Edgar Schneider’s World Englishes as Components of a Complex Dynamic System is a timely contribution to theory building in World Englishes research and to linguistics in general. The book offers a digestible introduction to the meta-theory of complex dynamic systems (CDSs), which originated in the natural sciences, but in recent decades has come increasingly to the fore in life sciences and social sciences. Here it is applied to language in general and specifically to World Englishes, showcasing how conceptualising language along these lines allows new insights into language variation and change from language-internal and language-external perspectives.
CDSs are ‘marked by complex systemic relationships that are perpetually developing, with many agents and units that are interconnected, exchange information […] and thereby build something larger’ (p. 7). Their interdependent parts evolve non-linearly over time with surprising (i.e. unpredictable) patterns emerging regarding the system’s behaviours or structures. The framework has been used, for instance, to study weather conditions, organisms, the growth of cities and human societal organisation. Emergent patterns and behaviours result from the interaction of the system’s components on a local level and not from a steering authority. Linking this to observations of language variation and change, Schneider successfully demonstrates the relatedness between the properties and processes of CDSs and of language.
While the application of this theory to language is not completely new – earlier publications from different linguistic (and also non-linguistic) disciplines along these lines are summarised in chapter 2 – this book offers a very broad view on how the theory benefits linguistics, how more recent approaches in the field naturally connect to this line of thought (most notably Construction Grammar and usage-based schools of linguistics), and how earlier conceptualisations of language as rule-based systems fall short of what we can actually observe in real life. As a transdisciplinary and holistic approach, CDS theory is a kind of meta-science that ‘argues against reductionism and categorical, deterministic thinking and highlights the productive power of interacting multi-agent systems without central control’ (p. 7).
Transferred to World Englishes, changes in CDSs are partly random and non-directional, partly motivated ‘by the impact of fundamental structuring principles imposed by cognition, functional needs, social parameters, and so on’ (p. 39). Speakers are then the agents within this system and through their continued exchange of context-bound utterances new constellations may emerge that we identify as characteristics of new varieties of English. This application of CDS theory to language is basically metaphorical (as in most sciences) and not mathematical as the multitude of possible parameters cannot be objectively measured and quantified (otherwise we would need access to all existing utterances). Still, simulations (see chapter 5) and the increasingly sophisticated quantitative analysis in World Englishes might help to make close approximations.
Although Schneider explicitly applies CSD theory to World English here, he offers it as a broader view on language in general. As such, it does not constitute an alternative model to established ones in World Englishes, such as the Dynamic Model (Schneider Reference Schneider2003, Reference Schneider2007) or Kachru’s (Reference Kachru, Quirk and Widdowson1985) three circles model. Rather, it is an invitation to reconceptualise our way of thinking about language and language varieties, turning away from categorical notions on all levels, such as languages as bounded entities or levels of linguistic description as quasi-independent, stable systems. In this, it does not only offer an excellent overarching perspective on language that is – as Schneider shows – applicable to many linguistic subdisciplines and has the potential of moving the partly fragmented field closer together (even beyond linguistics), but it also addresses a repeated call – most recently voiced by Bernd Kortmann in his presidential address at the last ISLE conference in Santiago de Compostela (September Reference Kortmann2025) – that after we have now made so much progress in describing single varieties of English, single features, single genres, single user groups, etc., it would be time to put the pieces together again. If this call has been answered on a methodological level by, for example, Buschfeld et al. (Reference Buschfeld, Ronan, Neumaier, Wellinghoff and Westermayer2024), Schneider does so on a conceptual level.
The book is well placed in the Cambridge Elements in World Englishes series, although the theory outlined here is in itself highly complex and fairly abstract. The way CDSs are presented, however, offers a very fundamental understanding of language beyond ideologies (e.g. national or standard language ideologies) which prevail not only in lay perceptions of language but which also tend to filter through in scientific approaches to language, be it in the models and concepts used or in the choice of the subject of study. Raising awareness about such biases in general and especially for newcomers to the field is an important contribution beyond the more specific merits of the book regarding theory-building and advancing linguistic and World Englishes research.
