philippines’, World Englishes, 33 (4): 472–85. Matsuda, A. (2002), ‘“International Understanding” through Teaching World Englishes’, World Englishes, 21 (3): 436–40. Matsuda, P. K. (2014), ‘The Lure of Translingual Writing’, PMLA, 129 (3): 478–83. May, S. (2014), ‘Introducing the “Multilingual Turn”’, in S. May (ed.), The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education, 1–6, London: Routledge. McGregor, G. and Li Wei (1991), ‘Chinese or English? Language Choice amongst Chinese Students in Newcastle upon Tyne’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 12 (6): 493–509. Otsuji, E. and A. Pennycook (2010), ‘Metrolingualism: Fixity, Fluidity and Language in Flux’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 7 (3): 240–54.

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Pandey, A. (2000), ‘Symposium on the Ebonics Debate and African-American Language: Introduction’, World Englishes, 19 (1): 1–4. Parakrama, A. (1995), De-Hegemonizing Language Standards: Learning from (Post)Colonial Englishes about ‘English’, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Pavlenko, A. (2018), ‘Superdiversity and Why It Isn’t: Reflections on Terminological Innovation and Academic Branding’, in B. Schmenk, S. Breidbach and L. Küster (eds), Sloganizations in Language Education Discourse: Conceptual Thinking in the Age of Academic Marketization, 142–68, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, A. (1985), ‘Actions Speak Louder than Words: Paralanguage, Communication, and Education’, TESOL Quarterly, 19 (2): 259–82. Pennycook, A. (2007), Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2008), ‘Translingual English’, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 31 (3): 301–9. Pennycook, A. (2010), Language as a Local Practice, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2012), Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, A. (2018), Posthumanist Applied Linguistics, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2019), ‘From Translanguaging to Translingual Activism’, in D. Macedo (ed.), Decolonizing Foreign Language Education: The Misteaching of English and Other Colonial Languages, 169–85, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. and E. Otsuji (2015), Metrolingualism: Language in the City, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. and E. Otsuji (2019), ‘Mundane Metrolingualism’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 175–86. Rivlina, A. (2015), ‘Bilingual Creativity in Russia: English‐Russian Language Play’, World Englishes, 34 (3): 436–55. Schneider, E. W. (2007), Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seidlhofer, B. (2009), ‘Common Ground and Different Realities: World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca’, World Englishes, 28 (2): 236–45. Sridhar, S. N. and K. K. Sridhar (2018), ‘A Bridge Half-Built: Toward a Holistic Theory of Second Language Acquisition and World Englishes’, World Englishes, 37 (1): 127–39. Sugiharto, S. (2015), ‘The Multilingual Turn in Applied Linguistics? A Perspective from the Periphery’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 25 (3): 414–21. Sultana, S., S. Dovchin and A. Pennycook (2015), ‘Transglossic Language Practices of Young Adults in Bangladesh and Mongolia’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 12 (1): 93–108. Torres, L. (1989), ‘Code-Mixing and Borrowing in a New York Puerto Rican Community: A Cross-Generational Study’, World Englishes, 8 (3): 419–32. Tupas, R. (forthcoming), ‘Unequal Philippine Englishes: Displacing Englishes from the Study of Englishes’, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. Wolfram, W., D. Christian and D. Hatfield (1986), ‘The English of Adolescent and Young Adult Vietnamese Refugees in the United States’, World Englishes, 5 (1): 47–60. You, X. (2011), ‘Chinese White‐Collar Workers and Multilingual Creativity in the Diaspora’, World Englishes, 30 (3): 409–27.

Chapter 7

English-Speaking Diasporas SUSANNE MÜHLEISEN

1  DIASPORA, MIGRATION AND TRANSLOCATION IN THE SPREAD OF ENGLISH: IN SEARCH OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING DIASPORAS World Englishes have long been discussed in terms of their function (Kachru 1985), their form and evolutionary development (Schneider 2007) in particular national territories. By applying a critical diaspora perspective to World Englishes, this chapter seeks to highlight the dynamisms of global and transnational movements which have been vital in spreading the language as well as in transforming the notion of what Englishes might mean today beyond their relatively static territorial confinements. In the academic discussions of the last decades, the concept of diaspora has become both highly fashionable and contested. The meaning of the term started out in a highly specific context – the dispersal of Jews ‘among the nations’ (see contribution by Benor, this volume) – but has widened considerably in recent debates in sociology, anthropology or cultural studies. In the original sense, the connotation of diaspora includes first the idea of an involuntary and forced translocation, secondly a continued orientation to a (real or imagined) homeland to which one aspires to return after a temporary stay in the new environment and, thirdly, a sense of alienation from the host environment which is often perceived as hostile (cf. Vertovec 2000). In Baumann’s (2000) comprehensive discussion of the history and semantics of the term, the original Jewish notion also includes a religious dimension: Although many Jews were quite successful and voluntary economic migrants, they interpreted residing outside Palestine as a transitory, miserable, and unfavourable stay. It was understood as a preparation, an intermediate situation until the final divine gathering in Jerusalem. Fundamentally the term took on spiritual and soteriological meanings, pointing to the ‘gathering of the scattered’ by God’s grace at the end of time. ‘Diaspora’ turns out to be an integral part of a pattern constituted by the fourfold course of sin or disobedience, scattering and exile as punishment, repentance, and finally return and gathering. (Baumann 2000: 317) Ever since the 1970s the concept of diaspora has become generalized on a grand scale. Safran (2004: 9) criticizes that the term ‘has been stretched to cover almost any ethnic or religious minority that is dispersed physically from its original homeland’. Similarly, Baumann (2000: 314) notes,

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For scholars in various disciplines in the humanities the term seemed perfect to sociologically capture the group-related institutionalization and the evolving multicultural society. In addition, the term’s emotion-laden connotations of uprootedness, precariousness and homesickness provided explanations for the group’s enduring and nostalgic loyalty to the cultural and religious traditions of the country of origin. The term ‘diaspora’, once freed from its restriction to Jewish history and experience, came more and more into use to refer to any processes of dispersion and to relate to countless so-called dislocated, de-territorialized communities. To add to this process of generalization, the initial idea of ‘ethnic diaspora’ is now further expanded as ‘the exemplary communities of the transnational moment’ (Tölölyan 1991: 5). What, then, are the consequences for the use of the term ‘diaspora’ for English-language contexts? Who or where are English-speaking diasporas? Depending on how narrow or wide the notion of diaspora is interpreted, one might see no community at all to which it applies or one might include all global English speakers who have some type of migration or translocation experience in the historical, distant or recent past. In order to sharpen the linguistic focus on the concept, I will, first of all, explore the potential meaning of diaspora and diaspora communities in view of the spread and transformation of the English-language before, secondly, looking at some details of the linguistic consequences in more specific contexts. The fact that English has become the unrivalled global language in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with an ever growing number of first and second speakers around the world is no doubt connected to its deterritorialization which started with large-scale migrations of English mother-tongue speakers from the British Isles to the ‘New World’, that is to North America and the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. This initial translocation of English by migrants and colonists is sometimes referred to as the ‘first diaspora’ (Jenkins 2009: 5–7) which also includes the settlement of other territories like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa where English consequently became the language of the demographic majority and which – with the notable exception of the Caribbean – largely correspond with Kachru’s ‘inner circle’ countries (Kachru 1985). However, we hardly ever think of or speak of a US American individual from Pittsburgh or Los Angeles or a citizen of Toronto, Melbourne or Auckland as a member of the English diaspora in our day. Even though the original Greek meaning of the term ‘diaspora’ as ‘scattering’ or ‘dispersal’ of people of the same origin was also relevant to the earliest migrants and settlers in the New World, some vital elements of the association of the original notion of diaspora are absent here. If we take the settlement of North America as a case in point, we can note that, while the first settlers to form a permanent colony in Plymouth, New England, in 1620, the Pilgrim fathers had fled from religious persecution1 and could therefore be seen as a case of forced migration, the orientation of subsequent settlers to the initial ‘mother country’, Great Britain, soon gave way to an urge to sever these ties and become independent. Any sense of transience and idea or illusion to return to the ancestral homeland, if it was ever there, certainly ended with political independence of the United States in 1776. The break in an orientation to the ‘homeland’ became manifest also linguistically with the establishment of an autonomous American orthography and dictionary. As Noah Webster ([1789] 1951: 20) writes in his Dissertations on the English Language, ‘As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose

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children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard.’ In the new colony, the culture and language of the newcomers became dominant from early on and the indigenous (Amerindian or First Nation) culture and language was subordinated to the point of near-extinction today – therefore, the typical diaspora sense of living as an ethnic or religious minority in an adverse environment was not given beyond, possibly, the very initial period of settlement when first colonists made use of the help of Amerindian intermediaries (cf. Bailey 1991: 64–6). In fact, the motivation and attitude of the British expansion was, as Bailey (1991: 67) points out, ‘far from an expression of internationalism or intellectual curiosity’ but came from political and economic motives supported by claims of superiority expressed in an early pioneer’s statement which sought ‘to convert those poore Salvages to know Christ and humanity, whose labours with discretion will triple requite thy charge and paine, as the discovering things unknowne, erecting Townes, peopling Countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching vertue and gain to our native mother Country’ (Smith 1986, volume 2: 421)2. Similar points could be made about the settlement of Canada, Australia and New Zealand with regard to motivation of settlement as well as the demographic, cultural and linguistic domination of what, in diaspora terms, might be called the ‘host environment’ but what, in colonial reality, was seen as a virgin land on which the home culture and language could be transplanted and institutionalized. In what Jenkins (2009: 7–9) calls the ‘second diaspora’ of the English language – the dispersal of English through British colonization of African, Asian and Pacific territories which largely correspond with ‘outer circle’ classifications in the Kachruvian sense – the search of who or what is the English-speaking diaspora becomes even more thorny. Despite the enormous diversity of temporal, geographic and demographic scenarios, it has to be noted that the history of non-settlement colonization of the British Empire remains one of domination and imperialism rather than one of migration of ethnic or religious minorities from the British Isles. To apply the term ‘diaspora’ to these colonial movements in general is, therefore, misleading since it disregards differences of agency and power relationships involved in colonial expansion enterprises versus forced migration and translocation. In a more specific sense, however, we can also note that colonial and language contact has resulted in postcolonial settings and communities where we find exactly those characteristics of the original meaning of diaspora – involuntary and forced translocation, a sense of nostalgia and an orientation towards an (often imaginary) homeland as well as a sense of alienation from the environment. But this original notion might then stand side by side more ambiguous and transformed identifications with ‘home’ or ‘host’ as a result of the contact situation. Explorations of diaspora, therefore, may well be most productively made in those linguistic and cultural settings which defy a neat classification of global English(es) in inner, outer and expanding circles (see also Honkanen, this volume, for an exploration of the New African diaspora in the United States). One of these areas of postcolonial tension where neither home nor host language is really present, where cultural and linguistic loyalties and affiliations oscillate between the (real or imagined) mother country Britain and the (real or imagined) African homeland, is the Caribbean. There are even more good reasons to make a case for the Caribbean, the first global contact zone for the large movement of people, goods and ideas, an exemplary setting for our diaspora investigations. As Yelvington (2000: n.p.) puts it succinctly, the Caribbean both anticipated and now exemplifies the global modern world: ‘Reconsidering the Caribbean as an origin-point of the modern global system means more than an understanding of the

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Caribbean’s role in the world. It means understanding the world’s role in the Caribbean, the constant back and forth movement of people, ideas, and things, and the intricate interplay of forces at work in shaping economies, societies, and cultures.’ In the following, I will attempt to give the idea of English-speaking diasporas a more concrete perspective which includes both the transformative power of language contact and social change in diaspora communities. First, attention will be given to the case of the African diaspora in the Caribbean (section 2 of this chapter) to exemplify processes of creolization and the making of modern societies. The second focus will be on the development of a duality of consciousness and identification in Caribbean diasporic and transnational communities in urban metropolis (section 3) and, finally, the third application will be on the reterritorialization of diaspora communities in the third space internet when we look at Caribbean diasporas in cyberspace (section 4). By selecting the African diaspora in the Caribbean as my primary example of an English-speaking diaspora,3 I will pay homage to the original connotations of diaspora and to the earliest application of the term beyond the Jewish and also Christian (Baumann 2000: 320) dispersals, that is to the context of the transatlantic slave trade and the resulting Black Atlantic (Gilroy 1993). In this first exploration, the question of creolization (in language and culture) as a concept of identity formation (cf. Cohen 2010: 71) contrasting with or, possibly, fruitfully engaging with the concept of diaspora, will also be discussed. The case of displaced Africans in the Caribbean corresponds in part, I will argue, to what Steven Vertovec (2000: 142–6) calls diaspora as a social form as one of three categories of diaspora he identifies. The three categories are not absolutely mutually exclusive and, as we shall see in the application to our Caribbean case studies in the further discussion (sections 2, 3 and 4 of this chapter), overlap at times. For the sake of a clearer idea of the categories, however, it is first of all important to delineate their boundaries. The defining elements of diaspora as a social form are specific kinds of social relationships which are ●●

●●

●●

created as a result of voluntary or forced migration from one home location to at least two other countries; consciously maintaining a collective identity, which is often importantly sustained by reference to an ‘ethnic myth’ of common origin historical experience and some kind of tie to a geographic place; institutionalizing networks of exchange and communication which transcend territorial states and creating new communal organizations in places of settlement; 

●●

maintaining a variety of explicit and implicit ties with their homelands;

●●

developing solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement;

●●

unable to be, or not wishing to be, fully accepted by ‘host society’ – thereby fostering feelings of alienation, or exclusion, or superiority, or other kind of ‘difference’ (Vertovec 2000: 143).

The second meaning of diaspora described by Vertovec (2000: 146–53) is diaspora as a type of consciousness. Similar to what Gilroy (1993) has described as the double consciousness of the Black Atlantic,4 Vertovec characterized this as a duality of consciousness as part of ‘diasporic individuals’ awareness of decentred attachments’ (Vertovec 2000: 147). Clifford (1994: 322) also stresses both the relationality and the multiplicity that is entailed in this idea of diaspora in that ‘the empowering paradox of diaspora is that dwelling here assumes a solidarity and connection there. But there is not

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necessarily a single place or an exclusivist nation . . . [it is] the connection (elsewhere) that makes a difference (here)’. Vertovec’s third identification of diaspora is its role as a mode of cultural production, a role which is usually discussed in the context of globalization, ‘as the world-wide flow of cultural objects, images and meanings resulting in variegated processes of creolization, back-and-forth transferences, mutual influences, new contestations, negotiations and constant transformation’ (Vertovec 2000: 153). Central to this meaning of diaspora is a ‘fluidity of constructed styles and identities among diasporic people’ (Vertovec 2000: 153) and the emphasis of hybridity and syncretism found in many diasporas.   As the first site of globalization in the Early Modern Period, the Caribbean will now also be our starting point for the discussion of the concept of diaspora for linguistic and cultural transformations and the consequences for World Englishes. From the Caribbean, the journey of diaspora investigations will then lead to London and other metropolitan urban centres as well as to cyberspace.

2  LANGUAGE CONTACT AND DIASPORA I: THE AFRICAN DIASPORA IN THE CARIBBEAN It is no coincidence that the involuntary and forced displacement of an estimated 12.5 million of Africans to the New World (cf. Eltis and Richardson 2010) between 1500 and 1867 is the primary example of diaspora movements in modern times since it is comparable in terms of traumatic experience with the original Jewish case of diaspora. With its largely negative connotations of coerced dislocation, victimization, alienation and loss it seems to comply first of all with Steven Vertovec’s (2000) initial meaning of the concept of diaspora as social form. The displacement of Africans to the Americas went along with almost complete cultural, linguistic and other ruptures of the genealogical connections to their ancestral homeland. In African diaspora communities in the Caribbean plantation societies – communities which were formed with enslaved Africans of diverse linguistic and ethnic origin who had mostly no common language to communicate in and little access to the language of the colonial masters – the linguistic result of this disruption was the formation of Creole languages within a relatively short period of time. In the Anglophone Caribbean, that is those territories which are primarily associated with British colonization, the new language creation which developed is characterized by the use of a mostly English lexicon and syntactic and phonological influences from African language structures. If we look at Vertovec’s (2009: 4) hallmarks of diaspora as a social form, that is the ‘“triadic relationship” between: (a) globally dispersed yet collectively self-identified ethnic groups; (b) the territorial states and contexts where such groups reside; and (c) the homeland states and contexts whence they or their forebears came’, we may, however, detect some problems for the application to the Caribbean case: the maintenance of ties with the ‘homeland states and contexts’ has to rely on the imaginary and partial reconstruction as does the self-identification as an ethnic group since, more often than not, the ethnic and linguistic origin of individuals was lost and can only loosely be connected (e.g. ‘the Yoruba in Trinidad’ or ‘the Akan in Jamaica’). A linguistic orientation towards a home culture and maintenance of the home language, usually one of the characteristics of diasporic communities, is not possible since there is not ‘one language’ to go back to. Rather, Creole with its African structural retentions is the closest thing the African diaspora speaker can use as a means of identification with an unspecific imagined home ‘Africa’.

