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- Serie: AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
- Sprache: Englisch
In one of the contributions to this edited volume an interviewee argues that "English is power". For researchers in the field of English Studies this raises the questions of where the power of English resides and which types and practices of power are implied in the uses of English. Linguists, scholars of literature and culture, and language educators address aspects of these questions in a wide range of contributions. The book shows that the power of English can oscillate between empowerment and subjection, on the one hand enabling humans to develop manifold capabilities and on the other constraining their scope of action and reflection. In this edited volume, a case is made for self-critical English Studies to be dialogic, empowering and power-critical in approach.
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Marta Degani / Werner Delanoy (eds.)
Power in Language, Culture, Literature and Education
Perspectives of English Studies
Published with the support of the Research Council and the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of Klagenfurt.
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.24053/9783823396048
© 2023 • Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KGDischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen
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ISSN 0939-8481
ISBN 978-3-8233-8604-9 (Print)
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Contents
Power in Language, Culture, Literature and Education: Perspectives of English Studies
1Introduction
In one of the contributions to this edited volume an interviewee argues that “English is power”. For researchers in the field of English Studies this raises the questions of where the power of English resides and which types and practices are implied in the uses of English. In this book, linguists, scholars of literature and culture, and English language educators address aspects of these questions in a wide range of contributions. The book shows that the power of English (Studies) can oscillate between empowerment and domination, on the one hand enabling humans to develop manifold capabilities and on the other inhibiting their scope of empathy, reflection and action. As for the basic intention informing this book, a case is made for perspectives in English Studies which are dialogic, empowering and power-critical in approach.
Indeed, power is a highly controversial concept with multiple meanings. In the following, we will offer a definition of the term permitting inclusion of practices of domination and liberation. We will then apply this concept to some perspectives of English (Studies). Finally, the different articles in this volume will be introduced to highlight their specific contributions to a highly diverse and controversial field of research.
2What do we mean by power?
When working on this volume, we came across a feeling of unease among our colleagues, who pointed out that the term power was too negatively connoted to permit a discussion of empowerment practices in the interest of a dialogic and democratic agenda. This did not come as a surprise considering that since the advent of neo-Marxist, postmodernist, poststructuralist or postcolonial perspectives the focus has shifted to concepts viewing power as hegemony and domination, with Michel Foucault’s work serving as a major reference point. However, on closer inspection, such an understanding of power would severely curtail engagement with the highly diverse uses of the term. Moreover, it would be very limiting to reduce power-critical schools to such an understanding. For example, the later Foucault suggested a notion of power inclusive of freedom, resistance, reversibility and social change, thus himself calling into question “an extremely pessimistic interpretation” of his work (Heller 1996: 105). This raises the question of how power can be defined to integrate its diverse manifestations without losing sight of its productive and restrictive dimensions.
In philosophy, such a definition is suggested by Byung-Chul Han. For Han (2005: 7), there is widespread theoretical confusion over the meanings of power, a term which is ubiquitously and controversially invoked in different fields of research. To avoid such confusion, he, therefore, suggests a neutral definition capable of encompassing divergent notions. For him power opens up space for an “ego” or “self” to find continuation in an “alter” or other self (Han 2005: 14, 76). This definition is echoed by Foucault in The Subject and Power (1982: 789-790), where power is discussed in neutral terms as a contextually situated set of actions impacting the actions of other people. Building on the later Foucault, Kevin Jon Heller (1996: 103-104) explains that “power is not evil itself”, that it can be used “to increase the freedom of others, or to capture them in relations of domination”. Summing up, Foucault, Han and Heller advocate a flexible notion of power, where not power itself but its diverse uses merit particular attention.
The uses suggested by the contributors to this volume all aim for empowerment through practices of English Studies. Such a focus necessitates further clarification of what we mean by empowerment. Our understanding of the term is shaped by Hannah Arendt’s notion of power as expressed in her book The Human Condition (2018 [1958]). Arendt’s understanding of the human condition rests on three basic principles, plurality, natality, and power as the force to create a democratic public realm. While plurality stands for the uniqueness of human beings and the diversity of human life approaches, natality denotes the human capacity of rebirth, of creating change (Arendt 2018: 175-178). As regards the third principle, power is defined as the force to create a “public realm […], where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities” (Arendt 2018: 200). Finally, Arendt views such power as a potential with uncertain outcome. As a potential, continuous actualization is required to keep a democratic public realm alive (ibid.: 200, 204). As situated in “an ocean of uncertainty” it is “never safe from the disruptive initiatives of further actors” (Canovan 2018: xxxi).
Of course, Arendt’s perspective is only partly compatible with the definition of power suggested above. While for Arendt power equals ongoing creation of a democratic public realm in a plural and uncertain world, our definition is more neutral and broader in scope, making Arendt’s notion applicable to only one set of power practices amongst others. Moreover, Arendt’s theory comes with limitations when discussed in the light of current power-critical debates. Arendt is mainly focused on humans, while current ecological and post-humanist perspectives have made a case for de-centering humans to include non-human actants, be they animals, environmental or technological forces. Moreover, critical theory after Bourdieu, Butler, Delanda, Foucault, Said or Spivak has drawn attention to structural forces going beyond those of plurality, nativity and democracy-building, thus highlighting how humans are shaped by hegemonic discourses, colonial mindsets, or regimes of discipline, and how they are enmeshed in highly complex networks inclusive of human and non-human actants.
In the light of these theories, humans are not as free to determine their lives as Arendt’s position may suggest. However, this does not mean that Arendt’s perspective is incompatible with those presented by critical theorists. Foucault (1989: 790), for example, also views plurality (“subjects are faced with a field of possibilities”) and the capacity to create something new as basic structural constituents of power relations. We, therefore, treat the two perspectives as implicated in each other, and as stimuli for mutual critical self-inspection.
