Englishes in the Outer and Expanding Circles: A comparative study

Abstract

The major objective of the study is to develop a framework allowing for the systematic investigation of the institutionalised varieties and performance varieties of English (also known as learner Englishes). This involves a detailed description of the forms of English spoken in India and in Russia as well as discussion of sociolinguistic histories and cultural background. Relying on evidence obtained for Indian English and English spoken in Russia, this paper argues that learner Englishes are self-contained forms of English that reflect order and structure within the grammar and need to be documented and studied systematically in analogy to indigenised forms of English. Moreover, the description of both varietal types should take into account various factors relating to the extra-linguistic setting and sociolinguistic history of the variety in question. Finally, the study shows how systematic accounts of a learner variety can provide a sound basis for -and a useful source of -differentiated cross-varietal comparisons with other forms of English.

Towards an integrated approach to postcolonial and non‐postcolonial Englishes

“…She therefore concludes that ‘[English in] the Netherlands cannot be said unequivocally to be either a second language or a learner variety’ (Edwards : 193). This once more supports the recent trend to view the concepts of EFL and ESL as two poles on a continuum rather than dichotomic constructs (Biewer : 28; Bongartz & Buschfeld : 48; Gilquin & Granger : 76; Buschfeld : 9, 12, 188), which clearly reinforces the need for an integrated approach to different varietal types (Buschfeld , ; Davydova ; Edwards ). In reaction to this observation, Edwards (: 157–190) also attends to the question of the applicability of Schneider's Dynamic Model to non‐postcolonial contexts like the Netherlands.…”

Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English

“…This absence of progress in the standardisation of this variety prompted Mukherjee (2007) to assert that IndE has entered a 'steady state' in its development as an indigenised variety of English, with progressive forces (emergence and use of indigenised endonormative language structures) and conservative forces (insistence on upholding exonormative BrE standards) balancing each other out. This includes lexical focus marking (Balasubramanian 2009a,b;Parviainen and Fuchs 2015;Sedlatschek 2009), topicalisation, dislocation and clefts , use of determiners (Davydova 2012;Sedlatschek 2009;Sharma 2005b), verb complementation (Hoffmann andMukherjee 2007;Koch and Bernaisch 2013;Mukherjee 2010;Mukherjee and Hoffmann 2006;Mukherjee and Schilk 2008;Schilk 2011), extension of the progressive (Collins 2008;Davydova 2012;Sharma 2009), use of past tense and present perfect (Davydova 2011;Fuchs 2016/to appear;Sharma 2009;Werner 2013), use of intensifiers (Fuchs and Gut 2016/to appear) and copula omission (Sharma 2009). Even if some Indians grow up speaking English, making them native speakers in the linguistic sense of the term, attitudes to IndE cause many Indians to deny that it can be their 'mother tongue'.…”

Elaborating on the Expanding Circle

“…One of the misconceptions expressed by the ELF scholars is that the WE paradigm deals only with description of varieties, which they contrast with their own goals to find the ‘common denominator’ (Cogo & Dewey, , p. 26) in intercultural communication. That is why most of the ELF works deal with linguistic phenomena that are common to non‐native Englishes (starting from the common phonological core by Jenkins () to recent works on European English (Dröschel, ) and comparison of Outer Circle Englishes (for example, Indian English) with the Englishes ‘spoken’ in Russia and Germany (Davydova, , ), which are explained as a search for communicative strategies.) However, the functional aspect, as well as feature description, has been a focus of interest in World Englishes since the launch of the paradigm (see the works by B. Kachru, , , which are now considered classical).…”