The Nationalist Ideology of Monolingualism in Postcolonial Theory

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AbstractThe ideology of a monolingual representation of a nation has been deeply ingrained in European nationalist thinking since the late eighteenth century. This European nationalist ideology of ‘one nation, one language’ is also evident in the most prevalent theories of postcolonial Englishes. The World Englishes paradigm stresses the global heterogeneity of English captured as homogenous national Englishes. The Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes describes an evolutionary process in postcolonial nations away from a colonial standard to new homogeneous national norms. This chapter shows that the theoretical assumption of linguistic national homogeneity (‘one nation, one English’) is central to both models. In contrast, the linguistic reality of most speakers in postcolonial nations is highly multilingual/-dialectal. For example, in Kenya, English coexists with Swahili, other indigenous languages, and the local hybrid Sheng. In Jamaica, the local standard variety of English coexists with Jamaican Creole. In both countries, speakers combine different languages and/or varieties of English, which together are perceived to be important for the expression of a national identity. Future theories on postcolonial Englishes, this contribution suggests, need to move away from European monolingual nationalist ideologies, take the users’ perspective seriously, and account for postcolonial linguistic diversity, which includes indigenous languages and different varieties of English.