Language revolution behind the cultural curtain

Abstract

This paper focuses on the innovative, revolutionary features of the World Englishes paradigm that shook the education world in the late 20th century. I speak about key concepts that are salient to the paradigm, such as pluricentricity, diversity, functionality, and equality as articulated by Kachru, such as inclusivity and variability, as well as the controversies emerging in and related to education, for example, the struggle between prescriptive and descriptive approaches, and norms and usage. With reference to Expanding Circle contexts such as China and Russia, I emphasize the cultural underpinnings that create the greatest challenge for intervarietal communicators, as measured in terms of Smith's (; 1992) notion of interpretability. Such challenges help explain the significant role assigned to intercultural communication studies in tertiary education curricula in these countries. Revealing cultural identity when speaking in English as a communicative mediating tool is not an easy task for individuals and requires a special training. No easier is the listening and negotiating of other cultural meanings, all of which sets new perspectives for researchers and educators, while also encouraging cooperation between them.

Varieties of English and Kachru’s Expanding Circle

“…The WE paradigm, which emerged in the 1960s (Kachru 1961, Beliayeva & Potapova 1961 and has developed since, with its theoretical basis brought into focus especially in the 1980-1990s (Kachru 1986, Kachru & Smith 1985, Smith 1987, Smith & Forman 1997, see also Bolton 2020), is a revolutionary theory (Proshina 2014a), as it has radically challenged the traditional views on the Empire's linguistic dominance, flipped sociolinguistic ideas, and drastically changed pedagogical beliefs that had found their way into English language teaching and learning. To summarize the major premises, the following arguments should be highlighted:…”

Cultural conceptualizations of Chinese zodiac animals in Chinese English

“…To unpack the cultural category of Chinese zodiac animals, people need to be aware of the applied cultural linguistics framework of cultural schemas and metaphors, and world Englishes practices in relation to lexical borrowing and semantic variation. People should also take interdisciplinary perspectives to enhance the ‘intelligibility of form, comprehensibility of meaning, and interpretability of sense’ (Proshina, , p. 4) while communicating in world Englishes.…”

“…World Englishes, as a discipline and paradigm, is ‘inclusive of all varieties and variants of English, of many cultures and ethnicities, of many topics and subjects, of various approaches and perspectives’ (Proshina, , p. 2). In this case, different cultural categories, schemas and metaphors also contribute essentially to the ‘inclusivity’ of world Englishes, although they may involve ‘communicational risks’ (Davis, , p. 26) among speakers of world Englishes.…”

How to Distinguish and Translate Synonymous English Legal Terms

“…The World Englishes (WE) paradigm (e.g. Bolton 2020, Kachru and Smith 1985, Proshina 2014, Proshina and Nelson 2020, Smith and Forman 1997, "has radically challenged the traditional views on the Empire's linguistic dominance, flipped sociolinguistic ideas, and drastically changed pedagogical beliefs that had found their way into English language teaching and learning" (Proshina and Nelson 2020: 526) including teaching translation. It has convincingly showed that English is not a monolithic and homogeneous language anymore; being pluricentric, it has differentiated into a great number of varietiesworld Englishes (cf.…”