INTRODUCTION

Modeling Englishes has enjoyed quite some popularity since the late 1980s, when the focus of research shifted from the description of individual varieties to attempts at explaining the entire “English Language Complex” (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 3). One of the most influential models which has emerged in this context is Schneider's (2003, 2007) Dynamic Model, which, in essence, claims that “it is possible to identify a single, underlying, fundamentally uniform evolutionary process which can be observed, with modifications and adjustments to local circumstances, in the evolution of all postcolonial forms of English” (Schneider 2017: 47). The realities of the twenty-first century, and primarily globalization and web-based communication, have dramatically altered the ways English is used around the world and have accelerated the diversification of the language. Schneider himself (2014: 28) draws attention to the limitations of the Dynamic Model in accounting for “this new kind of dynamism of global Englishes.”

It is the explicit aim of Buschfeld and Kautzsch's “Extra- and Intraterritorial Forces” (EIF) Model to account for these “complex linguistic realities” (2017: 104). The EIF Model's basic assumption is that all Englishes have been shaped by a set of “forces,” which can be divided into external (“extra-territorial”) and internal (“intra-territorial”) ones. These forces are viewed as “general mechanisms” affecting the development of any specific variety, the difference lying in the “concrete form” that they assume (2017: 116). This permits a unified treatment not only of postcolonial and non-postcolonial Englishes but also of the colonial and postcolonial periods for the former: “intra- and extra-territorial forces have always been the driving forces behind the (socio)linguistic developments in the territories throughout the process of colonization but also in postcolonial times” (2017: 116). The EIF Model builds on the basic components and assumptions of the Dynamic Model but integrates them in a “higher-level framework” (2017: 111), so that “all aspects of the model, most importantly the five phases and the four parameters operating on them, can be explained in terms of such extra- and intraterritorial forces” (2017: 116).