Language and Global Power: Considerations For Preserving Political Autonomy As An English Teacher in The Periphery

Language and Global Power:
Considerations for Preserving Political Autonomy
as an English Teacher in the Periphery
A thesis presented to Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
by
Jesse Lee Tian-Davey
July 2009
Terms of Use
In presenting this thesis, Language and Global Power: Considerations for Preserving
Political Autonomy as an English Teacher in the Periphery, as required to attain a
master’s degree at Eastern Washington University (EWU), I affirm that EWU and the
JFK Library may freely reproduce it and make it available for public inspection.
This thesis is licensed under a Creative Commons public license.*
It is freely available online at http://scribd.com/doc/17333036.
_____________________________________________ _________
*
Copyright © 2008, Some Rights Reserved
(see Appendix A: Creative Commons License and www.creativecommons.org)

iv
Abstract
Expatriate English teachers have been implicated by scholars in the field of World
Englishes as members of a system that may (intentionally or unintentionally) use English
education to reproduce powerful global cultures at the expense of less powerful ones. It is
now commonly accepted by scholars that Applied Linguists and teachers of English have
an obligation to reflect on the political aspect of teaching English. I have undertaken this
project to gain an understanding of the most prominent voices in World Englishes
scholarship. This thesis seeks to synthesize existing wisdom about the political
dimensions of English education and negotiate with it in my own voice. What I hope to
provide you, as a reader, is a basic understanding of the main questions World Englishes
scholars are asking about the political role of English teachers, responses that have been
offered, and my personal response to these questions, that you may ponder them for
yourself.
v
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my wife, Tian-Davey Feng, for caring for me during the
writing of this thesis and motivating me to be the best I can; my dear friend and probably
the most brilliant person I know, Daniel Lee Haffey, for keeping my intellect sharp; and
my mother, Victoria Lynn Davey, for her flawless devotion to my education and progress
through life.
I would also like to thank every classroom teacher by whom I have memories of
being challenged to grow into my potential. Without them, especially those in my early
life, this thesis would have been impossible—in chronological order, and by the name I
called them: Ms. Dreece, Kenny, Mr. Bussard, Mrs. Fechner, Mr. Schafer, Mme./Sra.
Merwin, Mrs. Posten, Mme. Gharst, Mr. Watson, Paul, Doug, Leonard, Pam, Vic, Jamie,
Dr. Reeves, and Dr. Dean. I will always keep you with me.
Of course, I also thank Dr. Tracey McHenry, who not only formally advised this
thesis, but also cheered me up during the process when I most needed it—on several
occasions.
Finally, I would like to thank the many people who have encouraged me in the
writing of this thesis or shown an interest in my work for inspiring me and forcing me to
put my thoughts into words. In particular, thanks to Andrea, David, Jill, Lance, Sara,
Sarah, and Yun-Joo for supporting me by coming to my thesis defense.

vi
Preface
Dear Reader,
This note concerns my reasons for writing this thesis about this topic, the
philosophical assumptions underlying this work, and how it is motivated by beliefs that
you and I may or may not share. I have written the note to alleviate the discomfort and
feeling of disingenuousness that the aloof character of scholarly writing induces in me,
predisposed as I am to skepticism about taking part in institutional traditions of which I
am not a founder.
As you are likely well aware, individuals in personal and especially institutional
capacities of every kind act according to agendas. In this note I will explain my own
agenda (insofar as it relates to this thesis) to you in the clearest terms I am able and to the
extent that I can perceive and comprehend it. I am, of course, limited by the acuity of my
own self-understanding.
The first thing I would like to make clear is that this thesis represents my process
of arriving at insights. It is not a fully self-assured work by a person who has 'arrived'
intellectually (as this likely not even possible) and believes himself best equipped to
‘teach’ the subject matter involved. In that vein, it is not primarily designed to persuade
others to subscribe to my perspective. For me, the goals of scholarship are to think
concisely and to evaluate and improve one's own thinking; this thesis represents my
process of struggling to do so. While I will reach ‘conclusions’ in the following pages,
this thesis is actually just an imperfect document of my thinking over the last few months,
with ‘conclusions’ of ongoing considerations that, in reality, will conclude only when I
cease to reevaluate them—with my death, perhaps.

Preface vii
Why linguistic power struggles?
I believe that the Academy has come a long way toward the exposure of unjust
societal power hierarchies. Nevertheless, there is much ground left to be covered both in
and out of the Academy, especially with regard to the role of languages in unequal power
relationships. The concept of linguistic human rights, which I will discuss in this thesis,
has yet to be advanced into popular (and for the most part, scholarly) discourse—and
even when it inevitably is advanced, I fear discussions will be skewed by several biases
that I perceive in existing discussions of linguistic power structures.
I have always been a politically-minded person, and I fear that a zeal for justice is
sometimes quelled in the Academy, rather than honed and given direction. Fortunately,
this is far from universally true, and I have had many instructors who have aided and
encouraged my own zeal, including the members of my thesis committee.
I believe that language education, even moreso than many other fields of
education, is inextricably political. Thus it is of great importance for me, as a once and
future teacher of English as a Foreign Language, to hone my own view of the symbolism
of what I do in order to institute an ethical pedagogy.
My view of reason
Setting aside accidental, reflexive uses of reason (or logical thought) to conjecture
and analyze input, reason seems to operate at the behest of personal axioms (or beliefs
held as true and foundational, which thus establish agendas for action and thought)
seemingly stemming from largely incomprehensible biological, material, and cultural
mechanisms influencing one's thinking. Detached by definition from personal

Preface viii
motivations, reason alone seems unable to produce justifications for establishing axioms,
and so seems limited (in its deliberate application) to the functions of improving one's
efforts in the pursuits they prescribe or strategically reproducing them in others. Reason
is a tool applied variously in terms of desirability—it is not always consulted—and
skillfulness—it is usually not wholly logical. I tend to rate reason as highly desirable in
most pursuits, and though I consider myself a skillful user of it, my ability to reason is
obviously not perfect.
This thesis constitutes an attempt to use reason for both of the above purposes by
way of analyzing philosophical scholarship pertaining to linguistic power structures and
critiquing that philosophy with the aim of locating a satisfactory combination of existing
scholarly theory and my own ideas.
With regard to the first function of deliberate reason—following the dictates of
one's axioms—the discovery, improvement, and justification of my own axioms is itself
axiomatically prescribed for me. Insofar as writing about power and identity in language
politics is a method of engaging my personal assumptions, it becomes an opportunity to
pursue a greater level of clarity and confidence in them, thus satisfying my axiomatic will
to self-actualization.
I do not consider the benefits of conducting scholarship self-evident. Rather, it
seems a functional pursuit prescribed either directly by one's axioms or by practical
incentive in the pursuit of distant axiomatic goals. It seems to me that most scholarship,
likely to be read by the writing student's teacher (if that), falls into the latter category.
While I am required to write this thesis to graduate, I am also internally compelled to
construct something which both vivifies my own worldview and successfully expresses
Preface ix
my thoughts to you.
Symbolism
My interest in non-empirical scholarship begins and ends with its capacity to
improve our moral judgement. If scholarship cannot offer us insight toward a plan or a
worldview that will help us reduce inequality and suffering, it truly relegates itself—and
us as scholars—to the ivory tower. For that reason, my thesis will attempt to draw
conclusions about how we, as individuals most of whom are likely in the academic
sphere, can improve our approach to formulating axioms and symbolisms regarding the
role of language in sustaining unequal power hierarchies.
Needless to say, not all people ascribe the same symbolism to an event or thing.
For example, regarding war, one person might see the heroism of fellow nationals while
another sees the futility of human struggle, a third sees evidence of social inequality
among those who go to war, a fourth sees the selfish nature of humans, and so on
indefinitely. The most basic constitution of symbolism is perhaps the notion of "right and
wrong," though scholars generally steer clear of discussion in these terms, preferring
more elaborate symbolisms. This thesis looks at global linguistic power structures and
makes an argument for the symbolism that I perceive therein.