Following Heller (1996: 79), Foucault views power as an ambivalent capacity, both shaping and being shaped by humans, both dominating and liberating them. Indeed, we view ambivalence as a pre-condition for critical thinking, our understanding of ambivalence linking back to Peter Zima’s dialogic theory. Zima (2000: 368) suggests a perspective where ambivalence is treated as ultimately irreconcilable, where opposite poles cannot be fully resolved in a synthesis. In line with such a concept, neither absolute domination nor freedom are possible since the two poles are always competing with each other. In other words, even in contexts in which empowerment is the aim, its initiators are implicated in socio-cultural contexts they can only partly grasp and control. Conversely, when moves are hegemonic in intention the wish to dominate also clashes with the plurality of available options and the creative potential of humans. To our mind such a position on the one hand necessitates self-critical reflection where- and whenever empowerment is envisaged. On the other hand, it can help highlight possibilities for resistance and liberation where domination and hegemony are practiced.
So far, we have repeatedly invoked the term dialogue without explaining what we mean by it. As further explained in Werner Delanoy’s contribution to this volume, our notion of dialogue rests on the belief that all human understanding and initiative is subject to manifold limitations but can be widened and transformed through respectful and (self-)critical engagement with diverging viewpoints. Despite our preference for such a concept, a note of caution should be added here. According to Zima (2000: 369, 376), people also take risks when committing themselves to the power of dialogue. On the one hand, their empowerment may significantly grow through inclusion of divergent perspectives. Also, such inclusion can foster inter- and transcultural conviviality on local and global levels. On the other hand, confrontation with other viewpoints can also overwhelm subjects, thus potentially threatening their sense of self and reducing their capacities to act. This may happen to individual and collective subjects, the discipline of English Studies being one of them.
3The power of English Studies
After Foucault, speaking of English Studies as a discipline or subject immediately draws attention to the field’s implication in power relations. For Foucault, discipline refers to practices of power which affect people’s desires, thinking and corporality in a manner “that allow[s] them to act in appropriate and expected ways and to do so through the exercise of self-control” (Scott 2001: 94). Such a perspective invites meta-reflection on the disciplinary power of English Studies practices. Despite its importance, such meta-reflection, however, goes beyond the confines of this volume. Let us just add that in light of an ambivalent understanding of power we see discipline both as a restrictive and productive force, limiting and enabling people’s scope for empowerment. The same can be said of the term subject. On the one hand, it refers to subjection, that is to how English Studies practices and practitioners are shaped by forces outside their control. On the other hand, scholars have coined the term subjectification to refer to the possibilities of human independence from such forces (Biesta 2016: 21; Heller 1996). Following Zima (2000: 414), we believe that the freedom of subjects resides in their abilities to self-critically and creatively engage with different perspectives in ongoing debate. Such engagement is also what we have in mind for English Studies.
The power of English Studies to a great extent results from the popular demand for English in a globalized modernity. Its economic utility is a major factor for widespread motivation to invest into learning English as a foreign language, leaving those at a disadvantage whose proficiency levels remain low. Moreover, the dominance of English may result in “linguicide”, that is the disappearance of small languages with little market value (Phillipson 2008). The still growing demand for English as an international language undoubtedly results from Britain’s imperial past and the United States’ wide-reaching political, economic and military power. Indeed, we strongly believe that the subject’s past and present cannot be divorced from colonial and imperial ideologies, finding expression, for example, in the preference for particular varieties of English, canons or interpretation practices. Also, the market for English Studies publications is by and large controlled by publishers operating from Inner-circle countries, such as Britain, the US, Canada or Australia, thus also subjecting authors from outside to these publishers’ rules and regulations. Finally, in global popular culture the influence of Hollywood, Netflix or communication platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, all with strong roots in anglophone countries, can have a significant impact on people’s structures of feeling, thinking patterns and modes of interaction.
Yet, the use of English as an international language has also opened up manifold possibilities for empowerment. English as a global language can foster intercultural dialogue, promote cosmopolitan conviviality, and give marginalized voices a better chance to be heard. The use of English as a lingua franca is moulding English in new ways, thus extricating English from the control of a small circle of players. Moreover, new orientations in the study of culture, the so-called cultural turns (Bachmann-Medick 2016), have opened up manifold space for critical self-inspection and the development of alternative concepts. Colonial, racial, gender- or class-related hegemonic practices have been critically questioned in the interest of more egalitarian, diverse, cosmopolitan and dialogic initiatives. In literature, canons have been deconstructed, revised and replaced by poly-central text ensembles. The shift from British and US-American literature to literatures in Englishes has drawn attention to writers and socio-cultural practices from all over the planet. Also, the inclusion of popular and digital media has significantly widened the scope of English Studies, bringing it into contact with other subjects and their academic traditions.
As stated above, to our mind, English Studies should aim for dialogic empowerment. In other words, English Studies is seen as a dynamic field committed to a democratic agenda and open to manifold directions for new development. As a dialogic discipline, English Studies should (self)-critically engage with past and present hegemonic practices in its different and changing areas of concern. Moreover, such English Studies not only shows respect for difference but also cultivates plurality to create a rich basis for mutual enlightenment and innovation.
Furthermore, English Studies must reflect upon its specific contributions to the humanities and beyond to make the subject a particular public realm, the way Arendt has defined this term. For us, this specificity results from engagement with different and changing uses of Englishes in diverse local and global contexts with the aim of empowering its users. In the light of such a program, English Studies is a dynamic and open-ended field of enquiry, as in Bakhtin’s (1981: 30) diction “there is no first word and the final word has not yet been spoken”. Therefore, following Rob Pope (2002: 12), we are in favor of an approach to English Studies which aims at preparing “[…] the way for subjects, disciplines and forms of knowledge which as yet have no name”.
