31.1553, Review: English; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Kachru (2019)

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Subject: 31.1553, Review: English; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Kachru (2019)

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Date: Fri, 08 May 2020 14:49:51
From: Mayowa Akinlotan [mayowa.akinlotan at ku.de]
Subject: World Englishes and Culture Wars

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-2980.html

AUTHOR: Braj B.  Kachru
TITLE: World Englishes and Culture Wars
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Mayowa Akinlotan, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

SUMMARY

The book “World Englishes and Culture Wars” is a novel collection of issues
and concepts, past, present, and future that have (and will still continue to)
shape intellectual debates and discussions about the narratives of the
contentions in the history, development, and future of World Englishes, which,
according to Kachru, are a metaphor for a window to see the fierce but subtle
competition among the World Cultures to remain at or move from the periphery
to the center. One veritable weapon to sustain the battle is to effectively
and efficiently play the game of the politics of language, which in this book,
is the politics of the English language, past, present, and the future. The
fourteen chapters in the book are grouped into six sections representing World
Englishes Today, Context and Creativity, Past and Prejudice, Ethical Issues
and the ELT Empire, World Englishes and the Classroom, and Research Areas and
Resources. The first section of the book consists of five chapters. 

Chapter 1, The Agony and Ecstasy discusses two different reactionary
perceptions of the spread, uses and functions of the English language in the
present global age. According to Kachru, there are two camps, whose attitudes,
reactions, and perceptions of the spread and status of the English language
can be identified as the agonising camp and the ecstasying camp. The agonising
camp, such as Ngugi Wa Thiongo, agonises that the continued spread of the
language is tantamount to the death of their local languages, cultures,
identity, ideologies, and sensibilities, all of which sum up into the loss of
future for the people and their societies. The ecstasying camp, according to
Kachru, thus includes those who see nativisation  and institutionalisation of
English not only as liberation but as an opportunity to express and export to
a global audience those cultural milieu, identities, and ideologies that the
local languages had no opportunity to do. Also, the ecstasying camp rejoices
at the opportunity to abandon the classical canon, and create a new canon
which promotes and controls the ideological tenets of the society. Of course
in this camp is the likes of Wole Soyinka, who won a Nobel Prize for
Literature on a literary career exporting African (Yoruba) ideologies to a
global audience via the English language (Akinlotan 2019b). 

Chapter 2 The Second Diaspora revisited how English language as colonial tool
came to Africa, Asia, and beyond. The first diaspora is the spread of the
language from Britain to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada. The Second Diaspora is characterised by expansion of the canon, a
conscious creation of a distinct African and Asian canon, which means a
repudiation of the shackles of canon from the colonial English. Moreso, a new
linguistic order began to emerge in these places, such as the creation of form
and meaning that are not shared with native speakers from the established
varieties. The growth and development of English in the second diaspora has
brought about different varieties in each country, which is often classified
along ‘an educated variety and a range of subvarieties’.

The reality of different varieties thus necessitates a question of standard
and codification, a conscious agenda that all new varieties must plan and
execute. One important argument made in this chapter is that of
pluricentricity which argues that places such as Nigeria, India, Singapore,
etc are now recognised ‘centers for the norms of standard, literary
creativity, and linguistic experimentation’.In other words, the argument that
the center, which was used to be Britain, then USA added, followed by Canada,
and New Zealand, can be least labelled a hegemonic cognitive shackle of
linguistic imperialism, which, if the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New
Zealand, etc could successfully break up after several decades of struggle,
then here comes the start of a new linguistic movement for the new varieties.
Unfortunately Kachru failed to mention how the political clout of these
once-new varieties of the USA and others helped them achieve that status.
Eckert (2018) has argued that such a linguistic agenda and movement would
require that such an agenda be complemented with a great play of political
power.

