The Language Teacher

Norms, Models, and Identities¹

Braj B. Kachru
University of Illinois

AT JALT96 when we focus on "Crossing Borders," we are exploring sensitive crosscultural and sociolinguistic issues. When we talk of language norms and models, we are indeed stirring a hornet's nest -- for these issues are related to individual and social identities. I would like to discuss the implications of these vital concepts with reference to two dimensions of what I have termed, "world Englishes": the demographic distribution of English and its range and depth. Range refers to the fast-expanding functional domains of English across cultures and languages, and depth refers to societal penetration of English.

It is well documented that the range and depth of world Englishes is unprecedented in linguistic history and in language spread. We cannot compare the spread and functions of English with any current or earlier languages of wider communication (LWC) -- Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, and so forth. The concentric circle model of the global profile of English shows the overwhelming presence of English:

Three Concentric Circles of Englishes: Expanding, Outer and Inner Circles

Englishes in Diaspora

The diffusion of English historically has resulted in two types of diaspora: the first in Australia, North America, and New Zealand, and the second in South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa, East Africa, and the Philippines -- the so called Anglophone countries. There are crucial differences between the two diasporas. The second diaspora -- the focus of this paper -- has resulted in distinct Africanization and Asianization of the language (see Kachru, 1992).

Pluricentricity and Englishes

But more importantly, English has gradually developed new local centres for authentication of its models and norms. In other words, it has become a pluricentric language with Asian and African norms and models for its acquisition, its teaching, and creativity in the language.

The users of English, then, are of two distinct types:

Norm-providing
L1 norm (e.g., the USA, the UK, Australia)

L2 norm (e.g., Singapore, Nigeria, Kenya, India)

Norm-dependent (e.g., China, Egypt, Iran, South Korea, Taiwan)

Codification of Norms

One might ask who controls the norms for authentication. With respect to English this is a tricky question, since there is no authoritative codifying agency for the language, as there is, for example, for Italian, established in 1582, or for French, established in 1635.

In the case of English, a major attempt toward establishing an academy in the UK was made in 1712 by Jonathan Swift. That attempt failed, as did the attempt by John Adams in 1780 in the USA. In the USA, ultimately pragmatism and universalism prevailed, and it was decided to have "a policy not to have a policy" (Heath, 1977).

The arms for codification of English are rather indirect and subtle. These include: manuals for linguistic "etiquette" or "table manners" (e.g., H. W. Fowler, William Safire); dictionaries and lexical manuals; pedagogical resources (e.g., Daniel Jones, John Kenyon); elite power groups (which generate language attitudes and psychological pressure); media agencies; and instruments of assessment for language evaluation.

The group whose variety provides the model indeed has subtle linguistic power, an elevated social status, economic advantages, and immense mobility since the "gate keepers" of the norm control linguistic access. The British phonetician David Abercrombie (1965), referring to English, makes three points: that a standard pronunciation such as Received Pronunciation (RP) is "a bad rather than a good thing, it is an anachronism in present-day democratic society" (p. 14); that RP provides an "accent-bar"; that "the accent-bar is a little like a color-bar: to many people, on the right side of the bar, it appears eminently reasonable" (p. 15); and finally, that RP does not necessarily represent "educated English," for while "those who talk RP can justly consider themselves educated, they are outnumbered these days by the undoubtedly educated people who do not talk RP" (1965, p. 15). The situation is not different in the USA.

Englishes as Symbols of Identities

In Africa and Asia, as elsewhere, world Englishes provide an important dimension of the users' identities- -- the articulation of the "self" and expression of how one wants to be perceived as an individual and as a member of a society. In ELT, little attention has been paid to this aspect of individuals and groups. Let me provide some examples here to illustrate the point. In one group we have Chinua Achebe from Nigeria and Raja Rao from India. Achebe (1965) states that:

the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings. (p. 222)

Rao (1938) states that:

The tempo of Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs. (p. 10)