While we believe that the power of English justifies the continuing existence of English Studies as an academic subject in its own right, transdisciplinary dialogue may well lead to new subject formations with parts of English Studies only playing an ancillary role. In fact, English Studies itself came into existence through a reconfiguration of disciplines by replacing, for example, Rhetoric (Pope 2002: 13), and it may itself be subsumed under emerging subjects such as Global Citizenship Education or Game Studies, the two being referenced in the contributions to this volume.
Finally, power is always situated in specific contexts and constrained by its contextual embedding. Of course, this is also the case for our book project, which is inextricably linked to the history and aims of the department from which we speak, namely, the English Department at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria. All the contributors to this volume are affiliated to this department both as regular staff members, project team members and external lecturers. The 18 articles included highlight the diversity of English Studies as practiced in this location and the contributors’ commitment to practices of dialogic empowerment. While in some of the contributions the tried and tested is revitalized in the light of new theories and challenges, other book chapters show a subject in transition with new perspectives emerging.
4The contributions in this volume
Our grouping of the contributions reflects common divisions in English Departments. In English Studies it is still common practice to view language, literature, culture, and language teaching as the main areas of investigation plus as the main categories for departmental differentiation. Building on this system, we have also grouped the contributions in this volume around the categories of (a) linguistics, (b) literature and culture, and (c) language education. However, we are aware that there is manifold overlap between and exchange across them. In other words, some of the articles would equally fit into at least one of the other sections. Moreover, the four domains are highly heterogeneous entities with different histories, aims and approaches. This is also the case in the present volume. Finally, some of the contributions go beyond the categories used, thus indicating the need for different categorization within and beyond the field of English Studies.
In the following, the individual contributions will be introduced section by section:
(a) Perspectives from English linguistics
In the first contribution to our volume an English linguistics perspective is introduced which highlights plurality and diversity of Englishes across the world. In “Power to the Englishes? Reflections on the notion of equality among world Englishes”, Alexander Onysko discusses how, on the one hand, research into different Englishes has created a diversified and rich knowledge base on Englishes in the world while, on the other, this research has so far failed to truly emancipate non-standardized Englishes. The chapter provides an extensive and detailed discussion of the theoretical approaches to the study of world Englishes that have been proposed in the literature so far, with a specific focus on the range of heuristic models that have been (and still are) employed to categorize Englishes around the globe. The contribution closes off with a provocative reflection on the concept of ‘nativeness’, making a call for abandoning this controversial notion in order to take a significant step towards empowering all Englishes.
In the following chapters, the focus lies on the moves and strategies underlying powerful discourses. In “Martin Luther King as a wielder of power”, Christopher Blake Shedd conducts a linguistic analysis of one of King’s books, namely, Where do we go from here: Chaos or community? Shedd analyzes how the civil-rights-movement leader made use of the lexical item power in this seminal publication. By integrating lexical semantics with etymological research, the author shows how King refers back to a quote by Alfred the Great and expands on it in the interest of a democratic and peaceful agenda. Moreover, King’s definition of power is discussed, which strongly overlaps with the definition offered in our introduction. In similar terms, King views power as the ability to affect others, and he also distinguishes different uses of power, ranging from democratic empowerment to violent repression. His contribution is followed by Marta Degani’s “About attributions of power and political control: Critical reflections on populism and its challenges from linguistic perspectives”. In this chapter, Degani critically reflects upon the manipulative power of right-wing populist discourses, shedding light on the complexity of this phenomenon. With the help of Critical Discourse Analysis, populism is discussed as a discursive reality with its specific objectives, strategies and topics. In addition, a typology is introduced to highlight the most relevant features of right-wing populist discourse. By doing so, a power-critical perspective is suggested for engagement with a hegemonic discourse that can seriously undermine a democratic agenda. In the following chapter, which focuses on the strategic use of language in banking discourse, Vesna Lazović investigates personification as a powerful strategy in British and Serbian online bank advertisements. The author’s theoretical basis is Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and she shows how both British and Serbian banks have made use of the ontological metaphor INANIMATE IS HUMAN (and the two sub-metaphors A BANK IS A PERSON and A BANK SERVICE IS A PERSON) to present themselves as reliable and trustworthy, stimulate positive reactions, and influence the decision-making processes of their clients. Again, this article documents how language is used to wield power, that is to attract people’s attention, to impact their feelings and to make them act in certain ways.
Nikola Dobrić and Günther Sigott’s chapter “Use of error profiles in applied linguistics – Empowering language instruction by cataloguing rating-negative performance at the English Department, University of Klagenfurt, Austria” would equally fit into our section on English Language Education. As the subtitle reveals, the two authors aim for empowering language instructors and error raters by systematically cataloguing specific error types at distinct proficiency levels. Dobrić and Sigott present their model with reference to a learner corpus of written student performances compiled at the English Department at the University of Klagenfurt. In their discussion, the two authors demonstrate how an erstwhile but no longer dominant area in applied linguistics (Error Analysis) can be revitalized to give practitioners the tools for understanding how errors work and which errors deserve particular attention at different competence levels.
The final contribution in this section is an article co-written by Eva-Maria Graf, Frédérick Dionne and Melanie Fleischhacker. In “The transformational power of questioning practices in coaching – Insights from linguistic and interdisciplinary research”, the authors discuss how certain questioning practices can initiate self-reflection processes, invite changes in perspective and generate new knowledge in the context of a particular helping profession. In their chapter, a combination of Conversation Analysis and psychological perspectives is suggested to discuss the empowering potential of certain question types. The data presented are taken from the authors’ project Questioning Sequences in Coaching (QuesCo). Different from the other chapters in this section, this contribution is situated in applied linguistics more generally and takes an interdisciplinary approach to analyze coaching discourse as an example of Conversational Analysis in a helping profession.
