Language as a Local Practice by Alastair Pennycook

Author:Alastair Pennycook [Pennycook, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Literature, Language &#038
ISBN: 9780415547512
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

English as metrolingual practice

The question that has started to emerge, then, is whether these old categorizations of language – varieties, code-switching, bilingualism, mother tongue, multilingualism, borrowing – as well as the identities that are assumed along lines of language, location, ethnicity and culture really work any more. Developed in contexts very different to those in which English now finds itself, many of these concepts simply do not seem to address the forms of hybrid urban multilingualism in which English now partakes. Indeed, there are strong reasons to question the very notion of English, or any language, as a discrete entity that is describable in terms of core and variation. There are two sides to this: on the one hand, the changing realities of urban life, with enhanced mobility, shifting populations, social upheaval, health and climate crises, increased access to diverse media and engagement with new forms of popular culture, are leading to fresh language mixes and possibilities. On the other hand, a serious consideration of the ways in which ideas about language have been constructed and invented forces us to consider anew not only emergent language mixes but the terms in which we think about them.

Bosire (2006, p. 192) argues that the “hybrid languages of Africa are contact outcomes that have evolved at a time when African communities are coming to terms with the colonial and postcolonial situation that included rapid urbanization and a bringing together of different ethnic communities and cultures with a concomitant exposure to different ways of being.” At the same time, “young people are caught up in this transition; they are children of two worlds and want a way to express this duality, this new ‘ethnicity’” Out of this mix, emerge new language varieties, such as “Sheng”, a Swahili/English hybrid, which provides urban youth with “a way to break away from the old fraternities that put particular ethnic communities in particular neighborhoods/estates and give them a global urban ethnicity, the urbanite: sophisticated, street smart, new generation, tough” (Bosire, 2006, p. 192). Also looking at English in different domains in East Africa, Higgins (2009) argues for the need to look not so much at local forms of English, but rather at ways of thinking about how “languages work together in multilingual societies by placing multilingual practices at the theoretical center” (p. 2). Focusing on English as a local language, Higgins thus draws attention to the ways in which English participates in local multilingual practices, how “East Africans exploit the heteroglossia of language to perform modern identities through localizing global linguistic and cultural resources while generally maintaining the multiple layers of meaning from both the global and the local” (p. 148).

Rather than thinking in terms of English and its peripheral varieties, therefore, this work moves towards an understanding of local language practices that draw on a range of language resources, whether these be from different varieties, registers or languages. This is, consequently, an attempt to move away from nation-based models of English and to take on board current

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