Preface x
My axioms
With regard to what is relevant to this thesis, I hold it as axiomatic that...
...I should pursue a fairer world: one in which resource and power distribution are equal.
...I should pursue a better world: one in which everyday quality of life is greater for all.
...I should pursue the realization of my full potential as a human being.
...I should be skeptical of the validity of everything I am taught and of my own
assumptions in order to discover beliefs that fit the contours of my mind.
When an argument is reduced to the simplest seed of its defining conflict, the
difference of opinion of individuals often seems to be at the axiomatic level. Therefore I
take no shame in using my axioms as a kind 'evidence' to support my argument a few
times in my thesis—this does not make it less rigorous, as others do the same; I am
merely attempting to make my invocation of my axioms explicit where it is typically
tacit. In other words, please understand that my argument will not constitute a whole
'proof' if my axioms are not accepted as given.
Goals and functions of this thesis
In short, I am attempting to arrive at conclusions which will further, better, or
newly define my own view of the world and what is important. Specifically, I seek to
improve by research and subsequent reasoning my perspective as to what linguistic
power structures symbolize. At the same time I am attempting, albeit less urgently, to
persuade you that the conclusions I reach are well-informed, reasoned, and appropriate
and (less crucially) that you might consider adopting them.
This thesis has a tertiary function of supplying impartial information such as the
Preface xi
names of scholars of World Englishes studies (among other fields) and the titles, dates,
and themes of their works, evaluative and subjective tidbits about the present character of
the academic climate on these topics, various data about countries, and so on. While I
hope to be informative in this regard, I do not consider it my highest priority to provide
factual data, which is amply available to the curious. Thus data is employed in this thesis
to better reason in the pursuit of my axiomatic goals, not to catalog a state of affairs per
se.
Secondarily, this thesis exemplifies the axiom-advertizing goal of reason in two
primary respects: it attempts to persuade you of my own beliefs (some of them reached or
codified as part of the process of writing this work), and it functions as a model for some
of my beliefs about academic writing. In at least the latter respect, however, it is very
imperfect because I have to date failed to codify my impressions of the flaws of
scholarship in general, though in many ways my relationship with it remains uneasy. I
admit that I am conflicted in several ways about academic writing, among them the use of
two-dollar words, of which I am also guilty. I remain unsure whether I use too few words
or too many. I do not believe there is value in standardized spelling or language standards
in general. I'm not convinced that scholastic writing methods are the best way to transmit
information and arguments; they seem at times welcoming of obtuse organization,
philosophical vagaries, self-aggrandizement, and excessive verbosity. I am guilty to some
extent of all of the above, but this is partly because I feel I must be in order to be the 'best'
scholar I can be. I also find academic traditions frequently beholden to methods I regard
as archaic. Finally, I'm wary of the academic norm of requiring the invocation of
canonical, prestigious writings to legitimize one's own view, concerned that a cult of
Preface xii
authorship and especially canon may be obscuring the spread of good ideas and that a
cut-and-paste academics in which there is a prescribed relationship between student and
canon, trivializing both, has become the norm. But I have not yet mentally organized my
resistance to these institutions in an applicable way. Rather than do so recklessly under a
deadline, I have avoided resisting prestigious norms wherever I am conflicted as to the
ideal way to do so.
There is a subtler, more peripheral proselytizing aspect to this work as well—an
underdiscussed phenomenon which I believe detrimentally pervades prestigious academic
writing: the advancement of my own ego and advertisement of my own ability. To
prevent myself from overly indulging, I have attempted to be candid about what I know
and do not know, even at the expense of persuasiveness, especially in this note. Along the
same lines, I have deliberately made an effort to keep this thesis tethered to me as a writer
and you as a reader, not because I believe writing ought to be subjective, but because I
believe it is inherently so and that to write the author and audience out of the foreground
of one's work is obfuscation. The inclusion of that damning word, I, reminds me of my
limitations, while, more importantly, the inclusion of that deferent word, you, reminds me
that I am accountable, even if only to a small number of readers, for what I offer them. I
hope that in a small way, this thesis can promote transparency and the dissolution of
pretense in academic writing. I have attempted to be as clear and grounded in the real
world as possible. I have tried (with variable success) to avoid pomposity and to be
unpresuming, clearly methodical, and direct—not because I lack an ego, but because I am
at least as proud of my critical attitude toward traditions, institutions, and myself as I am
of my general intelligence and academic wherewithal, and I wish to see my manner of

Preface xiii
weighing priorities spread.
Finally, this thesis serves tacitly as a kind of proof of my knowledge which is
required to receive my degree of Master of Arts, Teaching English to Speakers of Other
Languages, from Eastern Washington University. This is somewhat of a paradox: I
consider this the least lofty function of my work, yet it is doubtless the function that has
compelled me to do the work. In any case, it is nevertheless the most demanding function
because it imposes both a deadline and structural and content requirements on my
writing.
About me
I have written this note in part to avoid any pretense that my work is divorced
from my personal self. To that end, I also wish to say a little about my history. I am an
American white male—if that makes any difference to you—and first generation college
student (and black sheep) from a lower class Protestant family. I grew up in the suburbs
of Spokane, Washington. I have always been incorrigibly politically-minded, skeptical,
and leftist, challenging most of what I was taught as a child in my teenage years—never
to embrace much of it again. That is not to say that I feel no sense of closeness with or
indebtedness to my family; quite the opposite is true. But I have always gone my own
way, and I think this thesis exemplifies my continued tendency to do so.
I have wanted to be a teacher since fourth grade. My first experience teaching was
one year of teaching English to seven elementary schools in rural Japan, and I loved it.
From there, I wanted to move on to teaching college, so I entered the MA-TESOL
(Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program at Eastern Washington
University in Summer, 2008, where I have had opportunities to teach adults. Still, I miss
Preface xiv
teaching regularly and am eager to return to it, which I will do this Fall in the Asia
University America Program at EWU.
My research
While I have committed more work to the researching and writing of this thesis
than to any other academic activity in my life to date, I have much yet to read if I wish to
claim a comprehensive knowledge of existing World Englishes scholarship. Furthermore,
I am completely self-taught on World Englishes subject matter, and there is necessarily a
somewhat arbitrary character to the research I have done—my reading process has been
thus: consult introductory volumes, find recurrently prominent authors, and read their
books. This has left me with a somewhat retrospective view, since most of my main
sources are from the 1990s.
However, I would like to note that authors of my more contemporary reading
continue to emphasize and build upon the works I have focused on here. For that reason, I
believe I have arrived at quite an informed perspective on linguistic power hierarchies,
and, more importantly, I have critically engaged the material I read. At its best, writing is
not merely writing down—writing is thinking. I have struggled to avoid a cut-and-paste
approach to my work, which would have shortchanged us both. I have tried not merely to
read and write down what I read, but to read, think, and—only after I have thought—to
write down the fleeting results.

July 27, 2009
xv
Thesis Contents
Chapter One: Introduction 1

The Political Agency of Language Teachers 1
How EFL Teachers Risk Indoctrinating Students 4
How Language Aids or Threatens Power 6
Making Meaning 9
Organization 11
Chapter Two: Summary of Critical Approaches 12

Postcolonialism 12
Neocolonialism 13
Marxism 15
Reproduction Theory 16
Resistance Perspective 17
Chapter Three: Scholarly Strategies for Making Meaning of Periphery English 19

The Spread of English 20
The 1900s in Summary 20
Present-day Positions 21
Depicting the growth of English 23
Predicting the course of English 27
The contested ideal 28
The Individual Use of English 30
State Manipulations of English 32
Linguistic Human Rights 35
Critical Pedagogy 37
Evaluating Contemporary Discourse 39
Negotiating Reproduction Theory and Resistance Perspective 39
Depictions of the Growth of English: Description Versus Prescription 42
xvi
Chapter Four: Four Popular and Scholarly Biases 45

Mold Bias 45
Externality Bias 46
Institutional Bias 51
Standards Bias 53
The Bias Process 56
The Four Biases in Contemporary Scholarship 59
Mold Bias 59
Externality and Institutional Bias 59
Standards Bias 65
Chapter Five: My Perspective 68

Rationale for Terms 71
Depicting the Growth of English 74
A Descriptive Model 74
A Prescriptive Model 77
Predicting the Course of English 82
Setting Goals 84
Linguistic Human Rights 86
Chapter Six: Conclusion 90

Ideas for Further Discussion 90
Concluding Reflections 90
References 95
Appendix A: Creative Commons License 101
Appendix B: Glossary 107

xvii
Index of Images
Figure 1: Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English 24

