Language And Literature In A Glocal World

This collection of critical essays investigates the intersections of the global and local in literature and language. Exploring the connections that exist between global forms of knowledge and their local, regional applications, this volume explores multiple ways in which literature is influenced, and in turn, influences, movements and events across the world and how these are articulated in various genres of world literature, including the resultant challenges to translation. This book also explores the way in which languages, especially English, transform and continue to be reinvented in its use across the world. Using perspectives from sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and semiotics, this volume focuses on diasporic literature, travel literature, and literature in translation from different parts of the world to study the ways in which languages change and grow as they are sought to be ‘owned’ by the communities which use them in different contexts. Emphasizing on interdisciplinary studies and methodologies, this collection centralizes both research that theorizes the links between the local and the global and that which shows, through practical evidence, how the local and global interact in new and challenging ways.

This volume provides a new perspective on prevailing discourses on translanguaging and multilingualism by looking at ‘glocal’ languages, local languages which have been successfully "globalized". Focusing on European languages recreated in Latin America, the book features examples from languages underexplored in the literature, including Brazilian Portuguese, Amerinidian poetics, and English, Spanish, Portuguese outside Europe, as a basis for advocating for an approach to language education rooted in critical pedagogy and post-colonial perspectives and countering hegemonic theories of globalization. While rooted in a discussion of the South, the book offers a fresh voice in current debates on language education that will be of broader interest to students and scholars across disciplines, including language education, multilingualism, cultural studies, and linguistic anthropology.

Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.

Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award, The Fall of Language in the Age of English lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one's own language in this period of English-language dominance. Born in Tokyo but raised and educated in the United States, Minae Mizumura acknowledges the value of a universal language in the pursuit of knowledge yet also embraces the different ways of understanding offered by multiple tongues. She warns against losing this precious diversity. Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, Mizumura shows, but in the globalized world of the Internet, English is fast becoming the sole common language of humanity. The process is unstoppable, and striving for total language equality is delusional—and yet, particular kinds of knowledge can be gained only through writings in specific languages. Mizumura calls these writings "texts" and their ultimate form "literature." Only through literature and, more fundamentally, through the diverse languages that give birth to a variety of literatures, can we nurture and enrich humanity. Incorporating her own experiences as a writer and a lover of language and embedding a parallel history of Japanese, Mizumura offers an intimate look at the phenomena of individual and national expression.

This book is a compilation of articles dealing with linguistic and literary concerns relating to the global production and consumption of literature in English, and global instruction and education in the English language. The umbrella theme of the book is “English Language and Literature in a Globalized World” or “The Global Appropriation and hybridization of English”. The contributing authors are international scholars and creative writers from different parts of the world who offer unique perspectives on the ways in which the English language and English literature are constantly developing and changing in a postcolonial global world. They are mostly professors of English who have cross-cultural teaching experiences and who live or have lived and worked in both Anglophone and non-Anglophone countries. To many of them English is their dominant language, but not the mother tongue. All of them are bilingual or even trilingual. Thus their scholarly investigations are flavoured with their personal experiences or “adventures” with the language and its users. Their unique visions reveal a process of adoption, adaptation, reinvention and appropriation of both the language and its literature in a multi-national, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual community of a world where English has become the most recognizable sign of globalization. This book will appeal to all scholars and practitioners of English language and literature, particularly those interested in colonial and postcolonial studies, modern and post-modern studies, ethnic and minority studies, feminist studies, cross-cultural studies, linguistics, semantics, ESP and curriculum development.

This book critically explores global challenges from linguistic and literary standpoints aimed at contributing towards their mitigation. Composed of two parts, contributors to the first section examine issues such as language use in the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, the Covid-19 pandemic, migration, ethnic conflict, hate speech and language shift. The second part comprises essays that foreground global problems in literary texts. Contributors survey global problems like terrorism, gender inequality, racism and neo-colonialism, which engender horror and fuel violence. Drawn from various literary texts from Cameroon, Africa, Europe and America, contributors propose language and literature responses to global issues. These include using appropriate language and concrete techniques to assist citizens and world leaders convey precise messages for better understanding and nation-building. New communication strategies could also be adopted to keep life going and improve solidarity worldwide. Finally, contributors submit that dialogue could be a panacea through stakeholder collaboration and that negotiation is a productive solution to peace and harmony.

The worldwide spread, diversification, and globalization of the English language in the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has significant implications for English Language Teaching and teacher education. We are currently witnessing a paradigm shift towards Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL) that aims to promote multilingualism and awareness of the diversity of Englishes, increase exposure to this diversity, embrace multiculturalism, and foster cross-cultural awareness. Numerous initiatives that embrace TEIL can be observed around the world, but ELT and teacher education in Germany (and other European countries) appear to be largely unaffected by this development, with standard British and American English and the monolingual native speaker (including the corresponding cultural norms) still being very much at the center of attention. The present volume addresses this gap and is the first of its kind to showcase recent initiatives that aim at introducing TEIL into ELT and teacher education in Germany, but which have applicability and impact for other countries with comparable education systems and ‘traditional’ ELT practices in the Expanding Circle. The chapters in this book provide a balanced mix of conceptual, empirical, and practical studies and offer the perspectives of the many stakeholders involved in various settings of English language education whose voices have not often been heard, i.e., students, university lecturers, trainee teachers, teacher educators, and in-service teachers. It therefore adds significantly to the limited amount of previous work on TEIL in Germany and bridges the gap between theory and practice that will not only be relevant for researchers, educators, and practitioners in English language education in Germany but other educational settings that are still unaffected by the shift towards TEIL.

The Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures is the first globally comprehensive attempt to chart the rich field of world literatures in English. Part I navigates different usages of the term ‘world literature’ from an historical point of view. Part II discusses a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to world literature. This is also where the handbook’s conceptualisation of ‘Anglophone world literatures’ – in the plural – is developed and interrogated in juxtaposition with proximate fields of inquiry such as postcolonialism, translation studies, memory studies and environmental humanities. Part III charts sociological approaches to Anglophone world literatures, considering their commodification, distribution, translation and canonisation on the international book market. Part IV, finally, is dedicated to the geographies of Anglophone world literatures and provides sample interpretations of literary texts written in English.

This book examines the links between globalisation and the way we teach and learn languages.

Winner of the AAAL Book Award 2015 Winner of the Modern Language Association's Thirty-Third Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize Winner of the BAAL Book Prize 2014 Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations introduces a new way of looking at the use of English within a global context. Challenging traditional approaches in second language acquisition and English language teaching, this book incorporates recent advances in multilingual studies, sociolinguistics, and new literacy studies to articulate a new perspective on this area. Canagarajah argues that multilinguals merge their own languages and values into English, which opens up various negotiation strategies that help them decode other unique varieties of English and construct new norms. Incisive and groundbreaking, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in multilingualism, world Englishes and intercultural communication.