Another Nigerian, a Nobel laureate in literature, Wole Soyinka (1993), rightly feels that English plays "unaccustomed roles" in Africa, and thus is turned into "a new medium of communication." In Soyinka's view, "[b]lack people twisted the linguistic blade in the hands of the traditional cultural castrator and carved new concepts into the flesh of white supremacy." The result, continues Soyinka, is "the conversion of the enslaving medium into an insurgent weapon." Gabriel Okara, another African writer, is more direct, he asks: "Why shouldn't there be a Nigerian or West African English which we can use to express our own ideas, thinking and philosophy in our own way?" (Okara, 1963, pp. 15-16 [emphasis added]). There is still another group that includes Ngugi (1981), of East Africa, who considers English a "culture bomb," and he goes much further than that; in his view English is "probably the most racist of all human languages." (p. 14; see Kachru, 1996.)

Exponents of Identity

These identities have contributed to the English language a number of fascinating strands of multiculturalism, for example: (a) Distinct cultural identity as a variety, for example, Nigerian English, Singaporean English, and Indian English; (b) Appropriate acculturation of the variety in terms of sociocultural, religious, and interactional contexts; (c) Organization of discourse strategies and speech acts which are distinct from the ones considered appropriate in the Inner Circle; and (d) Alteration of linguistic codes due to the multilingual contexts of the use of English. This point is clearly presented by Ngugi in the context of Kenya where Swahili is the lingua franca, and there are "nationality languages" such as Gikuyu and Luo, and, says Ngugi (1992), "by playing with this situation, you can get another level of meaning through the interaction of all three languages" (p. 34).

Linguistic and Cultural Crossover and Multicanons

It is through these underlying cultural, linguistic, and ideological contexts that English has gradually turned into Englishes thus acquiring a unique multiculturism, multicanons, and internationalism. In ELTﾜrelated theoretical and pedagogical materials we seem to have ignored this refreshing and deliberate linguistic and cultural crossover of the language. By our present attitude we are denying:

that English as a medium is used by two distinct types of speech communities: one which perceives itself as monolingual and monocultural, and the other which perceives itself as multilingual and multicultural;
that these speech communities articulate in their varieties of Englishes distinct literary and oral traditions and mythologies; and
that their norms of literary creativity and their linguistic experimentations are not necessarily shared.

The multicanons raise a host of theoretical, educational, and ideological issues. We cannot view these multicanons of English as mere linguistic experimentation since canon expansion has both symbolic and substantive meanings. The expansion has symbolic meaning in the same sense in which one's identity is symbolic. It has substantive meaning in that the medium becomes a vehicle to express, articulate, and negotiate desired identities.

Mythology of Control

The overwhelming global functions of English, with their norms and standards, demand a shift in our paradigms of methodology and interpretation and, more importantly, liberation from consciously cultivated myths about uses and users of English. The conscious myth-making and perpetuation of such mythology is not innocent. The four far-reaching myths discussed below are just illustrative (for a detailed discussion, see Kachru, 1995).

The interlocutor myth . That English is primarily learned to communicate with the native speakers of the language (American, British, Australian). The sociolinguistic fact is that most of the interaction in English takes place among and between those who use it as an additional language: Japanese with Singaporeans, Nigerians with Indians, Germans with Taiwanese, Koreans with Chinese, and so forth.

The monoculture myth. That English is learned to understand American or British culture: That motivation is only partly true. In reality, one major function of English teaching in Asia and Africa is to impart native cultural values and traditions in culturally and linguistically pluralistic societies. English is thus used as a vehicle for integrative functions in a national sense (see, for example, above statements of Chinua Achebe, Raja Rao, Wole Soyinka and Gabriel Okara).

The model-dependency myth. That exocentric models of American or British varieties of English are actually taught and learnt in the global context. In reality the endocentric (local) models provide major linguistic input. However, one must recognize that there is serious confusion among the users of English between what is perceived to be the norm and actual linguistic behavior.

The Cassandra myth. That diversification and variation in English across cultures is an indicator of linguistic decay, and that controlling the decay is the job of native speakers as teachers of English literature and language as well as of ESL professionals and professional organizations. The debate on this question still continues in all the circles of English (a variety of positions on this debate are presented in Tickoo, 1991).