Figure 2: McArthur’s Circle of World English 26
Figure 3: Modiano’s oval model of “English as an international language” 29
Figure 4: My dome model of English prestige 75
Chapter One: Introduction
The Political Agency of Language Teachers
Those who are unaware that they possess power cannot direct how they will
unleash it. Consider a circus strongman who exhausts himself swinging a hammer to ring
a bell, earning a little money from his employer—he does this because he sees the
excitement and glee in the reactions of children and wishes to inspire them. He has not
read the town bulletin, for if he had he would know that a rich businessman would pay
him vastly more to row his goods across the river, too steep for his horses. He has not
read the news, for if he had he would know that survivors of an earthquake lay trapped
beneath the consequent rubble. He knows neither that his talent is wasted nor where it is
truly needed—neither how to help himself by aiding the businessman, nor how to help
others by aiding the earthquake victims. He takes for granted that to ring the bell and
make children happy is his function in life. His potential is unrealized and his ability
exploited for the benefit of another. A child wishing to follow in his footsteps later
becomes the same strongman in the same exploitative relationship with the circus
manager.
EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers risk being analogs to this
strongman. Many teaching in public schools could get more money in the private sector
—but surely few become teachers out of a desire for money! Unfortunately, despite
selfless intentions, many teaching in public schools are also unconscious that their
instruction may have the power to sustain existing inequalities in lopsided power
relationships. When they understand, however, that every ‘swing of the hammer’—every
Introduction 2
interval spent with students—can be directed either at the bell or at the rubble, teachers
gain agency—self-awareness of the power-relationships in which one is an actor and the
subsequent ability to direct one’s political power autonomously.
In this thesis I seek to answer the following question:
What critical considerations do EFL teachers need to ponder to ensure that
they may autonomously and insightfully direct the political power they possess as
teachers?
Many scholars—prominent among them Canagarajah (1999), Pennycook (1994,
1998), and Phillipson (1992)—have asserted that EFL teachers, especially those in
postcolonial contexts, have an obligation to gain agency by deeply considering the
political significance of their work and, until they have done so, may be acting as
unwitting political pawns. These authors further agree that the field of Applied
Linguistics has, overall, readily accepted the dubious proposition that systematic
language education (including English education) is an apolitical and purely functional
convention. Finally, they bemoan that ethics is rarely considered central to the field and
even less frequently incorporated into teacher education, resulting in a corps of educators
who inadvertently serve in the capacity of reproducing behaviors that reinforce existing
unjust power structures. While there was previously much disagreement as to whether the
global reproduction of English (largely through overt education) was symbolically loaded
or merely a functional development of global economy, the former viewpoint is now
taken for granted by scholars in the field of World Englishes, though what symbolism1
ought to be ascribed is perhaps the foremost matter of ongoing debate in the field.
1
The term symbolism is used to denote meaning creatively extrapolated from actions,
material things, and events.

Introduction 3
Canagarajah (1999) sums up the present-day assessment of the situation of
Applied Linguistics as follows:
in the post-modern world, education has lost its innocence. The realization
that education may involve the propagation of knowledges and ideologies
held by dominant social groups has inspired a critical orientation to
pedagogical paradigms. (p. 3)
What is now widely accepted in World Englishes scholarly discourse emerged
largely from 1970s scholarship such as that of Mazrui (1975), who goes so far as to argue
that universities must be viewed in the realistic light of their incarnation as multinational
corporations—indeed, that they are the most sophisticated mechanism by which
established power creates dependency to itself. Altbach (1981) notes that prescription of
pedagogical models and the research agenda and dominating the publication of academic
work are some of the means by which power uses the university to reproduce favorable
norms2 of thought and behavior. With such convicting arguments leveled at formal
educational institutions3, their members certainly have an obligation to weigh their
individual roles. Pennycook (2001) puts it thus:
for those who say we are just language teachers or just applied linguists
2
A norm is a behavior, attitude, or way of thinking with which a group regards
convergence or divergence as a matter of appropriateness. See Glossary for an example.

3
An institution, for my purposes, is a group of people organized according to a formal or
de facto structure and formally professed by the structure’s leadership elements to belong
together by virtue of one or more commonalities. Examples of institutions include states,
bureaucracies, businesses, churches, families, and any number of other non-commercial
organizations.
Introduction 4
and should not involve ourselves with such concerns, I say that we already
are involved. We cannot bury our heads in the sand as liberal-ostrichist
applied linguistics has done in the past. What we need is better ways of
thinking about what we do. (p. 138)
In this thesis I assume that EFL teachers work toward political goals—if not their
own, then probably those of the established and powerful. I hope to persuade you, if you
are an educator, that your position can never be apolitical, that it is crucial that you
continuously evaluate your political goals in your capacity as a teacher, and that you may
thereby claim ownership of the power you possess.
How EFL Teachers Risk Indoctrinating Students
The assumption today is that periphery4 English teachers who do not observe the
political dimension of their work will be unable to discriminate between pedagogical
tools and strategies that empower students and those that risk indoctrinating5 them—that
4
The term periphery denotes collectively those geographic areas in which English
speakers generally follow exonormative standards, while center describes a geographic
concentration of endonormative speakers who prescribe linguistic standards. This usage
is adapted from long-standing scholarly usage of these terms, and is chosen for its
economy, though more complex, non-dichotomous models for characterizing language
relationships will be described throughout this thesis.

5
To indoctrinate is to reproduce, as an authority (such as a teacher, politician, or parent,
for example), normal behavior and thought patterns in a subordinate by means concealed
from the subject and engineered to produce a specific outcome rather than an informed
decision by the subordinate.

Introduction 5
is, reproducing, as an authority (such as a teacher, politician, or parent, for example),
normal behavior and thought patterns in a subordinate by means concealed from the
subject and engineered to produce a specific outcome rather than an informed decision by
the subordinate. into the norms espoused by powerful actors. Auerbach (1995) writes of
the “ends-means approach,” a pedagogical method that presumes EFL to be purely
practical, devoid of political implications:
the ends-means approach serves as a mechanism of social control,
disempowering for both students and teachers. Its underlying assumption
is that learners should assimilate into preexisting structures and practices
without questioning the power relations inherent in them. To the extent
that objectives are framed in terms of the needs and demands of
institutions rather than learners, and content is limited to knowledge
necessary to function according to externally defined norms, relations of
domination and subordination are reinforced. Further, the central
responsibility for curriculum development lies with outside experts who
determine FOR learners what is important for them to learn and how they
should learn it. (p. 14)
She further argues that the teaching of applied linguistics has been
compartmentalized so as to cloak its political aspect. Indeed, exposing as fraudulent the
assumption that language teaching can be a merely functional activity is a central theme
in contemporary scholarly discourse. Eschewing this blithe attitude is the first step EFL
educators must take toward developing their agency.
The pedagogical tools and strategies in which the ends-means approach is often
Introduction 6
used to disguise a cultural reproductive function include curriculum, texts, and classroom
environments themselves (see Auerbach, 1995; Canagarajah, 1999). All of these, at their
worst, require students to prove their ability to assimilate to cultural attitudes and
behaviors prescribed by established powers (from which materials and strategies flow)
under the guise of what Auerbach terms “technical efficiency” (p. 39).
How Language Aids or Threatens Power
While language is not a finite commodity, it can empower its users much like any
physical resource. The ability to speak English correlates with societal prestige6 and
access to societal benefits, rights, and positions of power in many countries (see Cheah,
1997; Olsen, 2007; Pennycook, 1994; Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1995; Stroud &
Wee, 2007). Because of the potentially empowering character of language, powerful
actors whose cultural dominance may be threatened by the language acquisition of the
disadvantaged must be proactive in stifling resistance and oppressing innovation if they
wish to retain power and control. This seems to be the reason governments have
language planning7 and why the concept of language prestige standards exists.
Although economic parasitism is frequently cited as the motivation for attempts
by the dominant to reproduce their norms, the real motive seems to be a deeper-seated
fear of threats to the breadth and longevity of their culture8, not their finances.
6
The word prestige denotes the overall extent to which one’s position in a group is
enviable to other members of that group.

7
The term language planning encompasses goals, strategies, and actions of governments
meant to control under what circumstances and by whom languages are spoken.
8
When referring to culture, I refer to the complex of multichotomies and continua of
Introduction 7
Stavenhagen (1990) argues that controlling physical resources is more of a strategy
toward cultural self-preservation than a goal in and of itself:
the economic factor is seldom absent...[but] it does not usually constitute
any kind of triggering factor. Existential problems in a deeper sense are
involved...the risk of having to give up something of oneself, one’s
identity...It is therefore more a question of survival in a cultural rather than
a material sense. (p. 39)
Physical resources can simply be withheld and stockpiled to be doled out as a monopolist
sees fit, but language is a creative resource derived from the mind; therefore, to control
its empowering potential, would-be monopolists must stifle the creative faculty of the
mind. To do this, they take three approaches: first, they indoctrinate, primarily via formal
education, most citizens at a young age into a mindset that accepts the propriety of their
prestige standard9; second, they socially disparage variant norms and individual variant
norms common to a group. A culture can also be the group identified by this complex.
External actors, however, usually identify a culture by those behaviors that emerge as a
prestige majority. An individual may be a member of a culture without exhibiting all or
any of the behaviors by which that culture is externally identified, since these behaviors
are defined by a prestige majority with which that individual may not agree. It is the
individual’s tendency to define behaviors in terms of the culture’s complex which
indicates his or her membership to that culture. Furthermore, an individual may have
membership in multiple cultural groups (e.g. a nationality, an economic status, and a
religion may all be inlets to cultural membership).

