Worlds and users of Asian Englishes

Abstract

One of the fundamental but generally unexamined assumptions in the study of language in society is the centrality of language in social life. This is understandable since the business of sociolinguistics–or linguistics in general–is the study of language. However, this de facto focus on language might have inadvertently obscured the placement of language in the complex everyday lives of speakers. What if we suspend asking questions about the role of language in speakers’ lives, and train our focus instead on how speakers live their lives? This paper seeks to pursue this inquiry in the context of the study of the pluralization of English as a global language, especially as it relates to the experiences of users of “Asian” Englishes. For at least four decades now, we have witnessed the burgeoning study of “Englishes” branch into different approaches while still sharing the same broad epistemological assumption: the centrality of “English” or “Englishes” in understanding the role of English as a global language. While this has certainly contributed to the deconstruction of many notions such as the native speaker and monolingualism, it has also led not only to the reification of other notions such as “nation,” but also to the erasure of individuals and their worlds from the study of Englishes. By training our focus on the worlds of speakers of Englishes, we can map out different trajectories of social relations which go beyond the boundaries of the “nation,” but also critically engage with it within its own imagined ideological boundaries by mobilizing notions of class and other categories within which the Englishes are embedded. In the end, this chapter extricates Asian Englishes from their national imaginaries and instead points towards their speakers and their worlds as the starting point of critical inquiry, thus reconfiguring “Asian Englishes” in terms of shared and differentiated histories of classed, racialized, and gendered life trajectories.