The World System of Englishes

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Mair
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
World System ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The World ◽  
Web Forums ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Globalising World

Contact between and mutual influences among varieties of standard and non-standard English have always been a central concern in research on World Englishes. In a mobile and globalising world such contacts are by no means restricted to diffusion of features in face-to-face interaction, across contiguous territories in space or up and down the sociolinguistic scale. In order to better represent and understand the complex relationships obtaining between varieties of standard and non-standard English in the contemporary “English language complex” (McArthur 2003: 56; Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 1–3), the present paper proposes a new theoretical model, based on language systems theory (de Swaan 2002, 2010). While the model is not designed to supersede existing alternatives, such as the Kachruvian (1982) Circles, it will nevertheless complement them in important ways, chiefly because it is better equipped to handle uses of English in domains beyond the post-colonial nation state. The “World System of Englishes” model was developed in the course of the author’s work on the use of pidgins and creoles in web forums serving the post-colonial West African and Caribbean diasporas. The way Nigerian Pidgin figures in the creation of a globalised digital ethnolinguistic repertoire will hence serve as an illustration of its usefulness.

scholarly journals The examination of the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL): Evident disparities between world Englishes and standard English

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
Caroline Kim
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
English Language Learners ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Linguistic Barriers ◽  
The World

While many English Language Learners (ELLs) embark on a path towards higher education in universities centered around Standardized English, they must undergo rigorous training to prepare for these demanding TOEFL exams. Students that have been exposed to World Englishes, or lingua francas, for communicative purposes are now asked to abandon these English varieties to assume the elevated importance of the Standardized form of English implemented across universities around the world. This paper analyzes the juxtaposition and negotiation of these languages as learners are often encumbered with not only linguistic barriers but cultural hindrances that contribute to identity displacement. As language is deeply entrenched in one’s cultural background, it is necessary to reflect on how these English proficiency exams negate the learner’s L1 along with the unique qualities that they strongly identify with.

The Oxford History of the Novel in English

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
English Language ◽  
Book History ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Volume Nine of this series traces the development of the ‘world novel’, that is, English-language novels written throughout the world, beyond Britain, Ireland, and the United States. Focusing on the period up to 1950, the volume contains survey chapters and chapters on major writers, as well as chapters on book history, publishing, and the critical contexts of the work discussed. The text covers periods from renaissance literary imaginings of exotic parts of the world like Oceania, through fiction embodying the ideology and conventions of empire, to the emergence of settler nationalist and Indigenous movements and, finally, the assimilations of modernism at the beginnings of the post-imperial world order. The book, then, contains chapters on the development of the non-metropolitan novel throughout the British world from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. This is the period of empire and resistance to empire, of settler confidence giving way to doubt, and of the rise of indigenous and post-colonial nationalisms that would shape the world after World War II.

scholarly journals (Re)claiming English Language Today

2019 ◽  
pp. 177-185
Author(s):  
Nadežda Stojković
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Cultural Renewal ◽  
Paradoxical Situation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
National Languages ◽  
The Impact

In the huge and most diverse discussion on the influence of the English language as a second, international, or bridge language, there are distinctive voices drawing attention to the fact that this language as nowadays so widely used in innumerable contexts, is no longer ‘owned’ by the community of speakers to whom it is mother language, those primarily of the countries from where English language originates. Moreover, the number of people speaking, or rather using English language today either as their second or foreign language, by far outnumbers people to whom it is native. Situation being such, it is further claimed the concept of ‘standard English’ reflects inherent inequality stance, for if it belongs to everyone speaking it, then insisting on the supremacy on only one of its variants means placing all those speakers of it in a subdued position, and this possibly being yet another facet of English an agent of neocolonialism and globalization (Pennycook 1998, Phillipson 1992). The spread of the English language has been much investigated as oppressive to the formation and expression of personal and collective identities, degrading national languages and through globalization diminishing the impact of local cultures (Bhaba 1990), that it challenges cultures and discourses, being the impetus for continuous re-codification and re-colonisation (Foucault 1980). However, equally significant in relevance and number, the opposing views claim English today offers an expanded community of users enabling new ways of expressing, changing, negotiating voices that offer chances for cultural renewal and exchange around the world, that the awareness of this brings “decolonizing of the colonizers mind” (Penycook 2013). Taking the flip side of the situation, English language natives are noted to be in a paradoxical situation of being expatriates from their own language, themselves “co-victims” (Bratlinger 1990). This insurgent knowledge of the status of English language today is certainly to instigate further investigation, ‘writing back’ of what ontology this language now embodies.

Researching World Englishes in HEL Courses

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Percy
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Final Essay

This chapter describes assignments used to teach the History of the English Language (HEL) and its contemporary counterpart the English Language in the World. In both of these courses, linguistic concepts can be linked to literary analysis, which helps students learn how to analyze code-switching and/or style-shifting in the context of a literary argument. For discovering and interpreting issues about the status and use of English around the world, students have a number of options. For example, after reading specific articles about slang generally and analyzing examples chosen in class, some students choose to write a final essay on slang or jargon used within online newspapers or films that represent different World Englishes (e.g., in Nigerian “Nollywood” films). Thus, World Englishes become realer for students rather than exotic abstractions or curious variants of English or American English.