9
A language standard is a set of linguistic norms on which a speaker bases his or her
notions of the acceptability of speech or writing. In this thesis, it is frequently shorthand

Introduction 8
forms as illegitimate; and third, they refuse prestigious and powerful societal positions to
those who do not adhere to prestige standards. It is the first two of these methods of
which EFL teachers need be especially aware in their pedagogies.
Making Meaning
To construct, extrapolate, or ascribe symbolism is to perceive interactions in
the material world and to formulate mentally an interpretation of what they mean; this
includes making value judgements—assessing the beneficiality or ethical legitimacy of
behaviors. From beginning to end, the acts of constructing symbolism, making value
judgements, and behaving according to these assessments compose the process of
making meaning. Of course, each person has evaluative predispositions arising from
genetics as well as all things previously perceived and made meaningful. One’s
worldview is the totality of these existing tendencies. The mechanism by which we
attach symbolic meanings to events is self-updating, as new events may inform our
worldview even as they are interpreted by it.
Frequently to reevaluate and update one’s worldview seems a desirable ability, for
to do so is mentally to adapt well to unforeseen events. Furthermore, because they are
largely products of all perceptions to which we have arbitrarily been exposed at a given
point in time, our individual worldviews may not suit the contours of our genetic
predispositions, and the inability to reconsider them may interfere with self-actualization
—the realization of one’s individual potential (Maslow, 1943), a goal I hold as axiomatic.
for a formal language standard, which is a language standard officially prescribed by
authorities, usually by a government to its citizens or an educational institution to its
students.
Introduction 9
It appears true in my experience that this faculty, like any mechanism of the mind, waxes
and wanes according to whether it enjoys frequent exercise. While a ‘stalled’ worldview
will continue to ascribe symbolism to events, it will learn nothing from them. In this
thesis I refer to ascribing symbolism and making meaning responsibly; by this I indicate
that one is in such a reciprocal relationship with experience as I have just described—that
one’s worldview is not ‘stalled,’ but consistently reevaluated through active effort. A key
aspect of responsibility is examining the outlooks of those who have previously
considered the symbolism of the experiences and observations with which one is
concerned.
The goal of this thesis is to examine what describable tools individuals often
use to make meaning from the use of languages as it relates to unequal human
power relationships and then suggest ways in which these tools might be refined.
Languages are related to such relationships in at least two ways: first, they are a
tool for asserting as well as resisting dominance, and second, their usage is often
construed as a perceptible representation of the nature of the power relationship in
question; thus we tend to extrapolate our symbolic interpretations of such relationships on
the basis of the language use of the parties involved.
In particular, I will explore and criticize contemporary scholarly discourse on
language symbolism; scholarship can be a source of insight into how to responsibly make
meaning, since it represents the considered perspectives of those who have gone before.
While popular (that is, broadly societal) discourse will also be referenced, it is my belief
that scholarship is generally more a product of consideration and evaluation than is lay
opinion, which is generally more a product of indiscriminate adherence to local norms

Introduction 10
than scholarship and is far harder to define or chronicle besides. Finally, I will offer my
own perspective on symbolically interpreting language use.
It is my hope that some aspects of this exploration of the relationship between
worldview and linguistic events may be informative to, or at least stimulate to exercise,
your own worldview, and that it might help you set political goals as a teacher and as a
global citizen.
Organization
This document is divided into six chapters, including this introduction. Chapter
Two: Summary of Critical Approaches explains the basic principles of five scholarly
perspectives related to linguistic power structures.
Chapter Three: Scholarly Strategies for Making Meaning of Periphery English is
a review of literature, mostly from the field of World Englishes, examining the global
spread of English into countries with which the language has not been traditionally
identified, its use by individuals and governments in those countries. The chapter
concludes with my negotiation and synthesis of these perspectives.
Chapter Four: Four Popular and Scholarly Biases is an explanation of four
biases that I perceive to commonly exist in discourse on the subject of linguistic power
structures. After defining and elaborating on the character of the biases, I apply them
individually to the discourse examined in Chapter Three.
Chapter Five: My Perspective proceeds from my observations in Chapter Four to
draw conclusions about what is useful—and what I cannot make use of in good
conscience—within present-day theory. In this chapter I offer a rationale for my choice
and definition of some key terms, my own visual models for representing global English
Introduction 11
both descriptively and prescriptively, and some remarks on setting goals as an EFL
teacher and global citizen.
Chapter Six: Conclusion suggests where further scholarship might build on the
framework I have developed. I then summarize my final understanding of the state of
discourse on the subject of making meaning of linguistic power structures in terms not
entrenched in the vocabulary I have developed in this thesis.

12
Chapter Two: Summary of Critical Approaches
To participate in the present scholarly discourse on linguistic power structures of
the periphery, we minimally require an understanding of the critical schools
of postcolonialism, neocolonialism, Marxism, reproduction theory, and resistance
perspective.
Postcolonialism
Though often labeled as such, postcolonialism is not truly a theoretical framework
per se. It is a popular area of interest in contemporary academia, investigating the
legacies of colonizers in the cultures, economies, languages, literatures, and politics of
the once-colonized nation. Specifically, postcolonialism is usually concerned with
observing the development of cultural, national, and individual identities in postcolonial
states10, which is presumed to follow a unique trajectory due to the influence of the
colonizer.
Its preoccupation with identity11 is among postcolonialism’s most useful
characteristics with regard to language planning issues. Postcolonialism is quick to
embrace the complex and pluralistic nature of identity; perhaps because it regularly
observes identity in conflict, the best postcolonial scholarship eschews reductive
10
A nation is a group of people who feel that they belong together under a common
government. By comparison, a state is a group of people under a common government.

11
An identity, in this thesis, is the set of all symbolic meanings an individual attaches to
the events and things in his or her life, and the personal narrative he or she creates as a
result.
Summary of Critical Approaches 13
classifications of identity according to previous models suggesting that state membership,
native languages, and ethnicity interact in a lawful way to produce identities.
This insight notwithstanding, while the term postcolonial is a useful descriptor of
time and place—after colonization has ended in a region where it once occurred—I find
other vantages more tenable as theoretical frameworks.
Neocolonialism
Neocolonialism is a theoretical perspective describing the relationship between an
imperial state12 and its colony when that colony remains exploited by its colonizer even
after gaining independence. Typically this exploitation manifests as the siphoning of
commercial resources, wealth, and labor generated by the postcolonial state to
corporations of the imperial state. The goal of the imperial state is the sustenance of its
affluence and prestige, and the strategy it employs is often to negotiate commerce with
the postcolonial state only on terms advantageous to itself. Extensive land and natural
resource ownership, usually lingering from the colonial era, give the imperial state further
power with which to assert its economic will.
Neocolonialism as a theoretical approach seeks to make sense of international
relations by critically examining the motives of states, taking for granted the imperialist
12
By imperialism, I indicate the intentional domination of a people by a foreign
government (the imperialist or imperial state) in the interest of advancing that
government’s own culture, power, prestige, and/or material wealth and carried out by way
of the reproduction of the state’s own norms. Linguistic imperialism indicates the
strategy, typically included in imperialism, of using language as a venue for this normal
reproduction.
ambition to subordinate. It assumes that while the era of physical and military
colonialism has largely ended, imperial states continue to assert dominance and maintain
control through economic superiority.
Writers such as Ngũgĩ (1985) have argued that culture is an essential aspect of a
colonizing state’s ability to control its colony. The short-term goal of colonizing states, he
suggests, has been to demean or destroy the culture, including the language, of the colony
until the colonized themselves perceive it as inferior. This creates a psychological
dependency on the colonist’s culture, setting an exonormative cultural prestige standard
under which the desire to make meaning and identity cannot be satisfied except by the
cultural blessing of the colonizer, which may be withheld as a means of negative
reinforcement. In terms of neocolonialism, the implication is that the cultural—and
certainly the linguistic—interventions of the imperial state irrevocably alter the norms of
the colonized, which may remain adherent to a foreign standard after independence is
gained.
Crucial within the neocolonialist model is the concept of dependence. The
strategy of imperialist states is to maintain the dependent relationship of their former
colonies to themselves, whether by economics, culture, or both; without this dependency,
the imperialist state would be unable to set the terms for commercial interactions between
itself and the postcolonial state.
Marxism
Insofar as neocolonialism is predicated on the notion of economic subordination,
it is predicated on the Marxist theoretical framework. Marxism categorizes individuals
into classes according to whether they are owners of the means of production of wealth
(the bourgeoisie) or must rely on employment by such owners to provide materially for
themselves (the proletariat), ignoring the frequently unchallenged tendency toward
classification by citizenship. Marxism holds that the relationship between the two classes
is one in which the latter is exploited via its dependency on the former, and regards the
capitalist prioritization of profit as wasteful, since it esteems profitability before
usefulness.
It is the central tenets of Marxism that concern this thesis. (Although Marx and
Engels first codified what is now known as Marxism in Manifest der Kommunistischen
Partei in 1848, the exact and detailed opinions of Marx are often denoted using the
term Classical Marxism.) While it is more contemporary to refer to neo-
Marxism than Marxism, I do not consider the distinction a useful one; neo-Marxism is an
umbrella term for an amalgam of writings, birthed within the school of Marxism, which,
while not without insight, lack a cogent, unified improvement of essential Marxism
except insofar as they overlap with neocolonialist work.
A recent contribution which may be described as neo-Marxist has been the
extension of Marxist principles to international state relationships. It is here that neo-
Marxism meets neocolonialism (and I believe the latter a more concise descriptor); the
relationship of economic dependency between classes observed by Marxism is analogous
to that of imperial and postcolonial states within the neocolonial framework.
Reproduction Theory
Apparently popularized by Canagarajah’s Resisting Linguistic
Imperialism (1999), in which he uses it interchangeably with the term reproduction
orientation, reproduction theory is a term referring to a body of widely circulated

