540 week 2

Transgressive theories and performativity around language
Week 2

PART I (5:30-7:30)
 Blog Discussion: Questions, “rich points”, reflections
 Theory and ideology
 Gee Chapter 1
 English(es) and Globalization
 Pennycook Ch. 1 and 2
 Articles: Matsuda & Matsuda, Bombase, Bolton
• Documentary: The Global Tongue: English
PART II (7:50-9:00)
• Transgressive theories: Language as performance
 Pennycook Ch. 3 and 4
 Sign-up for Presentations

 Theories are ground beliefs and claims to know things: “A
set of generalizations about an area” (p. 13) “All claims and
beliefs are ideological” (p. 20)

 James Gee “Theory and meaning are moral matters” (p. 20)

 Explicit theory vs tacit theory. Holding non-primary
theories. We have ethnical obligations to explicate out
theories.

Reflection: What’s your (evolving) theory of language and
literacy?

 For me, the readings this week remain connected by the
idea that the study of language must be an ethical
endeavor, grounded in the notion that the many languaged
beings we share our world with not only stand as equally
"correct" in their semiotic systems, but also equally agented
to communicate through them. Such an endeavor, as
Matsuda and Matsuda note, is particularly complicated, as
"[t]he dominance of codified varieties of English is
constantly being reified by well-intended teachers and
editors who try to help students and authors learn features
of standardized written English" (371). In other words, in
an effort to help students "compete" with native speakers
on a global scale, teachers often end up reproducing deeply
held beliefs that the English language is a great equalizer.

 How is English as a global language related to cultural
forms and practices? Does its cultural spread make it a
culturally neutral language? Is the spread of English
part of the homogenization of the world, or is it part of
the greater diversification and heterogenization of the
world? How and why does a set of cultural practices
such as hip-hop spread across the world? (p. 5)

 Write down two (or more) ideas/theories that strike
you as important

 Write down two (or more) questions/critiques

(How are these ideas connected to social justice issues?
What are the authors pointing out? What are they
missing?)

 English language has always been on the move:

1) The expansion of British colonial power which
peaked by the end of 19th century

2) The emergence of United States as the major
economic power of the 20th century.

 http://www.uni-
due.de/SVE/VE_SpreadOfEnglish.htm

9

 Imperial Framework: Linguistic Imperialism
(Phillipson, Tollefson, Cooke, Skutnabb-Kangas)

 Pluralistic Framework: World Englishes, Global
Englishes, English as an international language
(Jenkins, Kachru, Gradoll, Quirk, McArthur)

 “the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by
the establishment and continuous reconstitution of
structural and cultural inequalities between English and
other languages” (p. 47)

 ““celebration of the growth of English” is tied to “an
uncritical endorsement of capitalism, its science and
technology, a modernization ideology, monolingualism as
a norm, ideological globalization and
internationalization, transnationalization, the
Americanization and homogenization of world
culture, linguistic, culture and media imperialism”
(Phillipson, 1999, p. 274)

 Periphery:
1) “countries that require English as an
international link”—
Japan, Korea, Italy, Turkey
2) “and those who use it intranational
purposes”—India, Singapore (former colonial
countries)
 Center:
Countries in the Inner circle (USA, UK, New
Zealand, Australia)
12

 English is best taught monolingually
 The ideal of English teacher is a native
speaker
 The earlier English is taught the better the
results are.
 If other languages are used much, standards
of English will drop.
 The more English is taught the better the
results are.
13

 There are significant differences between British and
American colonial language policies.

 Recognizing the agency of colonial nations to impose
English while overlooking the agency of learners
Second language users can be seen as agents in its
spread (Brutt-Griffler).

