The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

20Speaking and Writing in World Englishes

YAMUNA KACHRU

1 Introduction

English is used in the Three Circles for various purposes — as a home language and a medium of education, in professions, media, diplomacy, trade, commerce, and literary creativity. For achieving success in all these areas of activity, users of English have to perform various acts through the language, such as imparting information, negotiating, persuading, agreeing, disagreeing, demanding, apologizing, etc, in different contexts. These “speech acts” (Austin 1962; Searle 1969) are performed in the spoken mode in face‐to‐face interaction; they are also performed in the written mode using strategies and conventions different from those in speech (Reynolds 1993). This chapter examines the ways in which interlocutors from different Circles of English speak and write English to express their meanings to each other using a shared medium with different sociocultural conventions of language use and different cultural messages (B. Kachru 2002); it reviews research in speech acts, politeness, conversation analysis, and cross‐cultural rhetoric. The conventions differ across varieties because all users of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles are bi‐/multilingual. The different messages come from cultural values of the communities and conventions of language use, largely based on concepts of polite and appropriate behavior. The topic of cultural values is beyond the scope of this chapter; what is in focus is the ...