From colonial dynamism to current transnationalism

The ever-increasing dynamism of the diffusion of English calls for an integrated approach to postcolonial and non-postcolonial Englishes and to new contexts such as transnational cyberspace, new media, or “grassroots” usage. We focus on major theoretical approaches to modelling World Englishes in the 21st century by briefly defining, discussing, and comparing older and more recent approaches to the theorizing of World Englishes, their scope and their mutual relationships, notably the “Dynamic Model”, “Transnational Attraction”, and the “Extra- and Intra-territorial Forces Model”. We discuss these approaches in relation to some examples and applications from especially post-postcolonial nations and contexts, including South-East Asia, Namibia and Germany, Cyprus and Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina, social media (with examples from Facebook), fanfiction writing, and multiplayer online games.