Settler Colonial Englishes Are Distinct from Postcolonial Englishes

In this position paper, we take up David Deterding’s 2008 call to think more carefully about the differences across varieties of English that have developed as a product of settler influence (e.g., Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, United States) versus those in which the Indigenous languages continue to influence lexis, phonology, morphosyntax, and discourse-pragmatics (e.g., India, Nigeria, Singapore). For us, this distinction is fundamentally rooted in the types of colonialism that characterize nations. The delineation is not simply a matter of sociopolitical optics—it directly informs the developmental pathway a variety may follow. We propose that “postcolonial Englishes” is an inaccurate cover term, one that glosses over important ecological distinctions and places varieties on a continuum when they are better considered separate evolutionary contexts.