(b) Perspectives from anglophone literatures and cultures
In the first three contributions of this section a traditional textual practice – that of closereading – is revitalized and reshaped by interlinking literary, cultural and neuroscientific perspectives. All contributions show how literary texts can foster their recipients’ empathetic capabilities in the interest of dialogic empowerment. In “The power of love: Reading The Silver Linings Playbook as a romantic neuronovel”, Alexa Weik von Mossner highlights how a love story can pre-structure reader response through its generic appeal and narrative design to widen the recipients’ scope for empathy and acceptance of otherness. Drawing on cognitive cultural theory, the author demonstrates how a combination of culture-related perspectives and neuro-scientific insight can help redefine the dialogic power of literature. In the following contribution, Marijana Mikić’s theory building is also informed by a combination of cognitive psychological research, narrative and critical theory. The author offers a close reading of Sherri L. Smith’s Afrofuturist young adult novel Orleans. In her contribution “Ecosocial harm, grief, and communal empowerment in Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans”, she investigates how grief can empower readers to care for others subjected to oppression, marginalization and ecological harm. In her discussion of the novel, Mikić shows how Smith’s text “can […] be a catalyst for imagining and practicing more communal and liberating ways of engaging with the world”. Empathy, ethics and environmental concerns also play a key role in Carina Rasse’s “Feeling for others: Environmental justice, emotion, and moral imagination in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms”. In her discussion of the novel, Rasse interlinks ecocritical, narratological and cognitive neuro-scientific concepts to explore the relationship between literature, emotion, social criticism and environmental ethics. Building on the notion of “embodied simulation” (Gallese 2005), the author explains how readers can become cognitively, affectively and somatically engrossed in fictional worlds, and how they can develop empathy for the characters portrayed and their social concerns.
The following two chapters offer a historical and a contemporary perspective on uses of power in literary texts. The first article is focused on a Jacobean play. In “‘I am a husband now in Master Frankford’s place’: Abuse of power in the main plot of Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness”, Iris van der Horst offers an in-depth reading of the play with an eye to the various power imbalances and abusive power dynamics written into the text. The author situates her text analysis both in the play’s historical context and in that of modern concepts, thus drawing attention to the play’s past and present significance. While a comparison between the play and Jacobean conduct manuals can help document the unusually harsh treatment of Master Frankford’s adulterous wife, the modern concept of consent permits a re-evaluation of the illicit relationship between her and Frankford’s close friend. In this modern context, this relationship no longer classifies as adultery but as sexual assault. In the next chapter, Matthias Klestil builds on the distinction between subjection and subjectivation to discuss how Charles W. Chestnutt’s novel The Marrow of Tradition can give insight into racial oppression and open up space for black people’s socio-cultural empowerment. Klestil’s focus is on Foucauldian ideas of self-construction. In his analysis of Foucault’s late ethical phase, Klestil shows that the French philosopher’s notion of self includes domination through an other (subjection) and liberation from such a force (subjectification). The author then applies these two concepts to Chestnutt’s novel, thus offering a reading of the text which can simultaneously focus on “the legacies of race” and on “strategies of resistance and resilience”.
The last two contributions in this section show new directions for English Studies and equally belong to subjects beyond our discipline. The first one brings together critical animal studies and ecocritical discourse analysis. In “The story of meat”, Ursula Posratschnig challenges, as her subtitle reveals, “carnist ideology, science denial, and the erasure of animal cruelty, ecocide and social injustice”. In her discussion of “western mainstream beliefs and practices regarding meat consumption”, Posratschnig documents the destructive effects of industrialized meat production and consumption on human and non-human beings, plus the environment. One of the author’s central concerns is that of erasure, which she defines as the “systematic absence of discourses […] that would reveal connections between meat and ecocide, social injustice, health hazards, and extreme physical violence inflicted on nonhuman animals”. Armin Lippitz, René Schallegger and Felix Schniz have specialized in Game Studies research. In “Disempowering the controller: Videogames and the metanarrative of agency”, the three authors focus on player disempowerment in videogames as a design strategy. They emphasize the empowering potential of such a strategy by pointing out how videogames that deny their players agency permit critical insight into complex life-worlds and can offer new perspectives for engagement with them. Building on critical concepts of agency, plus game-specific definitions of interactivity and aesthetics, they turn to six concrete examples to highlight their potentialities for player empowerment.
(c) Perspectives from English language education
The final section focuses on practices of English language education. In “The power of literature (teaching): Experiencing Warsan Shire’s Home”, Werner Delanoy situates English language education in a dialogic perspective combining a post-Gadamerian hermeneutics and critical theories informed by Bakhtin and cosmopolitan philosophy. As regards the power of literature, he uses reader response criticism and its dialogic capacities as a starting point to highlight the particular possibilities of aesthetically motivated discourse. In its practical dimension, the article calls attention to written and multi-modal versions of Warsan Shire’s poem Home. In his discussion, Delanoy refers to the potential power of the text to immerse readers in an unfamiliar world and to challenge existing modes of feeling and thinking. In line with the first three chapters in the literature and culture section, the power of the literary text discussed again resides in its appeal to widening people’s scope of reflection and empathy. The concern for voices going unheard is also a key theme in Anita Millonig’s “Post-inclusive education, diversity and multilinguality in ELT”. In her contribution, Millonig makes a case for including the learners’ manifold first languages in English language education, thus offering a critical perspective on monolingual ELT practices (cf. Phillipson 2010: 15-16). Her understanding of post-inclusion links back to the aims of intercultural and critical pedagogy. Following Yildiz and Heydarpur (2018), such a program makes diversity on different linguistic and socio-cultural levels the basis for teaching and learning practices offering equal chances to all students. Millonig not only offers a theoretical perspective but also supports her arguments with concrete data gained from a school ethnography project she carried out herself.
