Quirk, Kachru, and the Circles of World English
Quirk and Kachru
The problem of Standard English and its indigenized varieties has been a central concern for two prominent scholars who represent two contrasting attitudes: R. Quirk, ‘Champion of Standard (native) English,’ and Braj Kachru, ‘Champion of non-native Englishes.’ For Quirk, a common standard of use is warranted in all contexts of English language use. R. Quirk founded the Survey of English Usage and drew on the descriptions of educated British English, which he presented in two grammars of English.
Kachru, a native of Kashmir, India, as a professor of linguistics and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, USA, pioneered the description of the developmental processes and manifestations of non-native Englishes. Kachru, on the other hand, argued that the spread of English had brought with it a need to re-examine traditional notions of standardization and models as they relate to outer circle users. In 1985, Kachru defined the characteristics of the major stratification of use of English due to its internationalization. He defined the spread of English in terms of three concentric circles representing the types of spread, the patterns of acquisition, and the functional domains in which English is used across cultures and languages. He labeled those circles – the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle.
The inner circle represents the traditional bases of English: the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and some Caribbean territories (380 million people, of whom 120 million are outside the US).
The outer circle includes countries where English is not the native tongue but is important for various reasons and plays a part in the nation’s institutions, either as an official language or otherwise. This circle includes India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, non-Anglophone South Africa, and Canada, etc. (The number of English speakers ranges from 150 million to 300 million.)
The expanding circle encompasses those countries where English plays no historical or governmental role but where it is nevertheless widely used as a foreign language or lingua franca. This includes much of the rest of the world’s population: China, Russia, Japan, most of Europe, Korea, Egypt, Indonesia, etc. The total number of English speakers in this circle is the most difficult to estimate as English may be employed for specific, limited purposes, usually business English. (It ranges from 100 million to one billion.)
The inner circle is norm-providing, which means that English language norms are developed in these countries – English is the first language there.
The outer circle (mainly New Commonwealth countries) is norm-developing.
The expanding circle (much of the rest of the world) is norm-dependent, because it relies on the standards set by native speakers in the inner circle.
In Kachru’s view, the global diffusion of English has taken an interesting turn: the native speakers of English seem to have lost the exclusive prerogative to control its standardization and have become a minority. He argued for a recognition of norms based on the manner in which English is used – within particular speech communities – both native-speaking communities and those in the outer circles, and emerging from that situation, it would be an educated variety intelligible across the others.