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Ideas of ethnic, linguistic or cultural purity have no place in the Caribbean contact zone and have given way to cultural and linguistic transformations and creolization. In that sense, the Caribbean case defies what has been called ‘classical’ or also ‘empirical’ diaspora which relies on the ‘idea of boundaries, being and belonging, often rooted in organicist metaphors of cultural reproduction, blood and nation’ (Alexander 2010: 114). Robin Cohen makes a case for the use of the concept of creolization over that of diaspora as a contrasting form of identity formation. He elaborates that, when creolization occurs, participants select particular elements from incoming or inherited cultures, endow these with meanings different from those they possessed in the original culture, and then creatively merge these to create totally new varieties that supersede the prior forms. Creolization is thus a ‘here and now’ sensibility that erodes old roots and stresses fresh and creative beginnings in a novel place of identification. (Cohen 2010: 71) A similar tension – between diaspora as social form and creolization – can also be noted in other characteristics in Afro-Caribbean contexts, for example the development of solidarity with ‘co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement’ (Vertovec 2000: 143). On the one hand, a sense of commonality with other New World Africans in the Caribbean, the United States or parts of Central and South America cannot be denied. On the other hand, the solidarity may also shift to members of other ethnicities in a community, for example in the identification as Trinidadian (of either African or Indian descent) over the solidarity with, for instance, a US African American individual or group. Creolization as a contact phenomenon, then, goes beyond a transformation of European and African language elements into a new language system. If we take the case of Trinidadian English Creole (TEC), we can see that the language has also incorporated (mainly lexical) elements of Bhojpuri, the Indian language the indentured Indians brought with them, with food terms like baigan = ‘eggplant’; bodi = ‘bean’ or channa = ‘chick pea’ (cf. Winer 2009), etc. which are now used as household terms by Trinidadians of diverse ethnic origins. The use of Creole is also extended to the Indian diaspora community in Trinidad who mark their identity as Trinidadians with Creole rather than the Bhojpuri they once came with but abandoned in lieu of Creole with the exception of lexical retentions.5 Creolization in a wider sense has also extended beyond language creation from different origins to cultural practices such as food preparation, to religious practices as well as to music culture: for example, in dishes and recipes which have African cognates but have been spiced with New World ingredients such as ‘Oil Down’ (cf. Goucher 2014), in the tradition of wakes which, in form and function, have also been partly adopted in Trinidadian Hindu practices (cf. Jha 1976), as well as in crossover styles of music such as ‘chutney soca’ where Trinidadian calypso incorporates Indian linguistic and musical elements and uses instruments from both Western and Indian music culture.6

3  GLOBALIZATION, TRANSNATIONALISM AND DIASPORA II: THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA IN URBAN METROPOLITAN CENTRES From its early history on, migration has been part of Caribbean life and has brought a large number of Caribbean people – both of African and of Indian descent – to the urban centres of Europe, the United States and Canada. While their migration was not forced

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in the same way as that of their ancestors in bondage or indentureship, the pressure of socio-economic advancement and educational opportunities has created diasporic and transnational communities which fall more into the categories described as type of consciousness and mode of cultural production (Vertovec 2000) than as diaspora in the original sense. Here, we have a rather positive and conscious self-identification as part of belonging to more than one heritage, a ‘here’ and ‘there’. Stuart Hall (1990) describes diaspora both as a metaphorical and a literal concept when he writes: Diaspora does not refer to those scattered tribes whose identity can only be secured in relation to some sacred homeland to which they must at all costs return. . . . The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined, not by essence or purity, but by a recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference. (Hall 1990: 235) The heterogeneity in identification is then also managed through multiplicity of practices. Vertovec (2009: 72) describes this multiplicity as a kind of ‘toolkit’ where ‘cultural attributes drawn from a number of sources throughout one’s life are understood as a set of resources from which people can construct diverse strategies of action day-today, situation-by-situation’. Such ad hoc selections might not only include attitudes and styles but also the choice and mixture of linguistic elements in a code-switching or codemixing style. For Caribbean migrants in London, for example, the linguistic symbol of the fragmented identity has become what Sebba (1993) describes as ‘London Jamaican’, a type of traversing of languages and varieties across ethnic boundaries, between Jamaican Creole (JC) and London English (LE). This is sometimes deliberately and consciously employed and, at times, comes out as unconscious testimony of the double or multiple consciousness as in the following blend of features, perhaps most visible in the alternation of realizations of the dental fricative /θ/ as London English /f/ in ‘somefing’ (line 4) or Jamaican Creole /t/ in ‘ting’ (line 5): Example 1 1 One day me met a witch Jamaica [inaudible] (gorra) mother – me saw her dere, me sit down an she tell me all the story alrigh%? One story was about the ghost she see – this is the story whe she tell me wha% she see, alright. She, one day, she tell me dat she saw a ghost – of somefing like a ghost, a person who come in the 5 house – she tell me she pick up a brick and break i bones – de ting run like she no know what. (in Sebba 1993: 14; transcription convention here adopted from Sebba: % = glottal stop) More recently, this multiplicity of identity has been described as ‘Caribritish’ (Muir 2018) in a Guardian article which reflects the seventieth anniversary of the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush, the steamer which brought roughly 500 Caribbeans – mainly Jamaicans but also some Trinidadians and Bermudans – to Britain in June 1948 and whose name is now almost synonymous with postwar migration from the Commonwealth in general. The author (Muir 2018), himself a London-born descendant of Jamaican parents who came to Britain on board the SS Empire Windrush, describes the generational differences of identification with Caribbean versus British culture in a situation-based ‘toolkit’ fashion which also includes a redefinition of what Caribbean-ness or Britishness might mean: My children will always carry the legacy of Windrush, but they and their peers are already redefining what that means in a new century. They aren’t so much chameleons, changing coats to suit the surroundings, as creatures whose coats of many hues allow

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those confident enough to do so to move around with greater ease than we could. . . . Windrush is a cloak they wear as they choose, not the straitjacket it could be for my generation. (Muir 2018: n.p.) Part of this cloak, this self-selected positive identification with Caribbean culture is mirrored in the assertive use of Creole which is often stigmatized, with highly ambiguous evaluations, in the home communities in the Caribbean (cf. Mühleisen 2002). Such a re-evaluation of contact languages in the new and diasporic environments is not restricted to the ‘Caribritish’ context but can also be seen in, for example, a positive and affirmative use of Cameroonian Pidgin in South Africa (Mai 2006), of Haitian Creole in Montréal (Sarkar and Winer 2006) or of Cape Verdian Creole in Lisbon (Märzhäuser 2010). As Mühleisen and Schröder (2017: 52) contend, ‘the urban diaspora constitutes a site where contact varieties are prone to undergo various transformations: structural, functional, and group-affiliational changes. Diasporic communities might therefore be seen as ideal exploratory fields where models of identity, language shift, and language prestige can be challenged or affirmed.’ In a study on differences in the communicative use of Creole in three generations of Caribbean presence in London (Mühleisen 2002), analyses of conversations show that both form and function differ considerably: while the first generation of Creole/Patois speakers use Creole for almost all conversational functions (referential, metalinguistic, directive, expressive), its use for younger speakers was restricted to more phatic functions, that is greetings, interjections, and so on. Here, Creole is used as a token to highlight the Caribbean side of the speaker’s identity. In the overview of generational differences as shown in Table 7.1, we can see the divergent usages, speaker groups and functions of English-lexified Creole in London.

TABLE 7.1  Generational Differences First generation

Second generation

Third generation

Variety

Distinct Caribbean C.

Jamaican Creole

London Jamaican

Homogeneity

Shared rules/features Adapted rules

High flexibility/creativity

Acquisition

L1

L1 and L2

L2

Identification

Regional Caribbean

Ethnic

Ethnic and stylistic

Group of speakers West Indian immigrants

Children of West Indian, Members of black and African immigrants, non-black youth culture other groups with communities immediate exposure

Legitimacy

Birth/genealogy

Genealogy/ identification

Use

Primary language of communication

Secondary language of Situational communication

Communicative functions

All

Selected

Phatic/symbolic

Age

All age groups

All age groups

Ca. 12–28

Source: Mühleisen and Schröder 2017: 59.

Identification/ performance

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What can be seen here is another type of transformation Creole has undergone in the move from first to third and, by now, fourth generation of Caribbeans: while in the first generation Creole was spoken exclusively by West Indians of all ages and ethnic groups, Creole in Britain has since become the language of Afro-Caribbeans and, more generally, of black youth culture. On the other hand, cross-cultural use of (mostly Jamaican) Creole by adolescents of non-Caribbean heritage has become quite common and has been attested for adolescents of different ethnic backgrounds. Such crossings are not only restricted to Creole but are also performed with stylized Asian English or Panjabi as tools of identification by groups who use them as one of their speaking styles by choice rather than on the basis of heritage ties (cf. Rampton 1995).

4  DIGITAL DIASPORAS AND CARIBBEAN CYBER-COMMUNITIES One of the key issues of diaspora and transnational communities is that of network ties, of maintaining the connection between either the ‘homeland’ and the diaspora community or the communication between transnational communities. While this required an expensive and time-consuming effort for many translocated generations – with letter writing, expensive travel or phone calls as the main sources of contact and exchange – the possibilities of the internet have increased speed, frequency and variety of communication enormously, allowing members of diaspora and transnational communities to be in intense interaction at almost no cost. While cyberspace communication might be seen as another form of deterritorialization and freedom from restrictions of time and space, it could also act as a substitute for a home, a virtual place which can be peopled with other members of the community and filled with activities and practices connected to the homeland. As Victoria Bernal (2010: 167) argues, members of diasporas have been deterritorialized and decontextualized, but they may experience this not so much as liberation, but rather as dislocation and displacement. Therefore, they tend to use the internet in part to undo the effects of their mobility rather than to enhance mobility. They may seek, through their online practices, to recontextualize themselves, and in some sense even to reterritorialize themselves through cyberspace. They do so by creating or visiting online versions of ‘home’, through connecting to others like themselves in diaspora, and by connecting with their homeland through a transnational field of communication facilitated by (but never limited to) the Internet. How is this online ‘home’ created linguistically, in what way do participants in cyberspace diaspora communities also mark their membership in this digital home as well as their fragmented and multiple identity? The complex interplay between language and identity in the digital diaspora will have consequences for a number of linguistic forms of behaviour which can be described as follows (cf. also Mühleisen, forthcoming): ●●

●●

They may result in acts of linguistic assertion where an emphasis or even overemphasis is placed on features of the home or heritage variety. Such linguistic acts of assertion must be seen as rather overt statements on the identification with the home community and a feeling of us (ingroup) versus dem (larger society). The second possibility is that speakers want to identify with their new environment and make this linguistically transparent by an adoption of features of

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the host variety, that is in linguistic acts of accommodation. ●●

Thirdly, speakers might use both varieties in a given unit of talk. Code-switching as a form of linguistic behaviour is highly common among multilingual speakers and is also used to index multiple identity in informal written communication in CMC contexts (cf. Moll 2017; Mühleisen, forthcoming). But the use of both varieties as a form of hybrid self-identification might also include some innovative mixing and symbolic merging of the codes (cf. also Sebba 1993; Mühleisen 2002; Mair 2003).

None of these possibilities is exclusive and, typically, not just one strategy will be employed by the writers but all three of them, depending on situation, interlocutor and purpose of communication. The fact that the interaction between the members of the digital community is written rather than face-to-face is significant in that the identification of the writer somehow has to be performed in the written mode, often by means of particular markers in the orthography. Orthography, then, becomes a symbol of the language which is represented in writing. While writing is not really an accurate representation of speech, we have some features in electronic writing which also resemble oral communication, for instance, features of context-dependency in chats or the constraints of sequentiality and time. Nevertheless, some information which used to be part of oral communication – intonation, loudness, the speaker’s emotive state – is added by graphic means to forms of digital writing. Consider the following example (cf. Mühleisen, forthcoming) taken from a corpus of a forum of diasporic Trinidadians, the Trinidad and Tobago Possee Livin California7 (bold marking of Trinidadian elements mine, S. M.): Example 2

1 For those of you who came out last saturday, I must say allyuh know how to parteeeeeeeeeeee. lawd! Like allyuh didn’t want to go home atall. Nearly miss meh flight. And for those who missed it . . . o well next time. Glad allyuh had a GOOD time. Blessup to Trini Diva, Goddess, MzLys,



5 Soca Daddy for coming out. Like Cutie blank meh boi . . . LOL. Anyway, round 2 will be at LA Carnival August 15th at the same place. Both sides this time. Blessings

What we have here is, firstly, a mix of features to signal loudness and emotive emphasis: for instance, in the graphic representation of ‘to party’ (line 1); the use of exclamation marks (line 2) and suspension points (line 3 and 5), the use of capital letters (line 4) or the emotive acronym ‘LOL’ (line 5). There are also, secondly, unmistakable markers of Trinidadian English Creole (TEC) lexical/ grammatical items and representations of pronunciation such as in the use of the TEC second-person plural form ‘allyuh’ (lines 1, 2 and 4), the first-person possessive and accusative ‘meh’ (line 3, 5) or the tag/discourse marker ‘boi’ (line 5). Bernal (2010: 167) notes that ‘many scholars have focused on the possibilities that cyberspace offers for escaping the body and transcending identity. People in diaspora, however, are often concerned not with escaping their identities, but, on the contrary, with how to maintain their identity in new contexts.’ This identity must be performed in variety choice since the written mode of communication on the internet lacks other means of identification like tone of voice or physical appearance which are important in face-to-face or even audio-visual communication. One of the motivations for the use of

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Creole rather than Standard English in the ttcalifornia diaspora forum might then also be the verification of and claim to membership to this group as ‘credible’ Trinidadians. On the other hand, the use of elements from both the home variety (Trinidadian English Creole) and the host variety (US American English) can also highlight the multiple identification of the fragmented reality of the writers. Both can be seen in the following two examples taken from the corpus: In example 3, the message is mainly referential, that is the function is to inform or exchange information about an event. The main body of the message is in Standard English but also contains a token phrase ‘See summa allyuh dey’ (line 4) in Trinidadian: Example 3

1 Re: Meet KES The Band at Caribbean Tree House on May 9th.

Danielle, hope to meet you (and the other memebers [sic]) at the show. There will be a Meet and Greet for KES The Band at the Caribbean TreeHouse Restaurant on May 9, 2008 at 8:30 p.m. See summa allyuh dey. Caribbean Treehouse.

5 Restaurant(310) [phone number, S.M.] Centinela Ave Inglewood, CA 90302 I’m Out.

In example 4, the double – Trinidadian and US American – affiliation of the writer can also be seen by the double reference ‘party/lime’ (line 2), with ‘lime’ as the specific Trinidadian lexical term for the general English ‘party’. Example 4

1 Re: Los Angeles Carnival.

As allyuh know, I have been keeping a low profile on the party/lime scene. Ah in school and it kicking my butt, so I just chilling and jelling. Such multiple linguistic affiliations may also be seen in the frequent use of the Trinidadian second-person plural pronoun ‘allyuh’ as well as the corresponding US (Southern) pronoun ‘yall’. Forums like the Trinidad Posse Livin California, formed in the early 2000s when the possibilities of the internet were still relatively new, were among the first cyber-diasporic creations of a homeland. Open forums are now rather an exception and have been replaced by closed forums in social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp groups. As Bernal (2010: 170) notes, however, [t]he Internet may be changing the experience of diaspora by offering a third space – neither here nor there – which may be particularly useful for diasporas who feel themselves in two or more places at once or live with a sense of dislocation. This third space also offers new opportunities for collaboration and co-production between diasporas and compatriots in the home country.

5  OUTLOOK Is the internet, then, the ultimate site of English-speaking diasporas? It seems that the spread of English around the globe has reached ever more new users and audiences in this third space in which imaginary homes are created through interaction. English is used by

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a surprising number of diasporas online which includes, for example, Haitians, Tamils and Eritreans who in face-to-face communication might rather choose French Creole, Tamil or Tigrinya. The motivation for using English in this diasporic environment is diverse. Bernal (2010: 168) notes that ‘for some, it may reflect their location in Englishspeaking North America or the UK; for others, the language of their advanced education or a lingua franca that bridges linguistic diversity. For some groups whose languages use different writing systems, the use of English rather than a language of the homeland may reflect the computer keyboard available.’ But not only the meaning of the term ‘diaspora’, also the situations, conditions and experiences to which it is applied have diversified. Ethnic and religious diasporas continue to exist but co-exist side by side with other communities – analogous and online – which would be interpreted more as transnational communities today. And new communication possibilities could then also result in a sense of a global transnationalism without ever leaving home. As Vertovec (2009: 15) writes about the new developments of migrant transnationalism, [t]he speed and intensity of communication between home and away has created in many contexts a ‘normative transnationalism’ in which migrants abroad are ever more closely aware of what is happening in the sending context and vice-versa. Research demonstrates how even those who have never themselves moved from the home context are powerfully affected by events, values and practices among their transnationally connected relatives and co-villagers abroad. The search for the English-speaking diasporas has not ended with the first and second dispersal of English in a textbook sense (Jenkins 2009: 5–10). Rather, the search has resulted in a highly diverse number of scenarios and conditions of communities whose identification with the English language and its use is highly contested, ambiguous and fragmented but is here to stay. Looking at World Englishes through the lens of diasporic and transnational movements, through processes of creolization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, has made the borders in which the New Englishes are thriving not entirely obsolete but, rather, it has emphasized the developments inside, outside and the many back and forths across borders which are becoming more and more fluid in our globalized world.

NOTES 1. There are, of course, also other cases in this ‘first dispersal of English’ movement which might count as forced and non-volitional translocation, for example the transportation of convicts from Britain to penal colonies in Australia between 1788 and 1862. Generally, the history of migration to North America is, of course, more complex than can be elaborated here, also including migration and formation of diasporic communities from Ireland. 2. John Smith, English soldier, adventurer, colonial governor and author, was one of the first chroniclers and supporters of English colonization in the New World. He lived from 1580 to 1631 and wrote a number of works – maps, chronicles, observations – which promoted settlement in the Americas. They were published in eight volumes during his lifetime, between 1608 and 1631 and were edited and published by Philip L. Barbour in 1986. 3. See also Baumann (2000: 320–1) for an overview of the first applications of the term diaspora to the African diaspora from the 1960s on.

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4. The term was first used by W. E. B. Du Bois (1897) to describe the condition of African Americans with a ‘sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity’. Paul Gilroy (1993), in his book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, takes up the term to describe the conflictual as well as productive hybrid identification with both European and African culture. 5. This is rather different in the Indian diaspora community in Mauritius. The East Indian community on this Indian Ocean island came from the same location – Uttar Pradesh – and around the same time as those who were transported to Trinidad. Yet, Eisenlohr (2006: 7–8) writes that in Mauritius ideologies of ancestral language play key roles in simultaneously defining a relationship to a ‘homeland’ in India and shaping a sense of nationality in the diaspora. The most important among these Indian ancestral languages is Hindi, locally understood as the ancestral language of Hindus of north Indian origin. Despite its restricted use, Hindi is a principal focus of diasporic belonging among Hindu Mauritians. Its practice, especially in religious contexts, is sometimes even understood to be a way of ritual communion with the Indian ancestors who founded the Hindu community of Mauritius. In contrast, the principal vernacular language, French-lexifier Mauritian Creole, which Mauritian Hindus share with almost all other Mauritians, is less relevant for the construction of a diasporic community, especially because its practice is seen as evidence of spatial and temporal distance from the world of Indian immigrant ancestors. 6. The term soca is attributed to calypsonian Ras Shorty, formerly known as Lord Shorty (birth name Garfield Blackman) who created it as an acronym from ‘the Soul of Calypso’ but spelled it originally SOKAH to reflect and acknowledge the East Indian influence. The expression chutney soca reflects a further East Indianization of the Trinidadian musical genre Calypso, with artists like Rikki Jai, Ravi B. or Master Saleem dominating the recent Trinidadian chutney soca scene. 7. The ttcalifonia group, as it was also called, was a yahoo group that was founded in July 2000 and was used as a forum for Trinidadians in the US American diaspora, mainly in California, well into 2008. At its peak time the group had 272 members who used this site to communicate about Trinidad-related events in California or also in Trinidad, as well as to simply connect Trinidadians in California. The corpus consists of altogether 3,486 entries and of 470,146 word tokens (cf. also Mühleisen, forthcoming).

REFERENCES Alexander, C. (2010), ‘Diasporas, Race, and Differences’, in K. Knott and S. McLoughlin (eds), Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, 112–17, London and New York: Zed Books. Bailey, R. W. (1991), Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Baumann, M. (2000), ‘Diaspora: Genealogies of Semantics and Transcultural Comparison’, Numen, 47 (3): 313–37. Bernal, V. (2010), ‘Diasporas and Cyberspace’, in K. Knott and S. McLoughlin (eds), Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, 167–71, London and New York: Zed Books. Clifford, J. (1994), ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology, 9 (3): 302–38. Cohen, R. (2010), ‘Social Identities and Creolization’, in K. Knott and S. McLoughlin (eds), Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, 69–73, London and New York: Zed Books.

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Du Bois, W. E. B. (1897), ‘Strivings of the Negro People’, The Atlantic, August 1897 issue. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​atlan​​tic​.c​​om​/ma​​gazin​​e​/arc​​hive/​​1897/​​08​/st​​rivin​​gs​-of​​-the-​​ne​ gro​​-peop​​le​/30​​5446/​ (accessed 31 January 2020). Eisenlohr, P. (2006), Little India: Diaspora, Time, and Ethnolinguistic Belonging in Hindu Mauritius, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Eltis, D. and D. Richardson (2010), Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gilroy, P. (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goucher, C. (2014), Congotay! Congotay! A Global History of Caribbean Food, New York: Taylor and Francis. Hall, S. (1990), ‘Cultural Identity and the Diaspora’, in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, 222–37, London: Lawrence and Wishart. Jenkins, J. (2009), World Englishes: A Resource Book for Students, 2nd edn, London and New York: Routledge. Jha, J. C. (1976), ‘The Hindu Sacraments (Rites de Passage) in Trinidad and Tobago’, Caribbean Quarterly: East Indians in the Caribbean, 22 (1): 40–52. Kachru, B. B. (1985), ‘Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle’, in R. Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (eds), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and the Literature, 11–30, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mai, M. M. (2006), ‘Assessing Patterns of Language Use and Identity among Cameroonian Migrants in Cape Town’, MA thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town. Mair, C. (2003), ‘Language, Code, and Symbol: The Changing Roles of Jamaican Creole in Diaspora Communities’, Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 28 (2): 231–48. Märzhäuser, C. (2010), ‘Cape Verdean Creole in Lisbon: Young Generation’s Perpective’, TRANS: Internetzeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 17: section 1.3, September. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.inst​​.at​/t​​rans/​​17Nr/​​1​-3​/1​​-3​_ma​​erzha​​​euser​​17​.ht​m (accessed 31 October 2019). Moll, A. (2017), ‘Diasporic Cyber-Jamaican: Stylized Dialect of an Imagined Community’, in S. Mühleisen (ed.), Contested Communities: Communication, Narration, Imagination, 69–93, Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi. Muir, H. (2018), ‘Caribritish: Me, My family and the Legacy of Windrush’, The Guardian, 7 June. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/uk​​-news​​/2018​​/jun/​​07​/ca​​ribri​​tish-​​me​ -my​​-fami​​ly​-an​​d​-the​​​-lega​​cy​-of​​-wind​​rush (accessed 7 October 2019). Mühleisen, S. (2002), Creole Discourse: Exploring Prestige Formation and Change Across Caribbean English-Lexicon Creoles, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Mühleisen, S. and A. Schröder (2017), ‘Prestige Change in Contact Varieties of English in Urban Diaspora Communities’, in S. Mühleisen (ed.), Contested Communities: Communication, Narration, Imagination, 51–68, Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi. Mühleisen, S. (forthcoming), ‘‘‘... allyuh know how to parteeeeeeeeeeee. lawd!” Linguistic Choices and Membership Construction in the Trinidad & Tobago Possee Livin California Forum’, in S. Mühleisen (ed.), Text Types and Genre in World Englishes: Case Studies from the Caribbean. Rampton, B. (1995), Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents, London: Longman. Safran, W. (2004), ‘Deconstructing and Comparing Diasporas’, in C. Alfonso, W. Kokot and K. Tölölyan (eds), Diaspora, Identity and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research, 9–29, London: Routledge.

