Mario Saraceni

English in the World

The title of this book is purposely ambiguous and invites questions: what is the current location of English? Is the relocation of English taking place? If so, where, how and why is it being relocated? This first chapter introduces the main themes of the book and sets in motion a discussion that will consider various aspects of the notion (re-)location. In the simplest and most intuitive sense of the word, the location of English could be taken as being England, in the same way as the location of Italian may be Italy and the location of Japanese Japan. This morphological similarity often includes the names of nations and makes the country-nation-language association almost a genealogical one: it seems to be in the natural order of things that Thai is the language of the Thai people and of Thailand, that German is the language of the German people and of Germany and so on. However, the correspondence between language, nation and territory is always a construct (see Chapter 2), and many languages have gone beyond it, their diffusion reaching larger areas than that of a single territory. The language that has done so in the most spectacular way is English, which, in the course of the last four centuries, has stretched well beyond England, to become the world’s largest lingua franca.

English as a lingua franca: between form and function

In this paper I wish to discuss some aspects of the current debates about the concept of English as a lingua franca. In doing so, I will use a recount of the pre-publication stages of the volume English in the World: Global Rules, Global Roles , co-edited by Rani Rubdy and myself (2006) as a starting point, to set the scene, and will move to more theoretical considerations in the second part of the paper.

Language and Nation Building

From a physical point of view, languages can be said to be located in specific territories. This is an idea that became central in the process of nation building in nineteenth-century Europe. It is indeed in that historical and geographical context that, perhaps unwittingly, much of the twentieth-century discourse on language purism and pluralism finds its earliest roots. In the specific case of English, the link with a particular territory probably began to be established earlier. With reference to 1362, when English replaced Norman French as the legislative language of Britain, Seton-Watson observed the following: One might […] risk the generalisation that, though England was a land of human civilisation from the time of Julius Caesar, and even earlier, an English nation and an English language only came into existence in the fourteenth century. From this time only dates the history of England, as opposed to the history of the people of Britain. (Seton-Watson, 1977, p. 30)

Reflections on the Rhetorics on the (Re-)Location of English.

For a growing number of people around the world, the ability to speak English has become an important skill and an integral part of their lives, similar to the ability to use a computer. This, in turn, means that English is unquestionably no longer exclusively associated with the identities of nations traditionally referred to as ‘Anglophone’ – this is part of what I call the relocation of English. In this paper I first illustrate this notion, suggesting that the English language could be reconceptualised so that the links with its ‘ancestral home’ may be completely severed, and the language may cease to be associated to a foreign Other and become fully part of the linguistic repertoire of the Self. In the second part I discuss some pedagogical implications of this idea.

The Relocation of English

The picture that emerges from the discussion that has unfolded in this book so far is one where two antithetic narratives about the relocation of English run along parallel lines: the academic discourse narrative and the public discourse narrative. On the one hand, the academic discourse narrative tells of an English language that has been transplanted in different parts of the world and describes the ways in which this linguistic re-rooting has been accompanied by local processes of acculturation. It also describes how these, in turn, have given rise to varieties of English that have reached different levels of development, stabilisation and recognition. On the other hand, the public discourse narrative tells of an English language that, because of its worldwide diffusion, is constantly under threat of corruption by the negative influence of local languages and cultures. One sees the acculturation and consequent diversification of English as a positive and necessary phenomenon producing beneficial liberatory effects for its users, while the other sees it as counterproductive and detrimental to the effectiveness of global communication.

Norms and authority in language: the case of UK English

This article is bound – to contrast with the other papers in this collection. English native speakers differ from the other groups studied in Sociolinguistica 28 in at least two major ways: first they are the users of the language that is spreading as a lingua franca and second they are users of a language which has never had a formal language academy. In this issue we are concerned with norms and authority in language. How are languages codified, standardised and controlled? Who are the norm givers and the regulating authorities? In this article we take the historical longue durée approach to explain why this is a very difficult question to answer in the case of English.

