World Englishes: New theoretical and methodological considerations (Varieties of English Around the World)

This book provides a collection of articles that reflect the current state of affairs in the blossoming field of World Englishes by bringing together several innovative synchronic and diachronic approaches. It contributes to the ongoing theoretical discussion concerning the criteria that make a low-frequency item represent an incipient change and examines the suitability of the sociolinguistics of globalisation theory for the study of non-traditional avenues for the spread of vernacular varieties of English (recent migrations, the entertainment industry, the web). It explores crucial aspects of language change and dialect evolution through the study of grammatical phenomena and the particular linguistic and socio-historical factors conditioning them. Together with theoretical questions, the volume shows a concern for methodological issues, such as sociolinguistic interviews, map-task experiments, metalinguistic comments, acceptability judgments and corpus-based methods. This volume represents the latest trends in the field and will undoubtedly set the agenda for the years ahead. World Englishes -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgments -- World Englishes today -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Key publications, resources and models for the study of World Englishes -- 3. This volume -- References -- Beyond and between the "Three Circles": World Englishes research in the age of globalisation -- 1. Introduction: English - one of the world's 7,000 languages, and yet a language like no other? -- 2. Defining the place of English linguistics in the wider field of English Language Studies -- 3. Augmentation -- 4. Conclusion -- References