scholarly beliefs about the relationship between colonizer and colonized. Specifically,
Canagarajah challenges that scholars have constructed a reductive model of this
relationship in which the imperial state imposes its language, culture, education, and
political philosophy and methods on the colonized state, which then becomes an
unwitting venue for the reproduction of imperial norms.
Canagarajah’s main contention with this perspective is its failure to acknowledge
the agency of the politically dominated—reproduction theory, he charges, posits a
simplistic causality which ignores the initiative, resourcefulness, awareness, and ability to
choose of the once-colonized.
Though the term originates from Canagarajah, others have voiced the same
concerns. Within my reading, Pennycook (1994) is the earliest to express criticisms of
what he called the “totalizing tendencies of much critical theory...[which] leave little or
no space for struggle, resistance, change, human agency or difference” (p. 69).
Reproduction theory, then, is not actually a scholarly school, but an alleged
scholarly supposition underlying and undermining scholars’ efforts to comprehend the
nature of postcolonial power struggles. As I find it primarily a useful descriptor, my use
of the term is not intended to be pejorative.
In Resisting Linguistic Imperialism, Canagarajah posits an improvement to this
tacit assumption: resistance perspective.
Resistance Perspective
Resistance perspective argues that individuals adapt to their circumstances with
ingenuity and initiative, making use even of an oppressor’s tools for their own purposes.
Specifically, Pennycook (1994) and Canagarajah (1999) are both focused on the
appropriation of English by members of postcolonial nations for their own purposes.
Canagarajah (1999) makes a point of extending this to observations of individuals as well
as nations.
Canagarajah writes the following:
The projects of the different models of resistance is to critique
centeredness, binding, uniformity, cohesion, generalization, abstraction,
globalism, and determinism in favor of decentering, unboundedness,
diversity, splintering, concreteness, specificity, localism, and
indeterminateness. (1999, p. 28)
In short, resistance perspective is defined mainly by what it refuses to be, being
itself pluralistic and eschewing monolithic categories and assertions of causality.
Though Canagarajah interchanges the term with resistance theory, resistance
perspective is in fact largely resistance to theory (or reproduction theory, generally
prevailing as it is). This is not necessarily a flaw in Canagarajah’s approach to
neocolonial issues, but it does call into question his promotion of the view as a theory per
se. Resistance perspective is an amalgam of misgivings; its hesitation to fully embrace
reproduction theory is understandable, but it also offers us no crucial improvement to that
model—only the warning that the categories we establish to understand the world may
also serve to narrow our view of it.
The gift of resistance perspective to studies of language policy and planning is its
perpetual reminder that attempts by the powerful to control the language of others are not
automatically successful; in fact, such attempts are met with resistance that frequently
thwarts them or reconstitutes the language for the benefit of the resister. Marxist and
neocolonialist writers are cautioned to bear in mind that the proletariat individual and the
postcolonial proletariat state are not docile vehicles for their bourgeois counterparts, but
are rather engaged in a continuous struggle to define the meaning and symbolism of the
norms that may serve as mechanisms of control or, if the proletariat succeeds, be
reconstituted as expressive mechanisms of self-selected identity.

19
Chapter Three: Scholarly Strategies for Making Meaning
of Periphery English
The contest to popularize one’s own view of what the spread, individual use, state
manipulation, and formal education of English in the periphery symbolize is carried out
in popular discourse, local politics, and scholarship. My goal in this section is to focus on
competing scholarly perspectives as to what World Englishes symbolize and how they
should be depicted in discourse.
Depictions (by visual models or other analogy) of English’s global character
convey the symbolism extrapolated by their designers. Graphics in particular are quite
telling as to the hierarchy of priorities by which their creators make meaning. For this
reason, I will examine in detail several visual models of the distribution of English.
While this thesis is primarily concerned with the insights of scholarship, it is
worth noting that within the center, popular perception of the symbolism of English has
been fairly unyielding in its triumphalism and optimism; in my experience, mainstream
media still speak of English as rightly and obviously prescribed from the center. This
mentality threatens to insulate majority citizens of the center against the pluralistic reality
of English, the general global progress toward multilingualism, and the potential benefits
of self-perception as a citizen of the world.
The Spread of English
The 1900s in Summary
Roughly speaking, the last century’s trajectory of scholarly opinion on the

Scholarly Strategies for Making Meaning of Periphery English 20
symbolism of English’s rapid international spread over recent centuries has been thus:
initial exhilaration has given way to apprehension, and eventually the complexities of
linguistic relationships have prodded us toward an admission that we have been largely
unprepared as scholars, teachers of English, and international citizens for the discourses
on the politics of language and linguistic rights that increasingly loom over our lives.
The majority of the 1900’s saw agreement among the mainstream center that
English’s rise to dominance was inevitable, beneficial to the world, and proof of
English’s fundamental superiority. This was the exhilaration stage, its prominent
scholarship triumphalist in character. Seemingly a continuation of 1800s ideas of British
destiny (see George, 1867; de Quincey, 1862), this notion was likely taken for granted by
scholars who inhabited a relatively homogeneous academic sphere. Pennycook (1998) is
highly critical of this discourse and notes that while it had become more politically
correct in its presentation by the late decades of the century, this indiscriminate chorus
was merely being rephrased, not reconsidered. He highlights this superficial shift via a
savvy comparison of Rolleston, (1911) who employed poetic language overtly praising
English, to Crystal (1987), a still-prominent name in World Englishes whose catalog of
the global uses of English is ostensibly neutral but, by cherry-picking only flattering
details of the language, ultimately serves the same mindset. Pennycook goes on to name
other recent triumphalists: Bryson (1990), Claiborne (1983), and Jenkins (1995), who
exemplifies the tendency of journalism to reproduce self-serving center standards.
Apprehension lurked throughout the era as scholars such as Kiernan (1969)
accused the British of haughtiness and contempt. The idea that the spread of English
universally, inextricably symbolized the assertion of imperial will was tempered by

moderate scholars such as Wesley-Smith (1994), who acknowledged the imperfection in
the correlation between the spread of languages and that of power or ideologies. Bullivant
(1995) notes that World Englishes discourse on the reproductive capability of education
in service to the dominant members of society “owed not a little to the influence of the
New Left…focused on the power of the school curriculum and the educational system to
reproduce the interests of the ruling or dominant class” (p. 161). Thus, contemporary
World Englishes scholarship has its foundations in skeptical positions which emerged
largely in the 1970s.
The contest between triumphalism and skepticism seems to have tipped in favor
of the moderate skeptical position by the 1990s, which in turn saw the emergence of
present-day paradigms espoused most prestigiously by Kachru (1986), Phillipson (1992),
Pennycook (1994, 1998), and Canagarajah (1999).
Present-day Positions
Phillipson (1992) popularized the term linguistic imperialism—describing the
spread of linguistic norms as neocolonial imperialist strategy—in a book of the same title,
and much of the scholarly theory of the previous two decades has developed within this
discourse. Today there is widespread agreement that the reproduction of English has been
conducted by the center in an attempt to concurrently reproduce other center norms, but
there is an increasing resistance to the oversimplifying tendency, termed “deterministic”
by Canagarajah (1999, p. 2), to consider successful reproduction a foregone conclusion.
Contemporary prestigious scholarship generally emphasizes the nuanced character of
linguistic power relationships. It is concerned mainly with deciding what the implications
and symbolism of English’s spread are, what use we may make of the lessons of
reproduction models, and how we must depart from such models.
Pennycook (1994), while certainly cognizant of the relationships posited by
reproduction, cautions us against denouncing periphery English education as purely an
act of imperialism, noting that it has genuinely provided many opportunities to the
disadvantaged. Canagarajah (1999) urges us to bear in mind that local factors create
unique linguistic situations that defy categorical assertions as to what the reproduction of
English signifies. Certainly, to assert that English’s spread universally symbolizes
imperialism is to define that spread in terms of the imperialist alone, ignoring the
reminder of resistance perspective to bear in mind the contribution of the colonized state.
None of this is to say, however, that reproduction theory is a thing of the past.
Indeed, Canagarajah (with whom the phrase originates) decries reproduction theory’s
monolithic tendencies, but even he is largely invested in its concerns and terminology.
Contemporary reproduction models generally regard the spread of English as a
component strategy of imperialist efforts, enacted deliberately by the center and carried
out in the periphery to spread center values such as capitalism (Crystal, 1995; Pennycook,
1994, 1998). As such, the spread of English is considered to be a form of lingering
oppression in postcolonial states to the advantage of center power. In particular, the
Unites States is often considered the imperialistic source of English norms, a status it
enjoys as a result of its global economic influence (Crystal, 1995).
Foucault’s (1975) interpretative reinvention of the panopticon (a prison designed
by Jeremy Bentham in 1785) as a metaphor for the invisible observation by authority13

