Unequal Englishes

The Politics of Englishes Today

R. Tupas

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137461223
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistica

This book proposes, examines and unpacks the notion of unequal Englishes as a way to understand English today. Unlike many studies on the pluralization of English, the volume assumes that inequalities and Englishes are inextricably linked and must be understood and theorized together.

Part I

Approaches to Unequal Englishes

1

Inequalities of Englishes, English Speakers, and Languages: A Critical Perspective on Pluralist Approaches to English

Ryuko Kubota

In scholarly discussions about the English language in the world, the traditional view of language as a bound, unified, and fixed system has been replaced by a pluralist understanding of language as diverse, fluid, and multifaceted. This is observed in such inquiries as world Englishes (Kachru et al. 2006), English as a lingua franca (Jenkins 2000; Seidlhofer 2011), English as an international language (McKay & Bokhorst-Heng 2008), and interactions across Englishes (Meierkord 2012). Furthermore, research focused on local practices of English use has demonstrated hybrid and agentive appropriation of language in selecting, mixing, stylizing, truncating, and bending linguistic codes and expectations (e.g. Blommaert 2010; Canagarajah 2011; Pennycook 2007, 2012; Rampton 2006). Despite some significant conceptual differences, these scholarly trends have pluralized our understandings about the forms and uses of English, its speakers, and the contexts in which English is used, destabilizing the normative idea of who owns English and which English is legitimate. Not only have they pluralized English and English speakers, they have also dislocated existing linguistic boundaries and related categories, conceptualizing linguistic practices as dynamic performativity. Applied to pedagogy, the pluralist perspectives have called into question the perceived superiority of mainstream American or British English and its native speakers that constitutes traditional linguistic conventions. In this chapter, I call these perspectives, which highlight the diverse, dynamic, and heterogeneous nature of English and English use, pluralist approaches to English.

Paralleling this scholarly trend, teaching and learning English has been emphasized in various segments in our society. This is seen in the global popularity of early learning of English, English-medium education programs, use of standardized English tests, learning English for work purposes, and so on. While such a trend reflects the increased global mobility of people, goods, and information, it is also influenced by a neoliberal belief that English is today’s predominant mode of international communication and that developing competence in English is essential for individual and national economic success (Kubota 2011a; Park 2011). At the same time, the neoliberal socioeconomic system has created unequal economic outcomes for individuals, as evidenced in income disparities and unemployment. In teaching and learning, what is still prevalent is a traditional approach that privileges standard varieties of English, native English-speaking teachers, and white teachers of English (Curtis & Romney 2006; Motha 2014). Furthermore, the perceived omnipresence and usefulness of English in the world is paradoxically contrasted with the local expectation for immigrants to acquire the locally dominant language rather than English in non-English-dominant nations.

Clearly, there are points of disjuncture between the pluralist approaches to English, which by and large project romanticized apolitical images of diverse global communication, and pragmatic responses to English or other languages in the world, which indicate normatism and inequalities. Some may argue that the pluralist approaches have not yet influenced educational practices or language policies. Others may argue that scholarly inquiries of English primarily describe sociolinguistic phenomena and do not necessarily need to inform practice. However, I argue that the scholarly interest in the plurality of English is inevitably linked to broader ideological forces, requiring critical reflection. One conceptual lens that can inform this critical exploration is multiculturalism. This chapter examines the ideologies underlying pluralist approaches to English by drawing on critiques of liberal and neoliberal multiculturalism discussed mainly in the United States. I argue that the pluralist approaches to English share with liberal and neoliberal multiculturalism the propensity to celebrate diversity but simultaneously reinforce a certain global/local commonality (e.g. English in the world), which is further propagated by neoliberal academic activities. This tendency overlooks inequalities and power hierarchies that exist among Englishes, diverse English speakers, and languages. Before presenting a critical analysis, I will provide a brief review of pluralist approaches to English, followed by a summary of liberal and neoliberal multiculturalism.

Pluralist approaches to English

Pluralist views of English—broadly identified with world Englishes (WE), English as a lingua franca (ELF), and English use as postcolonial performativity (Pennycook 2001)—are consistent with postmodern, poststructuralist, or postcolonial inquiries. These perspectives call into question the linguistic and pragmatic norms of English that have traditionally been taken for granted and conceptually pluralize the forms and uses of English (see Kubota 2012).