 Role of English in African contexts (Bisong, 1995)
Debate between Phillipson-Bisong and Brutt-Griffler-
Phillipson (See the handout)

 A more dynamic exploration of global Englishes.
 There should be different standards for different
contexts of use.
 Definition of Standard English should be determined
locally.
 A need to re-examine traditional notions of
codification and standardization (Kachru, 1985)

 “In my view, the global diffusion of English has taken
an interesting turn: the native speakers of this
language seem to have lost the exclusive prerogative to
control its standardization; in fact, if current statistics
are any indication, they have become a minority. This
socio-linguistic fact must be accepted and its
implication recognized. What we need to know are
new paradigms and perspective for linguistic and
pedagogical research and for understanding the
linguistic creativity in multilingual situations across
cultures (Kachru, 1985, p. 30)

 In this context, I could not help but to think about the ways in which
my native language, Spanish, and English merge with one another and
collaborate to the creation of a “new language:” some kind of Spanglish
that only becomes meaningful whenever I interact with other
individuals whose native language is also Spanish and English is their
L2. As a result of the interaction between these two languages, my
conversations with other Spanish expatriates are filled with English
words that are somehow adapted to the Spanish language, not only in
terms of pronunciation or spelling, but also in grammatical and
syntactical terms. A great example of this is out transformation of the
English verb “to hang out,” which frequently turns into a “Spanish
word” as we say things such as “Vamos a hanguear” (Let’s hang out). In
this case, the verb “to hang out” loses its final particle “out” and is
submitted to: a) the Spanish conjugation of regular verbs; b) the
spelling of the Spanish g-sound rather than the Spanish j-sound
(which in a way is similar to the English “h” in words such as
hot/hospital) and so it partially adapts to the English pronunciation of
the “ng” particle.

 I guess this “weirding [of] English,” is also some kind of
what Kingsley Bolton explains as “bilinguals creativity”
(461); but again, while Bolton coins this term within
literary artistic terms, such is not the purpose behind the
Spanish sentence “Vamos a hanguear.” What
is, nevertheless, clear, is that this process of language
transformation has – after so many years in the U.S.–
affected the way in which I communicate with others, and
consequently, my persona. It has affected my relationship
with both the Spanish and the English languages, since not
every time I speak Spanish is my audience fluent in English
too. This linguistic contact zone, then, turns into an
obstacle (or advantage?) upon which I stumble quite more
often than I ever thought I would. And yet, I can’t wait to
see which other new words I get to transform as I keep on
with my linguistic performance.

 English language complex (ELC)—McArthur (2003)

Metropolitan Standards, Colonial Standards, Regional
Dialects, Social dialects, Pidgin Englishes, Creole
Englishes, EFL, Jargon Englishes, Hybrid Englishes.

 World Standard Spoken English (WSSE)—
Crystal, 1997

 What are the implications of pluricentricity? How’s
bilingual’s creativity a manifestation of this hybridity
used in writing?

 Should efforts be paid to maintain a central standard
English (EIL standards?), or should different varieties
of English be acknowledged and legitimized (and in
what ways)?

 Is what we are now experiencing with globalization
and English fundamentally new?

 The issue of intelligibility, comprehensibility and interpretability

 Innovation versus norms

 English only in the U.S: Immigrant
Englishes, Ebonics, Spanglish, Chicana etc.

 Creole Developments, sub-varieties

 Teaching and testing World Englishes

 The ownership of English: E.G. Native vs Non0native speaking
teachers (NNEST) in ELT

 To what extend do you agree with Matsuda &Matsuda’s
claims when they say “To not make the dominant codes
available to students who seek them would be doing
disservice to students, leading to their economic and social
marginalization” (p. 372)?
 Do you think we are creating a binary discourses in writing
classrooms such as:
“WE for literary texts and SE/ME for “serious” texts”
“WE for home; SE for school”
“WE for discoursal features; ME for grammar”
(Canagarajah, 2006, p. 594)
Are we sanitizing academic texts written in WE?