Chapter 1 (‘Emergence and World Englishes’, pp. 1–7) briefly outlines how the early traditions in the study of language continue to shape modern linguistics, including World Englishes. Schneider argues that the idea of varieties as discrete entities with local features, which are evaluated in terms of their grammaticality or appropriateness, are still deeply engrained in linguistic thought despite the increasing recognition of the mutual interaction between them. He traces this back to traditional grammar education, which fostered a prescriptivist view of language, considering patterns deviating from the perceived ideal (erstwhile Latin) as errors. The conceptualisation of languages as static, abstract and discrete systems is continued in twentieth-century frameworks of modern linguistics. Both structuralism and generativism hold a purely synchronic view on language, favour clear-cut categorisations and form compositional approaches to language. Most modern schools of linguistics thus ‘build upon a notion of clear-cut entities, distinctions, and relations that deterministically describe what is possible or not in matters linguistic’ (pp. 4–5).
Allowing that such notions might have their usefulness in language teaching, that they fulfil a societal function (i.e. maintaining conservative social structures), and that they are anchored in cognitive principles, Schneider points out that they fall short of what we can actually observe in language usage: ‘Language, and life, for that matter, are inherently fuzzy’ (p. 5). This change in perspective has taken place or can be currently witnessed as well in other disciplines recognising that ‘nature and life are simply immensely complex processes’ (p. 5). Schneider argues that accepting this and adopting the theory of CDS in linguistics from the natural and social sciences will considerably advance our understanding of language, its evolution and its variability.
Consequently, chapter 2 (‘The theory of complex dynamic systems’, pp. 7–31) sets out to explain the main aspects of CDS theory, first describing its emergence and application in various scientific fields (section 2.1), before turning to a number of distinctive core properties of CDSs (section 2.2), which are explained, one by one, from a more general basis to how they are applied to language. I find this approach exceedingly compelling and convincing. Among the eight interacting properties of CDSs outlined in more detail in the book – i.e. systemness, complexity, perpetual dynamics, network relationships, the interplay of order and chaos, emergentism and self-organisation, nonlinearity and fractals, and attractors – let me focus on two, to illustrate this evaluation: (a) perpetual dynamics and (b) emergentism and self-organisation.
In CDSs, the repeated interaction (or exchange of information) between less complex entities leads to the emergence of more complex functional units, which, in a process of mutual adaptation and interaction with the environment, produce even more complex subsystems. This process is self-organised, i.e. the building of complexity does not follow from a steering authority. In other words, regularity emerges from functional interaction, not from preconceived rules considered best to fulfil a certain function. This idea alone, when applied to language, puts into focus the millions of (unrecorded) daily interactions between speakers (as agents within the system) whose activity leads to recurring patterns. These might be observed and put down at one stage in grammars and highlighted as the internal rules of language, ignoring ‘exceptions’ (i.e. less frequent or less salient patterns) as well as the perpetual change on all levels of the system due to both collaborative and competitive interactions between subsystems in an ongoing process of adaptation. The idea that languages cannot be fixed is nothing new in linguistic thought (though it might still be disconcerting to the layperson), but thinking about language as a CDS makes this truth a logical consequence of the nature of language itself.
The last part of the chapter (section 2.3) discusses earlier applications of CDS to language. A number of ideas adopted from CDS theory are increasingly recognised in language analysis, including the points which Larsen-Freeman & Cameron (Reference Larsen-Freeman and Cameron2008) identify as characteristics of CDS theory which are opposed to conventional modes of language analysis: the focus on processes rather than static systems, the fundamental role of context as intrinsic part of the system, the inherent messiness and noise of data, and the rejection of cause–effect explanations. Schneider states that such publications, however, often remain on a theoretical level without giving down-to-earth examples, and that there have not been concrete applications to World Englishes yet, as publications come rather from the field of language teaching and acquisition.
