World Englishes Final Lesson

1. World EnglishesFinal Lesson A Review

2. The historical, social and political context • Consider your own country of origin and describe the role of English in it. Can your country be classified according to the categories mentioned during the course? If yes, which category does it belong to? If not, why not? • We considered how, in numerous territories, English is used as an official, i.e. institutionalised, second language. What do you think are the main domains of institutionalised language use in these territories? • As we saw during the course, it has become increasingly common since the mid-1990s to find alongside English as a foreign language (EFL) the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Try to define the term ‘English as a lingua franca’ in your own words. Can you think of situations from your own experience where English is used as a lingua franca? Describe them.

3. The historical, social and political context • How closely is language and culture linked in your own personal experience? Try to find examples of cultural concepts which are unique to/typical for your own culture. If you were forced to abandon your first language, how would you explain these cultural concepts in English? • In the concluding comments to his edited volume, Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Fishman (1999: 448–9) quotes a number of scholars who argue that those who feel more secure about their own identity are more tolerant of other ethnic groups and, at the same time, better placed to be an effective member of a cosmopolitan grouping. He finishes his discussion by quoting Haarman (1997) on European identity as follows:European identity includes cosmopolitan elements, but cosmopolitanism cannot serve as a simplistic substitute for traditional national identity . . . The recipe for a member of a national community to become a self-confident European lies not in the denial or neglect of his national collective identity . . . Somebody who considers him- or herself to be a cosmopolitan at the cost of national identity will hardly be in a position to appreciate the national components in other people’s identity, and this can only weaken cooperation among Europeans.(Haarman 1997: 286) Do you agree that it is essential to retain one’s own national identity in order to become a ‘self-confident’ member of a larger grouping such as Europe?

4. Who speaks English today? • What is your stance towards Kachru’s three-circle model of the spread of English? Discuss the pros and cons of the model and explain what your own position is. • What is your response to these comments made by Bamgbose and de Klerk?“The main question with innovations is the need to decide when an observed feature of language use is indeed an innovation and when it is simply an error. An innovation is seen as an acceptable variant, while an error is simply a mistake, or uneducated usage. If innovations are seen as errors, a non-native variety can never receive any recognition.” (Bamgbose 1998: 22)“When does a substratal [indigenous] feature assert itself sufficiently to overcome the fear that if deviations are allowed, the rules will be abandoned and chaos will ensue? Is it when speakers use it often enough to silence or exhaust the prescriptors?"(de Klerk 1999: 315)

5. Standard language ideology • Do you speak/have you been taught standard English or non-standard English? Where would you locate your own variety on a scale of standard to non-standard? Which attitudes do you have towards your own variety? How do you think your variety is perceived by others in terms of prestige? Which varieties do you consider prestigious/non-prestigious? • Consider the similarities and differences across the Englishes designated ‘standard’. What is it that makes them similar/different? On which levels? • Why is it that the lexical level turns out to be the most noticeable level of divergence between the different standard varieties? • While standardness seems to be an issue of class in Britain, it is an issue of race in the US. Can you think of reasons for this difference?

6. The spread of English as an international lingua franca • David Crystal says that ‘English has repeatedly found itself in the right place at the right time’. What does he refer to in this quote? Do you think that there is more to the spread of English than pure coincidence? If so, what is it? • Look at the following quote from an autobiography of a Vietnamese mother-tongue speaker living in the US and discuss how it relates to the distinction between a ‘language for communication’ and a ‘language for identification’: As for English I do speak the language but I don’t think I’ll ever talk it. English flows from the mind to the tongue and then to the pages of books [...] I only talk Vietnamese. I talk it with all my senses. Vietnamese does not stop on my tongue, but flows with the warm, soothing lotus tea down my throat like a river giving life to the landscape in her path. It rises to my mind along the vivid images of my grandmother’s house and my grandmother [...].

7. The nature of English as a Lingua Franca • What is your own attitude towards ELF? • In which situations have you experienced ELF yourself? Do you consider yourself an ELF speaker? Whatcharacterises ELF interactions in yourown personal experience? • Is linguistic proficiency in the sense of EFL goals of imitating NS usage always an advantage in ELF contexts? Can you think of examples where NS-like proficiency can be a disadvantage? Building on the arguments you collect, try to redefine the term ‘proficiency’ for an ELF context? • What is your response to the following claim? “There really is no justification for doggedly persisting in referring to an item as ‘an error’ if the vast majority of the world’s L2 English speakers produce and understand it. Instead, it is for L1 speakers to move their own receptive goal posts and adjust their own expectations as far as international (but not intranational) uses of English are concerned.” (Jenkins 2000: 160)