About the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE)

Introduction
The International Association for World Englishes (IAWE) is a non-profit corporation that has brought together scholars working in the field of English language, linguistics, literature and cultural studies to conferences in the US and internationally since its foundation in 1992. Three distinguished scholars were responsible for its foundation and development, namely Braj B. Kachru (1932-2016), Yamuna Kachru (1933-2013) and Larry E. Smith (1941-2014). At the time of writing this entry, the Association has thus far held 24 conferences worldwide, of which nine have been held in the US and 15 internationally. Locations outside the US have included Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, and Turkey. In previous years, conferences were often held annually, although recently, it has been decided to hold the conferences biennially.

The origins of the International Association for World Englishes
The origins of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE) can be traced back to two international academic conferences that took place in April 1978 at the East-West Center in Honolulu, and in June-July at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. One important result of these conferences was the formulation of a program for research publications and other activities related to world Englishes, as well as a number of early publications that established world Englishes (WE) as a distinct sub-branch of linguistics.

One key distinction that emerged from the Honolulu conference was that between English for international (external) purposes and English for intranational (internal) purposes, an insight that would later lead to the threefold categories of Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles. The Honolulu conference also identified four key areas for academic development, namely basic research, applied research; documentation, dissemination and liaison; and professional support activities.

Another milestone on the path to IAWE was a third conference that took place on language and power, again at the East-West Center, which set out to explore the concept of power from a cross-cultural perspective and to provide data for the data of this topic with reference to language, literature and media. Following this, at the 1988 TESOL conference in Chicago, Braj Kachru and Larry E. Smith formed the International Committee for the Study of World Englishes (ICWE), to bring together interested scholars working on various aspects of world Englishes. In 1992, the ICWE met at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on the occasion of a conference on “World Englishes today”, and at this conference, the International Association for World Englishes was formally launched.

​IAWE conferences, 1992-2019
In the 27 years from 1992 to 2019, the IAWE association has held 24 conferences in the US and overseas. Of these 24 conferences, nine have been held in the US, and 15 internationally. Locations outside the US have included Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, and Turkey. In previous years, conferences were often held annually, although recently, it has been decided to hold the conferences biennially.

List of past IAWE conferences (No., Location, Host institution, Year)
  1. Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, US, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1992
  2. Nagoya, Japan, Nagoya International Center, 1995
  3. East-West Center, Hawaii, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1996
  4. Singapore, National University of Singapore, 1997
  5. Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, US, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1998
  6. Tsukuba, Japan, Tsukuba University, 1999
  7.  Portland, Oregon, US, Portland State University, 2000
  8. South Africa, University of Potchefstroom, 2001
  9. Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, US, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2002
  10. Syracuse, New York, US, Syracuse University, 2004
  11. West Lafayette, Indiana, US, Purdue University, 2005
  12. Nagoya, Japan, Chukyo University, 2006
  13. Regensburg, Germany, Regensburg University, 2007
  14. Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, 2008
  15. Cebu, Philippines, Linguistic Society of the Philippines, 2009
  16. Vancouver, Canada, Simon Fraser University, 2010
  17. Melbourne, Australia, Monash University, 2011
  18. Hong Kong/Guangzhou, China, City University of Hong Kong/Sun Yat-sen University, 2012
  19. Tempe, Arizona, US, Arizona State University, 2013
  20. Noida, NCR Delhi, India , Amity University, 2014
  21. Istanbul, Turkey, Boğaziçi University, 2015
  22. Syracuse, New York, US, Syracuse University, 2017
  23. Quezon City, Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, 2018
  24. Limerick, Ireland, University of Limerick, 2019

The IAWE conferences have been extremely valuable in bringing together university teachers of English language and linguistics, as well as related disciplines, in so many different locations worldwide. These have included three conferences in Japan, two in Hong Kong, two in the Philippines, and one each in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Singapore, South Africa and Turkey. As in other areas of IAWE engagement, including the World Englishes journal, the conferences are remarkable in terms of their inclusivity and openness to academic, intellectual and geographical diversity. From 2012 onwards, IAWE has awarded the Braj B. Kachru Student Award for the best paper presented by a student at the association’s conference.

