ИСТИНА

The presentation will discuss the emergence of a new theoretical paradigm in Russia, which iincludes linguistics, literature studies, culture studies, translation studies, and pedagogy. Known as the World Englishes (WE) paradigm, the new conception, whose father-founders were American scholars B. Kachru and L. Smith, has become internationally recognized and supported, due to the extraparadigmatic reasons (global spread of English) and its interdisciplinarity. The saliency of the new paradigm and its omnitude has resulted in its differentiation and branching into further paradigms: English as a Lingua Franca and English as an International Language, which presuppose diversity and are contrasted to English as a Foreign Language as a more solid concept of English. Meanwhile, it is far less known that parallel to the Kachruvian theory, Russia also witnessed the development of Ideas close to the WE conceptions. This paper will provide for the historiographic story of Russian scholars’ contribution to the paradigm, starting with the 1961 volume on Englishes Beyond England by T. Beliayeva and I. Potapova. And though the term in the plural was not used by Russian scholars, the previous Soviet and later Russian description of varieties and their functioning sounds today quite up-to-date. Major Russian schools of thought on the problem of English diversity will be covered, as well as their applications to different disciplines and practical usages. In the end, the paper will dwell on the main quandaries and future perspectives in researching and applying the WE paradigm.