The Three Circles Redux: A Market-Theoretic Perspective on World Englishes

Abstract

While Kachru's Three Circles model of World Englishes (Kachru 1985, 1986; Kachru and Nelson 1996) has been highly influential in highlighting the changing distribution and functions of English, it has also been criticized for its inability to account for the heterogeneity and dynamics of English-using communities, and for perpetuating the very inequalities and dichotomies that it aims to combat. By combining Bourdieu's (1984, 1986, 1990) notion of linguistic markets with the insights of the model's critics, this article deconstructs the Three Circles model by reinterpreting it as a model for the system of ideological forces that delimit local creativity and utility of English in the world. Such a reinterpretation can be a useful way of explicating the performativity of English in different sociolinguistic communities around the world, foregrounding dominant assumptions about the prevailing structure of the global linguistic market.

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