World Englishes and the multilingual history of English

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Traditional histories of English (e.g., Baugh and Cable, 1993) present a mostly unilinear account of the language that privileges the standard in Britain and to a lesser extent, the US. Most other varieties (e.g., in Australia, Nigeria or India) are treated as appendages to this history, of interest mainly for their lexical innovations. At the same time, studies of New Englishes (e.g., Platt et al., 1984) have also promulgated this separateness in history. This paper attempts to unify the history of Englishes by highlighting a thread that is downplayed in traditional accounts: that the language has always existed amidst a multilingual ethos in which language contact has been ever‐present.