The paradigm of WE (e.g. Kachru et al. 2006) raises skepticism about the view that regards traditional norms of Standard English—mainstream American and British English—as the sole frame of reference in linguistic studies. It identifies such Inner Circle norms as colonial embodiment and instead focuses on and describes postcolonial Englishes used in Outer Circle countries as well as international Englishes taught and learned in Expanding Circle countries. Thus, research on WE recognizes multiple Englishes in their own right, providing new meaning and vocabulary to describe Englishes that have been marginalized.

While WE is concerned with varieties of English, research on ELF (e.g. Jenkins 2000; Seidlhofer 2011) calls into question the common beliefs about who uses English as a global lingua franca and investigates what linguistic and pragmatic forms are actually used. Paying specific attention to communication in English that takes place between non-native speakers of English rather than between native and non-native speakers of English, ELF scholars have investigated linguistic and pragmatic uses of diverse speakers of English and how intelligibility is negotiated and established. Like WE, ELF research recognizes linguistic heterogeneity observed in speech situations involving traditionally marginalized speakers. These inquiries problematize the superiority of Standard English and the native speaker in research and teaching, legitimating multiple linguistic codes used by diverse speakers of English.

Other scholars problematize the Standard English, native-speaker norm, and the concept of language itself by drawing on postcolonial resistance and poststructuralist performativity (cf. Butler 1990). Scholars, such as Canagarajah (2013) and Otsuji and Pennycook (2010), critically evaluate WE research as an effort merely to describe the linguistic system of national varieties and to ‘pluralise languages and cultures rather than complexify them’ (Otsuji & Pennycook 2010, p. 243). They instead explore how English is appropriated, altered, or reformulated in local practices by focusing on agency and resistance. In this framework, diverse users of English are not bound by fixed linguistic expectations, no matter how multiple they are. Rather, they use English in fluid and hybrid ways to express and construct their identity. Interactions involve mixing different codes and unpredictable semiotic expressions. Linguistic codes no longer index certain speaker traits (e.g. Black English for black people); they can be used across ethnic and other social boundaries and taken up as identity markers. These perspectives underpin such phenomena such as language crossing (Rampton 2006), code meshing in writing (Canagarajah 2011), appropriation of academic English as postcolonial resistance (Canagarajah 1999), multiple ways in which global hip hop language and culture are appropriated in local contexts (Alim et al. 2009), and metrolingualism, which denotes ‘creative linguistic conditions across space and borders of culture, history and politics’ with a dialectic existence of fluidity and fixity (Otsuji & Pennycook 2010, p. 244).

While these ideas have made a significant contribution to transforming our understanding by pluralizing English (and other languages), its users, and linguistic practices, and by exploring complexities existing in the pluralized linguistic forms and practices, they seem to be consistent with a liberal intellectual tradition that celebrates diversity but insufficiently addresses issues of power that produce and perpetuate inequalities and injustices among Englishes, groups of English users, and different languages. This is where WE, ELF, and postcolonial performativity merge despite conceptual differences and tensions among them. The pluralist approaches to English can be compared with liberal and neoliberal approaches to multicultural education, to which I will turn now.

Liberal multiculturalism

In the field of education, multiculturalism has been a popular topic of scholarly discussion since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 70s in the United States as well as other nations like Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia (Banks 2009). While multiculturalism has been conceptualized in diverse ways, scholars agree that the current dominant approach is liberal multiculturalism, which has stemmed from a necessity to understand diverse populations of students in desegregated societies. Liberal multiculturalism in education has been concerned with the recognition and understanding of ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse groups of students and their families though respecting difference (May & Sleeter 2010). Such a well-intentioned approach has, however, been criticized in the political left (McLaren 1995; Nieto 1995; see Kubota 2004 in relation to language education).

First, in celebrating the superficial four Fs—food, fashion, festival, and folkdance, cultures in liberal multiculturalism tend to be essentialized as homogeneous entities. In an attempt to understand diverse groups such as blacks, Latinos, Asians, Arabs, and so on, these groups are characterized with unitary cultural traits, despite diversity within each group in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, and class, and so on. Moreover, such difference is sometimes exoticized or romanticized, leading to binarism and Othering. For example, Asian culture is often described as having such values as respect for authorities, discipline, and collectivism, whereas American culture is defined in terms of individualism, freedom, and self-reliance (e.g. Ariza 2006). In education, cultural essentialism is linked to a pedagogical urge to compromise the complexity of culture to facilitate understanding. Once an essentialist framework is established, culturally diverse students’ behaviors are understood in a prescriptive way.

