Which linguist proposed the Three Circles of English model?

The linguist who proposed the Three Circles of English model was Braj Kachru.

Kachru, an Indian linguist and scholar of World Englishes, described the global spread and use of English through three concentric circles. The Inner Circle contains countries where English historically became the principal native language, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland.

The Outer Circle includes places where English gained important institutional or official roles through colonial history, including India, Nigeria, Singapore, and Pakistan. The Expanding Circle covers countries where English has no comparable historical official role but is widely learned and used for international communication, such as China, Japan, and much of Europe.

The model is more than a map of accents or national borders. It distinguishes how English is acquired, what social functions it serves, and where language norms are traditionally produced or adapted. Kachru’s framework also challenges the idea that only native-speaker varieties define legitimate English.

A frequent mix-up is attributing the model to David Crystal, a prominent popular scholar of English. Crystal has written extensively about global English, but the Three Circles model is specifically Kachru’s.