13
Authority is power whose ownership is widely legitimized within a given group.
An authority is such an owner. Subordinate is a descriptor for any actor over whom
of those over whom it holds power has been extended by World Englishes scholars to
illustrate the supervisory function of English in the periphery (Pennycook, 1994;
Canagarajah, 1999).
Depicting the growth of English
If there is a transitional figure between previous paradigms and the heightened
political scrutiny of Contemporary World Englishes scholarship, that figure is Braj
Kachru, who began to argue prominently in the 1980s that the sociolinguistic realities of
English were determined by uninformed attitudes, power, and economic factors (1986,
1992). Kachru (1986) posited a widely circulated model of global English which
envisioned English as occupying three concentric circles: the inner, outer, and expanding
circles14. (Kachru’s terms originally appeared in proper case, but, as many others have
done, I have decapitalized them).
such an authority exercises power; a subordinate is such an actor. Insubordination refers
to the refusal of subordinates to act according to the pre- and proscriptions of the
authority.
14
Figure 1: Kachru’s three-circle model of World Englishes
Figure 1: Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English
According to Kachru’s model, the inner circle is norm-providing, the outer norm-
developing, and the expanding norm-dependent. In other words, the inner circle has fully
‘matured’ linguistic standards of English, the outer has standards which are presently
maturing into a unique form, and the expanding has not begun (or only just begun) to
establish its own variety of English and presently receives norms from the inner circle.
The model is significant for reinventing the way English is depicted on the global scale;
older models (e.g. Strevens, 1980) merely attempted functionally to catalog English
varieties by region, while Kachru’s is infused with the implications of political inequality
on which his work, alongside that of his peers, was focused. In other words, Kachru’s
model depicted for the first time the value-laden and symbolic implications of English’s
distribution.
McArthur (1987) proposed a circular model15 in which “World Standard English”
occupied the center, flanked by eight prominent regionally identified Englishes each
subdivided into dialects:
15
Figure 2: McArthur’s circle of World English
Figure 2: McArthur’s Circle of World English
Like Strevens’s, McArthur’s model seemed primarily descriptive in character;
however, it differed in that it supposed a world standard. A nearly identical model was
posited the next year by Görlach (1988). The position of such a standard seems to
alleviate some of the accusatory implications of Kachru’s model, placing McArthur’s and
Görlach’s graphics in a nebulous place between descriptive and prescriptive

representation—perhaps the reason Kachru’s fared better.
While Kachru’s model has enjoyed considerable popularity, it has increasingly
been characterized as inadequate or antiquated, especially for its preoccupation with
physical geography and accidents of birth (Jenkins, 2003). The waning popularity of
Kachru’s circle-model of English distribution has invited new efforts to describe
English’s distribution, none of which has yet enjoyed much consensus.
Predicting the course of English
Generally, scholars expect a more liberalized and diffuse stratum of English,
encompassing center and periphery varieties without preference, to form in coming
decades. There is disagreement, however, as to whether a ‘higher’ stratum consisting of
one ‘neutral’ global standard will also develop. Canagarajah (2006) foresees no such
formation:
...changes [toward a desire for ownership in the attitude of outer circle
speakers] are encouraging a reconsideration of the native/nonnative
distinction between varieties. They compel us to think of English as a
plural language that embodies multiple norms and standards...From this
point of view, “standard” Indian English, Nigerian English, and
Trinidadian English would enjoy the same status as British English or
American English, all of them constituting a heterogeneous system of
Global English.
Crystal (1997) also foresees a plethora of more-or-less equal varieties, which he
believes will be perceived as dialects. Unlike Canagarajah, though, he suggests that the
world will adhere to a verbal international prestige standard he calls World Standard
Spoken English.
Widdowson (1997) differentiates between distribution (a reproductive act by
linguistic authorities) and spread (a viral expansion), arguing that English’s growth is and
will continue to be increasingly the latter:
It is not a matter of the actual language being distributed but of the virtual
language being spread and in the process being variously actualized. The
distribution of the actual language implies adoption and conformity. The
spread of virtual language implies adaptation and nonconformity. The two
processes are quite different.
Widdowson (1993) furthermore agrees with Crystal that a practical global
standard will inevitably be established:
[English] will naturally stabilise into a standard form to the extent required
to meet the needs of the communities concerned...[T]he international
community...should preserve a common standard of English in order to
keep up standards of communicative effectiveness. English could not
otherwise serve their purpose. It needs no native speaker to tell them that.
(p. 8)
As discussed in the preceding section, graphical interpretations by McArthur
(1987) and Görlach (1988) presuppose a world standard as a foregone conclusion.
The contested ideal
Apart from their disagreements about how English’s spread will culminate,
scholars also variously imagine how it ought to culminate. Some of the visual models of
English’s distribution seem more prescriptive than descriptive, which might explain their
inability to displace Kachru’s three-circle model. Among these is Modiano’s (1999a)
centripetal circles of international English, which posits four nested categories of English
proficiency: no knowledge, learning, native and foreign-language proficiency, and
proficiency in “international English.” Modiano (1999b) shortly revised his model to one
in which “major” and “other” varieties lie along the periphery of a larger inner-oval
denoting “EIL” (English as an international language) with the additional descriptor “The
Common Core”16:
Figure 3: Modiano’s oval model of “English as an international language”
McArthur’s (1987), Modiano’s (1999b), and Görlach’s (1988) models similarly
exemplify their ideals, prioritizing “international English” as they do. And, as you can see
in the preceding Widdowson (1993) quotation, Widdowson not only predicts, but also
espouses, the organic stabilization of English into a common standard.
Canagarajah (1999) expresses a desire to see this dichotomy erased, with
16
Figure 3: Modiano’s oval model of “English as an international language”
increasingly geographically endonormative17 national forms recognized equally on the
global stage.
Ngũgĩ (1986) argues that the once-colonized must reject English as a medium of
culture and thought—arguing for a return to African models for his home continent—to
eradicate the viral legacy of imperialism from the mind of the colonized.
The Individual Use of English
As I have already noted, present-day thinking differs from the easily observed
threads in the 1900s, being demarcated largely by its wariness of reductive attitudes. This
can be observed in the scholarly reactions of Pennycook (1994, 1998) and especially
Canagarajah (1999) to neocolonialism and Marxism, which have focused on illuminating
the oversimplifying tendencies of those models: neocolonialism may treat imperialist
states as actors while marginalizing the colonized as pawns, while Marxism describes
only economic relationships.
Furthermore, as emphasized by Canagarajah (1999), scholars in the center have
tended to describe linguistic relationships at the macro level, neglecting the realistic
17
I use the term endonormative language to denote any language of which a speaker
considers him- or herself a norm-establishing user licensed by his or her ability to
communicate in that language. An endonormative language is distinguished by its user’s
symbiotic relationship to his or her cultural groups, in which he or she receives identity
but also advertizes it; thus, not by denotation but as a matter of course, an endonormative
language is one which serves as a venue for defining and expressing identity.
I use the term exonormative language to refer to the language of a speaker who
considers him- or herself an adherent to, but not an establisher of, that language’s norms.
details of sociolinguistic life in the periphery and misapplying Enlightenment models to
cultural groups whose members have worldviews unlike those of the center. He warns of
reproduction theory’s inability to attend to the details of the individual: “The assumptions
made by proponents of this position are that subjects are passive, and lack agency to
manage linguistic and ideological conflicts to their best advantage” (p. 2). From this
perspective the sweeping, ambitious assertions of reproduction theory are simply
overgeneralizations that ignore the crucial fact that each individual has his or her own
considerations and strategies for making meaning of his or her English use. This line of
thought has led to painstakingly detailed ethnographic work by Canagarajah and others
which attempts to analyze individuals’ situations with an eye to whether they confirm or
surprise the expectations of reproduction models, and how each individual makes
meaning from his or her English use.
Olsen (2008) illustrates the agency of individuals through his exploration of the
Dalit population of India. Classed as untouchable by the Indian caste system, this group is
increasingly using English to achieve a societal mobility on a global level that they were
until now prevented from enjoying even in their birth state. Olsen notes that Dalits are
“rapidly abandoning Hinduism and regional languages—the very cultural ‘practices’ that
held them down—for education in English” (p. 17). For these and other dispossessed
subordinates who have used it to their advantage, it would be a grave error to assert that
English is performing merely in an imperialistic capacity.
Stroud and Wee (2007) argue that discussions of individual language use must
bear in mind consumerism, a “general characteristic of societies in late
modernity....a consumer society is defined largely by the wide variety of goods that can
serve as markers of identity” (pp. 263-264). They assert that languages are consumables
by which individuals can project a desired identity socially; furthermore, consumers
prefer consumables, including languages, which are unlikely to preclude future options
and which enable the widest variety of activities. This manner of conceiving languages
grants individuals agency, but it reduces their decision-making process to a purely
pragmatic evaluative one which probably only represents one aspect of a complex
psychological choice.
Finally, like any scholarly field, World Englishes continues to update its
vocabulary. Scholars of World Englishes have lately begun to eschew the concepts
of native-speaker and non-native speaker as unhelpful and ambiguous designations
(Jenkins, 2003). Many have attempted to replace these with other memes (just as I have
adopted endo- and exonormative for my purposes); some prefer the term mother tongue,
while others suggest that reasonable competence, when measured according to an
established standard, may be a more functional signifier (Jenkins, 2003). None of these
attempts has yielded widespread consensus.
State Manipulations of English
Scholars, like states themselves, variously attach symbolism to intrastate efforts to
prescribe and compartmentalize the use of English, but such politically pregnant
assignations can produce uneasy discourse as they are sometimes readily attributed to
ulterior motives. With regard to intrastate politics, few generalizations can be made due
to the variety of stances adopted by governments to suit their specific agendas. What can
be said is that English language planning occurs in the periphery and the center; in
‘developing’ and ‘developed’ states; and in colonies, independent states, postcolonial