In “Teaching academic writing to undergraduate students of English in Klagenfurt: From the word to the world”, Ursula Posratschnig and Günther Sigott present a two-pronged concept combining a from-paragraph-to-essay approach with Global Citizenship Education. As for the mechanics of academic writing, the authors argue in favor of what they see as the dominant approach in anglophone academia. However, their concept goes far beyond the mere mechanics and the manifold skills informing this dominant practice. The authors also call attention to the importance of critical language awareness and mindful language use. Moreover, they interlink academic writing with engagement with important socio-political and ecological challenges.
The final two chapters present perspectives on teacher-empowerment in different areas of English Language Education. Carmen Amerstorfer and Clara Kuncic give insight into their approach to pre-service teacher training in ELT-courses accompanying the teaching internships at Klagenfurt University. In “The power within: The motivation, interest, and engagement of students in problem-based preservice English teacher education”, the authors make a case for problem-based learning as a methodology to foster professional creativity, pre-service-teacher collaboration and sustainable learning. They also present the findings of an empirical study, which confirm that this methodology positively impacts student motivation and can help achieve the objectives pursued. The focus of Irena Vodopija-Krstanović’s article is on EMI (English as a medium of instruction) teacher empowerment. In her chapter, the author explains that in higher education the need for English medium instruction in subjects other than English has grown very strongly in the past two decades. While she underlines the importance of academic English language proficiency for international mobility and competitiveness, she also calls attention to the fact that the vast majority of the programs offered are located in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. Thus, as regards EMI, Vodopija-Krstanović distinguishes two directions for empowerment. First, it can widen the professional scope of academics outside English Studies significantly. Secondly, a case is made for offering EMI-programs in non-English speaking countries to reduce the market-dominance of anglophone institutions. The author then documents her university’s efforts –the University of Rijeka in Croatia – to offer EMI-focused teacher-training programs.
References
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Bachmann-Medick, D. (2016). Cultural Turns. New Orientations in the Study of Culture. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist. Austin: Austin University Press.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2016). Good Education in an Age of Measurement. London/New York: Routledge.
Canovan, M. (2018). Introduction. In H. Arendt, The Human Condition. Second Edition. With a New Foreword by Danielle Allen. Introduction by Margaret Canovan. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, xix-xxxii.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8 (4), 777-795.
Gallese, V. (2005). Embodied simulation. From nervous to phenomenal experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4, 23-48.
Han, C. H. (2005). Was ist Macht? Stuttgart: Reclam.
Heller, K. J. (1996). Power, subjectification and resistance in Foucault. SubStance, 25, 1 (79), 78-110.
Phillipson, R. (2008). Lingua franca or lingua Frankensteinia? English in European integration and globalization. World Englishes, 27 (2), 250-267.
Phillipson, R. (2010). Linguistic Imperialism Continued. New York/London: Routledge.
Pope, R. (2002). The English Studies Book. An Introduction to Language, Literature and Culture. London/New York: Routledge.
Scott, J. (2001). Power. Cambridge/Malden: Polity.
Yildiz, E. and S. Heydarpur (2018). Vom Methodologischen Nationalismus zu einem postinklusiven Bildungsverständnis. Kontrapunktische Betrachtungen. Erziehung und Unterricht, 5-6, 1-11.
Zima, P. V. (2000). Theorie des Subjekts. Tübingen: Francke.
Part 1: Perspectives from English Linguistics
Power to the Englishes? – Reflections on the Notion of Equality in World Englishes
1Introduction
In English studies, the early 1980s witnessed the emergence of a new branch of linguistic research that shifted the focus onto the diversity of Englishes across the world and abandoned the monolithic conception of ‘the English language’. Braj Kachru, one of its foundational scholars, introduced the notion of Englishes to highlight the essential differences and variation of codes that have historically derived from English but have taken on different forms according to their various linguistic and social contexts. In Kachru and Smith’s terms
Englishes symbolizes the functional and formal variation in the language, and its international acculturation, for example, in West Africa, in Southern Africa, in East Africa, in South Asia, in Southeast Asia, in the West Indies, in the Philippines, and in the traditional English-using countries: the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. (Kachru and Smith 1985: 210)
The acknowledgement of diversity came with a call for the emancipation of English speakers in different socio-political territories, particularly in those nations that gained independence from Britain. This chimed in with the postcolonial struggle of freedom and identity formation, which became part and parcel of postcolonial literature studies, speaking of the appropriation of the colonizer’s language to give voice to liberated, self-affirmed identities in what Bhabba (1994) terms cultural hybridity.
Since the late 1990s, the world-wide diversification of Englishes has also been perpetuated through electronic means of communication that have evolved from e-mail, Internet-based services such as websites, blogs and chats, to multiple applications of social media communication primarily accessed via mobile devices. These global channels of linguistic interactions have boosted both the reach and the use of Englishes as major global means of inter- and transcultural communication. Building on Bhabba’s claim that Englishes have become a voice of cultural hybridity, electronic forms of communication have added a layer of medial hybridity to using Englishes, which is manifest in the mixing of genres and registers, influenced by the specific affordances of online communication and characterized by a frequent mixing of semiotic modes of communication (e.g. text and images, cf. James 2016). In the analysis of the different forms and uses of Englishes, linguistic hybridity emerges as a general characteristic since Englishes are shaped by the interaction of different linguistic conventions and various linguistic codes, as evident in the occurrence of language contact features (e.g. mixing of codes, borrowing or calquing).
