By Lars Hansen February
12, 2014
Ann-Marie Pedersen's "Negotiating Cultural Identities through
Language" raises the question of English usage among scholars in a
postcolonial Arabic country. The Jordanian academic community in Pedersen's
study relies on English for their scholarship and their teaching, but value
their native Arabic language in their day-to-day lives. The standardized
English they use to maintain a connection with their western counterparts can
best be described as "English in a bottle." The corporatization and
privatization of English based on western rationalism. Pedersen talks
specifically about the scientific community in her thesis. It is crucial for
scientists participating in an international discourse community to have a
certain degree of English proficiency, if they are to compete and negotiate
within established "dominant institutions." Pedersen's study
participants point to the important factors involved in writing effectively for
a foreign audience even at the expense of "literacy brokers who change the
content in these writers' text under the guise of editing for Standard
English." I agree with
"Phillipson's theory that the current spread of English functions as a
form of linguistic imperialism." However, the current migration of
international students into western academic institutions is in itself a form
of multicultural imperialism. The growing population of western trained
scholars like the participants in Pedersen's study will eventually exert a
dominant force on western culture; not unlike the foreign debt crisis western
governments are presently experiencing. The question then is whether or not the
eventual shift in a trans global cultural economy will give rise to a new
mandate for pedagogical reform. More importantly, can "inner circle"
distilleries bottling Englishes for foreign consumption continue to maintain a
monolinguistic monopoly on scholarly publication and intellectual
communication?
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