The aim of chapter 3 is thus to outline how such a transition from theory to concrete application could work (‘Turning complex dynamic systems theory into linguistic reality: The central role of usage and constructions’, pp. 31–5). Schneider argues that as many principles of CDS theory have already surfaced (though they have not yet been systematised into a general theory) in Construction Grammar and usage-based schools of linguistics, they have the potential to bridge this still existing chasm between theory and linguistic analysis. He convincingly unrolls how the continuously enacted interplay of language production and perception in usage leads to entrenchment on the individual level, i.e. the reinforcement of relationships through frequent repetition, and to conventionalisation on the community level, i.e. the growth of shared connections and associations due to regular interaction between members, thus producing usage-based patterns that reflect communicative functional needs (see Schmid Reference Schmid2020).
In this line of thought, language properties are shaped by communicative functional need. Common local language knowledge emerges from the strengthening of connections through repetition, which allows for minor modifications of this emerging systematicity. Not all modifications lead to adaptations: the factors encouraging the reproduction and spread of such innovations are manifold, including chance, and might be locally restricted. This perspective again most naturally inverts the view on grammars versus usage: unusual, infrequent (or non-canonical) uses are no deviations from grammars, but grammars are abstractions from reoccurring usage patterns. As such, they are in themselves inadequate representations: if languages are conceived as CDSs, the unpredictable and chaotic properties form an inherent (and essential) part of them.
Chapter 4 (‘Complex dynamic systems theory as applied to World Englishes’, pp. 35–65) applies these more general considerations to World Englishes on both the conceptual level (sections 4.1 and 4.2) and the level of concrete linguistic phenomena observed (section 4.3). Regarding the former, Schneider shows that the field has already been moving away from the view of varieties as discrete entities, their assignment to circles, and their categorisation into variety types by outlining a number of frameworks and concepts that have emerged in recent years and emphasise the floating character of linguistic resources (e.g. Pennycook Reference Pennycook2007; Blommaert Reference Blommaert2010), question the notion of varieties as clear-cut entities (e.g. Seargeant & Tagg Reference Seargeant and Tagg2011; Mair Reference Mair2013) and reconsider variety types as poles on a continuum rather than concrete categories (e.g. Buschfeld & Kautzsch Reference Buschfeld and Kautzsch2017; Buschfeld Reference Buschfeld2020). Continuing this line of thought, and leading to the major claim of this book, Schneider argues that neither varieties nor variety types constitute new linguistic systems but are continuations and components of the English(es) CDS, ‘and are thus functionally and structurally equal components of the same process’ (p. 38).
This claim is substantiated in section 4.3, where Schneider revisits the eight properties of CDSs outlined in chapter 3 and, again one by one, applies them to concrete observations from World Englishes research. In this way, he makes the first step to what he considers crucial in the future, namely, to adapt, adopt, develop and specify the abstract principles of CDS theory by specific observations and individual explanations from language variation and change. As with the more theoretical account in chapter 3, I find viewing language, and here concrete developments in World Englishes, through the lens of CDS theory exceedingly convincing. For instance, Schneider applies the principle of local agency without steering authority to the emergence of features in new Englishes, where, with the daily interactions between family, friends and other interlocutors, speakers ‘inadvertently contribute to the conventionalization of the forms they use’ without having higher-level (e.g. national) norms in mind.
Chapter 5, ‘Toward agent-based modeling of varieties emergence using NetLogo’ (pp. 65–9), can be seen as a short detour following a different approach than the more indirect or metaphorical application of CDS theory to language in the preceding chapter. The rigorous mathematical modelling of a system’s behaviour is usually not practised in most sciences, ‘since the range of entities involved, the properties associated with them, and the processes operating between them are manifold, often huge, and fuzzy by their very nature, hence difficult to measure, categorize, and capture by means of mathematical tools’ (p. 66). A third option in the field is to model CDS processes in computer simulations by defining the rules, nodes, links and agents, and by experimenting in how far such modelling can approach real-world observations.
