Author: Braj B Kachru
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 333
ISBN/UPC (if available): 019567833-8
Description
This volume provides a contemporary record of the development and use of the English language across Asia. It discusses the language from both literary and linguistic perspectives, highlighting its flexibility, vibrancy, and inclusive nature.
Society and language across Asia, argues Braj Kachru, are parting ways with the traditional canons of the Raj. New metaphors are being used to identify the emerging nation states - India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, to name a few - ' the roaring Asian tiger', 'the awakened giant', and 'the yawing elephant'.
And the newly awaken34d Asia has heralded in the 'Asian age'. Consequently, the English language has been re-crafted at various linguistic, soci9logical, and cultural levels and relocated in an Asian milieu.
English was once perceived to be a colonial language, waiting to be discarded from a pluralistic Asian subcontinent in the 1940s. But - gradually, unexpectedly, and rather interestingly - what actually happened is that the language turned into a linguistic commodity with nativized ideological and functional reincarnations in Asian contexts.
Written in an accessible and engaging style, Asian Englishes will be useful for students, teachers, and researchers of English both as a classroom text as well as a resource volume. It will also be interesting to a lay audience curious to find out about the pre-eminence of the English language in societies and cultures across Asia.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Phonetic symbols and transcription
Map of Greater Asia
INTRODUCTION: Anglophone Asia
Part I: Contexts
Asian Englishes
South Asian Schizophrenia
Past Imperfect: The Japanese Agony
PART II: Convergence
Englishization: Asia and beyond
Absent Voices
PART III: Mantras
Medium and Mantra
Talking back and writing back
PART IV: Predator
Killing or accessory or murder?
PART V: Pedagogy
Contexts of Pedagogy and identity
PART VI: Afterword
Present tense: Making sense of Anglophone Asia
Notes
Bibliography
Index