World Englishes, Registers & Communicative Competence

World Englishes (Braj Kachru, 1982)

• Three-circle paradigm that legitimizes all varieties of English and frames them as equally valid communicative resources rather than as “deficient” versions of Inner-Circle Englishes.

  • Inner Circle

  • Mother-tongue Englishes.

  • Countries: United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

  • Even here there is rich internal diversity:

    • British English ➜ Scottish English, Cockney, etc.

    • American English ➜ Appalachian, Boston, Black Vernacular (AAVE), Cajun, Chicano English, etc.

  • Outer Circle

  • Institutionalized second-language ( varieties—legacies of colonization where English has official functions.

  • Asian examples: Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, etc.

  • Expanding Circle

  • English as a foreign language (EFL); no historical institutional role but enormous worldwide demand.

  • Examples: China, Russia, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan.

• Key implication

  • Paradigm moves the focus from a deficit model (non-native vs. native) to mutual intelligibility and socio-cultural ownership of English.

  • Recognizes nativization: a local variety adapts English phonology, lexicon, syntax, and discourse norms to fit indigenous cultures (e.g., Singlish, Philippine English, Hong Kong English).

• Potential communication issues

  • Dialectal variation across geography affects pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, accent, grammar.

  • Without negotiation of meaning, such variation can trigger communication breakdowns when interlocutors are unfamiliar with each other’s variety.

English in the Philippines

• Multilingual context

  • Over 100 indigenous languages, reflecting immense cultural diversity.

  • National language policy (creation of $Surian\ ng\ Wikang\ Pambansa$) aimed to unify the nation via Filipino, yet English remains a practical lingua franca among non-Tagalog groups.

• Institutional entrenchment of English

  • 1970s Bilingual Education Policy ➜ English + Filipino as mediums of instruction.

  • Controlling domains: education, business, government, diplomacy; English thus became a full L2.

  • Filipino diaspora (OFWs, migrants) employ English for global citizenship.

Features of Philippine English (PhE)

• Phonology

  • Absence of voiced $\text{/z/}$; contrast neutralized with $\text{/s/}$.

  • Syllable-timed rhythm (vs. stress-timed in Inner Circle) ➜ flatter intonation.

• Lexicon

  • Local borrowings: balikbayan, jeepney, barong, tiangge.

  • Loan translations/calques: “open the light” (from buksan mo ang ilaw), “I will go ahead.”

• Grammar

  • Article omission before collective nouns: “Majority believe…” (no the).

• Sociolinguistic stratification (Tayao, 2004)

  • Acrolect (upper class): approximates formal American English.

  • Mesolect (middle class): minor deviations, usually intelligible internationally.

  • Basilect (lower class): heavy L1 substrate influence.

• Empirical evidence of communicative friction

  • Call-center study (Lockwood, Forey & Price, 2009):

  • North-American clients & Filipino agents experienced breakdowns due to PhE phonology and differing speech styles.

  • Agents’ lack of strategic problem-solving and limited accommodation magnified miscommunication.

Language Register / Speech Style (Martin Joos, 1961 – “Five Clocks”)

• Register = Language variety conditioned by context of use & user (also called tenor / tone / style).

• Spoken vs. Written instantiations

  • Spoken casual talk ➜ false starts, hesitations, overlaps, heavy reliance on non-verbal cues (eye-brow raise, wink, smile).

  • Written language must compensate with explicitness, punctuation, emojis (if casual).

  • Example: comparing two wedding invitations.

  • Formal card: “The honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of… Saturday, the seventeenth of May, two thousand…, at nine in the morning, Mandarin Hotel…”

  • Informal card: “WITH JOY you are invited to the wedding of… June 3 at 6 p.m. at the bride’s residence.”

Hymes’ SPEAKING Model (1967)

• Provides an ethnography-of-communication framework that determines appropriate register choice.

  • $S$ – Setting & Scene: physical time/place + psychological setting.

  • $P$ – Participants: speaker, audience, their relationships & relative status.

  • $E$ – Ends: purposes/goals & expected outcomes.

  • $A$ – Act Sequence: message form & order (openings, closings, rituals).

  • $K$ – Key: tone, manner, spirit (serious, sarcastic, mournful, celebratory).

  • $I$ – Instrumentalities: channel (oral/written/visual) & code (language/register).

  • $N$ – Norms of Interaction/Interpretation: rules for turn-taking, politeness, listener behaviour.

  • $G$ – Genre: category of communicative event (lecture, sermon, joke, e-mail, tweet).

• Bridging to Joos

  • Instrumentalities → register choice (formal vs. casual).

  • Key & Norms ensure that register matches community expectations.

Communicative Competence & Politeness

• Communicative Competence = ability to deploy appropriate linguistic forms, tone, register, non-verbal cues for effective interaction.

  • Speaker must continuously answer:

  1. What is my message? (topic)

  2. Who is my audience? (listener)

  3. What is my relationship to them? (status/rapport)

  4. Where/when am I speaking? (setting)

  5. Why am I speaking? (purpose)

• Politeness (Lakoff, 1973)

  • One of two universal requisites of competent speaking (the other = clarity).

  • Cross-cultural realization differs:

  • Japanese: explicit honorification toward seniors & those with power.

  • Filipino: po/opo as politeness markers in Tagalog; absent in many Visayan languages.

  • Must avoid discriminatory or biased language (use police officer instead of policeman, disadvantaged learners instead of underachievers).

  • Principle extends to politically correct, inclusive language.

• Humor as rhetorical device

  • Builds rapport only if SPEAKING variables (setting, relationship, key) authorize informality.

  • Risk: mis-calibrated jokes may violate norms → audience disengagement.

• Consequences of mismatched register/tone

  • Audience confusion, perceived disrespect, loss of credibility, or total communicative failure.

  • Workplace example: casual slang in a business report may be read as unprofessional.