An understanding of ‘China English’ and the learning and use of the English language in China

English Today ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cui Xiaoxia
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
English Language ◽  
Information Age ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
International Language ◽  
Living Entity ◽  
China English ◽  
The World ◽  
Reform And Opening Up ◽  
Opening Up

Some perspectives from an English educator. Since the implementation of the policy of reform and opening up, and China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has been gaining strength quickly in the international, political, and economic arena. Globalization has led to China taking part in varous kinds of international cooperation and exchange. At the same time, globalization and the Internet have been providing a novel context in which to use English as an international language. Under such circumstances, the Chinese are using more English than ever before, and China English is being simultaneously localized and globalized. Like any other language, China English is a living entity or organism that is not only growing and progressing in the ‘Information Age’, but is also making a contribution that is enriching and developing world Englishes at large. Indeed, China English now plays a significant role in increasing international understanding and cooperation within the WTO and in the whole world.

scholarly journals A Comparative study on English language teaching to young learners around the world

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 114-118
Author(s):  
Cansu Orsel ◽  
Fatih Yavuz
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Outer Circle ◽  
Young Learners ◽  
The World ◽  
Expanding Circle ◽  
Inner Circle

Usage of the English language as Lingua Franca has caused an increasing demand on the English Language Teaching (ELT) in early childhood and according to Braj Kachru’s Three Circles Model of World Englishes as the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle, and the Expanding Circle the approaches to the Young Learners dramatically differs. Besides the features of English as a global language and the nature of early language learning, this paper also focuses on the comparison of the three different examples from the Three Circles Model of World Englishes. They are compared in terms of techniques that are used and the approaches to the Young Learners. The examples taken are from the official websites of the three countries from the Inner Circle, Outer Circle, and the Expanding Circle; respectively, New Zealand’s Ministry of Education, Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development, and the Turkish Board of Education and Instruction. Keywords: Young Learners, The World Englishes, Lingua Franca, Braj Kachru, English Language Teaching (ELT).

scholarly journals Vowel Variation Between American English and British English

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 350
Author(s):  
Afzal Khan ◽  
Soleman Awad Mthkal Alzobidy
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Stress Pattern ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
British English ◽  
International Language ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The World

The English Language, being an international language, is spoken all over the world with many variations. These variations occur primarily due to environmental, cultural and social differences. The main reasons for these variations are intermingling of different races and strata in a society. In this regard prominent differences can be observed at phonological levels. These phonological variations produce different kinds of English, like British and American English. In these two there are differences in intonation, stress pattern, and pronunciation. Although South-Eastern British R.P. is known as Standard English but one cannot deny the existence and value of American English. The study attempts to highlight the vowel variation between British English and American English at phonological level.

scholarly journals BORROWINGS AS AN ASPECT OF LINGUACULTURAL TRANSFER IN THE CONTACT LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-181
Author(s):  
S.M. Pak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
English Language ◽  
Research Field ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Ancestry ◽  
Original Culture ◽  
The World

The article explores borrowings in terms of linguacultural transfer in the ethnic (Russian) fiction written in the English language, the material being works of Helen Litman, an American writer of Russian-Jewish ancestry. The research significance is related to communicative value of the original culture both for interpretation of the author’s style and purport as well as for developing the theory of Russian English in terms of the World Englishes paradigm. Since the primary message of H. Liman’s writings is the difficulty of integrating into a new reality, reference to the past is embodied in numerous cases of lexical and conceptual borrowings. The author explores such types of loans as exoticisms describing Russian prototypical historical, and everyday life concepts which are absent in American culture; Russian transcribed words including exclamations, slang words, incorporated in the texts; zoonyms as a particular case of conceptual borrowings, and phraseological calques. Numerous examples are conditioned by the absence of Russian culture-specific concepts in American linguacultural continuum. Traces of transferring cultural identity in bilingual writers’ fiction, which are found in this article, make it possible to infer the author’s purport as well as broaden the research field of contact fiction.

An emergent English-mediated identity and a Chinese variety of WE

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-95
Author(s):  
Asha Tickoo
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
English Language Learning ◽  
English Learning ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
The World

Abstract This paper will document an English-learning influenced transformation of self, as a shared experience amongst a community of its Chinese users. The study examines 84 English narratives on the English language learning (ELL) experience of undergraduate L1 speakers of Mandarin at three proficiency levels: Year II, Year III and Year IV. Identity, expressed in learners’ positioning on ELL, is assessed in its explicit, propositionally represented form, and its linguistically marked implicit counterpart. Implicit positioning is examined at the macro-discoursal level by acknowledging the choice of the narrative configuration, and therefore the perceptual mould, adopted for the capture of the ELL experience. It is also assessed at the micro-discoursal, sentential level in (1) the registered sense of agency over the learning, (2) the assumed responsibility for statements about the learning, and (3) the character of definition given to the learning. The cross-proficiency level assessment will show that overt and implicit positioning are in consonance in capturing a gradual adoption of an English-mediated access to the world, with resulting altered affiliations, affinities, and sense of being. The study traces the emergence of a Chinese community uniquely defined, in its own perception, by the use of the English language; hence its significance to the World Englishes enterprise.

scholarly journals Review: Making sense of Bad English

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-92
Author(s):  
Alexander Padilla
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The People ◽  
Specific Objective ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Different Parts

To recognize what is or what is not the good use of English, language scientist have disposed the official term “Standard English”. If so, what does this term really means? and what were the conditions and bounds where this term was created? and in consequence, who are the people that really speak on this strict way? This book discusses through an anthropological and linguistic way the term “Good English”. Thus, in general words the author will discuss: How can somebody know whether his use of English is good or bad? What are the causes of such distinction (good/bad) in real practices using this language? Moreover, the specific objective beyond the common negative answer about the not standardized English, this book will offer an explanation from the social, cultural and historical facts about the meaning of being an English user in different parts of the world.

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