The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

Preface to the First Edition

BRAJ B. KACHRU, YAMUNA KACHRU, AND CECIL L. NELSON

One might understandably ask, “Why yet another resource volume?” when there is no paucity of reference works for the English language. Such publications are available, with varied orientations, in every genre – companions, encyclopedias, handbooks, and manuals – in almost every part of the English‐speaking world.

We had two motivations for initiating this handbook project: First, we thought it important to revisit the proliferation of terminologies and concepts articulating the global uses of Englishes (e.g. international, lingua franca, world English, global English) in the post‐1950s diffusion and cross‐cultural functions and identities of varieties of the language. It has been extensively – and insightfully – argued that all these concepts only partially represent the social, cultural, educational, and attitudinal realities of the presence of Englishes in their worldwide contexts. It is further rightly argued that the multiple and diverse functions of world Englishes in dynamic societies of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas demand theoretical and methodological perspectives that contextualize the varied and increasingly evolving cultural and social characteristics of the language. There is indeed greater emphasis today than in the past on capturing the expanding fusions and hybridizations of linguistic forms and the unprecedented variations in global functions of world Englishes. It is, ...