The Board of the International Association for World Englishes
The Board of the International Association for World Englishes includes the President, the Vice President/President Elect, the immediate Past President, two Members, the Secretary/Treasurer, and the Executive Director. In 2022, the President is S. N. Sridhar (Stony Brook University); the Vice President/President Elect is Isabel Pefianco Martin (Ateneo de Manila University); the immediate Past President is Tej K. Bhatia (Syracuse University); the two Members are Eyamba Bokamba (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Kamal K. Sridhar (Stony Brook University); the Secretary/Treasurer is Daniel R. Davis (University of Michigan-Dearborn); and the Executive Director is Kingsley Bolton (Stockholm University).

Over the past 30 years, the IAWE organization has sought to promote the study of world Englishes in the international academic community, with particular reference to scholars and teachers of English language studies in the US and overseas. The IAWE organization owed its origins to the enthusiasm and vision of its founders, Profs Braj and Yamuna Kachru and Larry E. Smith. Since their passing, the IAWE Board continues to do its best to honor their memories as well as their vision for the association, as an inclusive, pluralistic and intellectually innovative forum for teaching, research and publication on world Englishes.

Adapted from Bolton, K., & Davis, D. R. (2023). The International Association for World Englishes (IAWE). In K. Bolton (Ed.), The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of world Englishes. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

​Past Presidents of IAWE

​Larry E. Smith 1993-1996
Braj B. Kachru 1997-1998
Anne Pakir 1999-2000
Ayo Bamgbose 2001-2002
Kingsley Bolton 2003-2004
Margie Berns 2005-2006
Bertus Van Rooy 2007-2008
Daniel R. Davis 2009-2010
Zoya G. Proshina 2011-2012
Suzanne Hilgendorf 2013-2014
Cecil L. Nelson 2015-2017
Tej K. Bhatia 2018-2019

A Cultural Warrior Rests His Case 
Braj. B. Kachru

Contributed by S.N. Sridhar, Stony Brook University (s.sridhar@stony brook.edu
Linguistics, English studies, and India Studies have lost one of their most charismatic leaders.  Professor Braj B. Kachru successfully challenged the orthodoxies of the English establishment on both sides of the Atlantic (the British Council, TESOL), including the “sacred linguistic cow” of the native speaker, which looked upon non-native varieties as erroneous approximations of standard English.  He argued for a pluralistic, socially realistic view of the English-using world, known as the “Three Circles of English” paradigm, where each circle has different contexts, uses and users.   The inner circle consists of the native speaker varieties, the second language varieties are the outer circle, and the foreign language varieties comprise the extended circle.  Through half a century of meticulous scholarship and energetic advocacy, Kachru demonstrated that the non-native Englishes such as Indian English, Nigerian English, and Singapore and Filipino English were rule-governed systems, shaped by natural evolutionary processes of second language learning and multilingual creativity, and vibrant expressions of distinct cultural identities.  It is irrelevant to judge them with reference to native speaker norms.  In the process, Kachru emerged as the world’s leading authority on the English as a global language.  Today, “World Englishes,” the field of study he pioneered and dominated, is a burgeoning discipline, with a world-wide following.

​Kachru was an influential authority on sociolinguistics, multilingualism, South Asian linguistics, applied linguistics, and his native language, Kashmiri, as well.  He wrote well-researched, comprehensive surveys on language in South Asia for numerous international reference works.  He founded South Asian Languages Analysis (SALA) in 1978, a major conference series for South Asian linguists.   In his research, he showed how South Asian languages have been shaped by a history of multilingual give and take with one another and with the lingua francas, Sanskrit, Persian, and English.  There is, therefore, a common core in the sound system, vocabulary, grammar, and culturally rooted modes of expression, such as greeting, which bridges the otherwise baffling diversity.  He studied the communicative rationale for the widespread use of language mixing or hybrid languages (for example, Hinglish) all across South Asia.  He described choices that speakers make based on the range of valued roles they make available.  He was concerned with the “killer” effect of the hegemonic languages on regional, minority and tribal languages of South Asia. 

Braj Behari Kachru was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, India, on May 15, 1932.  He was educated at the University of Allahabad, the Deccan College, Pune, and the University of Edinburgh.  He was Professor of Linguistics, Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Center for Advanced Study Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He died on 29 July, 2016 at Urbana.  He was married to Yamuna Kachru, herself an authority on Hindi grammar and English discourse, honored by the President of India, who died in 2013. They have a daughter, Amita, a physician in Santa Rosa, California, and a son, Shamit, a professor of physics at Stanford, and two granddaughters, Sasha and Ila. 