In this regard, Schneider briefly introduces the freeware program NetLogo, its general set-up and functions, with which the researcher can visualise step-by-step changes of a given subsystem. One of the inbuilt applications of NetLogo applies to language, simulating two linguistic variants competing in one social network. This is not meant as a sophisticated approach to apply CDS theory to linguistic relations but, rather, it serves as an outlook on how such an approach could be implemented, for example, to model the spread of a variant through society by determining certain properties and behaviours of the agents of the system. Schneider suggests that experimenting with such tools to, for instance, simulate the spread of innovative properties might be a fruitful line to follow in the future, but this is not a core interest of the book.
The conclusions in chapter 6 (pp. 65–72) repeat the call for a paradigm shift in linguistic thought towards a holistic and processual perspective, which hinges on two major points: firstly, that adopting a CDS perspective will help to provide a more realistic view on how language works by overcoming the limits of categorical thinking, and secondly, that this change of perspective is especially important in World Englishes as features and varieties are still not always recognised as all being on an equal footing. Returning to Kachru’s original idea of assigning ownership to speakers of all varieties of English, Schneider hopes that the adoption of CDS theory helps to overcome boundaries and attitudes imposed by social hierarchies and differences. The book thus returns here to the initial aspect of ideological stances filtering through in linguistic theory and essentially constitutes a plea for recognising ‘the importance of all the vibrant processes and communication practices on the ground’ (p. 71), which are all instances of language evolution underlying the same principles.
I see the strength of the theory especially in (a) the dissolution of categorical thinking regarding both linguistic levels and constituents and of the notion of languages or language varieties as more or less autonomous entities, and in (b) the notion that emergent regularities are reflections of functions within a network of interactions that might show quite some stability over time, but that such regularities are as much essential parts of the system as its irregularities, and that the balance between them necessitates constant change. As Schneider notes earlier, the complexity of such systems – i.e. the sheer multitude of agents, links, interactions and ongoing modifications – makes it impossible to predict a future state of said system. However, it is possible to explain past developments by uncovering as many of the components and processes involved to form the present state. Translated into linguistic studies, the factors that have been identified over decades of variationist studies, whether they are language internal or language external, are all part of the puzzle that allows us to arrive at a more and more complete picture of language evolution (in general, in terms of concrete languages and in terms of local instantiations of language use) if they are not seen as the one determining factor. Paradoxically, letting go off the idea that we can reconstruct all factors (which is already impossible because our access to relevant data, especially, but not only, when it comes to historical changes, is limited) helps us to grasp the complexity of language and thus provides a more realistic view of it. Accepting this, we can arrive at plausible scenarios that explain changes.
In conclusion, Schneider’s book is a recommendable read because of one of its recurring themes that I consider highly relevant in any domain of life: the human mind is prone to categorical thinking, which is necessary to make sense of the world, and which is at the same time dangerous as it leads to assuming cause-and-effect relationships that result in discrimination, stereotyping, black-and-white thinking, etc. Acknowledging (and trying to cope with) the complexity of the world is not always easy, but it is also first and foremost what research should be about. Schneider shows that the pitfalls of reductionist views are alive and well in our field(s). It reminded me strongly of the sociologist Richard Sennett’s introduction to his seminal book Building and Dwelling (Reference Sennett2018), where he compares cities (as CDSs), or his idea of an open city, to open science saying that ‘researchers will take seriously unforeseen turns of data, which may cause them to jump tracks and think “outside the box” […] ponder[ing] contradictions and ambiguities, stewing in these difficulties for a while rather than immediately trying to solve them or sweep them away’ instead of working ‘within a well-worn orbit […] to prove or disprove a hypothesis’ (p. 4). Embracing a line of thought that perpetually challenges fixed categories, fixed entities or fixed systemic states (and thus also dissolves boundaries between (sub-)disciplines) might be a timely step for World Englishes (and linguistics in general).
