Varieties of English

The term “variety” is an academic term used for any kind of language production, whether we are viewing it as being determined by region, by gender, by social class, by age or by our own inimitable individual characteristics.

The concepts of language variety and variation lie at the heart of the world Englishes enterprise:

l “varieties of English,”

l “localized varieties of English,”

l “non-native varieties of English,”

l “second-language varieties of English,” and

l “new varieties of English.”

l The issue of linguistic variety is also central to both traditional dialectology and contemporary linguistics, where it is often subsumed into the study of language variation and change.

l Global Englishes

l International Englishes

l New Englishes

l World Englishes

Many historians and sociologists ask a question how it happened that in 1600 England – second-rate country, in the 19th c. the British Empire dominated in the world.

Well-known phrase “The Sun never sets in the British Empire” was transformed into “The Sun never sets in the empire of the English language “. To put things metaphorically, whereas once Britannia ruled the waves, now it is English which rules them

Among the varieties of English, there is a division into

l the “Old Englishes” (usually British, American,Australian, Canadian and a few others) and

l the “New Englishes” that have emerged in such nations as India, Nigeria,Singapore, and the Philippines.

l It has become customary to use the plural form ‘Englishes’ to stress the diversity to be found in the language today, and to stress that English no longer has one single base of authority, prestige and normativity.

Tom McArthur’s Circle of World English (1987)

Manfred GЁorlach’s Circle model of English (GЁorlach 1990)

Braj Kachru’s Circles model of World Englishes

The “Three Circles of English”:

l the “Inner,” - the societies where English is the “primary language,” i.e., the USA, the UK,Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

l “ Outer, ” postcolonial Anglophonic contexts, a numerically large and diverse speech community, including such African and Asian societies as Nigeria, Zambia, India, and Singapore.

l “ Expanding ” Circles.

l The Expanding Circle is defined as comprising those areas where English is an “international language” and traditionally regarded as societies learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) - China, Greece, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the USSR

The Circles model was intended to represent

l (1) the types of spread of English worldwide,

l (2) the patterns of acquisition, and

l (3) the functional domains in which English is used internationally.

Multiple Mixing and World Englishes

l mixing of world Englishes,

l mixing of world English accents,

l mixing of English with other languages,

l mixing of English with non-Roman scripts.

English as a GLOBAL language

In Mass Media there are numerous facts about English spread worldwide, for example:

n 400mln English mother tongue speakers

n 350 mln English as a second language

n 100 mln use it fluently as a foreign language

n 2/3 world scientists write in English

n ¾ world mail in English

n 80% electronic information

n In 1997 81% of Internet users used English, in September 2002 only 36,5%

Дата добавления: 2015-10-23