While the diversity of Englishes is thus the result of the different socio-cultural realities of their users, the acknowledgment and labelling of different Englishes in the emerging research paradigm of World Englishes was grounded on the awareness that the ‘new’ Englishes are fully fledged languages in their own right and not an aberrant form of a standardized code of English. The following quote by the Indian literary critics Naik and Narayan is an example of this ideological emancipation.
Years ago, a slender sapling from a foreign field was grafted by “pale hands” on the mighty and many branched Indian Banyan tree. It has kept growing vigorously and now an organic part of its parent tree, it has spread its own probing roots into the brown soil below. Its young leaves rustle energetically in the strong winds that blow from the Western horizon, but the sunshine that warms it and the rain that cools it are from Indian skies; and it continues to draw its vital sap from this earth, this realm, this India. (Naik and Narayan 2004: 253, qtd. in Kirkpatrick 2007: 85-86)
Using the image of the many branched and multiply rooted Indian Banyan tree, Naik and Narayan create a powerful metaphoric analogy describing that English became part of India and that it is now an Indian tongue (among the multilingual constellations present in the subcontinent). From the point of view of World Englishes, this expression of linguistic emancipation is also an implicit call for Indian English (and by extension all Englishes) to be considered equal among other Englishes, particularly in relation to standardized English dialects. As pointed out in a recent chapter by Saraceni and Jacob, the beginnings of research into World Englishes were very much driven by the ambition to “redress the inherent inequality that existed between varieties of English […] and […] to achieve equal Englishes” (2021: 11). Despite this noble intention, the authors find that the notion of “equal Englishes” has remained a mere façade that obstructs a clear view of the Englishes-speaking world as being built on unequal Englishes up to the present day.
On this ideological backdrop of the strive for equality among Englishes across the world, the current contribution will throw into relief the main approaches and concepts that have characterized World Englishes research so far. Special emphasis will be given to the critical assessment of how the research paradigm of World Englishes has failed to achieve its foundational goal of facilitating Englishes to become equal among each other. Some thoughts are offered in closing on what might be a condition that can make Englishes come closer to this ideal(ized) state.
2A multitude of Englishes and theoretical approaches
While it is virtually impossible to do adequate justice to the plethora of research that has defined the field of World Englishes (WEs) during more than four decades of research, the intention of this section is to highlight some of the main theoretical models that define our understanding of Englishes more generally. In addition, certain key notions have become important shapers of scientific discourse on the subject, and the function of English as a global language and lingua franca is another crucial domain relevant to the discussion.
To begin with major theoretical models, the field has been characterized by the Three Circle Model of Englishes devised by Braj Kachru as part of the initial phase of world Englishes research (1983, 1985, 1988). The model has evolved out of an earlier distinction of Englishes into ENL (English as a native language), ESL (English as a second language) and EFL (English as a foreign language) (Strevens 1978), which has been recast by Kachru into three circles of Englishes labelled Inner Circle (corresponding to ENL), Outer Circle (corresponding to ESL), and Expanding Circle (corresponding to EFL). While the differentiation into second language and foreign language has become a matter of debate in the field (cf., e.g., Deshors 2014; Gilquin 2015) since it is basically a question of language acquisition in diverse multilingual contexts, Kachru drew a line between the two so that the Outer Circle prototypically captures Englishes in postcolonial contexts whereas the Expanding Circle refers to English being used as a main learner language in nations where English does not have a more widespread use among the population or other institutionalized functions.
At the time when the model was proposed, it offered a terminological shorthand to raise awareness to the existing plurality of Englishes across the world and had the invaluable function of providing a basic template for research into the multitude of Englishes. As the field evolved, however, the model became subject to repeated criticism (e.g. Bruthiaux 2003), as, among others, its conception maintained a hierarchy of center vs. periphery, in which the more powerful center is defined by countries in which English is spoken as a ‘native’ language such as the UK, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. From the point of view of current world Englishes research, continued reference to a stratification of Englishes in terms of the Three Circle Model (and to labels such as ENL, ESL and EFL) thus reinforce a hierarchical, unequal conception of Englishes.
Other early models trying to map Englishes across the world took a less hierarchical albeit territorial view. MacArthur’s Circle of World English (1987) arranges Englishes according to continents and nations, which is also the approach taken by Görlach (1988). Besides national and ethnic labels of Englishes (e.g. Australian Standardized English, Aboriginal English), MacArthur also acknowledges the existence of diaspora Englishes that form among migrant communities of other language speakers such as Hispano-English in the US and Ukranian English in the Canadian context. This dimension is lacking in Görlach’s model, which, on the other hand, includes English-based Pidgins and Creoles among the diverse territorial Englishes.
MacArthur’s and Görlach’s models can be taken as representative of a general territorial and social classification of Englishes, i.e. a listing and labelling of Englishes corresponding to national and social/ethnic names. This kind of approach has been criticized due to the fact that national labels tend to gloss over internal variation and that social/ethnic labels are essentializing categories that fail to acknowledge the fluid and dynamically shifting ways of language use that characterizes speakers of Englishes and languages in general. More recent research in the field (D’Arcy 2010; Degani and Onysko 2021) has adopted the notion of ethnolinguistic repertoires (Benor 2010), which emphasizes the fact that codes can be variably and flexibly employed to index ethnic identities. The static conception of Englishes as nationally-bound entities has been deconstructed in research focusing on Englishes as part of globalizing non-territorial dynamics, as expressed in terms such as global flows (Pennycook 2007), metrolingualism (Pennycook and Otsui 2015), the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert 2010), and superdiversity (Blommaert and Rampton 2011; Vertovec 2007). In a similar vein, a translingual approach to languages (and Englishes) laid out in Canagarajah (2013: 8) emphasizes that “semiotic resources in one’s repertoire or in society interact more closely, become part of an integrated resource, and enhance each other. The languages mesh in transformative ways, generating new meanings and grammars”. This perspective on Englishes is further pursued in the works of Lee (2018) and Jenks and Lee (2020) that highlight the fluid and transformative nature of language use, which conventionalized labels and categories of Englishes fail to capture.
