The rigmarole of intelligibility in World English(es) - or, on making sense of it all or, if you like, making the very idea of intelligibility intelligible

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the hot-button issue of mutualintelligibility among the different varieties of English, as they are currently spreading across the world at large, that has preoccupied a growing number of scholars in the field. I argue that such worries are largely misguided and are the result of mistaken assumptions concerning the expansion of worldwide, as well as the fact that the phenomenon that I have for some time been calling English is unique and suigeneris. In the final analysis, our difficulty in viewing World as a phenomenon unprecedented in history probably has to do with the fact that many of us are still trapped in a way of thinking about language typical of the 19 th century.

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