Speaking and Writing in World Englishes

Teasing out the tensions between English monolingualism vs. plurilingualism in European academic and research settings

“…The distancing from the standardized conventions can best be observed in the different ways of conceptualizing the interpersonal aspects of discourse -in other words, the use of linguistic phenomena coined as "academic Englishes" (Mauranen, Pérez-Llantada, and Swales 2010) and "interdiscursive hybridity" (Pérez-Llantada 2012). More broadly, the reported discoursal and rhetorical deviations from the 'default' standard academic English norms align with the arguments postulated by the ongoing debate on culture-specific traits in academic writing in World Englishes (Kachru 2006;Kirkpatrick 2007). The alternative discoursal constructions instantiating cultural differences in English academic discourse, as Mauranen (1993) argues, in turn pose a number of linguistic and epistemological problems to linguistic and cultural minorities of academic ELF users in Europe and elsewhere.…”

“…The present volume demonstrates that communities of researchers across European locations -namely, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden -have shifted or are shifting to English for journal publication purposes. Whether a result of personal interest or policy imposition, or maybe both, 'English just is' now seems to be the prevailing perception not only across the communities of researchers examined in this volume but also other research communities in Europe and beyond -the Arabian Gulf, Canada, China, India, Iran, Mexico, Sudan and Turkey inter alia (see, e.g., ElMalik and Nesi 2008;Uzuner 2008;Kachru 2006Kachru , 2009Buckingham 2014;Gentil and Séror 2014;Hanauer and Englander 2014;Li 2014, among others). Understanding perceptions in a comparative fashion and across geographic areas worldwide is therefore germane for future research in order to further debates on language and internationalization policies vis-à-vis the necessary maintenance of linguistic ecologies and multicultural identities in academic and research settings.…”

Cultural Representations of Rhetorical Conventions: The Effects on Reading Recall

“…A tally of such differences frequently starts with the Western preference for deductive style and the Chinese tendency toward inductive approaches, particularly in expository writing. The practice of putting the main thesis of a text before supporting ideas violates a Chinese reader's expectation for what Kachru (1998) calls a "delayed introduction of purpose" or "delayed topic statement" (p. 55). Chen (1986), in comparing the expository discourse structure of English and Chinese passages, found that Chinese paragraphs tended to introduce more subtopics than did their Western counterparts.…”

A Fourth Circle of English

“…In ‘Culture and argumentative writing in world Englishes,’ Yamuna Kachru observed that ‘[C]ulture is manifest in symbolic forms, including language and it is both historic and immediate’ (Y. Kachru, , p. 49). Indeed, like language, culture can and does change and we are witnessing this happen in India, particularly with one segment of the population, namely, youngistan.…”