The chapter introduces "World Englishes" as a topic of scholarly research and argues that the global spread of English is a fascinating but also a complex process, with a number of possible, and sometimes conflicting, perspectives on and approaches to it. It is shown that nearly every speaker of English today has been exposed to different varieties of global English through media, travel, international contacts, and so on. It is argued that, based on their own linguistic backgrounds and more or less incidental cases of exposure to global varieties of English, proficient speakers of the language typically have intuitions on the sociosymbolic signaling functions of variant forms of English. Furthermore, it is shown that a wide range of sociostylistic information can be culled from any individual text. As a sample text, a Malaysian speech on a scientific subject is presented and discussed, pointing out some of its distinctive features on the levels of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Knowing more about such facts enriches our ability to assess, understand and contextualize Englishes from all around the world.

This chapter discusses “newer” (i.e. in the last 400 years or less) varieties of English spoken in the Caribbean, in particular the relationship between the Caribbean and Central American varieties on the western edge of the Caribbean. It also presents a short discussion of the influences that have shaped these varieties and various popular heuristics for imagining their emergence as well as a description of the geographical locations in the Caribbean where these varieties are spoken. The social contexts of their emergence are also discussed as well as a grammatical sketch pointing out similarities and differences and a discussion of several theoretical issues of relevance to the field.

This chapter introduces the central claim by grounding it in a range of contexts, beginning with the use of the word ‘Englishes’ by John Florio in 1598. The first section discusses the post-reformation struggle over the ‘property’ of ‘our English’ in the sense of defining character and ownership, a struggle conducted around practices in theatre and translation. The phrase ‘our English’ features only once in the Shakespearean canon, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where it is set against ‘the King’s English’. This opposition finds echo in staged confrontations, notably around Shakespearean instances of the word ‘reformation’. These anticipate future cultural history and critical responses to Shakespearean practice, beginning with Ben Jonson whose alignment with cultural reformation ideology is highlighted. The exclusionary character of this ideology is pointed out and Shakespearean resistance to it in plays of the 1590s introduced. Specifically, the welcoming of (linguistic and human) strangers urged by Shakespeare is discussed in relation to his status as ‘Englishman forren’, while his inclusive vision of ‘our English’ is considered in relation to the present as well as the past.