A cultural‐conceptual approach and world Englishes: the case of Aboriginal English

Abstract: Studies of world Englishes have traditionally fallen within the scope of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, English studies, lexicography and critical linguistics. This paper is an attempt to show how these studies can be complemented by an emerging approach that employs the analytic tools and frameworks developed in cognitive and cultural linguistics to explore various features of world Englishes. The fundamental premise in this approach is that world Englishes should not be examined exclusively in terms of their linguistic features but rather as emergent systems that are largely adopted and explored to encode and express the cultural conceptualisations of their speakers. The paper focuses on Aboriginal English and shows how various features of this indigenised dialect of Australia reflect cultural schemas, categories, and metaphors that embody cultural beliefs and experiences of Aboriginal people.