Accounting for Non-Native to Non-Native English Practice : World Englishes versus Intercultural Communication

World Englishes is an academic paradigm that attempts to describe non-native English throughout the world as discrete language varieties rather than as learners' approximations of a recognised "standard" English (see Kachru, 1982). At the same time, a branch of pragmatics concerned with intercultural communication (see Blommaert, 1991 ; Shea, 1994) describes non-native language practice as an accommodation between differing cultural and linguistic dispositions. These two paradigms are considered as explanatory frameworks for non-native to non-native English practice, a task for which neither was originally intended. Each paradigm is found to offer useful insights but to have shortcomings : the former due to its undeveloped notion of culture and assumption of discrete cultures and language varieties, the latter because it does not grapple with the question of emergent language practices in stable intercultural situations. The paradigms are then synthesised, with contributions from other theories, to form operational characterisations of culture, language, the relation of language to culture, language's "worldliness" (Pennycook, 1994), non-native appropriation of English, and English user' awareness of language in an intercultural situation. Finally, specific targets of research are suggested for the study of English in an intercultural non-native context.