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Sarkar, M. and L. Winer (2006), ‘Multilingual Codeswitching in Quebec Rap: Poetry, Pragmatics and Performativity’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (3): 173–92. Schneider, E. (2007), Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sebba, M. (1993), London Jamaican: Language Systems in Interaction, London: Longman. Smith, J. (1986), The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580–1631), 3 vols, ed. P. L. Barbour, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Tölölyan, K. (1991), ‘The Nation-State and Its Others: In Lieu of a Preface’, Diaspora, 1 (1): 3–7. Vertovec, S. (2000), The Hindu Diaspora. Comparative Patterns, London: Routledge. Vertovec, S. (2009), Transnationalism, London: Routledge. Webster, N. ([1789] 1951), Dissertations on the English Language, Facsimile. Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints. Winer, L., ed. (2009), Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Yelvington, K. A. (2000), ‘Caribbean Crucible: History, Culture, and Globalization’, National Council for the Social Studies. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.soci​​alstu​​dies.​​org​/s​​ites/​​defau​​lt​/fi​​ les​/p​​ublic​​ation​​s​/se/​​6​402/​​64020​​1​.htm​l (accessed 23 January 2020).

Chapter 8

English and Social Media Translingual Englishes, Identities and Linguascapes SENDER DOVCHIN AND RHONDA OLIVER

1  INTRODUCTION Social media is an immense shared space in which the complex sociolinguistic practices evolve and revolve without involving direct physical co-existence. It represents a coexistence in a shared ‘cybernetic’ third space, formulated by unknown hierarchies, with an unknown number of contributors and of unknown identities. The spread and role of English in social media to connect these inexhaustible and never-ending subjectivities are multifaceted and complex (Dovchin, Pennycook and Sultana 2017). Modern communication technologies saturate the internet and allow for connectivity across time and space while facilitating ‘the global mobility of knowledges, ideas and semiotic forms’ (Deumert 2014: 116). As Deumert (2014: 116–17) adds, ‘[d]igital practices quite habitually localize the global because of the relative ease with which texts and signs can travel across space and time. Digital writers around the world have been shown to recontextualize global signs to express local meanings in everyday online interactions, and local signs can be catapulted “virally” to global prominence within a short space of time . . . .’ Addressing the need to keep up with the linguistic, cultural and semiotic proliferation of social media practices, scholarship on the spread and role of English worldwide has begun emphasizing linguistic diversity and semiotic heterogeneity as some of the crucial linguistic characteristics of social media (Dovchin and Pennycook 2018). The combination of diverse linguistic resources, repertoires, modes, codes, genres and styles in social media environments emphasizes the growing need to problematize more traditional concepts currently embedded within the critical dialogues of World Englishes (WE), a process that has become a major focus of contemporary ‘sociolinguistics of globalization’ (Blommaert 2010). When Pennycook (2007: 21) refers to the global spread of English, he directly associates it with creativity and innovation saturated with different semiotic resources, pointing out several flaws that currently exist in the framework of WE, namely ‘the location of nationally defined identities within the circles, the inability to deal with numerous contexts, and the privileging of ENL over ESL over EFL’. Furthermore, the process of constructing new national varieties of English (e.g. Singaporean English, Indian English and so on) comes with a risk of excluding ‘other Englishes’ such as English creoles, vernaculars and other eccentric and hybrid forms of local Englishes. As Pennycook (2007: 22) indicates, ‘[t]he notion of world Englishes leaves out all those other Englishes which

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do not fit the paradigm of an emergent national standard, and in doing so, falls into the trap of mapping centre linguists’ images of language and the world on to the periphery.’ Canagarajah (2013: 59) likewise acknowledges that WE do not necessarily move beyond pluralizing English nor do they reflect the dynamic changes in communicative practices in which English is involved. Thus, understanding English in terms of social media, the nation-state and the Three Concentric Circles overlooks many other existing and evolving formations of English. As Canagarajah (2013: 61) writes, the WE model leaves out a consideration of the contact between the circles, as it focuses on varieties within the three circles and nation-state boundaries. Therefore, this raises the question of whose norms apply when a member from the Expanding Circle talks to one from the Outer Circle (including on social media)? Whose norms apply when someone from other the Outer Circle talks to a member from Inner Circle? In this regard, Lee (2017: 103) highlights the additional critique spearheaded toward the Kachruvian WE paradigm because it privileges and codifies instances of standard and educated usage of Englishes, while an account for non-standard usage within peripheralized variants is discounted. Concentrating on codifiable variations from mainstream Englishes results in marginalization of English usages that do not necessarily get categorized or classified. The limitations of WE categories are particularly apparent in areas of the current transnational world where transformation is at its greatest and where a diversity of language practices is rapidly developing. On this basis, Seargeant and Tagg (2011: 497) argue that WE paradigms have limited applications with regard to ‘(1) the global spread of English and the diverse linguistic practices that have resulted from it; and (2) the linguistic practices of computer mediated discourse (CMD).’ In response, English, especially standard forms, may be better viewed not so much as the named ‘linguistic category’, but rather as semiotic resources that are used to effectively communicate, including to ‘socialize’ with others. These phatic presences of English in social media exchanges are, therefore, better viewed as ‘the standards of the indexical order of conviviality, instead of by the standards of language only’ (Velghe 2015: 27). For example, drawing on examples of communication between Thai speakers via social networking and instant messaging services, Seargeant and Tagg (2011) note that the complexity of English‐related forms in social media should be seen through a wider semiotic mix of communicative practices. Despite the participants all sharing an L1 (Thai), sporadic use of English is as an intrinsic element of social media in Thailand, because it offers a broader range of semiotic opportunities. Similarly, although questioning the separability of language from other modes of communication on Facebook, Sharma (2012) also suggests that the Facebook environment is a transmodal space, in which users redefine the role of English and other languages in relation to their existing online social relationships, innovatively transcending the meaning of English not only by mixing it with local language, but also by using other multimodal texts that draw on both local and global media contents. As Dovchin, Sultana and Pennycook (2015: 8) point out, Facebook users make meaning ‘not only through how they borrow, repeat and mimic certain linguistic resources available to them, but also through the ways they make new linguistic meanings within this complex relocalizing process’ (Dovchin and Lee 2019). In addition, as described by Oliver and Nguyen (2017), they can do so fluidly moving between their different linguistic resources, in the case of their participants between Aboriginal English (AE) and Standard Australian English (SAE) in creative and innovative ways. In a similar way Leppänen et al. (2009)

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describe how in the Finnish context users of social media engage innovatively and creatively, using appropriations to construct certain identities and communalities. That is, like the young Aboriginal adults in Oliver and Nguyen’s study, the young Finns appropriate English as a communicative resource in different ways to negotiate their meanings, identities and a sense of belonging, along with other varied linguistic resources at their disposal. As Leppänen et al. (2015: 4) point out, superdiversity in social media is realized by ‘the mobility and mobilization of linguistic and other semiotic resources that are distributed, recontextualized and resemiotized in various ways in countless and rhizomatic digital media practices mushrooming on the internet.’ Thus, ‘[t]he skilled use of the new media together with the use of English form a powerful combination providing local actors access to translocal activity spaces and communities of practice where young [people] can create discourse that is appropriate and meaningful within their particular contexts and normative frameworks’ (Leppänen et al. 2009: 1081). This chapter thus seeks to expand the horizons of WE to examine not only the extent to which diverse linguistic and semiotic resources are recontextualized, but also what kinds of identities, meanings and ideas are intricately intertwined and embedded into the tapestry of social media use. Analysing the language practices of groups of social media users with Mongolian background living in Australia and the United States, this chapter suggests that the use of English is better understood through the notion of ‘linguascapes’ – the combination of emerging ‘trans-’ perspectives in applied linguistics (Hawkins and Mori 2018) and the cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s notion of ‘world of -scapes’ (Appadurai 1996). Based on the complexity of the layers of meanings found in the English language practices in social media, this chapter points to the inadequacy of traditional analytic frameworks embedded within the paradigm of WE, particularly when analyzing the multiple modes of semiotic diffusion and cultural interaction that occur across and within English in social media (Canagarajah and Dovchin 2019; Blommaert 2018). To address this, this chapter seeks to investigate whether or not (1) English is ecologically embedded and interconnected within the diverse semiotic resources of social media; (2) texts are ‘meshed and mediated by diverse codes’; and, (3) how communication ‘transcends individual languages’ (Canagarajah 2013: 6–7).

2 ‘WORLD OF SCAPES’ AND ‘TRANS-’ PERSPECTIVES: LINGUASCAPES Arjun Appadurai (1996) argues that the current global cultural economy is an outcome of the markedly varied mutual challenge of sameness and difference on a platform categorized by radical disjunctures between diverse sorts of global flows and the ambiguous landscapes created in and through these disjunctures. It is a ‘deeply historical, uneven and even localising process’, as different local societies take up the materials of modernity differently (Appadurai 1996: 17). Globalization, thus, needs to be viewed through a complex and complicated process, overlapping and disjunctive orders and fluid processes in motion. It should involve the mobility of people, capital, culture, information, media and technology – a ‘world of scapes’ – a world fundamentally portrayed by objects in motion. Appadurai (1996: 45) envisions the ‘world of flows scapes’ through ‘five dimensions of global cultural flows’ – ethnoscapes (transnational flows of people including migrants, refugees, expats, tourists etc.), mediascapes (flows of media such as print media resources, popular culture resources, social media etc.), technoscapes (movement of technology,

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new technologies, computers, applications), financescapes (mobility of capital, money, investments, stock shares etc.) and ideoscapes (movement of ideas, ideologies, beliefs, politics etc.) to demonstrate the various ways that socio-cultural objects move across borders. These socio-cultural landscapes and their mobility do not necessarily exclude one another, but rather are mutually constructive and co-dependent. It is, however, important to indicate that these ‘scapes’ are not necessarily random and haphazard since they are deeply context-reliant and deeply local. These scapes may also create complications that manifest themselves in powerfully local forms, but have contexts and situations that are anything but local (Appadurai 1996). Following this vision, Pennycook (2003: 523) suggests that it is worth integrating the idea of ‘linguascapes’ into these ‘worlds of scapes’, ‘in order to capture the relationship between the ways in which some languages are no longer tied to locality or community, but rather operate globally in conjunction with these other scapes’. Understanding the global spread of language from the perspective of ‘linguascapes’ may be essential in revealing the mobility of languages in relation to other scapes, since different societies seem to create their own local ‘scape – linguascapes’ (Dovchin 2018). Higgins (2013) similarly notes that the transnational flows of linguistic and cultural resources not only transform and change, they also make further new local modes of reference as they collide and intersect. In order to develop the concept of ‘linguascapes’ further, there is a need to focus on the spread of language and especially the role of English through its ‘translingual’ meanings rather than ‘bi/mono/multilingual meanings’. Undeniably, a crucial point of emerging ‘trans-’ perspectives in applied linguistics is its emphasis on language as kaleidoscopic and fluid, dismissing the concept of ‘languages’ as nameable, discrete and dividable categories. ‘The common ethos of these [translingual] approaches implies that language is organically organized around miscellaneous semiotic resources, whilst operating in a discursively integrative universe’ (Dovchin 2015: 442). Therefore, ‘trans-’ perspectives call attention to semiotic mobility and semiotic diversity as the named languages are simply ‘one’ component for these social semiotic mobilities (Lee 2017). These perspectives extend the circumstance of using a particular language for communicating by acknowledging the (dis)integration and (dis)assemblages of semiotic resources in one’s communicative practices (Pennycook and Otsuji 2019). As Hawkins and Mori (2018: 2) describe it, the speakers’ communicative repertoires are a ‘fluid and creative adaptation of a wide array of semiotic resources’, and ‘a product of their sociohistorical trajectories through a multitude of interactions across space and time’ that are available to be configured as needed. Furthermore, ‘how this array of resources, when designed in a specific configuration, are received, understood, and responded to is dependent on the accumulated resources, and attendant meanings, of all interactants in a specific exchange or communicative act’ (Hawkins and Mori 2018: 2–3). In other words, language, and English in particular, moves beyond social, cultural, racial, ethnic, national and linguistic borders, while being taken up and relocalized into new and hybrid forms. Hence, English can be envisioned in terms of transcultural flows of resources, in which ‘cultural forms move, change and are reused to fashion new identities in diverse contexts’ (Pennycook 2007: 6). Transcultural flows of English refer not simply, as Pennycook (2007: 6) suggests, to ‘the spread of particular forms of culture across boundaries, or the existence of supercultural commonalities (cultural forms that transcend locality), but rather to the processes of borrowing, blending, remaking and returning, to processes of alternative cultural production’. Note, however, that ‘moving beyond’ does not necessarily occur in

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ways that transcend or do away with social inequality, rather it can often be reflective of insidious kinds of power relationships (Park and Wee 2012). An example from the Australian AE context reflects this by the way, as some speakers call their own dialect ‘rubbish talk’, reflecting their own subjugation and the attitude of the dominant social SAE speakers toward this minority language group. Despite this, AE speakers continue to use AE in creative and humorous ways, to transmit cultural understandings and as a way to maintain Aboriginal identity (Oliver and Nguyen 2017). In doing so, they reflect Canagarajah’s (2013) suggestion that translingual English enables individuals to mobilize different semiotic resources and adopt different negotiation strategies to make meanings across linguistic boundaries rather than focusing on fixed grammar, forms and discrete language systems. English is also viewed as ‘translocal’ since different forms of the locality are transported into other contexts of locality such that these ‘localities do not necessarily become more “global” or “deterritorialized” because of such patterns of translocalization’ (Blommaert 2010: 79). In short, ‘meanings are primarily imported into local systems of meaningfulness’ and ‘they remain as local as before’ (Blommaert 2010: 79). Following these lines of argument, the concept of ‘linguascapes’ refers to the transnational flows of semiotic resources moving across the current world of scapes, making new meanings in contact with other socio-cultural landscapes and affecting the particular speakers’ linguistic practices in varied ways (Dovchin 2018). As Dovchin (2018: 35) describes, ‘[u]nraveling the complex relationship between people’s locatedness in different types of “scapes” and their engagements with transnational linguistic resources, the concept of “linguascapes” can be potentially applied to an exploration of how people and their language practices are located in relation to the intersections of different social landscapes.’ The role of English in social media in this chapter thereby will be understood as ‘translingual English’ – one important semiotic node of ‘linguascapes’ – a large repository of mobile semiotic resources in miscellaneous forms characterized by other social scapes. As such, English and its movement is not treated in isolation, but instead understood in relation to the complexities of factors embedded within varied other factors within ‘linguascapes’ (Dovchin 2017). The incorporation of English and other semiotic resources produces new linguascapes, which simultaneously becomes part of the speakers’ multiple social and cultural identities and identifications.

3  LINGUISTIC NETNOGRAPHY The data used in this chapter derive from a larger longitudinal netnography research project that looked into the social media linguascapes of Mongolian background immigrants living in Western countries and was conducted from July 2018 to December 2019. Overall, fifty social media users from various social backgrounds aged between eighteen and thirtyfive volunteered to participate in the research. These participants were immediately added to our own Facebook accounts as soon as they decided to become part of the research project. All participants provided their full consent to use their Facebook profiles for research purposes. This allowed us unobtrusive access to observe the participants’ language practices using ‘netnography’ (Androutsopoulos 2015; Varis 2016). The main ethos in netnography indicates that online ethnography is useful in exploring social media interactions since the users have a number of multimedia options when it comes to conveying their ideas, opinions, daily activities, relationships and hobbies. Hence, it provides an ethnographic method for exploring ‘real-life cultures by combining the

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characteristic features of digital media with the elements of story’ (Underberg and Zorn 2013: 10). The tools of online ethnography can be used as ‘data-gathering devices due to their interactive characteristics’ and have been reinvented ‘to describe the expanding interactivity enabled by the proliferation of social media like YouTube and Facebook; networked individuals who can simultaneously produce, distribute and consume their own goods or services’ (Næss 2017: 106). With the borderless world of the internet, netnography has a potentially much broader application as it allows access to people from a variety of physical locations (Næss 2017). As part of the current netnography, the research participants were also invited for interviews and casual discussions in terms of their own metalinguistic awareness and social media practices. They also provided insights about their sociolinguistic biographies, social and cultural backgrounds, issues and tensions they have experienced in relation to their language use and to their self-identification. The various social media texts authored by the research participants were examined to understand the ways in which social media linguascapes create affordances for enacting and enhancing aspects of their socio-cultural identities. Five data extracts have been selected to introduce ways in which social media linguascapes are used to enact various identities. The names of all individuals in these extracts are pseudonyms to protect anonymity. All Mongolian data texts, including the interview accounts used in the data examples of this chapter, have been translated from Mongolian into English by the researchers.

4  TRANSLINGUAL ENGLISH, ETHNIC IDENTITY AND LINGUASCAPES In this section, we look at how a female Mongolian immigrant, Fatima, in Australia enacts her ethnic identity through the usage of translingual English embedded within her social media linguascapes. Note that the image in Figure 8.1 is public and not a photo of the participant. Fatima’s Facebook linguascapes are predominantly created by the translingual hybridity of Mongolian, Kazakh, English and other multimodal and semiotic resources. Through the combination of these translingual entanglements of resources, Fatima enacts her ethnic identity as a Mongolian Kazakh (the largest ethnic minority group in Mongolia) living in Australia. While the majority of the Mongolian population are Khalkh Mongols, Kazakhs constitute 5 percent of the population and mostly reside in the far west of the country. They started migrating to Mongolia from the 1860s, mainly from the Xinjiang region of China. The majority of Khalkh Mongolians are Tibetan Buddhists, while Islam is the dominant religion among ethnic Kazakhs in Mongolia. The relationship between Mongolians and Kazakhs in Mongolia has been largely amicable and Mongolian Kazakhs have enjoyed a comparatively high status in the Mongolian society. Nonetheless, Kazakhs have been strongly encouraged to learn Mongolian in order to be accepted into Mongolian society while very few Mongolians speak Kazakh or engage with Kazakh cultural practices (Dovchin and Pennycook 2018). Fatima’s parents are Mongol Kazakhs. She is proficient in Mongolian, Kazakh, Russian and English. She is also very proud of her Kazakh heritage, as suggested in one of her Facebook linguascapes, where she publishes a picture of a Mongolian-Kazakh girl (Figure 8.1), with holiday greeting embedded in original Kazakh orthography. She acknowledges New Year’s Eve – one of the most important traditional holidays for Mongolian Kazakhs to mark the first day of spring and the beginning of the New Year in the Persian calendar, often celebrated in midMarch. Therefore, although she immigrated to Perth, Western Australia, more than ten

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FIGURE 8.1:  Practicing ethnic identity and heritage culture through translingual English.

years ago, she still celebrates her Kazakh heritage and ethnic roots through her salute to this holiday. In response to this Facebook holiday greeting, many of her Facebook friends with Mongolian and Kazakh backgrounds send their greetings back, creating linguascapes with full translingual assemblages, as shown in Figure 8.2. Facebook conversation

English translation



1. Thanks, same to you. 2. Happy Nauruz, babe. 3. Thank youuu. 4. Happy holiday, babe 5. Thanks, babe 6. Happy Nauruz! I forgot yesterday. Did you enjoy the celebration? 7. Oh, I was here all on my own. I didn’t really celebrate. 8. We should eat kaz.



