Squaring the circles: issues in modeling English worldwide

Abstract

The model originally promoted by Braj Kachru and representing English worldwide as Inner, Outer, and Expanding circles has helped valorize denigrated varieties by drawing attention to commonalities across old and new varieties and by altering perceptions of their communicative potential and relative prestige. However, the model suffers from being based in a political/historical view of English worldwide and thus fails to capture transplantations of the language in locations not formally recorded by colonial history. Because it promotes specific varieties, the model also ignores variation within locales, especially where the gap between those who know English and those who do not is vast. Overall, the model encourages broad-brush descriptions of manifestations of English across all three circles that do not stand up to sociolinguistic analysis. In response, it is suggested that the model can continue to serve as a shorthand for English worldwide but that it must adapt by (1) moving away from a focus on nation-states in favor of a sociolinguistic focus on English-speaking communities wherever they are found and (2) recognizing that fundamental differences across contexts for English worldwide cannot be glossed over in support of specific varieties if we are to arrive at descriptively adequate sociolinguistics and socially relevant language policies.

New variety or learner English?

“…For criticism of the tripartite models cf Bruthiaux (2003). Mollin (2006a, Section 3.2), andMollin (2006b).…”

Review of Schneider (2011): English Around the World. An Introduction

“…But these relatively uncritical uses of these terms sit oddly with Schneider's (p. 32) earlier and more critical remarks that both the "ENL / ESL / EFL" and "Inner / Outer / Expanding Circle" classification schemes are "problematic in that they abstract from complex realities, and perhaps both may be a bit dated by now and fail to reflect the vigorous spread of English and changes of its status in many regions over the last few decades". The problems with Kachru's Three Circles Model have been discussed (Bruthiaux 2003;Pennycook 2003) and I have elsewhere suggested that while the model is still relevant, this is only after it has been reframed as a model of ideological forces (Park and Wee 2009). Thus, I am largely in agreement with Schneider's more critical remarks about the model (see also Schneider 2003: 243).…”

Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies

“…World Englishes, and particularly the rather static "concentric circle" model, have come in for considerable criticism over the last few years, with Bruthiaux ( 2003 ) amongst others pointing out the model's many inconsistencies, descriptive inadequacies, and perhaps above all its inabilities to deal with current contexts of global language use. Ultimately, concludes Bruthiaux, "the Three Circles model is a twentieth century construct that has outlived its usefulness" ( 2003 , p. 161), or as Ostler ( 2010 ) puts it, the three circles "are not an adequate basis for our attempt to fi t the spread of English into some more general theory that would characterize lingua-francas in general, and not just English as it is currently spoken around the world" (p. 35).…”