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14 - The Global Growth of English at the Grassroots

from Part III - Linguistics and World Englishes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2019

By
Christiane Meierkord
Edited by
Daniel Schreier ,
Marianne Hundt  and
Edgar W. Schneider
Daniel Schreier
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Marianne Hundt
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Edgar W. Schneider
Affiliation:
Universität Regensburg, Germany
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Summary

Varieties of English used as second or additional languages have received an enormous amount of attention in the past decades, particularly following Kachru’s pioneering work on Indian English. The sociolinguistics and the linguistic features of these Englishes have been described extensively, and corpora such as the International Corpus of English or the Global Corpus of Web-based English allow their linguistic comparison. Most descriptions and corpora are based on what have been called “educated” speakers – individuals who have successfully completed secondary education, often the elites of their various countries. However, many users of English today do not belong to societal elites but often to disadvantaged communities; frequently, they have acquired English with limited or no access to formal instruction. This chapter describes the uses and processes that can be observed with these individuals. Drawing on examples from, for instance, working-class citizens in Sweden, refugees in Europe, taxi drivers and informal traders in South Africa and Uganda, and domestic help in Hong Kong, it describes the histories and sociolinguistics of the spread of English at the grassroots of societies.

Keywords

interactions across Englishesspread of nonstandardized Englishesdisadvantaged communitiesuniversal free primary educationgrassrootsliteracytranslanguaging
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes , pp. 311 - 338
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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