Modeling World Englishes in the 21st century. New reflections on model-making

Deshors, Sandra C. Gilquin, Gaëtanelle [UCL]

This chapter seeks to bring together all the contributions in the volume. We identify converging lines of argumentation and findings across the studies featured in the book and we show how the approaches they adopt and the linguistic patterns they uncover shed new light on globalized Englishes, the diversity of their uses and their emerging functions. Based on these studies, we discuss possible avenues for future research in the modeling process of World Englishes (WEs) and we make suggestions as to what contemporary theoretical models of WEs should look like in order to truly capture the developmental patterns of WEs in the 21st century. Generally, it emerges that theoretical models anchored in the ‘moment of communication’ are likely to reflect most effectively the intricate dynamics that lies behind the development of Englishes worldwide and that is stirred by linguistic, pragmatic, social, ideological and cultural forces, simultaneously.