the 17th annual conference of the international association for world englishes: englishes in the...
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This article was downloaded by: [Temple University Libraries]On: 11 November 2014, At: 22:49Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Asian EnglishesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reng20
The 17th Annual Conference of theInternational Association for WorldEnglishes: Englishes in the World andthe World in EnglishesSaya Ikea
a University of Melbourne School of Languages and LinguisticsFaculty of Arts Victoria 3010, Australia E-mail:Published online: 11 Mar 2014.
To cite this article: Saya Ike (2011) The 17th Annual Conference of the International Associationfor World Englishes: Englishes in the World and the World in Englishes, Asian Englishes, 14:2,106-113, DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2011.10801313
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2011.10801313
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Conference Reviews
The 17th Annual Conference of the International Association for World Englishes: Englishes in the World and the World in Englishes
Saya IKE
The 17th Annual Conference of the International Association for World Englishes, known as “IAWE”, was held from 23-25 November 2011. The conference was hosted by Monash University, Melbourne, Australia—a university where a course of study on English as an International Language (EIL) is available for both undergraduate and graduate students. Given the conference theme “Englishes in the World and the World in Englishes”, Monash University seemed to be a perfect choice for the occasion.
Despite the worry about the unpredictable weather in Melbourne (prior to the conference, all the attendees received a kind warning email to be prepared for the four-seasons-in-one-day weather with a handy weather forecast for the conference dates), the conference started under a beautiful blue sky. In fact, the weather was nice and stable for the whole three days, which Prof. Farzad Sharifian, the conference chair, described as “God has been kind to us”.
The conference started with the keynote session by Andy Kirkpatrick, focusing on English use in China, one of the Expanding-Circle countries. Giving us a comprehensive picture of English education and people’s attitudes towards English in China, he explained how Internationalisation and Englishisation are intertwined, and then discussed cultural awareness when speaking in a different language. One such issue is that when one delivers knowledge in a different language, s/he may no longer be talking about the original knowledge, but rather may be delivering the knowledge through a different thinking process. Acquiring English and using it constantly may lead people to develop this Englishisation, and it may further influence their views and attitudes towards various concepts. Heavy emphasis on English, especially American English, in the Chinese education system as seen in the use of English as a medium of instruction in a number of universities, may also contribute to the Englishisation in China. Kirkpatrick gave us an example of a pitfall in the Chinese education system: all the students go through English classes at university, but not all students have to take Chinese classes. As a result, some important cultural concepts in Chinese such as the Chinese Rhetorical tradition in essay structure (i.e., indirect
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criticism and hierarchical structure) are never taught and are starting to be lost. However, based on his ongoing work on the Asian Corpus of English (ACE), a
corpus of developing Asian varieties of English, Kirkpatrick argued that Chinese English is definitely developing as a legitimate variety with its own cultural values and pragmatics. Not only Chinese English but all the other developing varieties of English have different forms and features according to their local (national) languages, and these features should not be criticised, because they represent cultural norms that are relevant in their communication contexts. With plentiful examples of nativisation and innovation of English in the Chinese context, ranging from preferred small talk topics to cultural expressions and creative text messages, Kirkpatrick made a convincing case that Chinese and English have influenced each other, and continue to do so linguistically, culturally, and pragmatically.
What is needed for successful communication is skills in understanding intercultural pragmatics, which he termed “communicacy”: the ability to understand and appreciate different cultural norms. Considering the significant number of Chinese English speakers, Kirkpatrick suggested that Chinese English is likely to be a dominant variety of English in the near future, and communicacy will be one of the key skills for speakers of both Inner-Circle varieties of English and Outer- and Expanding Circle varieties. He finished his seminar with two questions: Is Chinese becoming more Anglo? Is Chinese English becoming more rhetorically Chinese than Chinese? These questions are relevant in various contexts in the world where English has gained a powerful status as an international language and has become part of their national and other language repertoires. This was a great opening for the conference, and in fact, quite a number of individual paper presentations and panel presenters showed evidence that now our focus is gradually broadening from a single feature analysis to diverse cultural contextualisation of English.
