Intelligibility in World Englishes: Theory and Application

Intelligibility is the term most generally used to address the complex of criteria that describe, broadly, how useful someone's English is when talking or writing to someone else. This much-debated concern touches not only sociolinguistic theory but all aspects of English language teaching, second language acquisition, language curriculum planning, and regional or national language planning.Set within the paradigm of world Englishes 'ˆ’ which posits that the Englishes of the world may be seen as flexibly categorized into three Circles (Inner, Outer, Expanding) in terms of their historical developments 'ˆ’ the book provides an overview of the definitions and scopes of intelligibility, comprehensibility and interpretability, and addresses key topics within this paradigm:Who ' if anyone ' provides the models and norms for a given population of English users?hybridity and creativity in world Englishesevaluating paradigms: misinformation and disinformationpracticalities of dealing with the widening variety of EnglishesIs English "falling apart"?This is the first textbook to treat the topic of intelligibility in world Englishes comprehensively, filling a need for students, teacher educators, and scholars internationally in fields of TESL, multilingualism and second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, contact-language linguistics, and language planning.