Corpora and World Englishes

A powerful discourse-pragmatic agent of grammatical change in English since the mid-twentieth century has been the increasing acceptance of colloquialism. Little is known, however, about its influence on grammatical developments in regional varieties of World English other than the two inner circle ‘supervarieties’, British and American English. This paper reports findings from a corpus-based study of three grammatical categories known to be undergoing a colloquialism-related rise in contemporary English, across a range of registers in ten World Englishes: quasi-modals (have to, have got to, be going to, want to), get-passives, and first person plural inclusive let’s. In each case comparisons are drawn with non-colloquial variants: modals (must, should, will, shall), be-passives, and let us. Subsequent functional interpretation of the data is used to explore the effect upon the quantitative patterns identified of the phenomenon of colloquialism and of further factors with which it interacts (including Americanism, prescriptivism, and evolutionary status).

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And then there were many: How no English became one English, and then many - Elena Seoane and Cristina Suárez-Gómez (eds.), World Englishes: New Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1985. Pp. viii + 285. Hardback $143, ISBN: 978-9-9027-2491-73.

English Today ◽

10.1017/s0266078417000323 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 60-61

Author(s):

Simone Bacchini

Keyword(s):

World Englishes

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Conference Report: IAWE14, Hong Kong, 1–5 December 2008

English Today ◽

10.1017/s0266078409000224 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 25 (2) ◽

pp. 63-64

Author(s):

Bertus van Rooy

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

International Association ◽

Presidential Address ◽

Conference Report ◽

World Englishes ◽

Classroom Teaching ◽

Annual Conference ◽

Open Forum ◽

Conference Theme ◽

The City

ABSTRACTA report on the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the International Association for World Englishes was held from 1–5 December 2008 at the City University of Hong Kong. The Conference Theme was ‘World Englishes and World's Languages: Convergence, Enrichment or Death?’ On the first two days, three pre-conference workshops and an open forum discussion were held, addressing theory and methodology in the world Englishes classroom, creativity in world Englishes and the implications of language variation for classroom teaching. This was followed by three packed days of presentations, including a keynote, plenary and presidential address, four focus lectures, and eight streams of parallel paper presentations or special panels/thematic sessions. In total, more than 150 presentations were made, and the conference was attended by well over 200 delegates.

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