 …even the term world Englishes suggest that there is an
authentic category of “English” from which these other category
of world Englishes deviate. Kingsley Bolton argues that creativity
has provided an authenticating platform for world Englishes. He
says that, “colonialism and its aftermath had given rise to new
literatures that were redefining the canon of English literature”
(458).However, this acceptance has led to enforced
dichotomization between creative writing and other forms of
writing. Hence Chinua Achebe can alter the English language in
Things Fall Apart to narrate a unique Igbo experience, but when
Achebe writes essays he does not have the same privileges. From
where I stand, “colonialism and its aftermath” has given rise to
this forced dichotomy and lead to a forceful attachment of
“bilingual creativity” to the English “canon”.

 What I am trying to say is that as a nonnative speaker of
English, I cannot imagine English in the same terms as
Pennycook when he says: “English is a translocal language, a
language of fluidity and fixity that moves across, while becoming
embedded in, the materiality of localities and social relations.
English is bound up with transcultural flows, a language of
imagined communities and refashioning identities” (21). Using
English in Ghana or in the United States remains an oppressive
advantage because of my personal and collective experiences
with English. Though this view forms part of the same ones that
Pennycook critiques as bounded up with the past, my
experiences reinforce English as a language that predetermines
my engagement with dominant power structures. Like James
Joyce so aptly captures through Stephen Dedalus in the Portrait
of the Young Man as an Artist, “my soul frets at the shadow of
[this] language.”

 How much room is there for creativity in our classrooms when students
have been indoctrinated to have very little creative engagement in prior
educational settings that teach to standardized tests? (Lisa)

 How, then, do we as teachers and scholars and researchers reclaim for
both ourselves and our students the linguistically diverse resources
offered us by globalization? (Moria)

 Why are my standards for academic/professional language still one
way, while those for creative pursuits are another? (Erin)

 I feel that I'm caught in this divide which is now affecting all
instructors who deal with "cultural" subjects involving a literary
"canon" - at what point do we focus on what's "right," and to what
degree do we tell students that they must learn to independently
describe the shifting norms in our increasingly global world? (Ryan)

Reimagining language is reimagining modernity
(Foucault, 1970)—How does modernity produce structures of
inequality?

“Crossing” (Rampton, 1999): how members of certain groups
use forms of speech from other groups –or ‘styling the Other.

“ways in which people use language and dialect as discursive
practice to appropriate, explore, reproduce, or challenge
influential images and stereotypes of groups that they don’t
themselves belong to “ (Rampton, 1999, p. 421)
Semiotic reconstruction and performativity,

 The Global Tongue: English

Which of the issues we discussed appear in this
documentary?

 A shift from an “autonomous” view of language to a
more “ideological” model.
 Critical Applied linguistics as a “movable praxis” (p.
37). Anti-disciplinary and transgressive knowledge.

What’s the shift that Pennycook talking about? How’s he
using the notion of “transgressive”?

 Bhaba ( 1994): third-space and hybridity. “Difference is
neither One nor the Other but something else
besides, in-between” (p. 219)
 Transculturation practices point to the ways in which
those apparently on the receiving end of cultural and
linguistic domination
select, appropriate, refashion, and return new cultural
and linguistic forms through complex interactive
cultural groups” (p. 47)
 Pennycook urges us to think about the “Alternative
spaces of cultural production” while “never losing
sight of the uneven terrain” (p. 47)

A translingual approach to writing:

 What might these alternative spaces look like in a
writing classroom?

Pennycook Chapter 4 (Move to week 3?)

 Chomskian and Sassurean competence (the abstract
underlying ability to use language) and performance
9actual realization) divide in 60’s and 70’s- massive
influence on language pedagogy!
 In late 70’s many linguists including Halliday rejects this
distinction. Dell Hymes: Communicative Competence.
Debunking the ideal speech community.

 It’s in the performance that we make the difference and
challenge the centrality of competence over performance.
“We perform identities with words; we also perform
languages with words” (p. 73)
 Somatic Turn

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