This chapter provides an account of the types of contact and spread associated with the growth of English beyond the United Kingdom. It describes the main linguistic outcomes of these contacts, including pidgins, creoles, English as a second language (ESL), English as a Foreign Language (EFL), English as Lingua Franca (ELF), Immigrant Englishes and hybridities arising from code-switching and electronic and social media. It also gives an account of how different scholars have tried to make sense of the immense variety within ‘the English language complex’. Particular attention is paid to Kachru’s Three Circles model, Schneider’s Dynamic Model and its current refinements, Mair’s World System for Englishes, Mesthrie’s Contact-Contingency model, and insights from Corpus Linguistics, Language Contact and Language Ecology.

Driven originally by colonization and more recently by globalization, for more than four centuries the English language has been spreading to all corners of the globe, producing distinct and stable young varieties as well as the young discipline of ‘World Englishes’ to describe and analyze them. The present paper surveys and discusses several models that have been developed to explain the bewildering variety of forms and contexts which characterize these varieties. Early classifying approaches include categorizations and visualizations of varieties and variety types based on some of their properties, most importantly Kachru’s ‘Three Circles’ model. An evolutionary perspective is at the center of the ‘Dynamic Model’ of postcolonial Englishes. More recent trends at theorizing capture the ongoing dynamism and diversification of English by highlighting ‘forces’ which drive this process; in general, boundaries between nations are seen as diminishing also through the unbounded spread of linguistic forms in cyberspace. A few more suggestions at and reflections on modelling, most importantly Hundt’s comparison of theoretical and statistical modelling, are summarized and assessed.