Lexical Innovation in World Englishes: Cross-Fertilization and Evolving Paradigms

Winner of the 2020 ESSE Book Award in English Language and Linguistics

Lexical Innovation in World Englishes contributes to the investigation of World Englishes by offering insights into the lexical developments of selected English varieties and their cross-fertilization potential. Taking a theoretical and empirical approach and focusing on neological formations, this book:

• discusses and problematizes different categorizations of English varieties and processes of word formation, considering the expansion of English across the world;
• draws on authentic examples taken from language corpora to gain a finer understanding of the varieties’ transformations and of their reciprocal influences from a lexical perspective;
• aims to validate general considerations on the lexical features of these varieties of English and test them using corpora.

Including eight empirical case studies, this innovative text shows the importance of investigating lexical developments to observe the evolution of a variety while arguing for the need to go beyond a purely structuralist approach and to include a broader discursive and sociological perspective. Lexical Innovation in World Englishes is key reading for postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of World Englishes and language varieties.

Patrizia Anesa is a lecturer at the University of Bergamo, Italy.