English language as Hydra studies the glorification of English and stigmatization of many other languages. It exposes the rationalizations for the relationship between these two phenomena, where the knowledge of English and the ways it is taught are always presented as something beneficial to the learners. This book is made up of fourteen chapters with contributors from different countries where English is taught and spoken.
The opening chapter, by Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, describes how English need not function in a monstrous way, provided good conditions are in force for the strengthening of linguistic and cultural diversity. The alternative for postcolonial countries is to remain steeped in mental slavery. Two chapters on the English language as bully—in the Republic of Nauru (by Xavier Barker) and on the Cocos Islands (by Pauline Bunce)—report on the various ways in which different Australian authorities have treated local languages and cultures in recent decades. Their bigoted and ignorant ethnocentricity is a re-run of earlier colonial arrogance. Little seems to have changed in language policy since the colonial period.
The Hong Kong chapter, by Eugene Chen Eoyang, Pauline Bunce, & Vaughan Rapatahana, digs deep into the causal factors behind the Asian importation of native speakers of English as teachers. It analyzes how the figure of the English language governess became a Chinese person with a British accent, unloved, but respected and immovable. The study exemplifies how orientalism and linguistic imperialism have been recreated and renewed, with a very poor return on the investment in such teachers, and one that serves to maintain the fundamentally racist structure within the English teaching profession, with detrimental effects on local teachers and in learners.
The South African portrait, by Sandra Land, is mostly at the societal level. It is a compelling description of the allure of English and its anchoring in an economy that serves the interests of only a fraction the population. It makes use of Bourdieu's (Language and symbolic power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991) insights into the workings of language and power and shows that change in the direction of African languages will be an uphill road.
The Korean coverage, by Joseph Sung-Yul Park, reveals how demanding the existential struggle is for an individual with a hybrid identity, in a society that is anxious about developing competence in English. It describes the psychological dimension of linguistic and cultural border crossing. It exemplifies how native speakers' competence is a relational concept, and that the subjective internalization by Koreans of the status of privileged norms for English has dire emotional consequences. The chapter on New Zealand, by Graham Hingangaroa & Vaughan Rapatahana, is a panoramic analysis of English as a nemesis for the Māori language and culture throughout history. The analysis of Australian language policy for its indigenous people is less optimistic.
The Sri Lankan chapter, by Arjuna Parakrama, demolishes myths about standards and native speaker competence by showing how all language analysis needs to be firmly rooted in local multilingual social contexts. The chapter shows that much western scholarship is biased and false since the injustice involved by corrupt Sri Lankan elites in league with western interests is buried in learned positivist cant. The Philippine and Brunei chapters, by Lalaine F. Yanilla Aquino and Noor Azam Haji-Othman respectively, document the complexity of managing diversity in multilingual countries with English in an “auntie” role. They document dual or multiple Hydra heads, with English figuring strongly in elite formation or in the export of skills and with controversy about the quality and relevance of instruction in English.
The Singapore chapter, by Rani Rubdy, builds on the sizable volume of research into language issues in the country and concludes that a partnership with the Hydra in Singapore has been effective in eliminating mother tongues and in stigmatizing local variants of English. Ways are suggested that would reduce the grasp of a British English norm, enable a larger proportion of the population to prosper, and strengthen linguistic diversity and vitality, instead of smothering it. The analysis of the expansion of English in Latin America, by Anne-Marie de Mejía, demonstrates that the marketing of the language—by local elites and international bodies—may have useful instrumental effects for some, but it diverts attention away from the needs of the indigenous peoples and assumes that an expansion of English is in the interests of all.
This book brings together the voices of linguists, literary figures, and teaching professionals in a wide-ranging exposition of the monstrous Hydra in action on four continents. It provides a showcase of the diverse and powerful impacts that English has had on so many non-English language cultures. This book should be heeded by policy makers in the countries it covers, as well as being read by all those involved in English language teaching circles. All in all, the book is critical and stresses the injustices of imperial dominance, postcolonial privilege, and the marginalization of what are seen as lesser languages, while the extensive former literature on English and English teaching worldwide tends to be triumphalist, celebrating the global success of English and to be monopolized by western researchers.
