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World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition: Introduction
... Finally, WE is critiqued to ignore rich and dynamic linguistic practices that may reflect crossing borders between languages. At the same time, there have been calls for WE to draw on recent developments in Second Language Acquisition (see Bolton and De Costa 2018) to establish dialogues and synergistic relationships between the two sub-disciplines (De Costa and Crowther 2018). ...
The ideological role of English, beyond its instrumental value, is reported to be immense. British colonial rule deployed English as an ideological tool which facilitated colonial subjugation and religious conversion. Connections between English and evangelism have widened in the postcolonial and globalising world, leading to labelling English as a missionary language. Acknowledging the association of English with Christianity, scholars have called for examining relationships between English and other religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. The relationship of English with Islam is especially complex. While its global spread has encouraged Muslims to utilise it as an Islamic language, English has also been used by the post-9/11 West for moderating Islam. How have Muslim-majority societies responded to English in this complex ideological and geopolitical terrain? How do they manage English teaching in their secular and religious streams of education? This article examines how education policymakers in Bangladesh have dealt with the imperatives of secularisation for mainstream education and de-secularisation for religious education by localising English along the line of world Englishes. Taking the perspective of language as situated practice, I illustrate how the same English language textbooks are used for different ideological goals, with educational, social, and political implications.
... Varieties like Singaporean English are mostly not defined as L1 Englishes similar to, for example, British or American English because they did not originate in the nations that, from a western and European perspective, were considered the cultural and linguistic centers from which English emerged and developed during the British colonial period. In addition, such varieties are not norm-providing in the sense that they are not used as a model for learners of English [10,53,54]. Indeed, while an increasing number of Singaporeans view English as their L1 [52,54], and English is an official language in Singaporean education, academia, law, government, and business, it has a separate, functional, status from Malay, Mandarin or Tamil. ...
How well L2 English is understood and how L2 English speakers perceive one another within varying communication contexts has been studied relatively rarely, even though most speakers of English in the world are L2 speakers. In this matched-guise experiment (N = 1699) the effects of L1 and L2 English accents and communication context were tested on speech understandability (intelligibility, comprehensibility, interpretability) and speaker evaluations (status, affect, dynamism). German (N = 617), Spanish (N = 540), and Singaporean listeners (N = 542) were asked to evaluate three accents (Dutch-accented English, standard British English, standard American English) in three communication contexts (Lecture, Audio Tour, Job Pitch). The main finding is that the Dutch-accented English accent was understood as well as the two L1 English accents. Furthermore, Dutch-accented English evoked equally positive evaluations to the two L1 English accents in German listeners, and more positive evaluations than the two L1 English accents in Spanish and Singaporean listeners. These results suggest that accent training aimed at achieving an L1 English accent may not always be necessary for (Dutch) English language learners, especially when they are expected to mostly interact with other L2 speakers of English. More generally, our results indicate that L2 English speakers’ understanding and their evaluation of L1 and L2 Englishes would not seem to reflect traditional language norms. Instead, they seem to reflect the socio-cultural embedding of a language norm in a Lingua Franca English speech community that does not view accent varieties as a hindrance to successful communication.
This Element offers a comprehensive account of the unprecedented spread of English as a global language by taking historical, sociolinguistic, and pedagogical perspectives. To realize this mission, it opens with an accessible discussion of the historical trajectory of the English language with qualitative and quantitative connections to its contemporary diversity in terms of forms, roles, functions, uses, users, and contexts of English as a global and multilingual franca. Built upon this synchronic-diachronic symbiosis, the discussion is complemented by an overview of major analytical paradigms and trends that promote systematical scrutiny of the English language and its sociolinguistic and educational implications. It ends by showcasing instructional practices, recommendations, reflective questions, and future directions for language educators to revamp their beliefs, commitments, and practices considering the changing needs and realities of the present-day global sociolinguistic ecology and individuals therein.
It is argued that there is a paradigm gap that has prevented research on second-language acquisition (SLA) theory and indigenized varieties of English (IVEs) from making substantive contributions to each other. While it is true that studies of IVEs and their acquisition have been impressionistic (non-empirical) and often atheoretical, the lack of rapprochement is also due to SLA theory's excessive reliance for its models on acquisition in native-speaker environments and ignorance of the dynamics of language use in multilingual settings. This has resulted in the neglect and misunderstanding of IVEs. It is shown that IVEs represent a number of significant sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic variables, the investigation of which will put SLA theory on firmer theoretical ground and give it greater explanatory power.
Deleuze and Guattari discuss the rhizome as being "absolutely different from roots and radicles" 6. The rhizome is explained via principles. 1 and 2: connection and heterogeneity.: "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be". Principle 3: "Principle of multiplicity" "There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines". Principle 4: "Principle of asignifying rupture" "There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome." Principles 5 and 6: Principle of cartography and decalcomania: Where traditional thought is 'tracing', a rhizome is a map. Tracing involves laying onto reality the pattern of structure, itself a construct. "The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious". They take the term plateau from Gregory Bateson, it refers to a sustained intensity. "We call a 'plateau' any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome".
"Write with slogans: Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant!"