Dr. Ahmar Mahboob of the University of Sydney, the first focus lecturer, discussed the issues relating to implementation of World Englishes concepts into educational settings. In explaining a Dynamic Approach to language proficiency, he argued that language proficiency is determined by the degrees of shared contextual knowledge and shared linguistic code. Using an X-Y graph, he gave examples. Migrants with a different L1 background, for example, may have a high proficiency in contextual knowledge but may not have a high degree of shared linguistic code, while visitors to the country may be highly proficient in terms of shared linguistic code, but may not have a high degree of contextual knowledge. For successful communication, therefore, one needs the ability to talk with people with different linguistic codes and contextual knowledge. This corresponds to Kirkpatrick’s communicacy.
He then went on to explain how WE and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)
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can be positioned at opposite ends of a continuum; WE represents divergence of the language—the language developed and used for a local audience, and ELF represents convergence of different varieties of the language with the purpose of achieving international interaction. The question is, then, whether we should ignore all the peculiarity if the language use is meant for the local audience. In other words, if learners have limited access to other varieties of English in their local contexts, and if the variety of English they speak marks their local identity, to what extent and how can we teach different contextual knowledge? In fact, this question was raised in many other papers and panels that followed during the conference.
The panel “World Englishes in Context” followed Mahboob’s lecture in the afternoon, and five young scholars presented rich examples of how complex it is to introduce WE in local contexts, language policy-making, and English teaching in particular. A paper presented by Namala Tilakaratna was an especially fine example of such cases. Ms. Tilakaratna discussed the different attitudes towards English by the Sri Lankan government and local users. In Sri Lanka, English works as a link language between local people with different language backgrounds, and codification of English is in progress. As part of supporting the variety development and stabilisation, the Sri Lankan government promoted Standard Sri Lankan English (SSLE), but met with an extremely negative public response. The paper clearly illustrated the difficulty each Outer- and Expanding-Circle community faces in deciding models of English for teaching, and recognising what the working variety actually is. Governments’ language policies and public needs/desires are not always the same, and Ruth Golden’s presentation, which looked at discrimination of non-native English speakers, along with age and race in English instructor job advertisements in the Middle East and Asia, proved that the public voice often reflects certain discrimination against non-native English speakers.
World Englishes research has come a long way, to where we now have theoretical approaches to the diversity of English in different contexts, but these individual papers make us think once again of the importance of looking at each language context in its own light, and thinking about the role of English as an International Language.
The second day started with a plenary session by the conference chair, Prof. Farzad Sharifian, on Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes. He argued the danger of relying only on certain criteria in identifying a variety. Existing criteria such as those of Kachru (1992), Schneider (2003), and Butler (1997) may work for varieties in certain contexts, but they are not universal. Taking Aboriginal English in Australia as an example, Sharifian argued that when a variety of English emerges, it may develop all the criteria that have been proposed, or may not develop any of the criteria. He argued that not meeting one or more criteria does not necessarily mean that there
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is not a variety, and that we need also to include cultural concepts of a variety in our WE paradigm. When he mentioned the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in relation to Cultural Linguistics, it was not very clear to me at first. My understanding of the hypothesis was that language and thoughts are closely connected and language may form thoughts, and thoughts and culture did not seem to have the same denotation. However, when thinking about how culture shapes our thoughts and views of the world, and thus thoughts and views shape our language, Sharifian’s argument became clearer: culture and thoughts are not the same notion, but they are still very closely related to each other and together contribute to language and/or variety development.
Having some kind of criteria for variety identification is useful for the sake of WE research, and thus Sharifian’s claim that we need to consider cultural conceptualisation as a ground for a variety seems a little edgy; cultural conceptualisation and cultural schema are not something that can be measured or categorised. However, he has successfully pointed out that every language variety develops in a different cultural context, and that variety development not only relies on colonial history or social/political decisions, but also on the users’ cultural cognition. Sharifian admitted that conceptual metaphors that are culture specific may lead to misunderstanding and communication breakdown, but he also emphasised that they should not interfere with variety development. Instead of looking at the language core, or merely describing the language use, we should look at the cultural concepts behind their use.
His session opened up an extremely lively discussion with the audience, which truly demonstrated the real advantage of scholars coming together in one place and sharing the moment. It was interesting to see how people with the same interest, World Englishes, can have different opinions about conceptualisation of language and approaches to it. It was also interesting to see how much we care about naming and labelling things; there were rather heated exchanges of opinions about Sharifian mentioning “descriptive linguists” in his session, the term that has shifted to “documentation linguists” in recent years. Although this instance does not seem to have much relevance in the mainstream WE paradigm, such a discussion may prove the importance of WE. A new variety of English can be legitimatized by properly recognising it as a variety, but a different approach with a name for the variety with a negative connotation (e.g., Interlanguage, bad English, broken English) can also change people’s attitudes towards the variety.
