Settler Colonial Englishes

Colonialism is a broad term that encompasses a spectrum of sociopolitical realities for colonized peoples and places. An important distinction operates within this constellation, separating settler colonial states on the one hand from other colonial settings on the other. Linguistically, Settler Colonial Englishes are characterized by four aspects that set their evolutionary trajectories apart from those Englishes that emerge in other contexts. The outcomes are Englishes that are synonymous with the settler strand, rather than Englishes that constitute convergence between the colonial English and the local Indigenous Englishes that emerge in situ under colonial dominion. At the same time, there is a large range of factors that may impact the ongoing evolutionary trajectory of Settler Colonial Englishes, such as Indigenous linguistic diversity, population demographics, and isolation. We discuss these issues here and make predictions for the kinds of evolutionary phenomena we may and may not expect in Settler Colonial Englishes.

Colonialism · Indigenous · Population · Range (aeronautics) · Set (abstract data type) · World Englishes