English in education in the Philippines: from research to policy

As in other postcolonial settings, in the Philippines, linguistic and ethnic diversity intersect with ideological concerns related to identity and the politics of nation building. Therefore, any investigation on the forms and functions of English in the Philippines will also deal with matters that are relevant in many other parts of the world. Dilemmas, controversies, uncertainties and ambivalence regarding English and its place in society and education are analogous to those observable in countless other situations. The adoption of English as the medium of instruction raises even more questions and anxieties: are local languages going to be marginalized? Is English going to be an added intellectual burden impeding the students’ learning? Under the weight of such questions, policies sometimes oscillate between promoting English or the local national language and the ideal aim being that of finding a solution where the advantages of both languages are maximized and their disadvantages minimized. In addition, even when English is adopted as a medium of instruction, which variety is best suited? Should preference continue to be accorded to ‘native speaker’ varieties such as American English, or should local varieties of the language be granted full recognition as equally valid? In this chapter, I address these questions both generally and within the context of the Philippines, as discussed by the various contributors to this volume.

Post‐Brexit English: A post‐national perspective

In his article, Modiano raises a number of important issues regarding the role of English in post-Brexit Europe. In many ways, this discussion is very much about nationalism and its resurgence. Europe can be regarded as the birth-place of nationalism. Historically, particularly considering the 18th and 19th centuries, the codification of national languages has been instrumental in the construction of modern nation states. The cultural and ideological connection between languages and nations is still so strong that, even now, it pervades most discourse on language. The EU language policy, for example, is entirely based on the idea that languages represent national identities. Strictly within the frame of that policy, English is just one of the 24 official languages of the Union. However, despite the equal standing accorded to English with respect to other languages in official EU documentation, any cursory glance at actual language practice immediately suggests a very different picture. The readers of this journal need no reminder of the fact that English is far more than the language of one specific nation state. Just to reiterate a piece of information that can be found in every textbook in the field, English is not only the most widespread language in the world, but is also one that is more widely used as an international lingua franca and/or additional language than as the primary national language of any one country.

Book Review: English and politics

The Politics of English is an important book. Its subject is not English as a discrete, isolated linguistic entity, but the complex set of policies, values and practices that it is an inextricable part of. In exploring a range of interrelated themes, the focus is very much on English as a lived language or, better, as lived experience . In a textbook, this approach is particularly welcomed. There is great availability, nearly an inflation, of texts about English as a world language and the many varieties that have emerged in the last two centuries. By and large, these volumes tend to provide historical, geographical and linguistic overviews of the spread of English. While this is certainly very important, The Politics of English distinguishes itself by offering a different and critical perspective and extremely useful insights into what English actually means to its many users around the world.

A response to ‘Researching and critiquing World Englishes’, by A. Mahboob and J. Liang

In their article, Ahmar Mahboob and Jiawei Liang offer a solid, well-argued and detailed critique of research methodology that is commonly employed in World Englishes. Their contribution is particularly useful and welcome at a time when the field of World Englishes has been somewhat struggling to keep apace with recent developments in sociolinguistics, especially as regards the impact that aspects of globalization are having on language practices. In the mid-1980s, World Englishes was a truly revolutionary scholarly movement, which boldly argued for a reconceptualization of English as a plural, diverse, multifaceted entity, against traditional and conservative views that favoured one or two varieties of English (British and American) as the only ones that could legitimately be considered valid. The plural suffix -es attached to the word ‘English’ encapsulated that very idea: that there were many distinct varieties of English in the world, each one capable of expressing the culture of the place in which it was used, and each one, therefore, deserving equal recognition. The World Englishes ethos has been fundamental in putting forward new perspectives both in research and in language pedagogy. This principle was inspired by ideas that had been put forward by Asian and African postcolonial writers, who, decades earlier, had legitimated their choice of writing in English (rather than in a local language) by metaphorically claiming ownership of it through conscious alterations at the level of lexis, grammar, syntax and discourse. Adopted within World Englishes, this same principle has meant that equality among the various Englishes has been predicated on their being different from one another. Consequently, this presupposes that the existence of each single variety of English rests on the identification of its distinctive features. This basic notion – the identification of linguistic features – has rapidly taken a centre-stage position and driven much research in World Englishes. So, where is the problem, now? The synthesis of Mahboob & Liang’s argument is that the constant quest for distinctive features that would identify this or that variety of English has too often been conducted through methodologies not sufficiently grounded in any particular theory of language. Specifically, they lament, conclusions have frequently been too hastily drawn on the basis of linguistic data collected and analysed without adequate descriptions of contextual factors. The two scholars come from a Hallidayan tradition, where context, and therefore register, is of crucial importance in language analysis. Within this frame, each instance