scholarly journals Global Language Politics: Eurasia versus the Rest

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-151
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kamusella
Keyword(s):  
State Building ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Language Politics ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Linguistic Imperialism ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The World ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Global Language

AbstractGlobalization in the early 21st century can be considered as the age of inequality that splits the world into the rich North and the poor South. From the perspective of language politics, only very few discussed the division across the globe, especially, between Eurasia and the “Rest of the world.” In Eurasia, indigenous languages and scripts are used in official capacity, while the same function is fulfilled almost exclusively by non-indigenous (post/colonial) European languages in the Rest of the world. In the countries where they are spoken, non-Eurasian languages have limited presence in the mass media, education, or in cyberspace. This linguistic imperialism par excellence is a long-lasting and pernicious legacy of European (western) colonialism. The aforementioned divide is strongly associated to the use of ethnolinguistic nationalism in state building across many areas of Eurasia, while this ideology is not employed for this purpose outside the region.

Chinese Netizens’ reactions to the use of English as a lingua franca

English Today ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Weihong Wang ◽  
Fan (Gabriel) Fang
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Linguistic Capital ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Global English ◽  
Local Varieties ◽  
British English ◽  
Linguistic Imperialism ◽  
The World

With the spread of English around the globe, academics increasingly seek to figure out what global English means to the world. Some accept English globalisation as a reality and take it as natural, neutral and beneficial for international and intercultural communication (Crystal, 2003). Some recognise English skills as important linguistic capital and must-have global literacy (Park & Wee, 2012; Tsui & Tollefson, 2007). However, others associate the global expansion of English with linguistic imperialism and the death of indigenous languages (Phillipson, 2009). Some regard globally spread English as native English varieties, particularly American and British English (Modiano, 2001; Trudgill, 1999), others argue for the rise of local varieties of World Englishes (WE) (Bolton, 2005; Kachru, 1986) and the international use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) (Jenkins, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2011). Although these generic interpretations of English have solid arguments from their own perspectives, none is sufficient to elucidate all the ‘complexity of ideological ramifications of the spread of English in [any] particular locality’ (Pan, 2011: 79).

Language politics in Latin America

AILA Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 76-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kanavillil Rajagopalan
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Language Politics ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Linguistic Imperialism ◽  
The World ◽  
Politics Of Language

This paper is an attempt to take stock of the politics of language as it has been playing out in Latin America, ever since the countries in this region were colonized by European powers, mainly Spain and Portugal. Linguistic imperialism is by no means a new phenomenon in this part of the world. In more recent times, the relentless advance of English as the world’s leading lingua franca has only brought to light the difficult North–South relations that have underpinned the geopolitics of the region.

Globalising a local language and localising a global language: the case of Kamtok and English in Cameroon

English Today ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aloysius Ngefac
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Intellectual Community ◽  
Local Language ◽  
The World ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
Communication Needs ◽  
Global Language ◽  
Official Recognition ◽  
Different Parts

This paper assesses efforts being made to promote and expose a Cameroonian local language, Kamtok, to the global, intellectual community and to integrate and promote a global language in the Cameroonian context. Kamtok carries the ecology, culture and identity of Cameroon, besides being one of the most widely spoken languages in the country. The global language which is the focus of this discourse is English, considering that its use is no longer restricted to any particular country. The language, like other colonial linguistic legacies, was transported through colonialism and transplanted in different parts of the world, including Cameroon, and is now serving communication needs beyond the frontiers of its original seat. It is therefore claimed in this paper that Kamtok, like many Cameroonian indigenous languages, is relegated to the background and hidden from the global community, paradoxically because it carries the ecology and identity of Cameroon, and English, like other global languages, is being localized and promoted in the Cameroonian context with every iota of passion and vigour. This type of tendency is predictably rooted in the colonial history or in what Bokamba (2007: 41) calls a ‘ukolonia’ tendency whereby the colonised people were indoctrinated to believe that everything of theirs, including their indigenous languages and culture, was inferior and barbaric. Interestingly, English in Cameroon, unlike Kamtok, has an official recognition and is one of the official languages used for state transactions; it is taught in most, if not all, Cameroonian schools and the variety spoken in Britain is most often the classroom target, though this is done with little or no success; it has been the focus of many research works carried out by local researchers; and its vigorous promotion has even led to the banning of an important Cameroonian language, as shall be discussed later. Kamtok, on the other hand, has witnessed, and is still witnessing, many turbulent moments, such as the open and official banning of its use in some public circles, the complete absence of educational and political efforts to promote it, lack of standardisation, misrepresentation of its developmental status by both scholars and laypeople, and lack of scholarly interest from local researchers.

A whole cloud of culture condensed into a drop of semantics

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wierzbicka
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
German Word ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
The World ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Mental Worlds ◽  
Semantic Evolution

This paper investigates the meaning and use of the German word Herr as a form of address, in a historical and cross-linguistic perspective. The paper argues that despite their apparent insignificance, generic titles used daily across Europe, and in all the parts of the world to which European languages have travelled, can reveal complex and intricate webs of cultural assumptions, attitudes, and values, as well as how these assumptions, attitudes, and values change across time and space. Terms of address available for everyday use in a particular language can provide keys to the inmost recesses of the speakers’ cultural and mental worlds. But if we are to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) semantics, with its stock of primes and molecules and its mini-grammar for combining these into semantic texts, provides both the necessary tools and the necessary techniques. It allows us to practice semantic microanalysis with rigor and accountability, while at the same time exploring big questions of values, history, and culture. There has been an upsurge of interest in nominal terms of address in recent years, but as illustrated by the rich and valuable recent volume S’adresser à autrui (2014), edited by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, research of this kind focuses on frequencies, forms, and functions, with virtually no mention of meaning — as if basic titles such as Monsieur and Madame, Signore and Signora, or Herr and Frau had no meaning at all. As a result, while formal and functional aspects are carefully examined, the secrets hidden in the meanings of such words (and in their semantic evolution) escape scholars’ attention. To uncover these secrets and to bring to light their cultural significance, we need an appropriate methodology. By putting the German word Herr under the microscope, this paper demonstrates that NSM is a methodology that allows it to be done in illuminating and empirically verifiable ways.

