// World Englishes. 1985 Vol 4 (2). P. 223-232
Recent research in discourse analysis clearly demonstrates the relevance of shared socio- cultural conventions in successful linguistic interactions. Most recent studies in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), however, ignore this aspect of language behavior completely. In general, researchers in SLA have been interested in evaluating and falsifying or corroborating hypotheses such as contrastive analysis, error analysis, interlanguage, critical period, similarity between first and second language acquisition, linguistic markedness, natural approach and monitor. Very little attention has been paid so far to the communicative needs of the second language learners who may not share the standards of communicative competence that the native speakers of the target language value. Recent studies of non-native varieties of English establish beyond doubt the fact that these varieties differ from the native varieties of English precisely because their users have norms of communicative competence entirely different from those of native speakers of English. In this paper, evidence is presented to show that the development and institutionalization of non- native varieties of English around the world pose a serious problem for all existing theories of SLA. The issues that need to be addressed in future research are clearly identified.
