Reflections on World Englishes

Abstract

The journal World Englishes has become one of the most highly regarded publications . . . : the acronym WE itself symbolizes the inclusiveness. The pluralization of the word English by adding the suffix -es symbolizes the model. In my estimation, the impact of WE has created a new field of language research: the linguistic, socio-cultural, and pedagogical dimensions of the worldwide spread of English. The longstanding tradition in English linguistics was to regard only the use and usage of ‘‘native’’ speakers of English as the legitimate subject for description of the language. When studied at all, ‘‘non-native’’ speakers’ divergences from ‘‘native’’ speakers’ norms for usage were universally viewed as deficient approximation of those norms, useful only for analyzing processes of second-language acquisition and for developing teaching strategies to overcome these deficiencies. The WE paradigm has challenged this tradition by defining and establishing a more realistic theoretical perspective in which ‘‘non-native’’ varieties of English are accorded a significance equal to that of the ‘‘native’’ speaker varieties. The concepts of world Englishes and the Three Circles of English have created a new paradigm of the kind that Kuhn (1970) has pointed out in his treatise on the structure of scientific revolutions. World Englishes has had a monumental impact on the study of English and the entire field of applied linguistics. In the application of linguistic theory, WE has provided crucial insights to the fields of language policy and language planning. The primary contribution of WE has been to demonstrate unequivocally that these contexts rather than any panel or authority, appointed or self-proclaimed, define the functional adequacy and necessity of all formal features in a language variety.