World Englishes: Agony and Ecstasy

Abstract

The title of this paper is restricted to Englishes,1 but the phenomenon I propose to discuss applies to most languages of wider communication (e.g., Spanish, Portuguese, Tamil, Hindi-Urdu, French, Chinese) and also to languages of not-so-wide communication (e.g., Dutch, Swedish, Korean, and Serbo-Croatian). All these languages are in varying degrees pluricentric;2 they have multilinguistic identities, multiplicity of norms, both endocentric and exocentric, and distinct sociolinguistic histories. However, the pluricentricity of English is overwhelming, and unprecedented in linguistic history. It raises issues of diversification, codification, identity, creativity, crosscultural intelligibility, and of power and ideology.3 The universalization of English and the power of this language have come at a price; for some, the implications are agonizing, while for others they are a matter for ecstasy. In my discussion of these two reactions to the spread and functions of English, I would like to discuss ecstasy first and then come to the other part, the agony. But before I do this, my choice of the term 'Englishes' calls for an explanation: Why world and not world English?4 The answer to this question involves linguistic, attitudinal, ontological, and pragmatic explanations. The term 'Englishes' is indicative of distinct identities of the language and literature. Englishes symbolizes variation in form and function, use in linguistically and culturally distinct contexts, and a range of variety in literary creativity. And, above all, the term stresses the WE-ness among the users of English, as opposed to us vs. them (native and nonnative). I believe that the traditional concept of us vs. them used in describing

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