English in the Languages of Cultural Encounters

Abstract

II WANT TO CONSIDER THE IDEA OF THE CULTURAL ENCOUNTER between English and other languages, languages of others, but at same time also to think about English as a language of cultural encounter, an idea which connects to Ngugi wa Thiong'o's argument that translation is the language of languages.1 Related to this are ways in which English literature has for some time been marked even in categories used to define it by other cultures: world literatures in English, anglophone, postcolonial, Commonwealth literature(s). All these ways of describing literatures in English written outside Britain have particular implications, but general assumption, as with 'English literature', is that they are written, or read, in English.A simple example of how this cashes out in practice would be Conference of Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS). English is official language of Commonwealth, which hosts, in addition to ACLALS, organizations such as English Speaking Union, whose formation pre-dates Commonwealth itself. Any country that wishes to be a member of Commonwealth - even those members such as Mozambique, which have no historical links to British Empire - is required to accept rule that English language is means of Commonwealth communication. ACLALS conferences rarely infringe this rule: in my experience, even in India, all papers are given in English. It is noticeable, on other hand, that name of organization 'the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies' deliberately avoids specifying English as official language which ACLALS studies. I cannot find any information on any of many Commonwealth websites about how many languages are spoken in its fifty-three countries by its nearly two billion citizens, about thirty percent of world's population. However, website 'ethnologue' claims that there are 6,909 living languages in world, so with thirty percent of world's population, we might guess that on a proportional basis Commonwealth hosts around two thousand languages.2The Commonwealth Writer's Prize, by contrast, considers books in only one of them: i.e. books written in English, official language of Commonwealth. To get a prize, you have to write in English, to be a producer of 'English' literature in some sense. But what exactly, aspiring writers might ask, is English of English literature? In order to answer this question, I thought I would start at an obvious place, with a few examples of mainstream canonical English literature, drawn from writers I studied when I was 'reading', as they say, for my BA in 'English Language and Literature' at Oxford University - surely place, if anywhere, that represents heartland of English, of pure English English and English literature proper.My first example is a poem I was given to read in my very first term, on arrival in Oxford.Oft him anhaga are gebideoMetudes miltse beah be modceariggeond lagulade longe sceoldehreran mid hondum hrimcealde sa;,wadan wraxlastas: wyrd bio ful ara;d!Swa CW2CO eardstapa. . .3So here, it seems, is authentic English literature, straight from Oxford BA course on English Language and Literature. Perhaps someone should try submitting a book for Commonwealth Writer's Prize written in Anglo-Saxon. You might object, though, that claim by Anglo-Saxonists to call their object of study 'Old English' forms part of a particular, now historical ideology about origins of English in Anglo-Saxonism.4 So let us look at something more recent. I could cite some Chaucer, whose language resembles modern English a little more than poet of The Wanderer, but I thought John Donne might be fairer as a more comparatively recent canonical figure of English literature:Qvot dos haec Linguists perfetti Disticha feront,Tot cuerdos Statesmen, hic livre fara tunc. …