World Englishes, Globalisation, and Language Worlds

This article surveys current approaches to world Englishes (WE), provides a review of recent critiques of the world Englishes paradigm, and considers the ways in which the theorisation of world Englishes faces new challenges related to the effects of globalisation, as well as possible responses to such changes. This it does specifically by examining the sociolinguistic backgrounds and experiences of two groups of young people in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, and the complicated multilingual realities of their language worlds, in two cities geographically adjacent, but separated by a political border. Following Blommaert's (2010) discussion of the sociolinguistics of globalisation, the article then moves on to speculate whether the notion of 'language world' has the theoretical potential to extend the WE paradigm to accommodate transnational perspectives on world Englishes.