The issue of cultural conceptualisations in teaching EIL was also discussed in the panel “Critical reflections on teaching English as an International Language” in the afternoon. With a sophisticated use of technology (by integrating recorded speech into PowerPoint slides), Melanie van den Hoven, who could not be physically present, still managed to give her presentation on how we can develop students’ Intercultural
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Communication Competence (ICC). Making students aware of the features of their own variety can help them understand pragmatic/semantic differences in intercultural communication. Teaching EIL is a useful thing, however, making students aware of different cultural conceptualisations is another thing, and it is much harder to teach in EFL classrooms. The two questions we need to consider are how students can become aware of cultural conceptualisations, and how students can apply the knowledge to their intercultural communication. As Prof. James D’Angelo of Chukyo University proved in his survey with Japanese university students who are majoring World Englishes, it is considerably difficult to teach WE concepts in an EFL environment, where American-English-dominant ELT materials have a powerful impact on students’ attitudes towards English in general. His survey also showed that the majority of the Japanese university students, even in the World Englishes department, preferred American English as the best-suited English model. However, it was comforting to know that educated Japanese English came in second in the same survey, however small the number of such responses was. Integration of teaching cultural conceptualisations into TEIL is an open field for further discussion and development.
The second focus lecture by Prof. Ian Malcolm of Edith Cowan University was on various issues of Aboriginal English in Australia. With its unique historical background, Aboriginal English does not fit into any of Kachru’s Three Circles. Geographically Australia is an Inner-Circle country, and as Sharifian mentioned in the earlier session, Aboriginal English does not have a colonial history. Malcolm explained the history of Aboriginal English: it started as a New South Wales pidgin in the late 18th century, and was used as a Lingua Franca in interactions between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals. It has often been regarded as a non-standard form of Australian English, or (rather extremely) an Australian English dialect.
Although Aboriginal English does not have a typical British/American colonial history, it does have a history of being discriminated against and treated unfairly in Australia. Therefore, issues relating to whether or not to speak Aboriginal English remain controversial in contemporary Australia. Among them are fear of becoming a white, equality in education, issues of social/cultural identity markers, and exclusion of Aboriginal English in Australian English discussions. While the theme of the lecture was a very interesting one, it was unfortunate that his minimal use of technology somehow lessened the audience’s ability to focus on the content.
The third and the final day began with a second plenary session, by Dr. Alan Firth of Newcastle University. He started his session by outlining three major research fields: Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Conversation Analysis (CA) and World Englishes (WE). While each research field is rich and valuable in its territory, Firth pointed out the weaknesses in each research field. SLA has long focused on
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Native Speaker (NS) input and set native competence as the target for learners, ignoring the actual interaction and likely situations where English is used as a Lingua Franca. CA, on the other hand, has emphasised working with real conversations and developed data collecting methodologies and data analysis strategies, but it lacks techniques for understanding and analysing L2 talk (i.e., ELF/EIL interactions). WE has a deep understanding of EIL/ELF concepts, but does not have sufficient methods or micro-macro conceptualisation. Firth emphasised the benefit of scholars with different research fields working together to accurately analyse NNS-NNS (ELF) interactions, using his study of call centre interactions in ELF settings. By using CA approaches to ELF interaction and taking perspectives other than mainstream SLA, WE is able to look at ELF interactions in terms of creativity and communication strategies.
Mentioning the earlier claim of ELF as a variety of English by influential ELF scholars such as Jennifer Jenkins (2000) and Barbara Seidlhofer (2001), Firth argued that ELF is not a product but a process; ELF never achieves a stabilised form, because ELF is not a form but a function that is constantly emerging and varying. Therefore, he went on to say that ELF can never be fully codified, and can only be described as emerging norms within domains of norms. Considering the globalised world we are currently in, Firth argued that all the communities are becoming ELF communities. Thus, he concluded his session by stating that the ELF research field and WE research field should work towards convergence, rather than divergence. Just as integration of CA methodologies into WE research created wonderful analysis and realisation of ELF interaction, there needs to be cooperation between ELF and WE for better overall ELT research and identifying pedagogical implications.
