English: World Englishes

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This conceptualization of world Englishes is a socially realistic approach to the observed global spread and functions of English within the Three Circles model (Kachru, 1985: 12–13). This model provides a dynamic schema for contextualization of the speech communities of Englishes in their sociolinguistic contexts of contact and convergence. These communities comprise (a) canonically privileged users, the INNER CIRCLE; (b) users who have contextually institutionalized their Englishes, the OUTER CIRCLE; and (c) users dependent on external norms, the Expanding Circle (Kachru, 1985 and 2005: 211–220). Other issues include English's conceptual mythology, descriptive frameworks, identity construction, nativization, acculturation, creativity, and the ongoing theoretical, applied and ethical debates concerning world Englishes.

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Braj B Kachru is Center for Advanced Professor of Linguistics and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Emeritus, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the founder and co-editor of World Englishes (Blackwell, Oxford), associate editor of the Oxford companion to the English language, and contributor to the Cambridge history of the English language. His research on world Englishes, the Kashmiri language and literature, and theoretical and applied studies on language and society has resulted in over 25 authored and edited volumes and more than 100 research papers, review articles, and reviews. He was head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois (1968–79), director of the Division of English as an International Language (1985–91), and was director of the Center for Advanced Study (June 1996–January 2000). He was director of the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America (1978), president of American Association for Applied Linguistics (1984), and president of the International Association for World Englishes (1997–99). He was named Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University in 1998; honorary fellow of the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, India in 2001, and honorary member of the Japanese Association for Asian Englishes in 2004.

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