9. Who is talking about kaz.



FIGURE 8.2:  Mongolian-Kazakh-English translingual linguascape.

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Here the linguascapes are formulated by Romanized Kazakh resources ‘Rahmeet birge bolsyn’ [‘Pахмет бірге болсын’ original Kazakh; ‘Thanks, same to you’] (line 1); the combination of Romanized Mongolian and Kazakh highlighted by kissing emoticons, ‘Nauriziin bayriin mend Uchigdur martchihsan bna. Saihan bayralsnuu’ [‘Happy Nauruz . I forgot yesterday. Did you enjoy your celebration?’] (line 6); the blend of English and a Kazakh dish emphasized by multiple affectionate emoticons, ‘We should eat kaz ’ (line 8) and ‘Who is talking about kaz ’ (line 9), referring to the traditional Kazakh dish ‘Qazı’ – a traditional dish of Kazakhs, made from horse rib and sliced horse hindquarters that is turned into meat sausage using natural intestine casing. There are also examples of Romanized Mongolian and English combination such as ‘Bayariin mend babe ’ [‘Happy holiday babe’] accompanied by assorted multiple kissing emoticons (line 4). Overall, while practicing translingual incorporation of English, Mongolian, Kazakh and other available online semiotic resources, Fatima seeks to emphasize her ethnic identity and heritage of Mongolian-Kazakh. Given the rarity of Kazakh linguistic and cultural resources in urban and online Australian contexts, it does not take much to index her alternative identity affiliation, yet by doing so alongside other linguistic and cultural resources as part of her translingual social media linguascapes she affirms her identity as a Mongolian-Kazakh immigrant in Australia. Simultaneously, her ethnic identity as an immigrant living in Australia is enacted through her other Facebook linguascapes, portraying her intense homesickness, occupied with deep thoughts of her homeland, which are often displayed on her Facebook posts. Specifically, Fatima is often seen to publish pictures, images, videos or music clips associated with her hometown in Mongolia. Consider also the example in Figure 8.3. Facebook post

English translation My dear homeland #hometown Selenge province #Tunkhel

FIGURE 8.3:  Affirmation of the ethnic migrant identity in Australia through home country attachments.



1. Beautiful 2. So nice 3. Yep. Nice summer time 4. Beautiful color



5. Our homeland looks gorgeous. It has the most beautiful untouched landscape that is seen nowhere.

Fatima publishes the picture of her hometown in Mongolia, accompanied by a caption using Romanized Mongolian [‘Tursun nutag minu zee’], an English hashtag ‘#hometown’, tree emoticons representing the beautiful landscape – ‘ ’ – and the name of her hometown spelled in Romanized English – ‘Selenge province’ and the hashtag ‘#Tunkhel’. By sharing the picture of her hometown, Fatima expresses her feeling of homesickness, while seeking comfort and solidarity from her Facebook friends. Many of her Facebook friends respond in ways that appear to console Fatima. For example, using multiple

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different translingual repertoires such as Romanized Mongolian (lines 2–5) and Cyrillic Mongolian (line 5), they express how beautiful her hometown looks. It is common for Mongolian social media users to use English with hashtags as there is a prevalence of Roman and English over Cyrillic with hashtags. This practice seems to be a conscious and convenient choice insofar as hashtags with English have a greater reach. Some of her Mongolian Facebook friends who live in Australia also express the similar sentiment of homesickness by highlighting how Mongolia should be viewed as one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world and they do this by using Cyrillic Mongolian – the standard orthographic system of modern Mongolian ‘vутаг минь сайхан харагдаж бна аль ч оронд бхгуй онгон байгальтай’ [‘Our homeland looks gorgeous. It has the most beautiful untouched landscape that is seen nowhere.’] (line 5). Overall, while practicing translingual mixing of Romanized Mongolian, English hashtags and Cyrillic Mongolian, Fatima seeks to display her longing for her home country – Mongolia – while affirming her identity as a Mongolian background immigrant living in Australia.

5  TRANSLINGUAL ENGLISH, GENDERED IDENTITIES AND LINGUASCAPES In this section, we look at the translingual English practices of Sek, which are embedded within his social media linguascapes and in relation to his sexual identity. Sek is a cisgender gay Mongolian background immigrant living in the United States. He immigrated to the United States from Mongolia many years ago and currently lives in New York. In his own words, he has experienced a lot of discrimination and exclusion for being gay throughout his lifetime in Mongolia. As Sek describes, ‘I have even received death threats from some people for being gay. I had to constantly hide my identity. Since social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram were invented, it became easier for me to come out and be proud of myself because I knew those people who were threatening me could not actually come and kill me’ (interview, 15 May 2017, New York, USA). Facebook is an alternative space for Sek to feel liberated, where he can freely express his sexual identity without any obstacles. Social media space allows him to embrace his sexuality and his identity as a gay man. Sek is very active on his Facebook, displaying a full assortment of translingual resources such as linguistic, paralinguistic, semiotic resources, styles, images and modes, documenting his everyday activities, lifestyles, hobbies and desires. For example, in Figure 8.4, Sek posts a selfie, using English as an important expressive and discursive linguistic resource to create his individual personae. As in this example, the role of English can be viewed as translingual since it makes a full meaning in combination with other multiple semiotic resources. Sek uses his English resources integrating them within his social media linguascapes to provide us with some apparent indications in terms of his sexual orientation and sexual identity. Specifically, we can see how English is formulated using digital symbols (e.g. # hashtags, emoticons) and selfies. Sek’s Facebook selfies are also often used to invoke the stereotypical image of a ‘metrosexual man’ who takes pride in ‘his appearance, enjoys clothes, shopping, skin products, and good food, and these practices distinguish him from the retrosexual (the old-fashioned male)’ (e.g. a soccer player David Beckham, or swimmer Ian Thorpe are often being cited as the archetypes of metrosexual men) (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010: 245). From this view, by publishing his own selfie, Sek displays the stereotype of

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English translation You need to know you always look cool, Brother

FIGURE 8.4:  Practicing sexual identity through translingual English.

homonormativity, in which gay men are often envisioned as ‘metrosexual’, ‘fashionable’ or ‘fashion conscious’ in media outlets (Porter 2003). According to Sek, fashion is one of the most important expressions, which empowers homosexuality and helps gay men not to hide their sexuality, but instead to celebrate it. Sek describes how ‘fashion industry has been some sort of safe haven for me to express myself as a gay man’ (interview, 15 May 2017, New York, USA). The selfie of Sek is one of his many Facebook posts where he is dressed in a stylish and fashionable manner. Note that popular online hashtags incorporated within English captions are largely used to express Sek’s pride in his appearance – ‘#me trying to look cool #face #selfie’, and his night attire ‘#kiksagat #nightattire’, referencing the stylish men’s underwear brand founded by François Sagat, the popular French adult actor and performer. English is regulated here by the common rule of hashtag where spaces are not allowed even when the particular hashtag contains multiple words. All characters are required to be grouped and joined together because space will result in only tagging the first word in one’s post. In this way the meaning of the English is only clear when it is understood in relation to other multi-modal resources such as Sek’s pictures, hashtag symbols, emojis and hashtag norms. Here, the hashtags are deployed as a fully enregistered ‘translingual’ performing device, serving a complex range of identity functions reflecting Sek’s sexuality as a gay man. This also reflects descriptions of hashtags in relation to translingualism ‘[i]f we see translingualism as the fluid movement between and across languages or – more broadly – semiotic systems, hashtags definitely can serve as prime instances of translingualism’ (Blommaert 2019: 2). Hashtags are, Blommaert (2019: 1) adds, ‘part of an innovative online scripted register, which should be seen as formatting devices that introduce, proleptically, a recognizable framing effect on the statement, often as a reframing response to other statements giving keys for complex and multiple but equally formatted forms of uptake’. From this perspective, these hashtags appear to have powerful performative effects in formatting Sek’s desire to display his identity.

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As discussed in earlier examples, Sek opts for English with hashtags instead of Mongolian because of his location as a transcultural social media user who wants to deliver his messages to a wider network. Lastly, in response to Sek’s selfie picture, his Mongolian female friend mixes some English root words such as ‘cool’ and ‘Brother’, the colloquial Mongolian ‘Dandaa l’ [‘always’], bdagaa [‘look’], ‘medej avaa’ [‘need to know’] and the smiling emoticon. This use of Englishes is well integrated into the Mongolian syntax system to express the full meaning ‘Dandaa l cool bdagaa medej avaa 😀 Brother’ [‘You need to know you always look cool, Brother ’]. In this context, therefore, English is better understood as ‘Anglicized Mongolian’ rather than ‘Mongolian English’. Sek’s Facebook linguascapes encapsulate an affectionate style of speech with him referring to his Facebook female friends as ‘honey’, ‘sweetie’, ‘dear’, ‘darling’, ‘cutie’ etc. (see also Figure 8.5). Previous studies show that incorporating such displays of affection are usually more common within women’s talk (Dovchin, Pennycook and Sultana 2017). It is much less likely to happen between men or between men and women unless the discussants are involved in a romantic relationship. However, one of the ‘linguistic homonormativities’ established within the transnational gay community (Leap 2010) is to use such terms as ‘honey’, ‘darling’ and ‘dear’ with each other. It is thus not surprising to see Sek integrating affectionate terms in his posts using such terms as ‘hon’ (‘honey’), ‘darling’, ‘dear’, ‘sweetie’, ‘hongoroo’ [Mongolian for ‘darling’], ‘dorogaya’ [Russian for ‘dear’] and so on extensively in his social media linguascapes. In so doing, Sek re-enacts his gay identity by dissociating himself from the linguistic norm of masculine ‘manly’ heterosexual Mongolian men. For instance, in Figure 8.5, Sek’s female Mongolian friend leaves the affectionate comment about his puppies ‘loving ur puppies dear’. In an equally affectionate tone, Sek reciprocates his friend’s fondness through using the same affectionate tone: ‘Thanks sweetie! They make me so busy!’. This kind of speech style can be understood as a ‘gender-bending’ (Danet 1998) practice, where a male uses feminine style speech genres in his daily social media linguascapes to re-define his sexual identity. Sek does this drawing on a range of resources to re-enact his gay online identity by dissociating himself from the heterosexual linguistic normativity, especially that of masculine Mongolian men. Thanks to Facebook, Sek is able to liberally construct and

FIGURE 8.5:  Gender-bending in translingual social media linguascape.

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enact his sexuality through socializing, interacting and peer bonding. At the same time Sek emphasizes his ethnic identity in this picture as he has named one of his puppies ‘Mongol’, after his home country. He affectionately calls his puppy ‘too tiny’ and fondly refers to him as ‘Mr. Mongol’. Just like Fatima, Sek displays his pride in his Mongolian heritage, showing that he maintains a close emotional attachment to his home country.

6  CONCLUSION Previously the role of English in relation to the daily social media practices of Mongolian immigrants living in the West has not been systematically analysed within the critical dialogues of World Englishes. This chapter addresses this research gap by exploring the everyday lived experiences of Mongolian immigrants, exploring their use of English within the social media space. Hence, this study sought to expand the intellectual tradition of World Englishes by incorporating critical ideas entrenched within the debates of ‘translingual English’ and the ‘world of scapes’. In response to criticism in recent years about the codified and nationalized WE approaches, this study re-considered the way Englishes are used, particularly the codes, modes, styles and repertoires of transnational and translingual language users within their ‘linguascapes’. These refer to the mobility and diversity of semiotic resources they have as they move across the current world of different social landscapes, making new meanings, new identities and new languages (Dovchin 2018). In particular, we examined the role of English in social media finding that English does not necessarily represent a Weste​rn/Am​erica​n/Bri​tish/​Singa​porea​n/ Ind​ian and so on identity, but rather one in which the individual’s linguistic liberty and sociocultural identity can be fluidly constructed as part of their desire to create who they are as individuals. In the current context these Mongolian immigrants opted for multiple uses of English – reflecting their use of linguistic, paralinguistic, cultural and digital resources. Furthermore, they innovated and transformed English in variable strategic and creative ways just like any other transnational social media user around the world (Sultana, Dovchin and Pennycook 2013). Understanding the role of translingual English rather than Standard English opens up the possibility to identify the dynamic linguistic, cultural, ethnic and gendered environment of how de/re-territorialized immigrants may mobilize their multiple semiotic, textual and discursive resources. Social media thereby provides a convenient and liberating space for self-reflection and self-identification for many language users, which can be expressed through the array of textual and other semiotic resources (Dovchin 2015).

REFERENCES Androutsopoulos, J. (2015), ‘Networked Multilingualism: Some Language Practices on Facebook and their Implications’, International Journal of Bilingualism, 19 (2): 185–205. Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Vol. 1, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Blommaert, J. (2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. (2018), Durkheim and the Internet: Sociolinguistics and the Sociological Imagination, London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Blommaert, J. (2019), ‘Formatting Online Actions: #justsaying on Twitter’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 112–26. DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2019.1575832.

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Canagarajah, S. (2013), Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, Oxon: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. and S. Dovchin (2019), ‘The Everyday Politics of Translingualism as a Resistant Practice’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 127–44. DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2019.1575833 Danet, B. (1998), ‘Text as Mask: Gender, Play, and Performance on the Internet‘, in S. G. Jones (ed.), Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, 129–58, Thousand Oaks, London and New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Deumert, A. (2014), ‘Digital Superdiversity: A Commentary’, Discourse, Context & Media, 4–5: 116–20. Dovchin, S. and J. W. Lee (2019), ‘Introduction to Special Issue: “The Ordinariness of Translinguistics”’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 105–11. DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2019.1575831. Dovchin, S. (2015), ‘Language, Multiple Authenticities and Social Media: The Online Language Practices of University Students in Mongolia’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19 (4): 437–59. Dovchin, S. (2017), ‘The Ordinariness of Youth Linguascapes in Mongolia’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 14 (2): 144–59. DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2016.1155592 Dovchin, S. (2018), Language, Media and Globalization in the Periphery: The Linguascapes of Popular Music in Mongolia, New York: Routledge. Dovchin, S. and A. Pennycook (2018), ‘Digital Metroliteracies: Space, Diversity and Identity’, in K. A. Mills, A. Stornaiuolo, A. Smith and J. Zacher Pandya (eds), Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures, 211–22, New York and Oxon: Routledge. Dovchin, S., A. Pennycook and S. Sultana (2017), Popular Culture, Voice and Linguistic Diversity: Young Adults On- and Offline, Cham: Springer. Dovchin, S., S. Sultana and A. Pennycook (2015), ‘Relocalizing the Translingual Practices of Young Adults in Mongolia and Bangladesh’, Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 1 (1): 4–26. Hawkins, M. R. and J. Mori (2018), ‘Considering “Trans-” Perspectives in Language Theories and Practices’, Applied Linguistics, 39 (1): 1–8. DOI: 10.1093/applin/amx056 Higgins, C. (2013), ‘When Scapes Collide: Reterritorializing English in East Africa’, in R. Rubdy and L. Alsagoff (eds), The Global-Local Interface and Hybridity: Exploring Language and Identity, 17–42, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Leap, W. L. (2010), ‘Globalization and Gay Language’, in N. Coupland (ed.), The Handbook of Language and Globalization, 555–74, Malden, MA, Oxford and Chichester: WileyBlackwell. Lee, J. W. (2017), The Politics of Translingualism: After Englishes, New York: Routledge. Leppänen, S., J. Spindler Møller, T. Rørbeck Nørreby, A. Stæhrc and S. Kytölä (2015), ‘Authenticity, Normativity and Social Media’, Discourse, Context & Media, 8: 1–78. Leppänen, S., A. Pitkänen-Huhta, A. Piirainen-Marsh, T. Nikula and S. Peuronen (2009), ‘Young People’s Translocal New Media Uses: A Multiperspective Analysis of Language Choice and Heteroglossia’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14 (4): 1080–107. Næss, H. E. (2017), ‘Authenticity Matters: A Digital Ethnography of FIA World Rally Championship Fan Forums’, Sport Management Review, 20 (1): 105–13. Oliver, R and B. Nguyen (2017), ‘Translanguaging on Facebook: Exploring Australian Aboriginal Multilingual Competence in Technology-Enhanced Environments and Its Pedagogical Implications’, The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue Canadienne des Langues Vivantes, 73 (4): 463–87. DOI: 10.3138/cmlr.3890

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Otsuji, E. and A. Pennycook (2010), ‘Metrolingualism: Fixity, Fluidity and Language in Flux‘, International Journal of Multilingualism, 7 (3): 240–54. Park, J. S.-Y. and L. Wee (2012), Markets of English: Linguistic Capital and Language Policy in a Globalizing World, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2003), ‘Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and Performativity’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7 (4): 513–33. Pennycook, A. (2007), Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. and E. Otsuji (2019), ‘Mundane Metrolingualism’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 16 (2): 175–86. Porter, C. (2003), ‘It’s a Queer Thing. Why Are Gay Men so Good at Fashion?’ The Guardian. Retrieved from https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/li​​feand​​style​​/2003​​/sep/​​19​​/fa​​shion​​1. Last viewed 5 December 2019. Seargeant, P. and C. Tagg (2011), ‘English on the Internet and a “Post‐Varieties” Approach to Language’, World Englishes, 30 (4): 496–514. Sharma, B. K. (2012), ‘Beyond Social Networking: Performing Global Englishes in Facebook by College Youth in Nepal’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16 (4): 483–509. Sultana, S., S. Dovchin and A. Pennycook (2013), ‘Styling the Periphery: Linguistic and Cultural Takeup in Bangladesh and Mongolia’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 17 (5): 687–710. DOI: 10.1111/josl.12055 Underberg, N. M. and E. Zorn (2013), Digital Ethnography: Anthropology, Narrative, and New Media, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Varis, P. (2016), ‘Digital Ethnography’, in A. Georgakopoulou and T. Spilioti (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication, 55–68, London: Routledge. Velghe, F. (2015), ‘“Hallo hoe gaan dit, wat maak jy?”: Phatic Communication, the Mobile Phone and Coping Strategies in a South African Context’, Multilingual Margins: A Journal of Multilingualism from the Periphery, 2 (1): 10–30.