Individual paper presentations also discussed pedagogical implications as well as teacher training programs from a WE perspective. People in many of the ELF communities in the Outer- and Expanding-Circles have their first English encounters as learners of English rather than users. Textbook analyses presented by Setsuko Oda and by Yoko Nakagawa, and teacher training program related issues presented by Aya Matsuda, and discussed by van den Hoven in the panel “Critical Reflections on Teaching English as an International Language”, are just as important as looking at and identifying the features of emerging individual varieties of English. It should be emphasised at this point, however, that there were many individual presentations on variety-specific research focusing on certain features, which all were equally fascinating in their detailed observation and analysis.
The last focus lecture was delivered by Prof. Pam Peters of Macquarie University. The title of the lecture “Australian English or English in Australia?” somewhat reminded us of the conference theme “Englishes in the World and the World in Englishes,” and nicely fit into the role of the last focus lecture.
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While Prof. Sherifian and Prof. Malcolm discussed the unstable position of Aboriginal English in Australia, Peters further questioned the position of Australian English as an established standard variety of English. Despite the fact that Australia belongs to the Inner Circle according to Kachru’s Three-circle model, Australia is positioned in Phase 4, endonormative stabilisation, in Schneider’s (2003) Dynamic model. Looking at the rather young history of Australian English, Peters discussed the change in people’s attitudes towards Australian English and changes in the variety in the past four decades. Since the establishment of the Australian government style manual in 1987, and through codification of Australian English, in which Peters herself has long been involved, Australian people have actively marked their creativity and innovation in linguistic features, such as the use of unique discourse markers and culturally specific expressions. Meanwhile, Australian people continue to look up to the dual standard bearers: British English and American English, especially in written contexts, in spite of Australian English having already been codified and established as a variety.
Peters then argued that Aboriginal English, marked by its basilectal nature and distinctive grammatical/phonological features, could actually show evidence of differentiation (i.e., Phase 5 in the Dynamic model), and once again raised an issue of editing: How much should Aboriginal English be corrected? This had been the recurring theme in many of the keynote speeches and individual presentations.
It seemed that, now that we have come to an agreement that English varieties are developing with varying degrees of distinctiveness in their own local contexts, the next question we are facing is how we can, or should, implement this new concept into ELT practice not only in ESL/EFL settings but also in L1 English settings where vernacular and/or colloquial varieties of English hold strong cultural values. It is true that ELT practice is not the only focus in the WE paradigm, and as Prof. Sharifian repeatedly emphasised, we should consider the cultural conceptions in each context with care and respect. Nevertheless, as an English educator myself, it seemed that all of the lectures, sessions and presentations had some implications for needs analysis: what we need to look for in our teaching practice as well as in theoretical approaches.
Every attendee of the 17th Annual Conference of the International Association for World Englishes came with their insightful ideas and opinions. The conference helped us stimulate and refine our own thoughts, to learn more about different cultural contexts, and further develop our understanding of the WE paradigm. With the much-anticipated announcement of the 18th IAWE conference, which will be co-held by City University of Hong Kong and Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou from December 5-9, 2012, the 17th IAWE conference closed as a great success. As quoted in the beginning, the conference chair Prof. Sharifian humorously commented
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that “God has been kind to us” at the end of the closing ceremony, referring to the weather. He then added that “if it rains tomorrow, it’s not our fault—the conference is officially over at this moment,” and sure enough, it was pouring rain the next day.
References
Butler, S. (1997). Corpus of English in Southeast Asia: Implications for a regional dictionary. In
M. L. Bautista (Ed.), English is an Asian language: The Philippine context (pp. 103-124).
Sydney: Macquarie Library.
Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language: New models, new
norms, new goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kachru, B. B. (Ed.). (1992). The other tongue: English across cultures (2nd ed.). Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Schneider, E. W. (2003). The Dynamics of New Englishes: From identity construction to dialect
birth. Language, 79(2), 233-281.
Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a
Lingua Franca. International journal of applied linguistics, 11(2), 133-158.
Saya IKEUniversity of MelbourneSchool of Languages and LinguisticsFaculty of ArtsVictoria 3010, AUSTRALIA
E-mail: [email protected]
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