World Englishes in the Classroom

In the USA, multiculturalism as a societal or as a pedagogical concept has been perceived both as a divisive practice and as an enriching experience. It has been seen as a step toward national Balkanization and a threat to the Western canon, and as a laboratory for mutual understanding. In literature and language, the variationist approaches have been applauded for social realism and attacked as "liberation linguistics" and as an offshoot of "liberation theology" (see Kachru, 1991; Quirk, 1988). However, we must agree with Hughes, who states that:

In society as in farming monoculture works poorly. It exhausts the soil. The social richness of America, so striking to the foreigner, comes from the diversity of its tribes. Its capacity for cohesion, for some spirit of common agreement on what is to be done, comes from the willingness of those tribes not to elevate their cultural differences into impassable barriers and ramparts (cited in H. Gates Jr., New Yorker, April 19, 1993, p. 115).

And now let us take this vision of America beyond America and bring in Europe, the Middle East, South and East Asia, West, East, and Southern Africa, the Philippines, and South America. That is almost the globe; that is the global vision. That abstract global vision, with its linguistic diversity, cultural interfaces, societal hierarchies, and conflicts, is captured in various strands of world Englishes -- and that is the internationalization of English.

The vision is Vedantic and metaphysical in India's Raja Rao. It is Nigerian in Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. It is East African in waThiong'o Ngugi, and it is a Singaporean blend of Chinese and Malay in Catherine Lim and Edwin Thumboo's creativity. The architects of each tradition, each strand, and each variation have used the raw material of what is considered a Western medium, molded it, reshaped it, and redesigned it. The resultant creativity reflects vitality, innovation, and cultural and linguistic blends -- the hallmarks of innovation and creativity. It is not the creativity of the monolingual and the monocultural; this creativity has rejuvenated the medium from "exhaustion."

That this literature is a product of multilingualism, and of multiculturalism, has yet to be seriously realized. The use of such literature(s) as a resource in the classroom has as yet to be fully explored. The difficulties in doing so are not only that appropriate pedagogical resources are limited. That may be partially true, but the more serious difficulty is that our own visions are constrained. Our paradigms are inhibiting, and the vision has become myopic. We are not able to encompass the pluralism and multiculturalism embedded in the language, in world Englishes (see Kachru, 1994c).

We have additionally marginalized such creativity and multicultural dimensions of English by using terms such as "commonwealth literature" or "Third World Literature." Rushdie (1991) observes that "English studies" and "commonwealth literature" are "kept strictly apart, like squabbling children, or sexually incompatible pandas, or, perhaps, like unstable fissile materials whose union might cause explosion" (p. 61). One of course sees an identical attitude toward the African American canon, and the Chicano canon.

The custodians of canonicity in English are safeguarding the canon from African, Asian, or African-American intruders. But they are doing more than that; they are equally anxious about impurity entering the canon from the North, from the Scots. One recent exhibition of this concern is reflected in the response to the novel How Late it Was. How Late, by the Scottish writer James Kelman, was last year's recipient of the prestigious Booker Prize. It was called a "disgrace" by one of the judges, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, and "literary vandalism" by Simon Jenkins in The Times of London.

The New York Times (November 29, 1994) reported that:

In his heavy Scottish accent [Kelman] made a rousing case for the culture and language of 'indigenous' people outside of London . . . . "A fine line can exist between elitism and racism," he said. "On matters concerning language and culture, the distinction can sometimes cease to exist altogether."

Recalling times when Glaswegian accents were banned from the radio or when his two daughters were "reprimanded" in school for using the Scotts "aye" instead of the English "yes," he said it was wrong to call the language of his work "vernacular" or "dialect."

"To me, those words are just another way of inferiorizing the language by indicating that there's a standard," he said. "The dictionary would use the term 'debased.' But it's the language! The living language, and it comes out of many different sources, including Scotland before the English arrived." (pp. B1-2)

And not many years ago -- just over half a century ago -- the same attitude was expressed about the American literature in Britain. H. L. Mencken (1936), the great pundit of the American language, summarizes well the British attitude to American English when he writes that: "This occasional tolerance for things American was never extended to the American language." This was in 1936.