Second, liberal multiculturalism displays a contradictory stance of respecting difference on the one hand and acknowledging sameness on the other. While cultural difference is celebrated in decontextualized ways, a typical reaction to difference encountered in everyday life is color-blindness that downplays difference, as seen in the following comments: ‘They are students to me not Hispanic, Mexican American, White, Black or other. I do not care about the color of their skin, I respect them and they respect me, that is what is important’ (Herrera & Morales 2009, p. 202). ‘You have to treat all kids the same, white, black, red, purple; you can’t have different rules for different kids’ (Larson & Ovando 2001, p. 65). Conceptually uniting commonality and difference is more proactively promoted in the discourse of cosmopolitanism in education (Hansen 2010). However, the focus on sameness or universality can easily slip into assimilation.

Third, liberal multiculturalism typically eschews explicit discussions about unequal relations of power among groups or injustices among social groups identified in terms of race, gender, class, sexuality, and other categories, which shape the everyday experiences of people. The above-mentioned color-blind discourse sees people from different backgrounds as individuals, while obscuring group-based struggles. The liberal stance to recognize and respect cultural difference further places all cultures on the level playing field, obscuring unequal relations of power among them and making the domination of white middle-class Christian culture invisible. The purpose of multicultural understanding tends to become simply appreciating diversity rather than recognizing and critiquing relations of domination and subordination that coexist with diversity.

Finally, from a political, economic, and historical perspective, liberal multiculturalism in the United States has been undergirded by a post-World War II US ideology of making the nation appear to embrace liberal antiracism as a national culture while establishing a capitalist hegemony in the world economy. Melamed (2006) calls this ideology racial liberalism and argues that it has functioned as a vehicle for establishing the capitalist hegemony and national identity as a world leader of an antiracist liberal nation. In other words, the United States deployed the ideology of racial liberalism in order to establish the moral legitimacy of its global leadership through such liberal projects as racial desegregation and the establishment of legal rights. However, under racial liberalism, which denies white racial domination, racial inequalities, as seen in poor social and economic conditions of African Americans for instance, are viewed as pathology rather than structural injustice. In this way, racial liberalism evades socialist engagement to ensure social and economic equity and justice for marginalized people.

The ideology of racial liberalism, which echoes liberal multiculturalism, has merged into neoliberal multiculturalism since the 1990s (Darder 2012; Lentin & Titley 2011; Melamed 2006). Neoliberalism has indeed become a powerful ideological tool to justify new forms of social and educational structures and practices, including the current strong emphasis on teaching and learning English worldwide. I now turn to neoliberalism and neoliberal multiculturalism.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism has recently been a topic of discussion in the field of applied linguistics with an inquiry focus on issues of language, nation, ethnicity, identity, and language teaching and learning (Block et al. 2012; Chun 2009; Heller 2011; Kubota 2011a; Park 2011). Neoliberalism, originally an economic theory, has functioned as an ideology and constituted social structures and practices since the global economic downturn in the 1970s. To build a stronger economy, a free market principle has promoted small government with fewer state restrictions to facilitate the private sector to control economic activities. Economy has been strengthened also by means of reducing labor costs through introducing flexible employment systems, such as outsourcing and increasing non-regular jobs. Not only are nations in competition for larger capital, each individual worker is expected to demonstrate a competitive edge. Thus, neoliberal individuals are held accountable for developing and maintaining their employability on their own. This accountability extends to public institutions whose effectiveness is scrutinized by selected evidence, as seen in the school accountability movement (Hursch 2005) and quantitative measures used for tenure/promotion reviews in higher education. Social welfare has been reduced based on the principle that individuals, rather than the government, are responsible for their own quality life. Here, individual workers are given the sole onus of remaining employable while independent businesses are given freedom to pursue their profit. Indeed, the principle of capitalism is supported by individualism, absolving the government from ensuring equitable distribution of wealth or solving collective problems (Lentin & Titley 2011). This social, political, and economic system has created disparities between the rich and the poor, triggering the recent worldwide Occupy Movement.

Neoliberalism posits that individual economic success is predicated on the development of human capital—knowledge and skills necessary for the so-called knowledge economy. A core component of human capital is communication skills, including language competency. The discourse of human capital is clearly aligned with the global emphasis on teaching and learning English, which is perceived as a global language of economic opportunity. As evident from the discussion thus far, language learning in the neoliberal society is dominated by pragmatic pur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Ttile
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword by Arjuna Parakrama
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: From World Englishes to Unequal Englishes
• Part I Approaches to Unequal Englishes
• Part II Englishes in Nexuses of Power and Inequality
• Part III Englishes in Changing Multilingual Spaces
• Part IV Englishes in Unequal Learning Spaces
• Index