Chapter 9

Neoliberalism and the Global Spread of English A Korean Case JINHYUN CHO

1  INTRODUCTION Language has become a commodity in new capitalism characterized by a knowledge-based economy (Fairclough 2002). The ongoing ‘business’ view of language has particularly impacted social construction of communication, which is increasingly commodified as a significant instrument, tied to organizational profits or treated as a marketable product in itself (Gray 2010). Whereas language served as a marker of identity associated with class and/or nation before the advent of new capitalism, language is now seen by some through an economic lens, which views language as a form of capital convertible into a commercial item with market value (Heller 2010). In particular, English has gained a considerable value in the context of globalization, as it often serves as a common communication tool for workplaces that have become multicultural and operate transnationally (J. S.-Y. Park 2016). In addition to the commercial significance associated with English, it is worth noting the moral value attached to English language learning in the neoliberal workplace, in which individual workers are no longer seen as the passive owners of labour power but as active learners of skills and competences that can contribute to enhanced corporate productivity (J. S.-Y. Park 2016). Because language skills are created at the cost of time and resources, the acquisition of valued proficiency in languages such as English is embodied in the person as a commitment to self-enhancement, which is highly celebrated in the neoliberal discourse of human capital development (Chiswick and Miller 2003). In line with the central theme of de-territorial perspectives on English in this volume, this chapter examines the rise and expansion of English in the context of the global spread of new capitalism and neoliberalism, which has contributed to the blurring of national boundaries. While the concepts of communities and identities in nation states have long been legitimate tools for attempts to shape our understanding of language, these territory-focused approaches have increasingly encountered challenges in the current globalizing context (Heller 2008). The dichotomistic distinction, in which English is said to spread from the centre to the periphery, has gradually lost its place in today’s globalizing world, where there is no longer an imperial ‘centre’ (Hardt and Negri 2000). Given that the rapid spread of English in the context of globalization continues despite the absence

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of such a centre, an attempt to understand the ongoing rise of English requires a new approach. Shifting the focus away from structures towards processes and practices, this chapter investigates the processes by which English language learning becomes legitimized through local appropriations of one specific global ideology, neoliberalism. In doing so, it aims to contribute to how we understand and what we can learn concerning the role and status of English in today’s transnational world. One example to illustrate the impact of neoliberal ideology in the globalization of English is the rise of neoliberal personhood in English language learning, where the relationship between English as skill and labour as human capital becomes increasingly explicit. I focus here on the case of South Korea (hereafter ‘Korea’), where (as in many other national settings) English constitutes an important skill that job seekers must possess in order to penetrate the labour market. Apart from its instrumental value, proficiency in English is often seen as a marker of individual character, with ‘mastery of English’ serving as a symbol of how responsible one is for one’s future in a rapidly changing workplace (Gao and Park 2015). Examining the nexus between English and neoliberalism requires a nuanced understanding of neoliberal ideology, which is often interchangeably used with other similar concepts such as globalization, globalism and capitalism (Block, Gray and Halborow 2012). I will therefore begin by tracing the relationship between neoliberalism and new capitalism, in which the concepts of language and labour take on new materialistic meanings.

2  LABOUR AS HUMAN CAPITAL AND LANGUAGE AS SKILL IN NEOLIBERALISM New capitalism draws its distinction from old capitalism on the basis of dematerialized development characterized by global capital flows, knowledge and information (Castells 1993). The context of this change is globalization and the information technology revolution, in which global capital movement and the ability to create new knowledge and apply it to human activities have emerged as a crucial factor for enhanced organizational profit (Lankshear 1997). This extended form of dematerialization has stimulated significant changes in the world of work, which is characterized by flexibility and competition that goes beyond national borders. The kinds of workers required in the new workplace or ‘the new work order’ (Gee 1996) are not those who simply do what they are told to do, but individuals who take initiative to realize the enterprising self by actively acquiring appropriate skills (Fenwick 2002). In this new world of work, team-based approaches predominate, and value is placed on ‘soft’ skills such as communication, teamwork and leadership. As communication skills are strongly related to an ability to work in and lead teams, communication and foreign language skills have become regarded as sure-fire techniques that can transform speakers and ensure success as a key to completing workers as a ‘bundle of skills’ (Urciuoli 2008). It is important to note that neoliberalism serves as an ideological platform upon which contemporary capitalism and the new work order are rested (Doogan 2009). As free market ideology, neoliberalism is an economic doctrine that has undergirded the global expansion of capitalism since the 1970s. It is opposed to any form of regulation and in favour of a liberated market, and this ideology of minimum intervention in the market is grounded in the belief that individual entrepreneurial spirits can be best realized in an unregulated free market, which in turn serves to maximize human wellbeing (Harvey 2007). As the role of

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governments becomes restricted to guaranteeing free competition in a liberalized market and a power shift occurs from the government to market forces, corporations have been given more freedom than ever before, while social protection for individuals has been considerably reduced (Giroux 2017). Such market-centred neoliberal discourses, in turn, have led to the rise of corporate culture, which largely ignores civic and democratic values in relentless pursuit of organizational profits through brutal market capitalism (Giroux 2002). Combined with the emerging corporate culture, neoliberal managerial ideology has justified changes in relationships between employers and workers. Large firms abandoned long-standing paternalistic relations, and ‘worker displacement’ (Koeber 2002) has become a common feature of labour markets, which are characterized by the end of mass employment, fragmentation and fundamental changes in employment patterns as illustrated by a rise in contingent and casualized work. As relationships between employers and workers have become more tenuous than ever before, such changes in the labour market have led to a broader sense of insecurity and precariousness in society. Described as a new mode of domination in contemporary capitalism (Bourdieu 1998), a culture of precariousness seeks to create uncertainty and fear on the side of labour in order to guarantee its compliance in an increasingly individualized society (Bauman 2001). Under such circumstances, it seems likely that individuals feeling insecure about their future more willingly conform to the idea of worker responsibility for skills development, and skill-based competitiveness has become the norm in the contemporary workplace. Once associated with a specific manual or machine operation, the term ‘skill’ has shifted in meaning to denote a person’s labour power, including both knowledge and practice, in new capitalism (Urciuoli 2008). While the kinds of skills required in workplaces might vary from one geographical location to another, English language proficiency is widely regarded as one of default skill sets for people seeking white-collar jobs. As in many other contexts, in Korea, it is nearly impossible to get a decent job without English language skills, and investment in English language learning continues to increase in various forms ranging from early English language learning abroad in the case of young children to short-term English study abroad for university students (Cho 2017; Park 2011). The relevance of English language learning in Korea is due particularly to stiff competition in the local labour market, which has continued to contract since the neoliberal turn of the country in 1997.

3  THE ERA OF PRECARIOUSNESS IN NEOLIBERAL KOREA It is worth noting that English has always occupied a special place in Korean society (see the contribution by Rüdiger, this volume), and efforts to be proficient in English are closely related to perceived economic, educational and social prestige of the language, which has been historically accumulated (Cho 2017; Shin 2007). While the pursuit of English is driven by a confluence of complex desires, it is competitiveness that lies at the heart of this phenomenon in Korea (Piller and Cho 2013). The local English education boom, which is referred to as yeongeo yulpung or ‘English fever’, was born out of the neoliberal turn of Korea during the 1997–8 Asian Economic Crisis. In return for a bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to revive the economy, the Korean government agreed to carry out systemic reforms mandated by the IMF in four major sectors, which

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included corporate, financial, labour and public areas. One obvious outcome of the reform measures was the end of the ‘iron rice bowl’ or lifetime employment for workers employed by private organizations. Whereas jobs had previously been guaranteed for life in chaebols or large family-owned business conglomerates, neoliberal economic reforms characterized by downsizing, efficiency and labour flexibility have resulted in massive layoffs and an upsurge in the number of non-regular and low-wage workers (Lim and Jang 2006). At the same time, the introduction of merit-based wage systems, which replaced the traditional seniority-based systems, pushed workers to enhance employability for their own survival, and it is against this backdrop that the discourses of human capital development and skills acquisition came to dominate Korean society. One good example of labour as human capital measured by skills is the coinage of the term ‘spec’, which emerged soon after the crisis. As a short form of the English word ‘specifications’, the term refers to a range of qualifications (e.g. academic credentials, awards at competitions, official English language proficiency scores and various licenses) that job seekers should develop to compete in the competitive employment market (Kim 2012). With job applicants quantified as human capital for easy comparison, ‘spec’ serves as a potent signifier of the ‘worker-self-as-skills-bundle’ (Urciuoli 2008) or ‘technologies of self’ (Foucault 1988), in which individual subjectivity is fashioned to be compatible with dominant practices valued by powerful institutions. With the prevailing discourse of worker responsibility for skills development, a new subjecthood that fits the neoliberal era has emerged as an ideal in Korea. Personhood associated with neoliberalism emphasizes the development of self-managerial beings who see becoming autonomous, entrepreneurial and flexible as the most ethically appropriate way of conducting themselves in the new era. Although the pursuit of freedom and self-sufficiency as ideals was present in the process of the democratization of Korean society in the 1980s and early 1990s, the way in which self-governance has been incorporated into the daily lives of people as a moral regime is a new phenomenon, and is regarded as a critical marker of neoliberal subsumption in Korea (Song 2010). The neoliberal ideology of self-manageability has also penetrated into the area of language learning under the dominant view of English as a marketable skill. As a core ‘spec’ for employment, English is an important skill that no one in Korea can avoid investing in, but is particularly significant for young people whose future prospect is seen as increasingly bleak in the context of widening social polarization and income inequality following the neoliberal turn of Korea (Abelmann, Park and Kim 2009). Since the crisis, low- and moderate-income groups have continued to expand with increasing casualization of work and slow growth of the Korean economy, which in turn has led to market duality (Lee 2005). Young people are particularly vulnerable due to the low mobility between regular and non-regular segments and a rising skills mismatch between the elderly workers and the new highly educated youth population (Schauer 2018). In 2018, with youth unemployment reaching its highest levels since 1999 when the nation was still reeling from the impact of the financial crisis (Lee 2018), today’s young Koreans are truly experiencing ‘the age of precarious work’ (Kalleberg 2009). It is not surprising that Korean youths, feeling anxious about the new era marked by social inequality, are becoming critical of classed privilege that works to pre-determine one’s future. The state of hopelessness and resentment toward the established social structures felt by young Koreans can be well illustrated by the popularization of the so-called spoon theory.

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Creatively developed and spread by young people in the mid-2010s on the Korean internet (Kim 2016), the spoon theory originates from the well-known English idiom of ‘born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth’. According to the theory, the Korean population is broadly categorized into three different groups: one with a golden spoon or the most privileged, another with a silver spoon or the relatively privileged and the other with a dirt spoon or the least privileged. The spoon theory not only acts as a reminder of the widening social inequality but also signifies a growing frustration held by young people who are conscious of class-based constraints that determine individual opportunity (H. Kim 2017). At a time when inherited property of individuals is viewed as a pre-condition for success and self-made wo/men are treated as a myth among young people (Kim 2016), it is worth noting that English is still viewed as ‘acquired capital’ (Bourdieu 1986) that provides individuals with opportunities for success. For struggling young Koreans, English holds a promise for a better future (Park 2011), represents a huge potential (J. S.-Y. Park 2016) and serves as the most potent tool or ‘the only weapon’ (Bacon and Kim 2018). So the question to ask here is why, despite the increasing awareness of class-based privilege for success among young people, is English still believed by many as something achievable based almost exclusively on individual will? Asking this question is important, because it may provide important insight into the ascendance of English in the global labour markets, where many young people face a limited range of job opportunities (Cairns et al. 2016). I attempt to answer this question by analysing media discourses about two celebrity English language teachers, both of whom were allegedly born with a ‘dirt spoon’. Similar to brands of successful commodities, the stories share ‘an emotional connection point’ (Davis 2003: 44) to which young people can relate, and authenticity is granted through a powerful moral ideal, which is strengthened by the reported circumstantial limitations of the individuals and their super-strong will to succeed.

4 ‘I DID IT, SO WHY CAN’T YOU?’ A neoliberal view of subjecthood in English language learning is widely circulated in Korean media discourses, in which an emphasis is almost exclusively placed on the role of individual efforts in the mastery of English (see Cho 2017; Park 2010). As Park (2010) clearly illustrated in his analysis of newspaper articles that feature successful English language learners in Korea, discursive strategies that erase the classed privilege and highlight individual commitment to language learning serve to shape and strengthen the image of a particular type of learner that is closely aligned with the neoliberal ethos of hard work and self-development. Another strategy that contributes to the reinforcement of neoliberal personhood in Korea is to highlight the (allegedly) unfavourable individual conditions and associated challenges that the successful learner has had to surmount. In those discourses, the less capital one appears to have started with, the more worthy of admiration one is portrayed to be. This in turn leads to the construction of extreme images of English language learners. In what follows, I examine one such case, in which a lack of individual resources is constantly highlighted as a formidable obstacle, and singleminded determination is accentuated as the most important quality that one must exhibit in trying to become successful. Lee Yoon-Hee (also known as with her professional pseudonym Rose Lee) and Yoo Soo-Yeon are star English language teachers working in the local English language teaching industry. Lee has become popular thanks to her excellent ability to teach English grammar,

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targeting high school students as well as youths who study for one or more years to retake highly competitive university entrance exams. Similarly, Yoo has earned fame for her effective methods of teaching TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), mostly to university students and job seekers. She is also an author of a mentoring book entitled ‘20대, 나만의 무대를 세워라 [20s, Create Your Own World]’. Both Lee and Yoo are highly popular among young people not only for their competence in English language teaching but for their rags-to-riches stories, which are often circulated in local media. In the following, I analyse two television programmes aired in 2014, where the celebrity instructors shared their secrets behind success: Lee in ‘소중한 나를 위한 이야기 [Stories for Me, Because I’m Worth It]’, a life mentoring lecture series produced by OnStyle, a fashion cable channel catering to young women; and Yoo in ‘나의성공비결 [My Secrets to Success]’, an interview show with celebrities, produced by Educational Broadcasting System (EBS), which is a television network dedicated to school and lifelong education. Both programmes specifically target young people seeking inspiration, and Lee and Yoo were invited by the programme producers as role models for their accomplishment with English as a key to success. An analysis of the programmes indicates distinctive patterns that fit the popular neoliberal personhood. First, a focus is placed on the previous lack of personal capital narrated by the speakers whose individual conditions are presented as considerable obstacles to overcome. The given situations are then assessed by both speakers who have fully embraced the neoliberal responsibility for self-enhancement, and English is described as a rational choice through which to pursue human capital development. Secondly, similar to other cases of successful English language learning, the stories emphasize the importance of individual dedication and commitment as the single most important factor for success. It should, however, be noted that specifically ‘how’ they achieved a high level of proficiency is largely omitted, leaving single-minded determination as the only way to accomplish the intended goal. Throughout the commentary offered by the individuals on their respective stories, the neoliberal spirits of rational evaluation and management serve to connect the dots coherently. I will begin by discussing how these celebrity instructors’ life stories are framed in a way that serves to distinguish them as individuals that fit the ideal neoliberal subjecthood.

5  LACK OF CAPITAL AND RATIONAL MIND In presenting their stories, both Lee and Yoo emphasize that their familial backgrounds are nothing but ordinary or in Yoo’s expression, that both are ‘born without a gold spoon’. The shared emphasis on their ordinariness can be seen as a strategy to connect to the wide audiences made up of young people, most of whom are presumably in similar situations. As Lee describes: Example 1 저희 아빤 그냥 샐러리맨이셨습니다. 그리고 저희 엄마는 가정주부셨고요. 그 정도로 대한민국 오천만 국민의 가장 평범한 대표적인 가정에서 태어났습니다. My father worked for a company. And my mom was a full-time housewife. As such, I was born and raised in the most ordinary family that represents the fifty-million people in Korea. (Lee; Stories for Me, Because I’m Worth It, 2014, 4:39) While their familial backgrounds are presented as nothing special, it should be noted that their individual competences or ‘spec’ as evaluated by the speakers represent considerable

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obstacles that constrain future opportunities. Precisely how much ‘spec’ is required to enter the local job market is debatable, but in order to maximize employability, it is generally believed that one should be equipped with at least five core elements, which include decent educational credentials, a high grade point average, good TOEIC scores, short-term language learning abroad experiences and a range of certificates (Globurning 2015). Among these, the local ranking of the university from which an applicant has graduated is regarded as a key determinant (H. Park 2016), and this should be understood in the context of the highly stratified university system of Korea. Defined as ‘elite education’ (Lee and Brinton 1996), Korean universities are clearly categorized by rankings and social reputations, and students go through extreme competition to enter prestigious universities (Kim and Lee 2010). Successful applicants for elite universities are highly acknowledged for not just their academic ability but their determination and discipline to succeed in this extremely competitive entry process. A diploma from an elite university, therefore, serves as a significant form of capital that bestows enormous advantages in the local labour market, if not for life (Lee and Brinton 1996). This means that the majority of others attending non-elite universities have much fewer opportunities and have to compete even harder to grab what is available in the market. Students who graduate from regional universities are particularly disadvantaged in employment, due primarily to the generally low ranks of the institutions and a widespread perception of their graduates as less competent compared to students attending better-ranked universities located in the Seoul capital area (J.-Y. Kim 2017). As the low level of prestige attached to third-tier universities represents enormous hurdles that limit the future possibilities of many young Koreans, they share an even heavier burden in seeking to develop their own human capital for survival (Abelmann, Park and Kim 2009). It should be noted that both Lee and Yoo graduated from non-elite provincial universities, and in their commentary, they express a sense of dissatisfaction and worthlessness stemming from the lack of cultural capital. Example 2 저같은 경우도 사실은 제 모든것이 마음에 안들었어요. 제 외모, 제 성격, 제 집안, 제 학벌, 모든 것들이 제 마음에 들지 않았고. In my case, I didn’t like anything about myself. My appearance, my personality, my family background, and the university that I graduated from. I did not like any of them. (Yoo; My Secrets to Success, 2014, 4:16) 알고봤더니 로즈 스카이도 아니래. 근데 또 그것도 맞는 얘기였어요. People [at work] gossiped that I did not graduate from a top university. I could not refute it, because that was true. (Lee; Stories for Me, Because I’m Worth It, 2014, 10:23) In contrast, many successful learners of English whose stories have been circulated in local media have elite backgrounds, graduating from top universities and working as high-level government officials, professors at elite universities or top-level managers for conglomerates or multinationals (Park 2010). While the contrasting backgrounds of Lee and Yoo certainly represent formidable stumbling blocks that can reduce the likelihood of success, it is important to note how the conditional limitations are leveraged to distinguish them as individuals of extraordinary will and high moral traits. Rather than feeling hopeless and blaming their circumstances for a lack of opportunity, they accept

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the situation as it is and fully embrace the responsibility of achieving the entrepreneurship of the self. The programmes accentuate the ability of Lee and Yoo to rationally evaluate the given circumstances and act decisively and responsibly to pursue human capital development. Example 3 실제로 뭐 금수저물고 태어나지 않은 상황에서 불평등한 상황만을 보고 있자면 일단 나이먹는건 나고 늙어가는건 난데 조금이라도 인제 움직여야겠죠. 그래서 내가 가지고 있는 어떤 조건들이나 사회적인 환경들이 불공평하더라도 그게 바뀌어지진 않을거고 결국은 그거를 계속 쳐다만보고 늙어갈순 없으니까, 예 움직여야 한다. Born without a gold spoon, if I kept blaming the social inequalities, I would only get older, so I decided to take action. No matter how unequal my conditions or social situations are, they will never change. I didn’t want to get older and keep blaming the conditions, so yes, I took action. (Yoo; My Secrets to Success, 2014, 0:33) The emphasis on the ability to exercise a rational mind and act responsibly is, indeed, in line with the neoliberal ethos of self-governing (Song 2010). It grants a high level of credibility and recognition to the storytellers, who presumably worked very hard to compensate for the self-assessed lack of capital. It is important to note that English is mobilized as a primary driver behind their human capital development projects, and the next section presents English language learning as a site to construct a radical version of neoliberal personhood.

