Research Center for World Englishes

Welcome to the Research Center for World Englishes!

For the last four hundred years the English language has spread all over the globe and has developed a wide range of regional, social, and stylistic varieties. In the Postcolonial era it has become rooted and acquired new forms and functions, in contact with indigenous languages and cultures, in America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Australasia.

In our research we investigate structural properties and uses of some of these "World Englishes", based upon fieldwork, electronic corpora, and sample texts, and we are interested in the theoretical modeling of the evolutionary processes that have shaped these new varieties. This includes the disciplines of sociolinguistics and the study of pidgins and creoles.

Major international editing projects, including the journal EWW, the book series VEAW and the massive Handbook of Varieties of English, have also been carried out by Prof. Schneider and his team.

Go to the gallery of our book publications.