ABSTRACT
English has grown into an international language in a double sense, with both an
increasing number of users and international varieties.
As yet, however, there is no
comprehensive explanatory framework for the sociohistorical development of English as an
International Language (EIL). This study addresses itself to that task by integrating the
hitherto separate areas of study of language change and language spread in a unified
approach, language spread and change. The world language theory framework developed
here puts forward a sociolinguistic perspective on the development of EIL, connecting the
spread of English in the second and foreign language contexts over the last two centuries and
accounts for language evolution, the development of international varieties of English, via
second language acquisition processes.
Employing a historical-structural approach, the study first examines the sociohistorical
context in which English spread, identifying the crucial determinants of that spread within two
interconnected processes. The first of these, the imperial spread that accompanied colonial
rule in Africa and Asia, is shown to have operated within carefully prescribed boundaries
which limited access to English, referred to in the study as the containment policy. A facet
of socioeconomic development within colonialism, this imperial side of the development of
EIL is ultimately subsumed under the second process, the evolution of the world
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econocultural system.
Within this economic and cultural world context, world language develops,
characterized by its multilingual context and bilingual speakers, and initiating language change
via the process of world language divergence and world language convergence. With these
two processes, the unity and the diversity found in world Englishes in the postcolonial context
is explained. Toward this end, the concept of social second language acquisition—the
acquisition of a second language by populations—is developed as a theory of the
indigenization of English in Asian and African contexts.
At the same time, the world
econocultural system maintains the unity of the language.
The study concludes with the implications of the sociolinguistics of language spread
and change for English language teaching, developing the construct of cross-cultural
pedagogy.
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