Exploring linguistic variation in English across the world

Abstract

As the localized varieties of English used around the world, World Englishes (WE) have attracted great scholarly interest over the past 40 years. Differing with the previous linguistically-oriented WE studies, Axel Bohmann takes a multifeature, cross-varietal perspective to linguistic variation across the globe in his book, Variation in English World-Wide: Registers and Global Varieties. With a large corpus of texts, the author presents a general overview of variation by demonstrating potential linguistic similarities and differences between international varieties of English, and challenges the importance of geography in mediating linguistic differences in WE research. This book is a timely addition to the study of linguistic variation in the buoyant field of WE. Researchers interested in WE will find it a useful source for gaining a deep understanding of empirical-linguistic accounts of differentiation in English variation. The book consists of nine chapters. Chapter 1 begins with an outline of the major theoretical and methodological issues on WE, aggregation-based linguistics and multidimensional (MD) analysis. The author points out WE are approached broadly from linguistic and national-historical perspectives after tracing the development of WE research. In terms of approach, the aggregation-based methods find productive application in the study of English variation, which incorporates patterns of co-variation among plenty of individual linguistic features. These practices take register variation as an agnostic position rather than an equal factor. In comparison to the former, the MD analysis places emphasis on the situational-functional context, and views linguistic differences as functions of different situations. Bringing such approaches together, a comprehensive analytical framework is employed to describe variation in geography and register. Chapter 2 presents an introduction to the extralinguistic determinants of structural variation across a range of communicative situations, focusing on geographic variation and register variation in WE. The author discusses the dominant theoretical models in investigating geographic relations, and further states that there is a disconnect between the level of theorizing and a lack of comprehensive accounts of differentiation. In addition to geography, this chapter addresses a confounding factor of register variation within the framework of MD analysis, which offers a complementary perspective to English register studies. This is followed by how geography and register interact in structuring linguistic variation. As the author puts it, a more accountable analytic perspective ‘would be to quantify the influences of variety and register alongside each other’ (p. 40). Chapter 3 compares different perspectives on the analysis and quantification of linguistic variation. The author provides explicit descriptions and comparisons of the Labovian study of language variation and change (LVC) as well as the text-linguistic perspective. Concerning the LVC, the paradigm is more suited for a detailed analysis of individual constraints and less attuned to overall characteristics. Compared with the Labovian paradigm, the text-linguistic perspective assumes more natural and intuitive to variation, which is suitable to give a holistic account of linguistic variation. After discussing two paradigms in isolation, the featureaggregation approaches associated with dialectometry and register analysis are explicitly presented. Finally, the focus is placed on the justification for the adoption of MD framework and the central methodological steps. Chapter 4 turns to the specific selection of corpus data, linguistic features and methodological parameters.