Comparing The Three Circles Of World English

World Englishes (WE) perspectives on AW

English has assumed the status of ‘neutral lingua franca’ (Hyland: 2006: 24) for its pervasive use in both Anglophonic and international contexts to the extent that approximately “one in five of the world’s population now speaks English with reasonable competence” (Crystal, 2003). Canagarajah (2006) reports two different distributions of speakers for year 2050 as follows:

Graddol (1999) Crystal (2003)

English as sole or first language: 433 million 433 million

English as additional/second language 668 million 462 million

There have been several models of World Englishes such as presented by Kachru (), Strevens (1980), McArthur (1987), Görlach (1990), Modiano (1999), Schneider (2007), and Mufwene (2010). Kachru’s model of Three Circles of English has provided some valuable insights into the classification and understanding of different varieties of English as seen in the picture below:

The outer circle is the norm-developing for English is a Second Language here and comprises of those countries which experienced colonialism such as India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Kenya, Philippines etc. the expanding circle is the norm-dependent where English has the status of a Foreign Language. All the countries other than those in the inner and the outer circle are part of the expanding circle. Mufwene in Coupland (2010: 31-55) classifies World Englishes as ‘native Englishes’ for instance of UK or USA; ‘Creole/pidgin Englishes for those in the Caribbean and on the islands of the Pacific and ‘indigenized/nativized Englishes,’ which emerged in India and in other former British