Professor Kachru authored and edited over 25 books and numerous research papers. He was author of The Indianization of English, The Alchemy of English, Asian Englishes:  Beyond the Canon, A Reference Grammar of Spoken Kashmiri, A History of Kashmiri Literature, and co-author of other important works.  He edited or co-edited The Other Tongue, The Handbook of World Englishes, World Englishes:  Critical Concepts, Asian Englishes, Language in South Asia, Dimensions of Sociolinguistics in South Asia, Issues in Linguistics, Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary, among other titles, which have become standard reference works. He was associate editor The Oxford Companion to the English Language and contributor to the Cambridge History of the English Language, and other volumes.  The Collected Works of Braj B. Kachru have been published by Bloomsbury, London, in three volumes so far. 

With Larry E. Smith of the East-West Center, Honolulu he co-founded and co-edited the journal World Englishes (now in its 35th year) and co-founded the professional organization, International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), serving as its President from 1997-99.  In his vast research, publication, advocacy, and institution-building enterprises, he worked closely with his brilliant wife and colleague, Professor Yamuna Kachru.  His other major collaborators were Professor Kingsley Bolton of Singapore, as well as many students, who have made their names as distinguished scholars around the world. 

Kachru was also a gifted administrator. In a distinguished career spanning nearly half a century at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the leading public universities in the U.S., he served as head of three academic units.  Under his leadership (1968-79), the Department of Linguistics blossomed into a vibrant, multi-faceted research center, and came to be ranked as the third leading department in the nation.  His pluralistic vision ensured that its faculty comprised cutting edge Chomskyan theorists as well as Classical scholars, experts on non-Western languages, Asian and African, and applied linguists.  He insisted that linguists should address not only the structural and theoretical aspects of language but also their social and cultural dimensions.  He encouraged the study of linguistic theory with its applications to areas, such as, second language teaching, discourse structure, and analysis of literature.  He championed the teaching and scientific study of non-Western (Asian and African) languages, and the dynamics of multilingualism.  Subsequently, as Director of the Division of English as an International Language (1985-91), he transformed it from a service unit into an innovative research entity.  Finally, as Director of the university’s prestigious Center for Advanced Study comprising many Nobel laureates, he redefined its mission and gave it expanded visibility and influence (1996-2000). 

Kachru held many influential offices and received many prestigious honors.  He directed the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America in 1978.; he was Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University (1998) and a Visiting Professor at National University of Singapore; an Honorary Fellow of English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, and President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (1984) and the International Association for World Englishes (1997-99). His book, The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions and Models of Non-Native Englishes, was conferred the English Speaking Union of the Commonwealth prize for the best book on English.  He was a sought after Keynote Speaker at universities and professional conferences all over the U.S, India, and Asia. 

Professor Kachru was a larger than life figure who left an indelible impression on everyone he met, from students to luminaries of the field. He was an encyclopedic and meticulous scholar, a critical but respectful admirer of tradition, an open-minded integrator of scholarship from every culture, Asian, African, European, and American, an imaginative institution builder, and a confident, fearless, visionary intellectual.  He was also an inspiring teacher, passionate public speaker, a caring mentor, a supporting colleague, and a charismatic raconteur.  At Urbana, he and Yamunaji were an institution.  They trained generations of well-rounded linguists. These beloved gurus are now, in the words of Abhinavagupta, the greatest of Kashmiri scholars whose millennial anniversary we celebrate this year, kiirti maatra shariira (present only through their fame), but they will be missed by their world-wide, extended family of scholars and students. ​

IAWE Officers

Kingsley Bolton
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden
Executive Director
[email protected]

S.N. Sridhar
Stony Brook University
President
Stony Brook, NY USA
[email protected]
 
Isabel Martin
Ateneo de Manila University
Vice President/President Elect
Manila, Philippines
[email protected]
 
Tej K. Bhatia
Syracuse University
Immediate Past President
Syracuse, NY USA
[email protected]

Daniel R. Davis
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Secretary/Treasurer (Any questions about membership should be addressed to him)
Dearborn, MI USA 
[email protected]

Eyamba Bokamba
Director
Urbana, IL USA
[email protected]

Kamal (Meena) Sridhar
Director
Stony Brook, NY USA
[email protected]