World Englishes as Components of a Complex Dynamic System Schneider Hardback

World Englishes as Components of a Complex Dynamic SystemAuthor(s): Edgar W. Schneider\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781009663250, 978-1009663250\nSynopsis\nThis Element proposes to view World Englishes as components of an overarching Complex Dynamic System of Englishes, against the conventional view of regarding them as discrete, rule-governed, categorial systems. After outlining this basic idea and setting it off from mainstream linguistic theories, it introduces the theory of Complex Dynamic Systems and the main properties of such systems (systemness, complexity, perpetual dynamics, network relationships, the interplay of order and chaos, emergentism and self-organization, nonlinearity and fractals, and attractors), and surveys earlier applications to language. Usage-based linguistics and construction grammar are outlined as suitable frameworks to explain how the Complex Systems principles m.