states, and imperial states—in short, nearly everywhere English is widely spoken,
whether as a lingua franca or official language, whether endonormatively or
exonormatively.
In addition to the difficulty of generalizing, to examine what foreign state actions
symbolize presents an ethical dilemma for scholars, especially those of the resistance
perspective: wishing to remain deferent to the local authority of geographically distant
groups (to which they do not feel they belong), they may not be comfortable ascribing
symbolism to the actions of foreign governments. On the other hand, those responsible
for crafting an informed symbolism and value judgement of the actions of a government
under which they are not a citizen, such as EFL teachers, do not enjoy the chance to
remain purely deferent, lest they proceed with no notion of symbolism on which to
ground their behavior or legitimize indiscriminately some extant symbolism local to the
region in question.
Though language planning often takes subtle forms, some states plan English
quite overtly. In Singapore, the government formally recognizes English as the “first
language” of Singaporeans, despite the fact that most do not learn it until elementary
school (Cheah, 1997); employs de facto censorship of Singlish (Singapore’s English
basilect) (Tan, 2002); and conducts the Speak Good English Movement, “re-launched
every year amidst much fanfare and media coverage” (Stroud & Wee, 2007), to
encourage use of British prestige standard English (Singapore’s English acrolect18).

18
An acrolect is a language or language variety, usually prescribed to all members of a
state (and frequently to other groups) by well-established authorities, that is the only
variety popularly considered by those members to be the most prestigious among
languages or varieties. A basilect is its opposite, associated with the lowest level of
Meanwhile, it formally rejects any consideration that English should become an
endonormative language of Singaporeans, asserting repeatedly that English is the
language of ‘the West’—by way of contrast to its other three official languages,
Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, which are explicitly deemed “mother tongues.” These
language-planning strategies are met with great resistance; naturally, they would be
unnecessary if Singaporeans held a common view of what their English use symbolizes.
Indeed, Cheah (1997) notes that “for all ethnic groups, English is gaining ground
at the expense of local languages” (p. 4). Ho (2006) argues that the government’s
obstinate backing of its baroque compartmentalization of English (and Singapore’s
“mother tongues”) has resulted not only in political tension, but also in cultural and
dialectal death and a sweeping identity crisis among Singaporeans.
Lastly, it is worth noting that systemic suppression of insubordination is certainly
not always a function of government. Considering the case of the Dalits as addressed by
Olsen (2008), we observe that it can easily be a self-enforcing, self-replicating cultural
outgrowth sustained willingly, if not wittingly, by most of an area’s population. But if it is
all too easy to unwittingly act in an oppressive capacity, thereby maintaining unjust
power relationships, there is all the more reason EFL teachers must be aware that they,
too, hold political and cultural influence.
Linguistic Human Rights
While scholars have begun to advance the concept of linguistic human rights into
prestige. These are adapted from Stewart (1964) and diverge from their original and
common application, which is to denote the prestige poles of post-creole speech continua
specifically.
academic discourse, it remains common to separate linguistic state “strategies” from
human rights violations, particularly as the notion of linguistic human rights has yet to be
advanced into most popular political discourse. This separation is not a position as such,
but an assumption the evidence of which lies in the lack of widespread examination of
this subject, even among scholars. There may be a hesitation to examine it, since
declarations that states ought to behave a certain way are tantamount to ascribing ethical
symbolism to their behavior and prod a potentially sensitive subject. Resistance scholars,
in their reservedness, may need to evaluate how they can practically apply their
perspective toward the goal of improving the relationship between governments and
citizens.
Linguistic human rights are, of course, human rights securing freedoms regarding
the conditions under which languages may be used. Such freedoms have been actively
pursued in cases well-known to the general public and even been a subject of United
Nations efforts to establish standards, but have not popularly collectively crystallized
under a label as “gay rights,” “gun rights,” “healthcare rights,” and other political causes
have. To date, there has been little theory published on this subject as a unified, global
consideration, though many writings have addressed specific instances that violate
writers’ own notion of linguistic human rights. Perhaps the most comprehensive scholarly
attempt to introduce linguistic human rights is the volume Linguistic Human Rights:
Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination, edited by Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson. As
these authors (together with Rannut) put it:
What is relatively new is the attempt to clarify what should be regarded as
inalienable, fundamental linguistic human rights, to codify them and seek

to promote them as a means to achieve greater social justice. Now is the
time to include positive linguistic human rights fully in international law.
(1995, pp. 17-18)
Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson define linguistic human rights in relation to the
concept of “mother tongue,” noting that such rights can essentially be reduced to “the
right to identify with it/them, and to education and public services through the medium of
it/them” (1995, p. 71). A key distinction, to these authors, is between “individual” and
“collective” rights: the former must be granted to every individual, while the latter
requires a substantial demographic of “mother tongue” users before it need be
implemented.
These authors argue that linguicism, irrational discrimination against speakers of a
given language or variety, “is a major factor in determining whether speakers of
particular languages are allowed to enjoy their linguistic human rights” (p. 106).
Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson do not codify an exhaustive list of the universal
linguistic human rights for which they argue (though regionally contextual rights are
suggested throughout the book), relying on the principle that sociopolitical participation
through the venue of the “mother tongue,” which they define as “the language(s) one has
learned first and identifies with” (1984, as cited in 1995, p. 71), is foundational and can
be easily extrapolated.
Critical Pedagogy
Preceding sections of this chapter have focused on extrapolating symbolism and
making value judgements. This section exists to explain scholarly approaches to the final
step in the process of making meaning (as I have defined it)—the question of how EFL
teachers should proceed from our value judgements to our behavior. Critical pedagogy is
one of the terms by which scholars denote a teaching strategy that takes for granted
neither the political neutrality of education nor that it is merely reproductive. It is
identified with the work of, among others, Canagarajah (1999), Freire (1970), Giroux
(1988), hooks (1994, 2003), Kanpol (1994, 1997), Kincheloe (2008), McLaren (1989),
and Pennycook (2001). Freire is frequently identified as the foundational figure in the
academic discourse of critical pedagogy, though others have pointed out that the idea was
never necessarily a ‘new’ one.
Ira Shor (1992) defines critical pedagogy as prioritizing
habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface
meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements,
traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the
deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal
consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization,
experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse. (p. 129)
In my terms, the intention of critical pedagogy is for students to improve their
ability to make meaning independently. Pennycook (2001) writes that it is a “form of
pedagogy that addresses the marginalizations and exclusions of schooling by...developing
the possibilities to articulate alternative realities...tied to a vision of more inclusive social
democracy. It is a pedagogy of inclusion” (p. 130).
Many have found fault with the academic discourse on critical pedagogy: Gore
(1993), Johnston (1999), and Usher and Edwards (1994) have all argued that it has
remained largely theoretical, impractical, and even self-aggrandizing, while Ellsworth

(1989), paraphrased here by Pennycook (2001), asserts that it is
tied to a rationalist view of education in which students are supposed to
arrive logically at the understanding that they have a right to freedom from
oppression....and [works] with too simple an understanding of the
multiplicities of oppression so that it is too easily assumed that students
will side with the “oppressed” and against the “oppressors” (p. 132).
Nevertheless, the scholarly concept of critical pedagogy has been far from a non-
starter, with a large volume of work committed to it. Still, most invocations of the subject
that I have encountered feature an overview much like the one I am now giving, with no
mention of day-to-day strategies relevant to such a pedagogy. There seems to be a lack of
unification among scholars about what critical pedagogy means, what it as a perspective
assumes, and how it can be implemented, with very little offered in the way of the latter.
The hotly politicized discourse over critical pedagogy is, in my view, bogged
down in mutually used but hazily understood theoretical buzzwords: for example,
Pennycook’s (2001) call to a “postmodernism,” “postcriticalism,” “poststructuralism,”
and “postlinguistics” verges on the ridiculous, and begs the question of whether academic
writing has on its agenda any intent to assist teachers whatsoever. Tendencies to aloofness
have been rebutted with further aloofness, while practical tools for organizing thoughts
and behaviors are what most educators likely seek. This may be one reason that scholars
continue to complain that, despite paradigmatic shifts in scholarship, pedagogy itself is
often treated in the ‘same old’ way—according to Auerbach’s “ends-means approach”
with its presumption of political neutrality.