In Chapter 3 Culture Wars Kachru presents different shades of ‘wars’ that are
linguistically and culturally driven, more especially as a result of the
continuous spread of the English into cultures and speech communities that
once aggressively and politically repudiated the language. To these societies,
the English language is a Western power and weapon, and its spread comes with
risks of cultural and political shifts. Another dimension of war ‘is
appropriated by the Anglophone African and Asian countries, who are severing
their umbilical cord from the Inner Circle, or the original native speaking
countries...’ (p.50). In spite of this repression, Kachru argues that the
English language continues to attain more functions in new societies such that
‘no other language is close to English in its penetration in various levels’
(p.53). There is also a third dimension of war, which is the conscious
language policy to promote local languages at the expense of English in the
second diaspora speech communities. For instance, there are many State
legislative houses in Nigeria that conduct their business in local languages,
preventing the use of English. Of course such a proposal is a reflection of
resentment towards dominance of English over local languages. Also, a
continued repudiation of the traditional English canon in many societies
reflects the attitude towards English, which is “learn just the language but
not the culture and learn our own culture through the language”.

Chapter 4 Standards and Codification touches on ever topical issue and
question characterising studies and research of World Englishes. The chapter
reiterates that the debate about the question of standard has moved from the
Standard to standards, which again reflects that Outer Circle Englishes are
potentially standard-bearing themselves. In order to attain standards, Kachru
proposes four ways of codifications;  (1) authoritative codification, an
establishment of an agency to guide the process, (2) sociological
codification, agreeing on a certain form, such as an ‘accent bar’ that
everyone should aim for, (3) educational codification, using educational
resources (e.g. teacher’s competence, dictionaries, the media) to identify
‘proper’ and ‘acceptable’ uses, and (4) psychological codification, that the
society should reward those who use the language correctly, ensuring that
users are psychologically pressed to use the language correctly.

In addition, Kachru proposes that an international institute or center be
established, and that it should not be an agency ‘correcting, improving and
ascertaining the English tongue...but a research center that has the functions
of a clearinghouse, archive, think tank, and graduate teaching program’
(p.79). Chapter 5 Power and Politics reiterates the power behind language and
how the politics characterizing its interplay at the center and the
peripheries is displayed. This chapter conceptualises many practical questions
and issues raised in Chapter 2 and 3. For instance, the continued struggles
between the English language and other mainstream languages will continue to
be shaped by ideological battles powered by political sphere and influence. In
another dimension, the movement of any new variety of English from the outer
circle to the inner circle will require a titanic play of power and politics.

Part II Context and Creativity consists of Chapters 6 and 7, The Speaking Tree
and Creativity and Literary Canons respectively. Chapter 6 The Speaking Tree
conceptualises World Englishes as a speaking tree, which not only continues to
grow in branches (i.e. different varieties in the Outer and the expanding
circles) but also continues to enable these societies to use it to meet
different social needs ranging from educational, research, media, cultural and
cross-cultural, political, commerce and trade purposes. Also, this spread has
ensured that  English language and literature have ‘ceased to be exclusively
Eurocentric, Judeo-Christian, and Western’ (p.110). In other words, it has
becomes an exponent of multiculturalism, which was once frowned upon. For
instance the expansion of canon, which was fiercely fought by the ‘owners’ of
English, has now become a norm. That is, different societies with their own
varieties today now have different canons, symbolising their inclusion in a
global discourse and articulation of one’s cultural repertoire and identities.
Kachru argues that literatures produced in World Englishes, together with all
of their linguistic innovations, should provoke conscious questions in the
form of debate and research, with a view to harmonising the form, uses, and
functions of the language in an increasing cross-cultural global community of
users of the language.

Chapter 7 Creativity and Literary Canon shows the relationship between
creativity and literary canon, especially how the various multicultural
literary canons benefited from linguistic creativities both in their mother
tongue and other languages. The chapter presents creativity as being in the
core of World Englishes, as evident in their literary canons, their
innovations, their writing styles, creation and translation of texts into
English and local indigenous languages, and transfer of cultural systems from
local indigenous language to expressions in English. 

