African Englishes and Creative Writing

The functional and pragmatic contexts of world Englishes

“…What began as Braj Kachru's (, ) examination of the bilingual's creativity in the context of contact literatures in English in 1983, and the processes of pragmatic and discoursal nativization and stylistic innovations exhibited in the literary works of Chinua Achebe, Amos Tutuola, and Raja Rao led to serious study in the literary creativity of world Englishes, and the contact between English and new cultural contexts. Illustrating the bilingual's creativity through the literary experimentation by writers of the ‘new literatures’ in the Outer Circle opened up discussions on multicanonicity and literary creativity: nativization of context, cohesion, and rhetorical strategies; postcolonial literature and world fiction (Bolton, ); transcreation of culturally embedded speech functions in African English, Indian English, and Southeast Asian English literatures (Bokamba, , ; Thumboo, ); textual competence and interpretation (Nelson, , ); speech acts in world English fiction (D'souza, , ; Y. Kachru, ; Nelson, ; Valentine, , ); speech acts in discourse (Y. Kachru, , , ; Pandharipande, ; Sridhar, ; Valentine, , ), and the (re)construction of gender identity (Valentine, , ).…”

Re‐Englishing ‘flat‐world’ fiction

“…Via multiple strategies of literary outsourcing (Pandey, , p. 63), and site specific canonicity in which the center decides what is hot and what is not, we witness not a diminishing of startificational arrangements per se, but rather a renewed reinforcement of asymmetries in cultural price fixing. As Bokamba () notes in spite of the ‘estimated 2,035 languages’ (p. 332) which serve as the vernacular of the masses, elite writers continue to publish works in an English whose consumers continue to be the educated consumers of ‘elsewhere.’ Even more alarming is the peripherization and overt sidelining of Africa in zones of soft power production in the post‐global economy. As Bokamba (, p. 331) compellingly notes, with ‘only one per cent’ of scholarly citations coming from Africa, in contrast to, ‘Ninety‐five percent of all books published [which] are textbooks and not fiction and poetry,’ most have to concede that Africa's marginalization and ‘almost complete exclusion from knowledge creation and production worldwide’ has important ramifications – econometric outcomes which become crucial elements in any analysis of so‐called ‘flat‐world’ fiction where production zones remain firmly housed in the so‐called hub (Pandey, ).…”

“…As Bokamba () notes in spite of the ‘estimated 2,035 languages’ (p. 332) which serve as the vernacular of the masses, elite writers continue to publish works in an English whose consumers continue to be the educated consumers of ‘elsewhere.’ Even more alarming is the peripherization and overt sidelining of Africa in zones of soft power production in the post‐global economy. As Bokamba (, p. 331) compellingly notes, with ‘only one per cent’ of scholarly citations coming from Africa, in contrast to, ‘Ninety‐five percent of all books published [which] are textbooks and not fiction and poetry,’ most have to concede that Africa's marginalization and ‘almost complete exclusion from knowledge creation and production worldwide’ has important ramifications – econometric outcomes which become crucial elements in any analysis of so‐called ‘flat‐world’ fiction where production zones remain firmly housed in the so‐called hub (Pandey, ). Even Lahiri (, p. 15) in the most neutral of tones writes of her dissonance from to Bengali in her linguistic biography using her trademark sophistication and nuance to offer commentary in the form of: ‘I think of my mother, who writes poems in Bengali, in America.…”

“…In closing, it has to be reiterated that it is in and through literary creativity that the vim and vigor of linguistic variety of world Englishes can be ensured – an area demanding close vigilance on the part of literary critics and the new generation of Kachruvian scholars alike. With choices in creative writing ‘often more deliberative, than subconscious or accidental’ (Bokamba, , p. 320), it is perhaps this linguistic genre which bodes towards trends regarding the future vitality of WE variety – at least in the written form. More research has to focus on typification strategies at work in and across bodies of literary texts in the post‐global moment.…”

“…Evidence is provided from emerging frameworks in the sociolinguistics of mobility, pedagogical linguistics, and political economy to demonstrate the intellectual staying power of Kachruvian frameworks using data elicited from the sub‐field of literary stylistics. Analyses of literary works in world Englishes whether from the Inner, Outer or Expanding Circle are emerging to be a burgeoning sub‐field of analyses in WE studies particularly in the past two decades (Bokamba, ; Bolton, ; Pandey, ; Percillier & Paulin, ; Varughese, , ).…”