6  ORDINARY PEOPLE WITH EXTRAORDINARY WILL The previous section naturally raises the question of why the speakers chose to study English and how they have become successful at language learning. Both Lee and Yoo narrate that they were motivated by similar concerns about a future limited by their immediate circumstances. In trying to enhance their individual values in the job market, English language learning emerged as the most rational course of action, and they decided to go overseas for short-term English language learning or eohak yeonsu, a popular practice among young Koreans to increase employability. This socio-economic approach to transnational mobility, which is defined as an attempt to increase social mobility in the labour market (Yoon 2014), is indeed a key motivational factor for many young people in Korea and beyond in pursuing overseas experiences. In addition to the acquisition of foreign language skills, ‘global’ experiences that accompany language learning also serve as a form of cultural capital that can help enhance individuals’ social status (Heath 2007; Kawashima 2010). For many young Koreans keen to develop their human capital, English language proficiency is often seen as the most practical solution to increase individual worth, for it is something that they can ‘acquire’ and combine with a desired overseas experience (Abelmann, Park and Kim 2009). Similar to the popular beliefs in English and transnational mobility, the stories of Yoo and Lee highlight their desires to overcome the circumstantial limitations with the acquisition of English language skills and associated cultural capital. Example 4 제가 대학교 4학년 2학기때 일단 사회에 나갈려니까 막막하죠. 그리고 저는 컴퓨터도 못하고 영어도 못하고 학교도 유명한 학교가 아니고 이런 상태에서 사회에 나갈 마음의 준비가 안됐었던것 같애요. 저같은 경우는 대학교 4년 동안 학교에 적응을 잘

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못해서 아르바이트를 굉장히 많이 했었거든요. 그 때 모아놨던 돈을 갖고 내가 뭔가 다른 기회를 잡아봐야 되고 다른 세상에 나가봐야겠다. When I was in the second term of the fourth year at university, I felt so unprepared to go out into the society. I didn’t know how to use a computer, wasn’t good at English either, and my university was not prestigious. So I was not ready at all in those situations. I had trouble adjusting to the university for the whole four years, and did a lot of part-time jobs instead. I decided to use the savings to go abroad to grab new opportunities and experience a wider world. (Yoo; My Secrets to Success, 2014, 6:34) While English language learning is presented as a valuable opportunity to broaden options for the future and possibly yield a breakthrough in the perceived stalemates, it is worth noting the lack of details on specifically how they mastered English through study abroad. The rather fleeting discussions on the secrets to their mastery of English focus exclusively on oral proficiency, which they claim to have acquired only through hard work. In Yoo’s story, she assesses her English proficiency back then as so poor that she could not even hold simple conversations in English. However, she presents the lack of linguistic knowledge as beneficial for language learning because, in her opinion, she could learn English properly from scratch. Challenging and entrepreneurial spirits are highlighted as the only key to enhancing oral communicative skills, which she claims to have ‘embodied’ from interactions with the speakers of the language by actively creating the right kind of environment. Example 5 워낙 영어를 못했어요 제가. . . . 사람들이 뭐라고 얘기할 정도냐면 너는 혼자 다니지 마라. 다른 사람들은 혼자 다니면 손짓발짓을 하면서 집을 찾아올수 있는데 너는 손짓발짓을 해도 못찾아온다. 바로 국제 미아다. 그럴정도로 영어가 바로 안되는 상황에서 갔어요. 가서 오히려 그게 또 저한테는 나름대로 유리했던것 같애요. 왜그러냐면 어떤 그 기본적인 문법이라든지 외우고 있던 단어 갯수 뭐 이런거에 연연하기 보다는 어쨌든 내가 여기서 살아남아야 되니까 사람들하고 어울리면서 이렇게 그때 당시에도 제가 도서관에 가서 공부라는걸 해본적이 없어요. 많이 부딪치고 이사람 저사람 몸으로 부딪치면서 배울수 있었던게 내가 영어에 대한 어설픈 지식이 없어던게 오히려 더 나름대로 도움이 됐던거 같애요. I was really bad at English. . . . People said that I shouldn’t go out by myself, because other people might be able to manage to get home by using body language, but I wouldn’t be able to do so. They thought that I would be lost forever overseas. My English was that bad when I got there [Australia]. But I think it worked well for me, because I didn’t need to worry about grammatical accuracy or using particular vocabulary, but could learn English from interacting with people for survival. I never went to a library to study English. I tried to explore opportunities to meet as many people as possible, and I think my lack of knowledge about English was rather beneficial. (Yoo; My Secrets to Success, 2014, 7:20) Similar to the ongoing practice of distinguishing communicative skills from literacy in the new workplaces (Cameron 2002), oral competence is valorized over other aspects of English study such as grammatical knowledge and vocabulary, and is presented as the single most important aspect of English language learning. The site of language learning – overseas – justifies the oral-based approach to English, which indeed motivates many Koreans to go abroad (Cho 2015). The language learning process overseas, as recalled

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by Yoo, helps construct her subjectivity as befitting the popular neoliberal personhood characterized by challenging spirits and fearlessness. Studies show that transnational mobility serves as an ideological site of subjectivity formation governed by neoliberalism for young people, because a defined stay in a foreign land away from the familiar represents an optimal condition to explore individual autonomy and youth agency (see Haverig and Roberts 2011; Seo 2009). In stories of neoliberal personhood, challenges are welcome to demonstrate one’s ability to rise to the occasion and conquer victoriously, and the aforementioned example of English as achievable solely through sheer individual determination serves as an epitome of neoliberal dreams of self-success. Similarly, Lee highlights hard work as the only way to learn English. An emphasis on her academic background as a non-English major serves to highlight her ability to rationally evaluate the circumstances in trying to find a solution. Example 6 4시에 일어나서 새벽 3시에 잘때가 많습니다. 그러니까 실제로 그냥 한 시간 자는거죠 . . . 제가 부족한거, 대학교 4년 동안 영어 전공한 분보다 내가 부족한게 있지 않을까. 그래서 24시간을 나눠서 쓰기 시작했습니다. I often wake up at 4am and go to bed at 3am. I get to sleep only one hour . . . I tried to understand what I was lacking. There must be something that I don’t have compared with people who majored in English for four years at university. So I started to use 24 hours down to the minute. (Lee; Stories for Me, Because I’m Worth It, 2014, 9:13) No matter how humanly impossible the story might be seen by people in other social contexts, it is believable and even laudable by young Koreans living in the neoliberal era of precariousness. After all, the celebrity instructors were in the same situations as the majority of the youths today. Rather than feeling defeated by the lack of individual resources, they decided to overcome the circumstantial constraints by actively practising neoliberal spirits in learning English. Their stories of creating success out of nothing can potentially resonate with many Korean youths, who need inspiration and hope to defy their bleak future prospects, and the ideology of English as a source of hope and opportunity in the neoliberal Korea continues to be reinforced through the mediatization of ordinary people with extraordinary will for English language learning. Example 7 따라서 오늘 제가 여러분들한테 하고 싶은 이야기는 뭐냐면 그냥 키도 작고 약간은 노처녀고 그리고 뭔가 부족해보이는 저 여자도 해냈다면 아마 여러분들도 해낼수 있을거다. . . . 여러분들은 여러분이 갖고 싶어하는거 다 가지실 수 있습니다. 앞으로 하면 되잖아요. 따라서 여러분들이 지금부터 갖고 있는 시간을 온전히 여러분들에게 쏟아부으신다면 아마 상위 1퍼센트가 아니라 상위 0.1퍼센트가 되는 남들이 모두 부러워하는 여성으로 성장해있지 않을까 싶습니다. The point that I am trying to make today is if this lady, who is short and a little bit old and doesn’t seem to be perfect, can do it, you can do it too. . . . You can get everything that you want. Just keep working hard. If you use all the time in your hand just for you, you will become a top one-percent, no, top 0.1 percent woman who everybody envies. (Lee; Stories for Me, Because I’m Worth It, 2014, 3:54) While the stories of ordinary people who have achieved the extraordinary may motivate many, it should, however, be noted that such stories can also contribute to creating radical images of desirable personhood. Because the strategy of highlighting over-commitment

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as the key to success works more effectively when it is presented as the only possible resource that individuals have, the fewer resources one has, the more worthy of respect one would be seen to be in terms of delivering a popular personhood. The cases presented here illustrate evolving images of neoliberal personhood, in which it takes not just determination, but over-determination, and not just efforts but Herculean efforts to be successful.

7  CONCLUSION I have discussed the spread of English within the neoliberal conditions of Korean society with a particular reference to the power of neoliberal personhood in English language learning, in which individual conditions represent formidable hurdles to overcome and an extreme single-minded determination is presented as the only key to success. It is worth noting the processes by which a lack of personal capital is harnessed to drive the pursuit of highly valued capital (in the form of English) that serves to distinguish the individuals from the similar others. That is to say, the very conditions presented as enormous obstacles constitute a necessary mechanism by which a particular success story is constructed, disseminated and internalized. As only the individuals who begin with relatively few resources are eligible to fit these stories, the new subjectivity creates standardized images of radically determined individuals whose superhuman will is claimed to be their only asset. The popularity of a ‘radical personhood’ for English language learners in Korea should be understood in the context of the neoliberal societal conditions, in which young people particularly suffer. As discussed earlier, young Koreans are facing a contemporary environment marked by neoliberal precariousness and societal inequality. Under the current social structures, many youths become increasingly sceptical of the possibility of self-made success but, at the same time, understand that attributing under-achievement to their unprivileged class backgrounds risks being labelled as lacking individual moral fibre. As the burden of self-development is entirely their own in neoliberal Korea, young people need a source of hope to stay optimistic about the future, and this is exactly what stories of successful English language learners are mobilized to inspire. These stories can be especially powerful if they are delivered by people who claim to have been in exactly the place in which many young Koreans find themselves. As noted earlier, the success stories feature multiple connection points through which young people can relate to on both an experiential and an emotional level. As success stories based on the neoliberal ethos of individual agency and self-governing are constantly mediatized, individuals who are exposed to media messages in their everyday routines consciously and unconsciously incorporate them into their lives (Thompson 1990). As individuals are recognized and valued as desirable members of a society only if they act ‘responsibly’ and put this social ethos into practice, others are programmed to follow the same social norms, which in turn contributes to the continued expansion of English. The local practice of appropriating and legitimizing English in relation to the global economic value attributed to the language demonstrates that the spread of English can no longer be understood as an outcome of the territorially based concept of linguistic prestige and orders established in the existing ‘circles’ models. The global expansion of English is rather a phenomenon that is driven by both local and global ideologies and practices, which operate at multiple levels. The localized expression of English and struggles within it, therefore, have broad implications that go beyond the national border of Korea.

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Park, J. S.-Y. (2016), ‘Language as Pure Potential’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37 (5): 453–66. Piller, I. and J. Cho (2013), ‘Neoliberalism as Language Policy’, Language in Society, 42 (1): 23–44. Schauer, J. (2018), IMF Working Paper: Labour Market Duality in Korea, International Monetary Fund. Seo, D.-J. (2009), 자유의 의지, 자기계발의 의지 [The Will to Freedom, the Will to SelfDevelopment], Paju: Dolbaegae. Shin, H. (2007), ‘English Language Teaching in Korea: Toward Globalization or Glocalization?’, in J. Cummins and C. Davison (eds), International Handbook of English Language Teaching, 75–86, Boston: Springer. Song, J. (2010), ‘“A Room of One’s Own”: The Meaning of Spatial Autonomy for Unmarried Women in Neoliberal South Korea’, Gender, Place & Culture, 17 (2): 131–49. Thompson, J. B. (1990), Ideology and Modern Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press. Urciuoli, B. (2008), ‘Skills and Selves in the New Workplace’, American Ethnologist, 35 (2): 211–28. Yoon, K. (2014), ‘Transnational Youth Mobility in the Neoliberal Economy of Experience’, Journal of Youth Studies, 17 (8): 1014–28.

Chapter 10

Ship English of the Early Colonial Atlantic SALLY J. DELGADO

1  INTRODUCTION Linguistics, in parallel with the study of literature and culture, has historically prioritized the perspectives of privileged, land-owning minorities whilst silencing, obscuring or mis-representing the speech practices of those outside of the Western, male bias. Since the European appropriation of lands around the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean basin escalated in the seventeenth century, the voices and the language practices of not only women, indigenous groups and peoples of African descent but also of marginalized peoples of European descent have been systematically ignored or dismissed. Favoring Western, elite perspectives in the academic study of language and culture – in an effort to define monolithic and unitary standards – has normalized theories that advocate for monological, monolectal and mono-agentive bias. In response to this bias, this chapter challenges fundamental assumptions of hegemony and advocates for verbal-ideological decentring described by Bakhtin ([1930] 1981: 370) as something that rejects ‘sealed-off and self-sufficient’ ideals, instead considering language ‘conscious of itself as only one among other cultures and languages . . . no longer conceived as a sacrosanct and solitary embodiment of meaning and truth’. Drawing from Bakhtin’s decentred approach to language, this chapter presents Ship English of the early colonial Atlantic as an example of supra-regional usage whose fluidity defies theories of territorial hegemony in New Englishes and provides a reference point for many of the settler-varieties that emerged from the extensive language contact of the region. The aim of this chapter is to present the sociohistorical and sociolinguistic context of Ship English in such a way as to demonstrate its relevance in the history of World Englishes. Furthermore, Ship English is also presented as a historical precedent to modern, translingual practices of English that continue to challenge the biases in linguistics that neglect mobile, marginalized and non-formally educated speakers whose uses of English often resist classification according to the ideologies of monolingualism contextualized through settlement and stability. Ship English, described in Delgado (2019) as a speech practice derived from language contact in maritime communities of the early colonial Atlantic,1 was one of the principal trading languages across the coastal Atlantic and Caribbean since European colonial expansion boomed after the turn of the seventeenth century. As such, it affected language

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change in emerging trading outposts of the Western Atlantic, the Caribbean and North America in addition to the metropoles of the Eastern Atlantic, in West Africa and Europe. It is thus critical to any comprehensive discussion of World Englishes as it contextualizes the spread of English during this period of explosive colonial expansion. It is furthermore relevant to any comprehensive discussion of creoles that emerged in situations of language contact, particularly around coastal trading routes. However, because English speakers in transient and translingual communities (who were often second language speakers and/ or not formally educated) must be considered as agents of language change, it has been overlooked in theories of World Englishes centred on institutionalized and monolingual speech communities. In pidgin and creole studies, discourse that accompanies theories of monogenesis, imperfect second-language learning and African substrates often locate African slaves in opposition to land-owning European masters, and thus neglect the complexity of the language contact situation. This chapter aims to recover some of that complexity by focusing on the marginalized, and often displaced, men and women of mixed heritage and European descent who worked in the maritime epicentres of language contact. Awareness of language in maritime communities owes more to stereotype and literary representation than to empirical research. The limited research we have on Ship English shows that it began as a supra-regional form of British English. Shopen and Williams (1980: 49–52) explain how sailors commonly spread new lexical features around the home ports they visited, and this accelerated dialect spread around littoral trade centres in the British Isles in the Middle English period. Subsequently, Hickey’s (2005: 50) volume on transported dialects suggests how Ship English may have ‘incubated’ new varieties of English that gave rise to dialects in places such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Hence, some scholars have recognized that Ship English not only played a significant role in the formation of dialect areas in the British Isles but also in the foundational stages of overseas varieties. Yet, except for Hickey’s (2005) edited volume, which focuses more on the colonial legacy of World Englishes rather than the speech practices of those who may have transported features, there are no edited volumes on World Englishes that go beyond a brief mention of maritime usage. The relevance of Ship English, much like the importance of those who spoke it, has been systematically suppressed in a discipline that devalues the contributions of migrant, non-formally educated and transcultural communities. This chapter proposes to not only acknowledge the role of Ship English in terms of language change and dialect formation but also pay tribute to those who navigated its shifting language practices. The first section provides the theoretical context for the discussion of Ship English. It opens with a definition of models of language change that have shaped the way we understand World Englishes, continues with a review of the limited literature regarding Ship English, and concludes with a short section explaining how my own material was sampled and analysed. The subsequent section detailing the sociolinguistic context of Ship English presents a demographic profile of those who would likely have spoken Ship English followed by a sociohistorical description of the core and extended speech communities, illustrated with linguistic data sourced from Delgado (2019).2 The chapter concludes with an evaluation of the relevance of Ship English to wider discourses on World Englishes and creoles and a reflection on how recognizing the linguistic agency of transient and marginalized maritime communities in complex situations of language contact might help challenge the dominance of monolithic and hegemonic models.

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2  THEORETICAL CONTEXT – MODELS OF LANGUAGE CHANGE Traditional models that aim to explain the spread of language features often highlight the importance of geographical or social proximity, and thus devalue the impact of language contact with maritime communities that contained their own social hierarchies and were not geographically fixed. With his Wellentheorie, Schmidt (1872) proposed the metaphor of waves starting from a single point in a pond to explain dialect change based on geographic adjacency, and Labov (2007) later adapted this model by proposing that ‘waves’ of change could move through social space in addition to geographical space. Yet both models promote the premise of change through sustained proximity and thus implicitly suggest that transient or shifting movement minimizes the potential for feature transfer. Yet, transient and shifting movements were characteristic of maritime communities, not only in terms of the literal geographical movement of labourers aboard sea-craft, but also their metaphorical social movement, because highly regulated (and ineffectively monitored) global trading practices moved through cycles of being publicly endorsed, universally condemned, and/or covertly supported – which again shifted depending upon geographical location and state-sanctioned ideologies. Building on the earlier work of Schmidt and Labov, Tagliamonte (2013: 15) describes how language changes originate in ‘focal areas’ that have cultural or political dominance, and then spread from core areas to peripheral locations. Although theories of dialect change and feature transfer have extended Schmidt’s early-nineteenth-century wave model, incorporating social, political and cultural factors, words such as ‘focal’, ‘centre’ and ‘peripheral’ conceptualize language change in spatial (and hence geographical) terms. Consequently, these theories implicitly devalue language use in coastal (peripheral) zones as these regions are, by definition, not geographically ‘central’ nor are they politically ‘central’, as logic dictates that institutions of power should be located at a safe distance from sea-borne foreign attack. Models that chart the development of New Englishes often foreground the foundational role of colonizer varieties and prioritize the influential role of land-owning (male) settlers to explain the emergence of newly established national forms. Five common development stages in new dialect formation, summarized by Schneider (2011: 35), assume that settler populations move through phases of decreasing association with a founder nation, ultimately developing a new variety associated with independence. These five stages necessarily classify new dialects in political terms that index the Anglo-centric and patriarchal discourses of nation-building. In addition, these classifications co-construct concepts of unified language as necessarily appearing in post-colonial contexts, which minimize the agency of marginalized populations and the impact of transient and enduring admixture – both defining characteristics of maritime speech. Koineization, described by Trudgill (1986: 90–103) as a three-stage process of dialect mixing, levelling and simplification, is potentially the most useful to the discussion of Ship English. Trudgill (2004: 27) explains, ‘dialect mixture situations involving adults speaking many different dialects of the same language will eventually and inevitably lead to the production of a new, unitary dialect’. Despite Trudgill’s idealized ‘unitary’ target in accordance with the nation-building ideologies appropriate to the post-colonial New Zealand context he was describing, the process of dialect contact, mixture and change he identifies applies similarly to the contact situation of Ship English. Yet, diverging from Trudgill’s ‘unitary’ target, if we consider the process of dialect contact, mixture and

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change as a feature of maritime communities that embody what Bakhtin ([1930] 1981: 368) describes as ‘extranational multi-languagedness’, we can appreciate the process as one that serves to destabilize ideologies of nation-state. Bakhtin explains: external multi-languagedness . . . undermines the authority of custom and of whatever traditions still fetter linguistic consciousness; it erodes that system of national myth that is organically fused with language, in effect destroying once and for all a mythic and magical attitude to language and the word. (Bakhtin [1930] 1981: 368–9) Trudgill’s claims about how linguistic levelling is a consequence of human desire for social conformity and group identification has parallels in maritime communities in which ‘mutual dependency was commonly accompanied by emotional and physical intimacy’ (Delgado 2019: 101), a situation which was magnified among pirates who considered collectivism a core value (Rediker 2004: 101), and whose language practices reflected intense mutual identification (Delgado 2013: 161). Thus, despite its embedded nationalism, koineization may be the most viable model to contextualize Ship English as it explains a process of language change through the convergence of speakers with strong social identification. The theories of language change presented here serve to illustrate how traditional models index geographical and social stability in a framework of post-colonial nationalism, and, as such, devalue the agency of marginalized and transient peoples whose lives and languages are often considered peripheral and counter-productive to unitary nation-building. In resistance to what Schneider (2019) calls ‘methodological nationalism’, an adaptation of Trudgill’s theory of dialect convergence and mixing to include Bakhtin’s concept of extranational multi-languagedness may help to understand the complex process of language contact and change rather than focus on any idealized unitary output.

