Week 2: Models of English

Various models of English including Kachru's three circle model, Schnieder's dynamic model of postcolonial Englishes, Moag's life cycle of non-native Englishes, etc are explained. The concepts of ENL/ESL/EFL (Kachru's) and the 'spread' and 'distribution' of English (Widdowson's) are elaborated along with the idea of English Language Complex (Bhatt's).  

The lecture systematically surveys conceptual frameworks (models) that have been suggested to identify similarities between World Englishes and to classify them accordingly. The earliest suggestions along these lines were static models, which either worked out historically based relationships between national varieties, having branched off in a family-tree-like manner, or classified countries based on whether English is used as a native, second or foreign language in them. Other early categorizations emphasized the global, national or regional outreach of varieties or variety types based on sociolinguistic settings in communities and their resulting linguistic properties. In contrast, recent models emphasize the evolutionary or even cyclic character of varieties.

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schneiders-model.pdf (0.09 MB )

bhatt-elc.docx (0.02 MB )

spread-of-english.pdf (0.22 MB )