New Englishes

In SOCIOLINGUISTIC approaches to English, the name often given to the national VARIETIES of the language which have emerged around the globe, especially since the 1960s in those countries which opted to make English an official language upon independence. Regionally distinctive use of vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar is found in all such countries, but often only on a very limited scale. The term is really applicable only when there has been considerable linguistic development away from the traditional STANDARDS of British and American English, with some degree of local standardization (e.g. in the press), as has happened in India, Ghana and Singapore, and several other countries where English is used as a second language. It has thus also come to be applied to first-language situations, such as in Canada, Australia and South Africa, as well as in areas where CREOLE or PIDGIN Englishes are important, such as the Caribbean and Papua New Guinea – even though in these cases the Englishes in question have a considerable history behind them.