And is this attitude about American English in Britain not dead? In 1995 -- just a year ago -- Prince Charles said that the American version of the language was "very corrupting" and that the English version was the "proper" one. He told the British Council that "we must act now to ensure that English -- and that, to my way of thinking, means English English -- maintains its position as the world language well into the next century" (Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1995: section 1, p.4). And Prince Charles is not alone in taking this position; others, like him, are jealously guarding what is perhaps the only major export commodity left with Britain. It is, therefore, rightly claimed that "Britain's real black gold is not North Sea oil, but the English language . . . . It's difficult to qualify a national resource. The value of having, in the post industrial age, people use the language of one's own culture is virtually inestimable." ("Selling English by the Pound," Times, October 24, 1989, p.14, as cited in Romaine, 1992, p. 254). Prince Charles understands that very well indeed.

In teaching world Englishes, it seems a new perspective can be presented in three academic areas: The diffusion of the English language, multicultural literary creativity, and methodology of teaching. What it entails is a paradigm shift in several ways. The following points deserve attention for training professionals and for teaching advanced students:

(a.) sociolinguistic profile of the forms and function of English;

(b.) variety exposure and sensitivity;

(c.) attitudinal neutrality;

(d.) functional validity of varieties within a variety (e.g., Nigerian Pidgin, Basilect, Baza'r English);

(e.) range and depth of uses and users;

(f.) contrastive discourse and pragmatics;

(g.) multidimensionality of functions; and

(h.) multiculturalism in content and creativity.

There is also a provocative ideological facet to English teaching: Why is English considered a language of power? What ideology does English represent? Why do, for example, Ngugi (1981) -- and some others -- consider English a "culture-bomb," a "killer language," and " . . . probably the most racist of all human languages" (p. 14)? Why does English evoke -- or symbolize -- a host of positive or negative labels -- depending on a person's perception?

And now, the major questions are: What does this global profile of English tell us about the norms and models?; What are its implications to the tower of Babel?; and, as professionals, what are our responsibilities? These questions become more important since our professional organizations and our professional journals have adopted a "meaningful" silence on these issues. There are reasons for this silence: economic, ideological, and social (see Kachru, 1994c; Lummis, 1973; Pennycook, 1994; Phillipson, 1992; Tsuda, 1994a, 1994b).

Conclusion

These are some of the provocative and challenging questions for discussion around one language in its various global incarnations -- in its multicanons. We deprive ourselves -- as teachers and students -- of an immense resource of cross-cultural perspectives, and strategies of multilinguals' creativity, when world Englishes are viewed exclusively from a Judeo-Christian and monolingual perspective.

By marginalizing the global uses of English, we are walling in an important world vision for which world Englishes have become an important resource. What is needed is a pluralistic vision of models, norms, and canons that will use this immense, unparalleled resource with sensitivity and understanding -- locally and cross-culturally. I have used here two crucial words: sensitivity and understanding. Sensitivity requires that the self-proclaimed custodians of the canon must recognize the appropriations of what Gates, Jr. (1992) has termed "loose canons," though Gates specifically focuses on the African-American canon. Understanding requires that the profession recognizes the importance of the varieties of English, their creativity and literary traditions, their unique functions, their vibrant, distinct voices, and the relevance of these voices to teaching, to curriculum, and to broader conceptualizations of English studies.

The present challenge of world Englishes can not be met with earlier paradigms of language teaching and methodology and curriculum. We have to redesign the world of English studies -- and that applies as much to the Inner Circle as to other Circles of English. The diffusion of English challenges the sacred linguistic and literary cows of the profession: we have to redefine concepts such as "speech community," "native speaker," and "communicative competence" for English in a global context. That indeed is a great challenge to our profession in the 1990s (for a state-of-the-art review and resources for teaching and research, see Kachru, 1994b).

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Endnote

¹A detailed discussion of some of the major points in this paper can be found in Kachru, 1992; Kachru, 1994a; Kachru, 1994b; and Kachru (Ed.), 1992.

Braj B. Kachru is Center for Advanced Study Professor of Linguistics and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is founder and co-editor of World Englishes, series editor of English in the Global Context, associate editor of The Oxford Companion to the Englsih Language, and past president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics.