The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

28World Englishes and Descriptive Grammars

DANIEL R. DAVIS

1 Introduction

There has been significant progress in the grammatical description of varieties of English in the past 25 years (Schneider 2003: 234). Specific grammatical descriptions play an important role in the recognition of different English languages, and demarcate a distinct stage in the history of the grammatical tradition. Nevertheless, the writing of these descriptions comes at a cost. They depend on assumptions drawn from various areas of linguistics and language study, and these assumptions limit the uses to which these descriptions can be put.

This chapter is inspired by the integrational linguistic approach set forth in Harris (1998), and draws upon the work of sociolinguists James Milroy, Lesley Milroy, and Deborah Cameron. The chapter is integrationist in its commitment to the assumption that current grammatical description, both in form and intent, owes a great deal to the general cultural background, the historical contexts, intellectual issues, and philosophical discourses of the English languages. Even the most basic grammatical terms are set within an intellectual tradition, and have political implications: There is no such thing as a value‐free description. This approach speaks to the experiences of those using, encountering, and analyzing world Englishes and varieties of English. Milroy and Milroy (1999) explore the importance that social networks and grammatical traditions have for social attitudes ...