The title of the book itself suggests the complex and contentious relationships between globalization and World Englishes (WEs). The editors bring together major debatable issues in WEs research. The diverse argumentative voices of the the contributors provide readers with a good point of entry into inquiry on the varieties of English. The volume consists of a preface, an engaging introduction, nine articles, and some final reflections by the editors.
The three-page preface opens a forum for scholarly discussions on space, border-crossings, and the mappings of language onto its speakers. The introduction (Ch. 1), by Tope Omoniyi & Mukul Saxena, brings forth three thought-provoking themes, organized by sections—‘World Englishes from colonisation to globalization,’ ‘The global is rooted and contained within a local history,’ and ‘World Englishes: A community of practice’—in order to make the point that English is not only crucial to the process of globalization but its life force. Ch. 2, by Paroo Nihalani, addresses the recurring issue of how to keep “national identity” without sacrificing “international intelligibility” and “multicultural interpretability” in border-crossing intercultural communications. To tackle this problem when WEs are used, Nihalani proposes a pragmatic model, allowing “divergence” at the segmental level but keeping “convergence” at the supra-segmental level. Ch. 3, by Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew, begins with an in-depth discussion of the nature of and the reasons for the inevitable emergence of a certain language as a lingua franca (LF) in a particular territory. Based on her analysis, Chew proposes a model of language change. She adopts her model in her case study to explain why different dialects or languages took turns being exploited as LFs in different periods of Chinese history. She makes a confident prediction that WE will unavoidably be the next LF when China is engaged actively in global affairs and activities. In Ch. 4, Martin Dewey & Jennifer Jenkins point out the difference between LF and English as lingua franca (ELF). They argue for the necessity to examine systematically the innovative linguistic features of ELF spoken by peoples from expanding circles in a period of significant social, political, and cultural transformations. They maintain that it is wrong to simply view those defining features as errors. In Ch. 5, Rakesh M. Bhatt discusses how “scale”—a concept used in sociolinguistic theories of globalization—can be applied to a WEs study. The analysis illustrates not only how English challenges its use in local communities, but also how it “shapes the global cultural politics of language and language use” (95). A small-scale survey described in Ch. 6, by Maria Georgieva, provides evidence of disagreement about Global English (GE) in Europe's plurilingual and multicultural societies. The survey results show that the respondents tend not to accept a new standard of GE established only for instrumental purposes, but prefer to maintain the standards of British or American English. Ch. 7, by Farzad Sharifian, reveals that Persians in Iran not only construct a “modern-citizen” identity by their access to English, but use that language as a tool to conceptualize their cultural schema. Ch. 8, by Augustin Simo Bobda, explores the patterns of English transplantation in West African countries from the fifteenth century to the present and the modes of its diffusion, as well as the sociolinguistics of English (i.e. pidgins and creoles) and some exclusive West African patterned phonological features. Ch. 9, by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, focuses on how English-only and multilingual language policies in Latin America engender sociopolitical and cultural contention. The author points out that no panacea can be found to solve such conflicts in the contemporary, increasingly globalized world. In Ch. 10, Alastair Pennycook makes an interesting analogy between Global Englishes (GEs) and hip hop. He argues that the former resembles the latter in their multiple, co-present, and global origins. Like hip hop, English diffusion over its long history is actually an evolving process in which that language is being constantly localized. His evidence suggests strongly that GEs is the right term to name English. In the last chapter, the editors revisit the above-mentioned contributions, tease out three perspectives (hyperglobalist, skeptic, and tranformationalist) to categorize them, and identify some specific directions for further studies.
Thematically, the chapters are well-coordinated. The first two chapters and the last give an overview of studies on WEs in relation to globalization. They investigate at a theoretical level the relevance of globalization to the complexity of WEs. The nine articles in between exemplify contentious issues such as homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, conformity vs. nationalism, and standard British or American English vs. WEs or GEs when English is used as a second/foreign/international language or LF in postmodern societies worldwide. The sources of the data are varied, covering from China, India, Iran, Bulgaria, and West African countries, to Brazil in Latin America.
All in all, this volume suggests that globalization has brought about marked effects on the varieties of English or Englishes (or the other way round) when the language is consumed by border-crossing speakers. English consumers from the “inner”, “outer”, or “expanding” circle choose their accents or forms from their linguistic repertories for particular communicative purposes. Such reality urges decision-makers about language policy at state or institutional levels to think about what to do at this point. It pushes English literacy practitioners in multicultural contexts to rethink what to teach and how to teach. It reminds English-as-a-foreign-language learners that to speak or write like a native speaker of English is not always their ultimate learning goal. They may use discursive strategies in English to construct (not to hide, as is often taught) their cultural identity when needed.
