Varieties of English world-wide : where we stand

The paper summarizes the state of scholarly research in one of the most recent and most stimulating branches of sociolinguistics. Criteria which help to show whether a variety (or an utterance) is English are discussed in detail before the distinctiveness of individual Englishes is focused on. Regular developments of New Englishes -innovation, retention and rejection of linguistic features- are treated with data from the U.S., Canada, Australia and South Africa, with particular attention given to pronunciation and lexis. Forms and functions of English are then treated with regard to second- and foreign-language countries. Finally, there is a critical look at what we have achieved and what remains to be done