3  REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE: SHIP ENGLISH Various historical sources attest to the unique speech of sailors. Maritime dictionaries and phrase books have been available since the seventeenth century, for example Smith’s ([1627] 1968) Sea Grammar and Manwayring’s ([1644] 1672) Sea-Man’s Dictionary, and are still published, for example Jeans’s (1993) Words and Phrases Derived from the Sea, MacKenzie’s (2005) database of Seatalk and Choundas’s (2007) Pirate Primer. Very few academic studies explore beyond the lexicon of maritime speech. Two notable studies are Matthews’s (1935) monograph on sailors’ pronunciation in the second half of the seventeenth century and Bailey and Ross’s (1988) article on the morphosyntactic features of Ship English. More recent articles explore Ship English as a levelled variety and integrate a predominantly sociolinguistic focus. Schultz (2010) describes the development of Ship English as a process of dialect levelling made possible by consolidated and co-dependent communities with strong linguistic identities, and Delgado (2013) focuses on linguistic theories of pirate speech based on sociohistorical data. In 2019, Delgado’s Ship English: Sailors’ Speech in the Early Colonial Caribbean became the first published monograph to present linguistic data on syntactic variation and discourse features in maritime communities. As more scholarship emerges on maritime practices of speech, more comprehensive data challenge previous assumptions that lexical distinction was the only marker of maritime usage. Studies in dialectology recognize that mariners had linguistic agency in British ports. Tagliamonte (2013: 17) explains how a pan-coastal dialect emerged in southwest

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Scotland, north-west England and Northern Ireland as a result, in part, of the movements of semi-transient mariners. She also attests to a ‘pan-variety parallelism’ across northern regions and the Irish Sea in which ‘all communities share the same (variable) system’ (Tagliamonte 2013: 192), suggesting that maritime communities may have formed communication networks that transported linguistic features and established supra-regional norms. Indeed, it may have been highly mobile populations such as sailors who facilitated the admixture of English dialects and helped to form ‘a mixed dialect, an amalgam of elements drawn from all parts of the country’ as described by Dobson (1955: 35) that was happening concurrently with the emergence of a standardized Early Modern English. Beyond the British Isles, Thornton (2000: 56) explains that river and coastal trade routes, and hence also those who worked them, shaped an early-seventeenth-century Atlantic identity. Mariners were thus also potentially integral to the spread of regional dialect features that influenced local identities in these new trading spaces. However, beyond allusions to the potential linguistic agency of mariners, there is little academic recognition of maritime speech in World Englishes. Creole and pidgin scholars provide the most compelling indications that Ship English affected international language contact and change. Reinecke (1938: 107) was the first to claim that ‘the seaman is a figure of the greatest importance in the creation of the more permanent makeshift tongues [i.e., trade pidgins]’. He suggests that pidgins emerged from contact between maritime traders, native populations and resident foreigners (Reinecke 1938: 110). Later, Hancock’s work on creole genesis coined the term ‘Ship English’ (Hancock 1976: 33) and suggests that the speech of mariners may have been a formative contact variety in creoles that emerged along West African shores (Hancock 1972, 1976, 1986, 1988). Hancock (1976: 33) claims that Ship English served as a hypothetical protoform for creoles spoken on both sides of the Atlantic, explaining that ‘the only possible historical link between them was the seamen and their speech’. This claim is later echoed by Bailey and Ross (1988: 194) who argue that sailors’ speech was the earliest form of English in many coastal regions around the Atlantic and Caribbean and therefore ‘seems to have been the earliest component of the superstrate’, a component that was continually reinforced by the fact that ‘sailors were instrumental in founding and maintaining the colonies where creole languages developed’ (Bailey and Ross 1988: 195). Holm’s (1989) seminal text, Pidgins and Creoles, echoes their claim, recognizing that ‘[m]ost Creoles arose in maritime colonies . . . [and within] the mixture of dialects and even languages found among ships’ crews, nautical speech has always constituted a distinctive sociolect’ (Holm 1988: 78). Hancock and Holm’s work promoted subsequent scholars to acknowledge the role of maritime communities in creole genesis theory, and some went so far as to suggest that Ship English played a critical role as one of the four inputs to Atlantic Pidgins along with Cant,3 Sabir4 and West African languages (Linebaugh and Rediker 2000: 153).

4  ARCHIVE MATERIAL: SAMPLING AND ANALYSIS. The material presented in the following sections derives from my archival research on sailors and their speech communities (Delgado 2019: Chs 3–4) and is illustrated with enumerated linguistic examples, sourced from analysis of morphology, lexicon, syntax and discourse markers of Ship English (Delgado 2019: Chs 5–7). The research responds to the hypothesis that non-territorial maritime language practices, collectively referred to as Ship English, were formative in the spread of English as an international lingua franca

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around the Atlantic during the period of early colonial expansion, approximately defined as between 1620 and 1750. A summary of the sampling and analysis methods is provided here to contextualize the enumerated examples, but for a comprehensive methodology, please see Delgado (2019: 8–11). The research design was a mixed-methods convergence model in which both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed concurrently – using standard statistical measures of correlation to determine general tendencies – before converging the data for comparison (see Creswell and Plano Clark 2007: 62). Both quantitative and qualitative data were sourced from archived originals or copies of documents curated in one of eight international archives visited between 2010 and 2015.5 Data collection prioritized written representations of maritime speech that were prepared or published between 1620 and 1750 and reflected the speech of transatlantic mariners. The archival material was divided into three subsets of data. The first subset, representing over half of the estimated 3,000 items used to generate findings, comprises written transcripts of witness depositions given in admiralty court sessions which may have been adapted to the written mode by court clerks, but nonetheless remain the closest account of sailors’ spoken language available to a present-day researcher. The second subset, representing approximately a third of the archival material, contains hand-written records including letters, receipts, logbooks and miscellaneous records attesting to personal grievances, vessel movements, crew and trade activities. A third and much smaller subset, accounting for about a tenth of the archival material, was composed for public consumption, for example sea-shanties, published journals and fictional representations.

5  THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONTEXT OF SHIP ENGLISH 5.1  Sociodemographic Profile of Speakers Assumptions about stereotypical sailors often obscure the recognition of authentic speech practices among the men, women and children of maritime communities. Large crews were ranked in a class system comprising the commissioned and warrant officers, military personnel and support workers such as the gunsmith and armorer and the experienced mariners that managed the daily functions of the ship in addition to those who attended and serviced their daily needs, such as the cook, sailmaker, carpenter, surgeon, schoolmaster and servant.6 In addition to officially recognized (and remunerated) crew, a range of largely undocumented transient passengers, workers, servants, wives and slaves frequently accompanied the ship for short legs and entire voyages (Adkins and Adkins 2008: 181–2; Brown 2011: 95; Delgado 2019: 31–6; Litter 1999: 45). The workers of the lowest social stratum were collectively referred to as ‘the men’ or known by a synecdoche that dehumanized them as ‘hands’ or by locative phrases that prioritized the ship: ‘before the mast’ and ‘of the lower deck’. They were the most likely to be commanded in fixed expressions that resisted the insertion of an object noun phrase or pronoun between the main verb and the satellite particle, a tendency in wider maritime speech practices, see examples (1) and (2).

(1) when they got up the anchor [HCA 1/99/6]7



(2) call abroad him [E134/34Chas2/Mich36]

‘when they hauled the anchor up’ ‘call him off the vessel’

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Some commanders, such as Francis Drake, encouraged collaboration across social strata, illustrated by his command: ‘I must have the gentlemen haul and draw with the mariners, and the mariner with the gentleman’ (Drake, cited in Bicheno 2012: 141). Among communities of pirates, formal hierarchies were less rigid due to the common practices of granting shares to all crew, having them sign articles of compliance and permitting votes on major navigational decisions (Rediker 2004: 79). For example, one reported pirate encounter shows the captain’s consideration of the crew before giving command: ‘one of the Quartermasters came and asked the Captain whether he would to sea, hi demanded what the Company were inclined to doe, who was answerd, they were willing’ [CO 5/1411/639]. The omission of the verb ‘go’ in the expression ‘he would to sea’ in this testimony additionally illustrates a feature of Ship English that permits the omission of main verb or infinitive in contexts of transparent meaning, which is also found in (3):

(3) wee met with Shipton again who forced us with him [HCA1/99/5] ‘we met with Shipton again who forced us to go with him’

The omission of verbs, and particularly ‘be’, may be connected to abbreviated notation style in logbooks, see (4), but is also evident, particularly in passive contexts, in depositions from illiterate lower-tier mariners who would not have composed log entries, as in (5).

(4) the wind blowing violent & contrary [HCA 1/12/2] ‘the wind is/was blowing violent and contrary’



(5) one that razed with him [ADM 106/288/42] ‘a person that was raised with him’

Vessels of different size and function swarmed the shipping lanes of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Bicheno 2012: 24). In addition to the large naval and merchant ships that circumnavigated the trade triangle of the early Atlantic, a myriad of mid-to-small scale vessels used their speed and maneuverability in short-range voyages. Many of these small vessels not only supplied (and attacked) larger vessels, but also worked smaller-scale trade operations designed to evade documentation and custom regulations (Bicheno 2012: 350–2; Jarvis 2010: 122–5, 159). The diversity of vessels produced equally diverse on-board communities unique to the size and purpose of the vessel (Delgado 2019: 79–81), yet oversimplified stereotypes of able seamen and pirates on large ships fails to recognize what Jarvis refers to as ‘highly complex individuals with recoverable life stories, shoreside ties, ambitions, and more self-determination than is usually allotted them’ (Jarvis 2010: 465–6, italics in original). Failure to acknowledge the complex sociodemographic profiles of maritime workers has perpetuated a failure to recognize their speech communities that had critical agency in the expansion of European colonial regimes and the spread of English around the world.

5.2  Core Maritime Communities Despite the myth of the solitary sailor (Delgado 2018: 23–5), mariners had closely knit speech communities. Many crewmen served alongside fathers, uncles and sons (Walsh 1994: 28–34; Jarvis 2010: 121); they commonly married and had children, and their wives were active in maritime communities, sometimes accompanying their husbands to sea. The title ‘sea wife’ in numerous depositions refers to women who went to sea

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(Delgado 2019: 47) and the fact that the East India company forbade their officers from bringing wives to sea in the early voyages of the seventeenth century attests to the commonality of this practice (Fury 2015: 16). The formation of the honorific ‘sea wife’ reflects a tendency in Ship English to compound free morphemes,8 for example Ship English commonly collocates the free morphemes ‘noon’ which survives in modern English in the bound context of ‘afternoon’ and as a free morpheme meaning midday, and the morpheme ‘yest’, which survives only in the bound context of ‘yesterday’, see (6a-c) and (7a-c). (6a) this day noon [ADM 52/2/5] (6b) after last noon [T/70/1216/12] (6c) to day noon [ADM 52/2/5] (7a) yester night [ADM 52/2/3] (7b) yest noon [ADM 52/2/5] (7c) yest afternoon [ADM 52/2/5] Even if mariners did not serve with family members or loved ones, they would have been rapidly integrated into the crew of a small vessel, in which physical and social proximity was a requisite of effective work (Walsh 1994: 35). Alternatively, on a large vessel, low-ranking crewmen were assimilated into close-knit ‘mess’ groups – which ranged from around eight to twelve members – ostensibly designed to manage the logistics of food rationing and distribution, yet also served to provide training, healthcare and discipline (Adkins and Adkins 2008: 75). Officer Samuel Leech describes mess groups in kinship terms: ‘the crew of a man of war is divided into little communities . . . [that] eat and drink together, and are, as it were, so many families.’9 Social cohesion in mess groups promoted intimacy that manifested itself in sentiments of brotherhood and sometimes also in intimate and potentially sexual relationships. Unsurprisingly, shared language practices among such nuclear communities served to reinforce peer-identification. In Delgado (2019), I argue that shared language practices in maritime communities became stabilized with sustained feature transfer over time and strength of social cohesion. Low-ranking sailors (the largest crew component of any vessel) often spent long periods of time with peers because transatlantic voyages were broken into legs, each dependent on favorable weather conditions and the availability of supplies (Jarvis 2010: 125; Bicheno 2012: 124). Low-ranking crewmen were often refused shore-leave based on concerns about crew attrition or conduct, and, as a result, they could expect to spend an average period of 15.73 months (or one year, three months and twenty-three days) in active service before being decommissioned and either seeking another appointment or spending time ashore (Delgado 2019: 87). In addition to the long periods of active duty, the lowest-ranking sailors were also likely to serve on consecutive voyages, not only out of financial necessity, but also because they were subject to the common maritime practice of ‘pressing’10 crews from one vessel into another (Adkins and Adkins 2008: 365). The relatively long periods of time that low-ranking sailors spent in maritime speech communities permitted the stabilization of their practices of speech. Perhaps because of sailors’ time at sea, in addition to legal depositions that intended to determine timelines, many archival records document markers of time in maritime speech. Research shows ‘last’ as the most common time marker in Ship English, see (8), and the compounded

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phrase ‘last past’ as the second most common, see (9), both commonly occurring in post-nominal positions.

(8) the 20th of Aprill last [ASSI 45/4/1/135/10] ‘the 20th of April last year’



(9) seaven night last past [HCA 1/9/63] ‘a week ago’

Present-participle phrase modifiers are also common in depositions, and typically serve as adverbs to provide attendant circumstances that embed meaning around a single matrix clause. These modifying phrases function like conjoined or subordinate clauses, see (10), and often incorporate the word ‘being’, see (11).

(10) they tarrying longer the said Le Fort sailed away [HCA 1/52/137] ‘because they stayed longer than expected, the aforesaid Le Fort sailed away’



(11) At 6 last night the flood being made we weighed [ADM 52/3/12] ‘At 6pm last night, because the flood had passed, we weighed anchor’

Practices of speech common in Ship English would have been the target for crew members who were non-native speakers. Sailors were often recruited from British territories and considered ‘British’ for the purposes of naval records (Adkins and Adkins 2008: 51). This practice increased after the Navigation Acts of 1651 required at least three quarters of any crew on an inter-colonial trading vessel to be British – legislation which, in itself, attests to the commonality of recruiting more than a quarter of the crew from overseas (Earle 1998: 202–3).11 In practice, recruits were enlisted as needed from wherever available; they would typically have included sailors from ports around the British Isles in addition to various trading and resourcing hubs of the Caribbean, the colonies of North America and the coastal countries of Europe and Africa (Fusaro 2015: 8, 17; Earle 1998: 203). Moreover, both merchant and naval vessels routinely took on foreign servants, passengers and nonpaid workers who composed a significant (often undocumented) part of the shipboard community (Delgado 2019: 61–5). Indeed, such recruitment practices contextualize one witness testimony about a British vessel in which ‘there was no Englishman on board besides the captain’ [HCA 1/52/100]. Certainly, ships were multilingual and multidialectal spaces, but on British vessels, English would have been the lingua franca of instruction, discipline and social communication. Non-native speakers would be expected to acquire the variety of English that was common to shipboard communication. The learning needs of these non-native speakers may, in part, explain why particle omission and paradigm simplification are characteristics of Ship English, as they likely facilitated language acquisition. High-frequency examples of paradigm simplification in the archival material indicate zero-inflection on genitives, see (12), and nominal plurals, see (13a), specifically with the synecdochal use of the uninflected noun ‘sail’ to refer to a vessel, see (13b).

(12) the King of Ennglande pape [CO 5/1411/78] ‘the King of England’s paper’



(13a) in few day after [HCA 1/52/75]



(13b) 3 sayle more [ADM 52/2/5],

‘a few days after’ ‘3 more ships’

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Verbs expressed in the present-tense indicative modality also typically lack inflection for third-person subjects in Ship English, with either pronominal or nominal subjects, see (14), and irregular verbs typically occur with zero marking in both present tense and preterit contexts, see (15). Moreover, the availability and flexibility of multiple negation markers (Delgado 2019: 198–202) reduce the need for auxiliary verb inflection, see (16). Paradigm simplification in Ship English coincides with tendencies towards either zero inflection or reduced inflectional paradigms in creoles (McWhorter 2018: 21–3) providing further indications that language acquisition in multilingual communities impacted maritime speech.

(14) moderate weather blow fresh [ADM 52/2/3]



(15) he see him cruelly beat [HCA 1/99/147]

‘moderate weather blows fresh’ ‘he sees/saw him cruelly beaten’

(16) He know of no commission [HCA 1/9/10] ‘he doesn’t/didn’t know of any commission’

Once recruits acquired the shipboard lingua franca, Ship English would have marked group identity that low-ranking crewmen strengthened through participation in storytelling, music, gaming and dramatic play (Rediker 2004: 155). These predominantly oral speech practices, represented in Figure 10.1, reinforced the spread of Ship English and promoted a shared cultural identity characterized by belief in maritime folklore and ritualized uses of alcohol (Delgado 2019: 105–12). Alcohol was often consumed among mariners in renegade communities before conflict to show solidarity and courage, described by one witness as ‘Drinking Rum and Gunpowder’ [HCA1/99 The American 618, 28 October–4 November 1731]. This ritual has historical parallels in Obeah war rituals (Boukman Barima 2016: 20) and provides another sociohistorical indicator that language and culture contact was taking place in maritime communities. Linguistic evidence of language contact can be traced in performative practices of swearing such as oath-making, blasphemy and profanity, which are perhaps the most renowned discourse features of Ship English (Delgado 2019: 258–67). For mariners, swearing marked emphasis, personal agency and in-group identity.12 However, it also marked status and intentionality when issuing commands or threats to captives or subordinates, see (17) and (18).

(17) [O]ne of the prisoners came up to him and struck him on the shoulder saying you son of a bitch if you offer to make any resistance you are a dead man, and then thrust the deponent down into the Cabbin. [HCA 1/99 Williamsburg, 14 August 1729]



(18) Damn you. You shant come up yet [HCA 1/99/7]

The rhetorical function of swearing to underscore the validity of a threat or command suggests realis modality, an integral part of the system of tense, mood and aspect in predominantly oral West African languages and Afro-Atlantic Englishlexifier Creoles (Faraclas et al. 2016). Furthermore, the interpretation of swearing as realis modality is strengthened by the performative and oral nature of maritime speech communities in which instructions were often repeated but marked as final with swearing, see (19).

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(19) [he] Came to the Deponent and told him he understood he has some jewels and Rings and with a pistol and Cutlass in his hand Said he would blow his brains out if he did not deliver them . . . but afterwards Came a Second time and demanded them in the Same manner . . . then came a third time with his pistol corked and his finger upon the trigger and swore that the deponent had them and if he did not deliver [HCA 1/99/6] Maintaining group identity through shared language practices among low-status sailors was not only social (see Figure 10.1), it was critical for protection against cruel treatment. Autonomous maritime communities were prone to tyrannical captains and violent superior officers who kept order through physical violence, sometimes beating crewmen to death, for example John Morris, who was beaten by a superior officer ‘severall times very violently . . . he struck all of his teeth out of his head . . . laid for about 5 weeks and then died’ [HCA 1/52/48]. On their own ships, low-ranking sailors were subject to unreasonable imprisonment, excessive disciplinary measures, public rituals of punishment and cruel and unusual violence intended to ensure their compliance and subordination (Fury 2015: 4–5; Delgado 2019: 89–93). If vessels were captured by foreign attack or pirates, cruel and unusual punishments were routine, such as being burned with lighted matches [HCA 1/9/3], blindfolded and hung by a rope [HCA 1/9/15] or cut around the anus [HCA 1/99 Jamaica 1738-1739]. Strong communication networks among low-ranking sailors increased the potential for collective resistance against cruel treatment. Indeed, this type of collective agency enabled successful negotiation of better conditions at sea and provided a pseudolegal support network for many low-ranking crewmen (Delgado 2019: 105).

5.3  Extended Maritime Communities Ship English that developed at sea through strong communication networks and necessity transferred to port communities by transient but regular contact between sailors and the

FIGURE 10.1:  ‘Saturday Night at Sea’ by George Cruikshank, an illustration from Songs, Naval and National by Thomas Dibdin, published in London, 1841. Reproduced from the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons https​:/​/co​​mmons​​.wiki​​media​​.org/​​wiki/​​File:​​ Satur​​day​_n​​ight_​​​at​_se​​a​.jpg​ (accessed 3 August 2018).

