"Anglophone"

Rankin, Robert L rankin at ku.edu
Thu May 16 22:07:03 UTC 2002


----------------------------Original message----------------------------

>A terminological question:  What about "anglophone"? I ask because I find
myself reacting against the term when I see it in contexts where I would
expect something like "English speakers",...

I guess personally that I find the term quite ordinary.  I don't really
react negatively to it, although I tend to use "English speaker(s)" myself.
But this is just because I've found that students raised on MTV tend to
understand my lectures better if I stay away from 'Francophone',
'Aktionsart' and the like in favor of more down-to-earth vocabulary.

The contexts in which I've seen it used recently suggest a mild
politicization in favor of multiculturalism as opposed to more ethnocentric
views, but I think this may just follow the use of the term "Anglo" as an
ethnonym in this kind of writing.

When I hear/see 'anglophone' I'm also always reminded of the newspaper story
from a Quebecois source publicized by Mary Haas back about 1981 which made
mention of francophones, anglophones and speakers of other languages that
the publication labeled "allophones".

Bob Rankin



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