Besides this range of approaches and notions that take a post-varieties turn, World Englishes also became enriched by developments in other fields, most prominently in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (e.g. Geeraerts et al. 2010), which inspired research into cultural models and metaphors across diverse Englishes (see, e.g., Callies and Onysko 2017; Wolf and Polzenhagen 2009). Related research on language and culture, which was initially inspired by work on cognitive anthropology that became labelled cultural linguistics (cf. Palmer 1999), brought about further insights into how Englishes are shaped by cultural conceptualizations of speaker communities that have adopted the language (e.g. Degani 2017; Malcolm 2017).
Thus, despite the fact that reference to initial models and their terminology has continued, research in World Englishes has seen richly diversifying theoretical approaches. What is more, theory building in WEs has also been evolving towards process-based models that attempt to describe the diversity of Englishes in the world.
Edgar Schneider’s Dynamic Model of the evolution of post-colonial Englishes (2007) was among the first process-based theories. It characterized the evolution of postcolonial Englishes in five stages: foundation, exonormative stabilization, nativization, endonormative stabilization and differentiation. His model has found widespread acclaim in the field and has proven to provide valid insights into the relation between language development and socio-historical events from the spread of English as a colonial language up to its emancipation in postcolonial settings. More recently, Schneider’s model has been built upon by Buschfeld and Kautzsch (2017) who propose the Extra- and Intra-territorial Forces Model. In an attempt to address the highly complex factors that influence the uses and functions of Englishes across the world, also outside colonial contexts, Buschfeld and Kautzsch (2017) name a range of ‘forces’ relating to attitudes, policy-making, globalization, socio-demographic speaker variables, tourism and colonization that are held to influence the development of Englishes in Schneider’s five stages.
While this theory is still in need to be fleshed out further, other process-based models of world Englishes include typologies of Englishes such as Mesthrie and Bhatt’s (2008) types of what they call the “English Language Complex” (excluding L1 Englishes) and Kortmann et al.’s (2020) classification of Englishes as traditional L1 varieties, high-contact L1 varieties, indigenized L2 varieties, English-based pidgins, and English-based creoles. Some of the labels in Kortmann et al.’s typology acknowledge the role of language contact as a possible classifier of Englishes, and the pivotal role that language contact processes and scenarios play for an overarching modelling of world Englishes is more extensively elaborated in Onysko’s (2016) Language Contact Typology of Englishes. Delineating macro-settings of contact that are flexible on historical grounds and potentially variable depending on scale (individual speaker vs. speaker communities), Englishes or uses of English can be described as aligning with the types of Global Englishes (GEs), Englishes in Multilingual Constellations (EMCs), Learner Englishes (LEs), English-based Pidgins and Creoles (EPCs) and Koiné Englishes (KEs) with examples of standardized English dialects for the latter category.
Mufwene’s (2001) model of language contact, which postulates a feature pool uniting all linguistic elements of languages in contact that is available for speakers to draw on, has inspired some other, contact-based models of Englishes. Biewer (2015) applies it to Englishes in the South Pacific and Meierkord (2012) takes it into the domain of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). According to her, when speakers of different languages use English to communicate among each other, this contact situation relies on a pool of features that comprises the Englishes and multilingual repertoires from the speakers involved. Accommodation and selection from this metaphorical pool are the processes that shape such ELF interactions. In a similar vein, Pitzl (2016) describes ELF interactions as forms of transient language contact that are influenced by the multilingual repertoires of the speakers and their shared multilingual resource pools. In general, researching the uses of English as a lingua franca has become a budding field of research on its own despite the fact that this context of using Englishes is part and parcel of the diversity of Englishes across the globe and thus another facet of world Englishes. The most holistic approach to understanding lingua franca uses of English has been put forward in James’s (2021) tricodal/trimodal theory of modelling the communicative event involving English as social practice. Foregrounding an analysis of Englishes that focuses on the communicative event, James’s model is in line with a post-varieties perspective on Englishes as it is most vociferously argued for in the translingualism paradigm. At the same time, his model of how English and other language elements form heteroglossic discourse offers descriptive linguistic insights by establishing a connection between three modes of language use (identification, representation and action) and the linguistic domains of lexicophonological, lexicosemantic and lexicogrammatical encoding.
As the brief discussion of the various theoretical approaches to Englishes and uses of English has shown, research on world Englishes has come a long way from its beginnings of acknowledging the plurality of Englishes across the globe. Despite the ‘stickiness’ of concepts and classifications of Englishes that have determined early scientific discourse in the field, the different models theorizing Englishes from process-based perspectives have diversified and increased our understanding of both the complex reality of communicative acts involving Englishes and their abstracted, reified and conventionalized labels as English codes.
In view of the ideological framing of world Englishes research in terms of emancipation and equality, the mentioned process-based models steer generally clear of portraying Englishes in hierarchical relationships. Indirectly, however, certain (conventionalized) notions such as native/non-native Englishes or first and second language Englishes reinforce existing dichotomies of power when used as labels in some of the proposed classifications or when illustrating some of the theories.