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land-based service providers who attended them (Bicheno 2012: 13; Delgado 2019: 118– 23). However, before feature transfer happened on land, it was spread among expanded maritime communities at sea (Delgado 2019: 123–7). Transatlantic vessels frequently travelled in convoys of between fifteen and thirty ships for protection (Delgado 2019: 123), and communication among these convoys was a prominent feature of language contact. The safety provided by these convoys meant that they were encouraged by administrators, for example one letter instructing a captain to ‘give Convoy to any other ships or vessels of his Majestys subjects bound your way, which shall be ready to sail with you, or you shall meet with’ [CO 5/1411/657]. This instruction demonstrates another characteristic of Ship English that tends to express action in nominal rather than verbal form. In the captain’s instruction to ‘give convoy’, the noun rather than the verb denotes action. Often, the verbs ‘give’, ‘make’ and use’ occur with direct objects that indicate primary actions, see (20) and (21).

(20) to make him dishoner [HCA 1/9/8]



(21) he used some threatenings [HCA 1/99/22]

‘to dishonor him’ ‘he threatened’ Indeed, the most common construction using ‘make’ was often associated with parts of the vessel to denote maritime movement, see (22), a practice that persists in idiomatic usage referring to physical movement such as ‘make haste’.

(22) they made what saile they could after them [HCA 1/53/12] ‘they followed them to the best of their ability’

Constructions such as these were likely reinforced in convoy situations to reaffirm group identity when sailors were permitted to use small boats to visit and socialize on each other’s vessels, a custom described by one observer in the mid-seventeenth century (Gage 1648: 15). In this way, communication in convoys provided the first level of an extended speech community beyond the vessel, which helped stabilize and spread Ship English among wider maritime communities. After Ship English stabilized at sea among socially cohesive mess groups, crews and fleets in convoy, it spread to land-based maritime service providers, some of whom potentially didn’t self-identify as maritime workers, for example coastal navigation pilots, traders in supply goods, sex-workers and dockers who helped to service and provision the ship, unload and take on cargo (Delgado 2019: 127–30). Atlantic ports were often replete with commercial and military vessels that would have increased opportunities for contact between mariners and service providers and thus created situations of potential language spread (Linebaugh and Rediker 2000: 146; Delgado 2019: 139–42). In addition to language contact as a result of regular maritime activity, individual sailors often sought refuge in port communities as they fled harsh maritime discipline, so much so that local proclamations forbade ale-house keepers to harbour runaways (Lavery 2009: 50). Other individuals were abandoned in ports, often becoming integrated into those coastal communities, for a variety of discipline for health-related reasons (Brown 2011: 55, 57–9, 113). In addition to these fugitives and abandoned sailors, crewman who were permitted shore-leave typically maintained close contact with each other in taverns and communal lodgings and socialized with service providers to conduct business, share news and forge profitable alliances (Delgado 2019: 143). Any port community, described by

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one contemporary observer as ‘sea towne’ (Gage 1648: 88), was replete with sailors, traders and service providers who used English as a lingua franca, which consequently spread through shared maritime orientation. Thus, Ship English moved from the vessels, beyond the convoys and into the international trading ports. In addition to its characteristic lack of inflection, the simplification of verbal paradigms would have made Ship English an accessible lingua franca, for example, the auxiliary ‘do’ often occurs in affirmative statements of the indicative modality without emphatic meaning, see (23), which potentially simplified irregular verb conjugation in the preterit, see (24).

(23) our ketch did touch our stearn [ADM 52/2/3]



(24) wee did take in the Soldiers [ADM 51/4322/1]

‘our ketch (a two-mast sailboat) touched the stern of our main ship’ ‘we took the soldiers in’ Beyond the immediate communication needs of mariners seeking trade and services in port, the importance of Ship English was potentially amplified by the maritime nature of international trade. Transatlantic maritime trading was based on a complex system of debt, credit, factorage and barter, and it served as the foundation of an emerging international economy in the early seventeenth century (Delgado 2019: 128–30). British vessels not only maintained the economies of war by moving large numbers of troops, equipment and captives during regional conflicts; they also maintained networks critical to colonial communication, commerce and contraband. Britain explicitly legislated to maintain trade monopolies in the face of international free markets (Brown 2011: 41), and Britain’s role in the transit and sale of foodstuffs, manufactured goods and human cargo around the Atlantic increased throughout the seventeenth century (Brown 2011: 105; Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives & Library 2014). Various depositions refer to the infrastructure of this trade, specifically ‘factories’ in West Africa [HCA 1/12/2–4] that functioned not only as horrific sites of brutality and abuse, but also as points of language contact, which potentially derived what Hancock describes as ‘Coastal English’ in West Africa, based on maritime speech (Hancock 1986; Delgado and Hancock 2017). In short, maritime networks of commerce and contraband fueled emerging economies, and although it was only one of the codes of communication that facilitated international trading, Ship English potentially influenced pidgins and varieties of English around the multilingual coastal regions of Western Europe and Africa, the Caribbean and the east coast of the Americas.

6  CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This chapter presents the sociolinguistic context of Ship English with illustrative samples of usage from archival records to demonstrate a historical example of supra-regional English. It is hoped that the example of Ship English might serve to ground contemporary studies on supra-regional usage in historical context and thus mitigate discourses that marginalize non-territorial varieties as aberrant and inconsequential. The chapter has shown how maritime practices of speech, not defined by territory, grew out of a situation of strong social cohesion among predominantly low-status mariners in multilingual contexts. It furthermore summarizes how Ship English became stabilized through oral speech practices among wider maritime communities and transferred to ports through transient but regular contact with service providers, a process that was potentially

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intensified by the maritime influence on emerging international economies and the need for codes of communication that could serve as lingua francas. Due to the maritime nature of international trade, Ship English likely served as a target for language acquisition around the early colonial Atlantic and thus would have played a critical role in the international spread of English around the Americas, West Africa and Europe. It therefore merits recognition in discourses on World Englishes despite nationalist perspectives in dialectology that assume change radiates outwards from the elite epicenters of colonial settlement. The study of non-territorial forms of language prompts a critical re-evaluation of linguistic models that are still grounded in neo-colonial ideologies of geographical and political unity. Contrastively, studies in World Englishes increasingly explore the impact of supra-regional Englishes on perceptions of identity and culture (Rasinger 2010) and models of language learning (Hickey 2018; Nero 2012). Nero explains: In today’s transient world, where a continual multidirectional flow of people, goods, and services has deterritorialized languages and their users, languages, especially English, are now without borders. (Nero 2012: 143) Like more contemporary forms of non-territorial English, Ship English is named for its medium of transmission in much the same way as technology-mediated practices of usage are named for their mode of transmission, for example ‘Netlect’ (Paçarizi 2018), ‘textese’ and ‘e-mailese’ (Bode Ekundayo 2014). The ship also signifies maritime culture comparable to how some technology-mediated varieties are named for cultural symbols, for example ‘Lolcats’ and ‘Lolspeak’ (de los Santos 2012). Just as internet-mediated usage of English needs a ‘post-varieties’ approach to World Englishes (Seargeant and Tagg 2011), English usage among displaced communities and economic migrants also needs to be understood in a context beyond geographical classification. In this respect, Ship English becomes a useful historical point of comparison for contemporary Englishes, specifically those emerging from global migration and computer-mediated discourse that resist traditional geographical frameworks. This chapter advocates for recognition of the linguistic agency of multicultural and mobile communities in World Englishes similar to how scholarship in sociology and history has increasingly recognized mobile populations, for example Gilroy (1993) argues that mobile people of the nineteenth century, including sailors of African descent, were the main agents in the development of modernity; and Scott (2018) stresses the importance of sailors and transient populations of mixed heritage in the historical developments that led to the Haitian Revolution. I have argued that maritime communities used speech practices that influenced the spread of English around North American, Caribbean and West African shores (Delgado 2019). Furthermore, maritime speech was likely spread by second language speakers because of its function as a lingua franca in the plurilingual context of transatlantic trade. For this reason, Ship English may also have served as the target coastal variety that became an adstrate in creole formation (Delgado and Hancock 2017). Indeed, the salience of paradigm simplification – that would have made Ship English easier to acquire – suggests the role that non-native speakers played in its growth and spread. In this context, Ship English may provide a historical precedent to contemporary uses of English as a lingua franca in cross-cultural domains, discussed in Guido (2008). Just as Guido uses EFL contexts to challenge the socio-political primacy of native speakers in Kachru’s seminal three-circle typology, this chapter suggests how, since its inception, English as an international language has been negotiated in plurilingual

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contexts that resist unified territorial classifications. Bakhtin ([1930] 1981: 288) explains that language is never unitary, nor can it be idealized in territorial isolation devoid of human complexity: ‘It is unitary only as an abstract grammatical system of normative forms, taken . . . in isolation from the uninterrupted process of historical becoming that is a characteristic of all living language.’ In this chapter, I have attempted to demonstrate one way that multicultural and mobile populations were part of the ‘process of historical becoming’ in World Englishes, which consequently prompts a critical re-evaluation of nationalism and native ownership in linguistic models.

NOTES 1. Determined roughly as the period between 1620 and 1750. 2. For a more detailed description of linguistic features of Ship English and the methodology used to determine them, see Delgado, S. (2019), Ship English: Sailors’ Speech in the Early Colonial Caribbean, Berlin: Language Science Press. 3. Cant, dating from the sixteenth century, refers to the language practices of English ‘rogues and criminals’, whose main function was to deceive and conceal (Coleman 2004: 4). 4. Sabir denotes a pidgin language used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries (Holm 1989: 607). 5. The eight archives visited were: (1) Whim Archive: Frederiksted, St. Croix; (2) National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago: Port of Spain, Trinidad; (3) The Barbados Department of Archives: St. James, Barbados; (4) Barbados Museum and Historical Society: Bridgetown, Barbados; (5) Colección Josefina del Toro Fulladosa: University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; (6) The National Archives: Kew, London, England; (7) The Merseyside Maritime Museum Liverpool, England; and (8) The National Maritime Museum: London, England. 6. Based on a typical English 100-gun ship of the line in the late seventeenth century (The National Maritime Museum, London, England ‘Nelson, Navy, Nation’ Exhibition, visited by this author in 2015). 7. Codes in square brackets refer to the archive and the document number as it appears in the collection from which the example was sourced. When no unique coding was given, the documents have been identified by date and headings available. See Appendix 1 for an index of archive coding. 8. The preference was a wider phenomenon in Early Modern English in which the language had become more analytic favouring the use of free over bound morphemes (Millward and Hayes 2012: 165–6). 9. Cited from a display in the British National Maritime Museum’s ‘Atlantic Worlds’ exhibition, visited by Sally J. Delgado on 22 November 2015. 10. Contracting with coercion or force. 11. Pirate crews, often recruited by force, coercion and opportunism, may have included significantly more international representation than in naval and merchant vessels because they were not subject to the restrictions of the 1651 Navigation Acts. 12. The extent of swearing as a marker of group identity among pirates meant that testimony about profane language was a common feature of piracy trials; accused seamen were found guilty or acquitted, based – at least in part – on the fluency, frequency and strength of their profanity (Delgado 2019: 266–7).

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REFERENCES Adkins, R. and L. Adkins (2008), Jack Tar: The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary Seamen in Nelson’s Navy, London: Abacus. Bailey, G. and G. Ross (1988), ‘The Shape of the Superstrate: Morphosyntactic Features of Ship English’, English World-Wide, 9 (2): 193–212. Bakhtin, M. M. ([1930] 1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, M. Holquist (ed.), trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, Austin and London: University of Texas Press. Bicheno, H. (2012), Elizabeth’s Sea Dogs: How the English Became the Scourge of the Seas, London: Conway, Bloomsbury. Bode Ekundayo, O. S. (2014), ‘Linguistic Symbol Intraference in Textese and E-Mailese: Implications for Teaching and Learning Standard English’, GIST Education and Learning Research Journal, 9: 124–41. Boukman Barima, K. (2016), ‘Cutting Across Space and Time: Obeah’s Service to AfroJamaica’s Freedom Struggle in Slavery and Emancipation’, Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, 9 (4): 16–31. Brown, K. (2011), Poxed & Scurvied: The Story of Sickness and Health at Sea, Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. Choundas, G. (2007), The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers and Rogues, Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books. Coleman, J. (2004), A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries. Volume I: 1567–1784, New York: Oxford University Press. Creswell, J. W. and V. L. Plano Clark (2007), Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research, Los Angeles: SAGE Publications. Delgado, S. J. (2013), ‘Pirate English of the Caribbean and Atlantic Trade Routes in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Linguistic Hypotheses Based on Socio-Historical Data’, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia: International Journal of Linguistics, 45 (2): 151–69. Delgado, S. J. (2018), ‘Mythbusting Maritime Ficiton’, in N. Faraclas, R. Severing, C. Weijer, E. Echteld, W. Rutgers and S. Delgado (eds), Breaking Down Binaries: Tidal Shifts in the Study of the Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Greater Caribbean and Beyond, 19–33, Willemstad, Curaçao: University of Curaçao.  Delgado, S. J. (2019), Ship English: Sailors’ Speech in the Early Colonial Caribbean, Berlin: Language Science Press. Delgado, S. J. and I. Hancock (2017), ‘New Routes to Creolization: The Importance of Ship English’, Paper presented at the Winter meeting of the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Austin, Texas 5–7 January 2017. de los Santos, E. A. (2012), ‘Lolcats and Lolspeak: The Importance of the Internet Culture for English Professionals’, Brazilian English Language Teaching Journal, 3 (1): 62–76. Dobson, E. J. (1955), ‘Early Modern Standard English’, Transactions of the Philological Society, 54 (1): 25–54. Earle, P. (1998), Sailors: English Merchant Seamen 1650–1775, London: Methuen. Faraclas, N., J. Lozano-Cosme, G. Mejía, R. Olmeda Rosario, C. Heffelfinger Nieves, C. Cardona Durán, M. Cortes, C. Rodriguez Iglesias, F. S. Rivera Cornier, A. Mulero Claudio, S. DeJesús, A. Vergne, J. P. Muñoz, P. A. Le Compte Zambrana, S. Brock, M. J. Haynes, M. Angus Baboun and J. Enrique Arus (2016), ‘Recovering African Agency: A Re-analysis of Tense, Modality and Aspect in Statian and Other Afro-Caribbean English Lexifier Contact Varieties’, Paper presented at the 21st Biennial Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, Kingston, Jamaica 1–6 August 2016.

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Fury, C. (2015), ‘Rocking the Boat: Shipboard Disturbances in the Early Voyages of the English East India Company 1601–1611’, Unpublished manuscript, copy shared by the author via personal email 20 August 2015. Fusaro, M. (2015), ‘Public Service and Private Trade: Northern Seamen in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Courts of Justice’, The International Journal of Maritime History, 27 (1): 3–25. Gage, T. (1648), A New Survey of the West-Indies: Or, the English American His Travail by Sea and Land, London: R. Cotes. Facsimile, courtesy of The Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Digitized Holdings (ref 792.1.8.). Gilroy, P. (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London and New York: Verso. Guido, M. (2008), English as a Lingua Franca in Cross-Cultural Immigration Domains, Bern: Peter Lang AG. Hancock, I. F. (1972), ‘A Domestic Origin for the English-Derived Atlantic Creoles’, Florida FL Reporter, 10 (1–2): 7–8, 52. Hancock, I. F. (1976), ‘Nautical Sources of Krio Vocabulary’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 7: 23–36. Hancock, I. F. (1986), ‘The Domestic Hypothesis, Diffusion and Componentiality: An Account of Atlantic Anglophone Creole Origins’, in P. Muysken and N. Smith (eds), Substrate versus Universals in Creole Genesis, 71–102, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hancock, I. F. (1988), ‘Componentiality and the Origins of Gullah’, in J. L. Peacock and J. C. Sabella (eds), Sea and Land: Cultural and Biological Adaptation in the Southern Coastal Plain, 13–24, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Hickey, R., ed. (2005), Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hickey, M., ed. (2018), ‘Thailand’s “English Fever”, Migrant Teachers and Cosmopolitan Aspirations in an Interconnected Asia’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39 (5): 738–51. Holm, J. (1988), Pidgins and Creoles. Volume I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, J. (1989), Pidgins and Creoles. Volume II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jarvis, M. J. (2010), In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World 1680–1783, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Jeans, P. D. (1993), Ship to Shore: A Dictionary of Everyday Words and Phrases Derived from the Sea, Santa Barbara: ABC-C40. Labov, W. (2007), ‘Transmission and Diffusion’, Language, 83: 344–87. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2007.0082 Lavery, B. (2009), Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World, London: Conway. Linebaugh, P. and M. Rediker (2000), The Many-Headed Hydra: Slaves, Sailors, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Boston: Beacon Press. Litter, D., ed. (1999), Guide to the Records of Merseyside Maritime Museum. Vol. II, St. John’s: AGMV Marquis. MacKenzie, M. (2005), Seatalk: The Dictionary of English Nautical Language, Nova Scotia, Canada: Mike MacKenzie. Available online: http://seatalk​.blogspot​.com/ (accessed 10 March 2014). Manwayring, H. ([1644] 1672), The Sea-Mans Dictionary: Or, an Exposition and Demonstration of all the Parts and Things Belonging to a Shippe, Menston: Scolar Press. Matthews, W. (1935), ‘Sailors’ Pronunciation in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, Anglia: Journal of English Philology, 59: 192–251. McWhorter, J. H. (2018), The Creole Debate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives & Library (2014), Liverpool and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Information Sheet: 3). Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.liv​​erpoo​​lmuse​​ums​.o​​rg​.uk​​/arch​​​ ivesh​​eet3 (accessed 10 June 2015).

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Millward, C. M. and M. Hayes (2012), A Biography of the English Language, Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Nero S. (2012), ‘Languages Without Borders: TESOL in a Transient World’, TESL Canada Journal, 29 (2):143–54. DOI: 10.18806/tesl.v29i2.1106. Paçarizi, R. (2018), ‘“Netlect” in Albanian: The Social Network Variety’, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 9 (6): 101–5. Rasinger, S. M. (2010), ‘Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Language Use amongst Eastern European Migrants in East Anglia’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31 (3): 287–300. Rediker, M. (2004), Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Reinecke, J. E. (1938), ‘Trade Jargons and Creole Dialects as Marginal Languages’, Social Forces, 17 (1): 107–18. Schmidt, J. (1872), Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der Indogermanischen Sprachen, Weimar: H. Böhlau. Schneider, B. (2019), ‘Methodological Nationalism in Linguistics’, Language Sciences, 76. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2018.05.006 Schneider, E. W. (2011), English Around the World: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schultz, P. (2010), ‘Ship English’, MA diss., University of Texas at Austin. Scott, J. S. (2018), The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution, London and Brooklyn: Verso. Seargeant, P. and C. Tagg (2011), ‘English on the Internet and a “Post-Varieties” Approach to Language’, World Englishes, 30 (4): 496–514. Shopen, T. and J. M. Williams, eds (1980), Standards and Dialects in English, Cambridge: Winthrop Publishers, Inc. Smith, J. ([1627] 1968), A Sea Grammar, original publisher London: John Haviland, reprint Amsterdam and New York: De Capo Press. Tagliamonte, S. A. (2013), Roots of English: Exploring the History of Dialects, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thornton, J. (2000), ‘The Birth of an Atlantic World’, in V. Shepherd and H. McD. Beckles (eds), Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World: A Student Reader, 55–73, Kingston: Ian Randle. Trudgill, P. (1986), Dialects in Contact, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Trudgill, P. (2004), New Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walsh, V. (1994), ‘Recruitment and Promotion: The Merchant Fleet of Salem, Massachusetts, 1670–1765’, Research in Maritime History, 7: 27–46.

APPENDIX 1: INDEX OF ARCHIVES ADM

Admiralty Records

ASSI Records of Justices of Assize CO

Colonial Office

T

Logbooks of the Carlyle, Company of Royal Adventurers

HCA High Court of Admiralty E134

Witness Depositions, Legorne Court Archives

Chapter 11

Jewish Englishes in the United States and Beyond An Ethnolinguistic Repertoire Approach SARAH BUNIN BENOR

1  INTRODUCTION We got out of the car and stayed by [‘on’