Part III Past and Prejudice presents three chapters 8, 9, and 10 as Liberation
Linguistics, Sacred Linguistic Cows, and The Paradigms of Marginalisation
respectively. Chapter 8 Liberation Linguistics revisits the questions, issues,
and discussions, past and present, that characterised early reactions of the
then ‘owners’ of English towards the peculiarities characterising the uses,
functions, form and meaning of the language in the former colonies. The
chapter presents how different processes converged to break the owners’ attack
‘on the recognition of pluricentricity and multiidenties of English’. At the
centre of Quirk’s concern is that of the retention, preservation, conservation
of British variety of English with which other varieties should be measured.
Kachru argued that  linguistic, educational and sociolingusitic realities
converged against such utopia idea of a World Standard. The fact that English
language has been nativised and reconstructed to express different cultures
necessitates emergence of standards rather than the standard.

Chapter 9 Sacred Linguistic Cows shows that the spread of English has been
characterised with three types of reactions: linguistic, attitudinal and
ethnocentric. Part of the attitudinal reaction is the question of whether the
spread of English has made other cultures and languages it co-exists with
stronger or weaker? Chapter 10 The Paradigms of Marginalization shows that
there are systematic paradigms with which quite a number of users of English
across the World cultures are marginalised. One paradigm holds that
‘monolingualism and monolingual societies are the norms for hypothesis
formation’ (p.168). The other paradigm refers to the ‘resistance to taking
into consideration linguistic and sociolinguistic contexts that entail
modification or alternation of hypotheses’. One of such hypotheses is that
non-native speakers cannot have a complete grammar of a language, an
hypothesis representing the perspective of a monolingual grammar. The third
paradigm, according to Kachru is the ‘misconnection between a hypothesis and
its generalisation, and the relationship of both to sociolinguistic contexts
and the historical realities of language use.’ The chapter clearly summarizes
its argument: the need to revisit the idea that only hypotheses, theories, and
concepts developed from the Inner circle or its users are the ‘lights’ and
thus should be generalised into the Outer and Expanding circles.

Part IV Ethical Issues and the ELT Empire has two chapters, 11 and 12
representing Applying Linguistics and Leaking Paradigms respectively. Chapter
11 Applying Linguistics presents us with  a number of concerns between the
conceptualization of the relationship between World Englishes and Applied
Linguistics, and that such concerns need to be addressed, if the gains made in
the studies, teachings, and research into World Englishes will continue to be
of linguistic, cultural and social value for everyone concerned, the users,
researchers, and the policy planners. Among those concerns is continued debate
about the nativist versus non-nativist attitudes towards the status of the
varieties of English needs to be re-examined in how we design, conceptualise,
theorise, and explain issues of interest and findings in research and studies
into varieties of English around the globe. Chapter 12 Leaking Paradigms
challenges linguists to be self-evaluative of the models and paradigms we
applied in teaching and describing language as a powerful social tool. In
other words, paradigms must always be evaluated time and again, to ensure a
creation of a sound theoretical, methodological, pragmatic, and ethical
paradigm that allows us to objectively study language and the speech
communities without bias.

Part V World Englishes and the Classroom and Part VI Research Areas and
Resources have a chapter each, Mythology in Teaching and Research Resources
respectively. Chapter 13 Mythology in Teaching re-examines a number of
misconceptions about method, approach, and strategies of teaching the English
language, together with its subtle culture, to users who are bilingual or
multilingual. Some of these myths, which are consciously and unconsciously
created by the Inner Circle, with a power-driven and power-seeking purpose,
are that (1) the inner circle ‘owns’ the language, and users in outer and
expanding circles are just ‘borrowers’ of the language, (2) English language
and its literature is monoculture and has one literary canon, whereas the
reality is one of many literary canons, (3) uses, functions, forms and
meanings of usages in outer and expanding circles look up to models in the
inner circle, whereas empirical data has shown bilingual speakers from the
outer circle attaining equivalent performance with speakers in the inner
circle, (4) outer circle varieties are error-driven, and should be approached
as such, therefore promoting and characterising these varieties with
error-analysis and fossilisation approaches, and (5) those who challenge the
hegemony, power and control of the inner circle carry linguistic, cultural and
social risks. 

