INTRODUCTION

Huber (2014: 87–91) discusses the development of English in Ghana against the background of the Dynamic Model of the Evolution of Postcolonial Englishes (Schneider 2007) and claims that the variety can be located between the nativisation and endonormative stabilisation phases. However, at the same time he makes an important point about the divergence of Ghanaian English from the prototypical path laid out by Schneider, who suggests (2007: 31–32) that one of the most important driving forces in the development of a new variety of English is the interplay between colonisers (settler or STL strand) and colonised (indigenous or IDG strand). Ghana was an exploitation colony (cf. Mufwene 2001: 8 footnote 3), not a settler colony. Therefore, the number of British in the country over the whole colonisation period and after independence was very small in comparison to the local population. In addition, those Brits who stayed in the colony would often not stay long enough to lose their ties with the mother country. This leads Huber (2014: 88) to conclude that ‘convergence and identity construction […] did and does take place not so much between the STL and IDG groups but rather within the IDG strand’ (emphasis in the original).

With the absence of a sizable IDG strand, one main explanatory factor underlying the Dynamic Model is not met. In the Extra- and Intraterritorial Forces (EIF) Model proposed by Buschfeld and Kautzsch (2017), colonial interactions are just one of a set of factors contributing to the developmental history of a variety. It may therefore prove more useful in accounting for the evolution of Ghanaian English and its current sociolinguistic manifestations. I will argue in this chapter that on the intra-territorial side, educational and language policies as well as sociodemographic realities play a major role. Together with the country's colonial history as the major extra-territorial force, they have shaped Ghanaian English in the foundation (beginning in 1632) and exonormative stabilisation phases (1844–1957). They also account for some linguistic patterns found today.

Since independence in 1957, which marks the formal onset of the nativisation phase of Ghanaian English, the number of speakers of English has expanded greatly (in both absolute and relative numbers) and while many Ghanaians still struggle to accept a local standard model of English, many distinct Ghanaian features exist on every linguistic level, some of which even show sociolinguistic stratification (such as /t/-affrication, Huber 2014; Brato 2015).