摘要：Compared with conceptualisations of World Englishes (WE) from the 1970s and early 1980s, a current analysis of the debate taking place within the field highlights a move from a merely descriptive linguistic analysis to one that more clearly situates WE in a social context (Bolton, 2005). As Kachru (1997) urges, WE must be conceptualised in relation to pluralism, and approaches to the subject must reflect this: "It is indeed vital to recognize that world Englishes represents certain linguistic, cultural and pragmatic realities and pluralism, and that pluralism is now an integral part of world Englishes and literatures written in Englishes. The pluralism of English must be reflected in the approaches, both theoretical and applied, we adopt for understanding this unprecedented linguistic phenomenon (p. 237)."
