Sociolinguistic Profiles: India, West Germany, and Japan

Abstract

The preceding chapters focused on the nature of functional approaches to language study and three sociolinguistic concepts—communicative competence, intelligibility, and model—and how they can be used to gain insight into language use and pedagogy in nonnative contexts. This chapter considers three particular contexts in which English is learned and used as a second or foreign language—India, West Germany, and Japan. These countries are particularly interesting for a look at nonnative contexts of language learning and use since each can be associated with a distinct nonnative variety: English in India is an institutionalized variety of English; Japanese English represents a performance variety. English in West Germany represents a variety of English which is best placed on a continuum between a performance and institutionalized variety.