Exit English? Reflections on Linguistic Imperialism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-547
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Global English ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Linguistic Imperialism ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Language

This paper considers the questions of universalism and the use of English as a global language in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West in two parts: The first part examines the role of language in creating the world of the novel, and the second takes into account the function of naming/un-naming in mapping this world. In so doing, we attempt to reflect upon the linguistic vision that is presented in Exit West and how that vision informs the cartography of its world. We thus explore the distribution and valuation of English as a universal language and Englishes as varieties of it in the narrative and their intersection with nationalism, Hamid’s alternatives to such distribution and valuation, and the overlap between his linguistic alternatives and territorial expansion and sanction are investigated. While Hamid’s linguistic vision in the novel, we argue, proffers spaces for defying and resisting linguistic imperialism, it at times remains reinscribed within the hegemony of the English language. Keywords: World Literature, Lingua Franca, Global English, Linguistic Imperialism, Mohsin Hamid, Exit West.

scholarly journals Political Jurisprudence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Generating Functions ◽  
State Building ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Reason Of State ◽  
Constitutional Legality ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Political Right

Political jurisprudence is the branch of jurisprudence that treats law as an aspect of human experience called ‘the political’. This is an approach that many contemporary jurists, those whose work presupposes the autonomy of legal order, tend to suppress. In this book, Martin Loughlin assesses the contribution made by political jurists and explains its contemporary significance. Political jurists maintain that the essential characteristics of modern legal order can only be revealed by considering how political authority is constituted. The political is orientated to the fact that people are organized into territorially-bounded units within which authoritative governing arrangements have been established, but the authority of this way of viewing the world is strengthened only through institutional-building. Law may be an aspect of the political, but to perform its authority-generating functions effectively it must operate relatively autonomously. The political and the legal operate relationally, without one being reduced to the other. Loughlin introduces the rich literature of political jurisprudence through essays on innovative political jurists such as Hobbes, Burke, Constant, Romano, and Schmitt, and on such central themes as political right, institutionalism, constitutional legality, and reason of state. Building on his earlier books, The Idea of Public Law (OUP 2003) and Foundations of Public Law (OUP 2010), this collection extends his account of this influential strand of European legal thought.

Some reflections on English as a ‘semi-sacred’ language

English Today ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Asker
Keyword(s):  
Lingua Franca ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Linguistic Imperialism ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Language ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Oxford University Press

BY GENERAL consensus English has become, if not a global language, then at the very least a lingua franca. Some commentators on English in the world, like Robert Phillipson (Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 1992), use the term that serves him as a title to imply that English is itself part of the problem of having just such a global language. The argument here however is that English – like Latin, Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Examination Chinese – through its political ascendancy (as a result of various waves of colonial activity alongside its use for religious purposes), may have taken on the character of a ‘semi-sacred’ rather than simply an imperial and imperialist language.

Sandra Ramos Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
Silvia Spitta
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Graphic Arts ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
The Rich

Sandra Ramos (b. 1969) is one of the few artists to reflect critically on both sides of the Cuban di-lemma, fully embodying the etymological origins of the word in ancient Greek: di-, meaning twice, and lemma, denoting a form of argument involving a choice between equally unfavorable alternatives. Throughout her works she shines a light on the dilemmas faced by Cubans whether in Cuba or the United States, underlining the bad personal and political choices people face in both countries. During the hard 1990s, while still in Havana, the artist focused on the traumatic one-way journey into exile by thousands, as well as the experience of profound abandonment experienced by those who were left behind on the island. Today she lives in Miami and operates a studio there as well as one in Havana. Her initial disorientation in the USA has morphed into an acerbic representation and critique of the current administration and a deep concern with the environmental collapse we face. A buffoonlike Trumpito has joined el Bobo de Abela and Liborio in her gallery of comic characters derived from the rich Cuban graphic arts tradition where she was formed. While Cuba is now represented as a rotten cake with menacing flies hovering over it ready to pounce, a bombastic Trumpito marches across the world stage, trampling everything underfoot, a dollar sign for a face.

The Language of Global Success

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsedal Neeley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Global Organizations ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Language ◽  
Language Strategies ◽  
Native Tongue

For nearly three decades, English has been the lingua franca of cross-border business, yet studies on global language strategies have been scarce. Providing a rare behind-the-scenes look at the high-tech giant Rakuten in the five years following its English mandate, this book explores how language shapes the ways in which employees in global organizations communicate and negotiate linguistic and cultural differences. Drawing on 650 interviews conducted across Rakuten's locations around the world, the book argues that an organization's lingua franca is the catalyst by which all employees become some kind of “expat”—detached from their native tongue or culture. Demonstrating that language can serve as the conduit for an unfamiliar culture, often in unexpected ways, the book uncovers how all organizations might integrate language effectively to tap into the promise of globalization.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document