The evolutionary cycle of New Englishes: parameters of the developmental phases

Sociolinguistics of Linguistic developments/

Phase History and politics Identity construction
contact/use/attitudes structural effects
1: Foundation STL: colonial expansion: trade, STL: part of original nation STL: cross-dialectal contact, STL: koinéization; toponymic
military outposts, missionary IDG: indigenous limited exposure to local borrowing; incipient
activities, emigration/ languages pidginization (in trade
settlement IDG: minority bilingualism colonies)
IDG: occupation, loss/sharing of (acquisition of English)
territory, trade
2: Exonormative stable colonial status; English STL: outpost of original nation, STL: acceptance of original norm; lexical borrowing (esp. fauna and
stabilization established as language of “British-plus-local” expanding contact flora, cultural terms); “-isms”;
administration, law, (higher) IDG: individually “local-plus- IDG: spreading (elite) pidginization/creolization (in
education, … British” bilingualism trade/plantation colonies)
3: Nativization weakening ties; often political STL: permanent resident of widespread and regular contacts, heavy lexical borrowing;
independence but remaining British origin accommodation IDG: phonological innovations
cultural association IDG: permanent resident of IDG: common bilingualism, (“accent,” possibly due to
indigenous origin toward language shift, LI transfer); structural
speakers of local English nativization, spreading from
STL: sociolinguistic cleavage IDG to STL: innovations at
between innovative speakers lexis-grammar interface (verb
(adopting IDG forms) and complementation,
conservative speakers prepositional usage,
(upholding external norm; constructions with certain
“complaint tradition”) words/word classes), lexical
productivity (compounds,
derivation, phrases, semantic
shifts); code-mixing (as
identity carrier)
4: Endonormative post-independence, (member of) new nation, acceptance of local norm (as stabilization of new variety,
stabilization self-dependence territory-based, increasingly identity carrier), positive emphasis on homogeneity,
(possibly after “Event X”) pan-ethnic attitude to it; (residual codification: dictionary
conservatism); literary writing, grammatical
creativity in new variety description
5: Differentiation stable young nation, internal group-specific (as part of network construction dialect birth: group-specific
sociopolitical differentiation overarching new national (increasingly dense group- (ethnic, regional, social)
identity) internal interactions) varieties emerge (as LI or L2)

Edgar W. Schneider. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 56.