From unequal Englishes to the praxis of decolonial fissure: Englishes in the Indonesian periphery

Abstract

The idea of unequal Englishes has of late been proposed with vim and vigor to unravel the presence of the unequal spread of the nativized variants of Englishes, especially in Kachurian Outer and Expanding circles. The notion envisions the possibility that any emerging varieties of Englishes in these circles are considered more legitimate than any other emerging variants and are therefore valorized. By contrast, there is also the possibility that certain variants are considered less legitimate, making them stigmatized and demoted to a lower status. This results in unequal Englishes. I argue in this article that the notion of unequal Englishes (a) overlooks the mundanity of vibrant multilingual practices in a certain locus of enunciation, which thus renders the term ‘unequal’ dubious, (b) still succumbs to the idea of structural inequalities within a regional linguistic context and (c) undermines the performative potentials of individual language speakers to construct their own versions of Englishes. By illustrating instances of the everydayness of linguistic practices in several life domains from a specific locus of enunciation (i.e. multilingual and multicultural Indonesia), the article proposes the notion of ‘the praxis of decolonial fissure’ (Walsh 2018), which depicts the grassroot performativity.

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