Kachru argues that the process of demythologising must start from the
classroom, where the ‘perceptions of our needs, our priorities, and our needed
tools - theoretical, methodological, and educational’ must be passed onto our
students, co-researchers, and the society at large, with serious
re-examination of these myths. The final chapter Research Resources provides a
list of areas and issues that constantly require the attention of student,
researchers and all users from all the different speech communities. For
instance, more research is called for on the issue of conceptual frameworks in
World Englishes, stratification, intelligibility, power and politics of
English, hegemony and globalisation of English, nativisation and
acculturation, and differing contexts and identities in World Englishes (for
example, Akinlotan 2019a,&b).

 EVALUATION

The weight of the content of this book means a single review or read cannot do
justice to it. This is an encyclopedia of the studies and research in
varieties around the globe, including their history of status,
conceptualisation and development. Important issues, question, and concepts
relevant to understanding the history, state-of-the-art studies/research, and
the future of World Englishes are well discussed throughout the fourteen
chapters contained in the book. Also, key concepts such as nativisation,
linguistic ideology, language power and politics, language ownership in a
global world, the problems of measuring standards via different paradigms, etc
are discussed from probing perspectives such that readers are challenged to
rethink the theoretical, methodological, and socio-cultural standings
characterising World Englishes. Kachru also succeeds in moving the questions
about the theoretical and practical realities of World Englishes to the
teaching of English language, in the lights of pluricentricity brought about
by the widespread development of the language in different societies. 

The book is very lucid in its language, clear in its re-conceptualisation of
known concepts, ambitious and bold in asking difficult questions in very clear
language. Many thanks for Kachru in using his vintage position to once again
bring forth those difficult questions of: (1) when will the users, together
with all the apparatus of institutions made up of the educational, political,
cultural, social, and economic institutions , in the inner circle universally
accept the realities of the shift of the English language from monocentricity
to pluricentricity, where all literary canons, creativities, innovations, etc
are not approached with suspicion, as ‘borrowers’ of the language, as not good
enough to develop paradigms and/or hypotheses for the inner circle varieties?
The book is a must for students, teachers, researchers, linguists and
non-linguists, everyone who lives with the realities that the spread of
English language is an important socio-economic and political phenomenon.

The following lines clearly state one of the agendas Kachru sets out to
achieve (which he does achieve) in this great work: ‘We have now to re-examine
the myths we follow, the myths we believe in, and the myths we pass on to our
students and colleagues. We must gravely and calmly analyze the relevance of
such myths to our sociolinguistic contexts. We must engage in self-examination
and ask ourselves. Why is it that we have always shirked from taking bold
local initiatives...and why is it that we have accepted primarily the role of
receivers of patronage and not asserted our partnership?’ (p.237).

REFERENCES

Akinlotan, Mayowa. (2019b). Evolution of outer circle varieties: a new model
for Nigerian  English. Socjolingwistyka, 33 (3), 43-55

Akinlotan, Mayowa. (2019). Noun phrase complement in Nigerian English.
Brazilian English  Language Teaching, 9 (2), 342-346

Eckert, Penelope. (2018). Meaning and Linguistic Variation: The Third Wave in
Sociolinguistics.  Cambridge University Press


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mayowa Akinlotan currently works at Katholische Universität Eichstätt Germany.
My current research interests cut around corpus linguistics, syntax, varieties
of English, sociolinguistics, quantitative methods, language variation and
change.





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