Among the new models put forward in the last decade, there is actually only one theory that relies explicitly on power differentials in the Englishes-speaking world. This is Mair’s world system of Englishes model, which applies de Swaan’s (2002, 2010) theory of the global language system in analogy to Englishes across the world. From the point of view of the global economy and global political power, de Swaan calls English a “hyper-central” language, i.e. the most important language in the world in terms of economic power and, at the same time, a global promise for upward social mobility and increasing wealth. Accordingly, people all over the world will strive towards acquiring English as the most valuable linguistic capital to have. In analogy, Mair (2013) divides the Englishes-speaking world into more and less central Englishes, putting standardized American English on top of the hierarchy. However, this application of de Swaan’s model suffers from the misleading prediction that all speakers of Englishes will eventually aspire towards speaking standardized American English, which in itself remains difficult to pin down (cf. Lippi-Green 2000; Preston 2005). In fact, if English is conceived of as a global commodity, what would rather be expected is that speakers of other languages (or Englishes) will tailor their English usages according to their communicative necessities that will help them to achieve their economic goals. This can more generally be described as an orientation towards using English as a lingua franca in multilingual contexts (including accommodation to their interlocutors’ Englishes). In a forthcoming publication, Mair (2023) concedes that
Pluricentric English is not a happy democracy of voices, but remains a hierarchically structured constellation of varieties and styles. They all command different prices in economic terms and are evaluated very differently in terms of cultural prestige. In this constellation, it is ELF uses that are developing most dynamically. The ELF boom is driven by globalisation and more immediately responsive to economic factors than traditional ENL and EFL uses. (n.p.)
Mair’s approach can be seen ambivalently since on the one hand, it is certainly an economic truth that Englishes (and among those some codes rather than others) are economic commodities that are instantiated in the global and local markets, and as such a source of capital that people aspire to. On the other hand, the approach is still strongly situated in established categories and labels of reified Englishes furthering the long-practiced institutionalization of Englishes that has, among others, become severely criticized in recent, post-varieties discussions of English-informed codes (e.g. in the translingualism paradigm). Furthermore, the economic side of Englishes is complexly entangled in local and global forms of (c)overt prestige, depending on individual situations and goals. From the point of view of equality among Englishes, Mair’s model makes it clear that linguistic equality is impossible on grounds of political and economic power differences. While this can be taken as a sobering assessment of the ideological backbone of world Englishes, the strive for equality among Englishes has also been commented on critically among world Englishes researchers. The next section will highlight some main arguments in this regard.
3Decolonizing World Englishes
In 2015 Mario Saraceni clearly voiced that while the field of World Englishes had produced a large volume of research, there was little progress made in terms of its initial aspirations to decolonize the language. According to him, World Englishes has reached an impasse.
World Englishes began very much as an anti-establishment, revolutionary philosophy, which opposed old, traditional, anachronistic, stale and unrealistically monolithic ideas about English, and proposed new, fresh, modern ideas that would take into consideration the diverse sociolinguistic realities in which English had relocated. Now, the novelty is somewhat wearing off. […] If, nearly 30 years later, we’re still advocating the need to begin to favour plurality against singularity, one could be excused for feeling that, perhaps, there may have been a certain amount of congestion in the field. Where do we go from here? (2015: 3-4)
Saraceni’s observation happened at a time when research in World Englishes became influenced more strongly by approaches that highlighted the global, fluid and translingual nature of Englishes (see Section 2). Despite that, he noted that very little progress (if not none) had been made in the applied sense of world Englishes research, i.e. in changing the power structures that continue to favour certain standardized, ‘native’ Englishes over others. In this sense, Saraceni’s metaphor of the impasse describes the situation that the field of World Englishes has remained stuck in its noble intentions of creating equality among the Englishes while, in fact, a situation of unequal Englishes has persisted throughout.
As such, Saraceni’s voice can be seen as one among others that take a critical view on the role of certain Englishes in the world. Already a few decades earlier, Phillipson (1992) demonstrated how institutionalized Englishes, taking the example of the British Council, continue to be driven by colonial attitudes in spreading standardized English via education globally. Similar observations were made by Skutnabb-Kangas (1988), commenting on how the promotion of (standard) English in education leads to linguicism, which is the discrimination of other languages and their speakers to the detriment and potential loss of other languages.
Lamenting the fact that norms of Standard English have continued to dominate English language education has remained part and parcel of the academic discourse of World Englishes and its extensions into English as a lingua franca and applied linguistics. A recent volume dedicated to “Pedagogies” (Bayyurt and Saraceni 2021) provides a telling overview of that. The most critical notions that have continued to be part of this discourse are the unfounded and unjust practice of “native-speakerism” (e.g. Galloway 2021; Matsuda 2021), British and American centric teaching materials (e.g. Syrbe and Rose 2021), and the lack of alternative norms and assessment practices. In a different volume, Kirkpatrick (2021) provides an engaging account of the issues and finds that although world Englishes (including English as a lingua franca) are now commonly taught in teacher training programmes, they become scarsely implemented in the classroom. He acknowledges that teachers are frequently open to a world Englishes perspective; however, practical reasons such as the lack of coded alternatives (e.g. reference works and teaching materials) stand in the way of implementing non-native speaker targets. According to him, the resilient native speaker model can only be dissolved top-down, which means by changes in the curricula and in the practices of stakeholders involved in the English language teaching industry (2021: 266).
As Kubota (2021) argues, this change of English models in the educational domain depends on a necessary break-up of the widespread, normative language ideologies towards English. Normative ideologies are in turn entangled with the commodification of English in the global market place (cf. Park and Wee 2021) and the hegemonic role it plays in the capitalist world system (cf. O’Regan 2021). The issue of liberating (non-standard) Englishes and other languages thus emerges as a gargantuan task and one that causes a challenge to the current world system. It is ultimately connected to a power struggle over capital and resources and will target the currently privileged beneficiaries of the standard English commodity in the global market.