Evaluating Contemporary Discourse
In my view, there is among existing scholarly schools no paradigm that offers
exactly the right toolkit for responsibly making meaning of linguistic power structures.
In this section I will critique these scholarship I have summarized in terms of the
strengths and weaknesses I perceive.
Negotiating Reproduction Theory and Resistance Perspective
Neocolonialism and Marxism suggest an imbalance of influence that symbolizes
injustice and wrongdoing; this is certainly insightful and cannot be easily dismissed,
taking as axiomatic, as I do, the need to pursue a fairer world. However, many have
pointed to the need to be more encompassing than Marxism, focusing as it does solely on
economic factors. Furthermore, both paradigms suffer from monolithic tendencies as
expressed by resistance perspective: they tacitly (presumably unintentionally) posit a
world in which certain groups enjoy sufficient power to strategically engineer their
prosperity while disadvantaged elements are defenseless to the manipulations of these
groups—envision a game in which imperialists and the bourgeoisie are players and other
groups are pawns. Canagarajah (1999) rightly urges us to consider anew all entities, no
matters how disadvantaged, as players.
The implication here is that acknowledging the once-colonized as ‘victims’ of the
colonial era’s empires is not only unhelpful in and of itself, but also potentially dangerous
because it places those ‘victims’ in a gray area in which their cultural and linguistic
decisions become permanently flavored by their victim status. A victim has only a pre-
determined set of recourses, lacking the agentive perspective of independence.

Reproduction theory suggests recourse instead of course, recuperation instead of
operation, reaction instead of action. This danger may even be embedded in the
term postcolonial itself, supplanting, as it does in some usage, the term independent.
On the other hand, when extending resistance theory to this extreme, our attention
is drawn to the inevitable fact that imperialism is a real strategy of the powerful. The
reason the term postcolonial is used, after all, is because it describes a set of real
circumstances. Those circumstances define the character of the struggle in which the
game’s players are engaged; merely pointing out the nature of the struggle (imperial will
versus independent will) does not itself seem to presume a foregone conclusion.
Furthermore, resistance perspective itself seems not to posit a new symbolism in
place of the player-and-pawn dichotomy it perceives within reproduction theory. Its
essence, in fact, seems to be its contention that reproduction theory does not say enough
about two specific topics: the agency of the disadvantaged and the pluralistic nature of
authority structures. Merely to advance this complaint, while certainly valid, may not
justify the position of a new theory. Actually, Canagarajah’s own work is concerned with
most of the same issues as that of ‘reproduction theorists’ themselves: the imperialistic
(one could say reproductive) tendencies of exonormative pedagogies and texts, the
supervisory function of English in the periphery, and the influence over classroom
dynamics held by norm-setting institutions are all examined in Resisting Linguistic
Imperialism.
The fundamental position of reproduction theory is that the center attempts to
reproduce itself in the periphery through, among other methods, the multiplication of
center-standard linguistic norms, a concern with which Canagarajah is similarly

preoccupied. While the self-determining power of postcolonial people should not be
ignored, its existence does not alleviate the exploitative pressure directed at those people;
neither does its invocation solve the problem of responsibly judging the value of
assertions of linguistic authority.
Part of what appears to be at stake in whatever conflict may exist between
reproduction theory and resistance perspective is the way that we conceive the
relationship between a priori reasoning (upon which reproduction theorists rely) and
experiential knowledge (upon which Canagarajah’s work is based); when examining
linguistic authority structures in an attempt to extrapolate symbolisms, do we subordinate
one to the other? How do they interact?
Resistance perspective is appealing in that its call to specificity and concreteness
necessitates a more rigorous self-discipline in our scholarship; Canagarajah is not only
unwilling to make blanket assertions of symbolism, but defies generalization of any kind,
examining in detail how real individuals construct symbolism in his ethnographic work.
But while the wariness of resistance perspective toward sweeping assertions may ward
off criticism (and indeed, avoid mistaken assertions) by presuming so little, specificity
can be paralyzing; a sea of ethnographic data may be less removed from real-world
relationships than broad symbolic categories for organizing them, but it also offers us no
foothold on which to ground our own symbolic perspectives. We must also bear in mind
that the concepts of resistance perspective and critical pedagogy are themselves
advertized to us by a self-interested academic tradition rooted in European ways of
thinking; they are not disinterested or unburdened of history. There seems to be a belief in
scholarship that we can somehow move ‘beyond’ our Enlightenment academic roots, but
no matter where we move, we will not move the place from which we came.
In short, we must locate a middle ground between the philosophical dispositions
of reproduction and resistance in order that we may continuously update our axioms but
predicate this process on both reason (favored by reproduction theory) and experience
and observation of real and detailed situations (favored by resistance perspective). At the
same time, I hope to retain the material strengths of both viewpoints: reproduction
theory’s insight into the power struggle between imperialists and former colonies and
resistance perspective’s call to specific, localized thinking.
Depictions of the Growth of English: Description Versus
Prescription
Attempts to depict English’s distribution iconographically seem doomed to failure
(or at least a brief lifespan), though Kachru’s model may still enjoy its reputation a while
longer. It seems to me that existing models fail mainly in that they have been one-
dimensional; Kachru’s circles demonstrate geographic distribution elegantly, but do not
depict proficiency or notions of acrolect and basilect, limiting their applicability. And
while it’s true that prestige outer-circle English norms come from the inner circle, they
are certainly selectively drawn from the acrolects thereof—Black English Vernacular, for
example, has not found its way into most outer-circle prestige standards. Modiano’s
model, on the other hand, deliberately ignores geographic distribution. Furthermore, it
seems largely an incarnation of his own idealized distribution, placing, as it does,
“English as an international language” at its center.
This idealized representation indicates to me a need for two models—one to

describe the state of English and one to prescribe an ideal state. Kachru’s model is
fundamentally descriptive; what it really conveys is the hierarchical reality of English
prestige in the world: briefly, emulation of standards flows toward the inner circle.
Modiano’s model is prescriptive, suggesting that we should distribute prestige equally to
global varieties, with the exception that “international English” ought to be awarded the
greatest prestige. Kachru’s model may be too realistic a vision of linguistic power for
those (like Modiano, seemingly) who seek a model prescribing a more utopian
incarnation, but the latter kind of model is simply not useful for observing and critiquing
the problematic power hierarchies from which many hope the world will emerge.
When viewed as a diagnosis, not a prescription, Kachru’s model seems perfectly
contemporary in a world that still glorifies the concept of the native speaker. Its
shortcoming, then, is that it illustrates only geography, suggesting a relationship among
states while not depicting intra- and a-state concerns. It is more dubious to suggest that an
adequate prescriptive model has yet been posited.
Prescriptive models generally seem unrealistic (if taken in good faith) or
unhelpful—that is, rather like the status quo. Those presented in this thesis range from
Modiano’s highly abstract ovals (invoking a postmodern sensibility) to circles containing
extant taxonomies surrounding a hypothetical prestige standard (rendering the intent of
the model ambiguous), but all thinly conceal the same underlying structure: a tiered
model with an acrolect as the summit toward which all speakers are intended to converge
(albeit presumably not in a monolingual capacity).
We may note that the hypothetical geographically decentered global acrolect is the
forerunner among scholars’ idealizations of the culmination of English’s global spread.

But such a variety, if it ever comes to exist, will surely emerge primarily from existing
prestige varieties; after all, what impetus is there for authorities of the inner circle to
make concessions to insubordinate exonormative forms? Furthermore, by embracing such
an emergent acrolect we run a risk of cementing English as the ‘final’ culmination of
global natural languages, the consequences of which are difficult to foresee.

45
Chapter Four: Four Popular and Scholarly Biases
Present-day World Englishes discourse can be criticized in terms of four
prominent biases from which we must divorce ourselves in the process of formulating a
procedure for responsibly making meaning. All four biases occur popularly and in
scholarship and are generally tacit and—I would speculate—mostly unintentional. In this
chapter I will attempt to convince you that they are indeed unreasonable biases; in the
below section I will examine them in existing scholarship, then under the assumption that
they are undesirable.
Mold Bias
Mold bias will not be new to anyone familiar with resistance perspective; it is
merely my term for one of the biases against which Canagarajah cautions us. In
short, mold bias describes the tendency to apply reasoning about familiar power
structures to external structures with which one lacks personal familiarity, assuming
predictable causal relationships and outcomes, as though presuming that the structures
and actors involved are ‘cut from the same mold,’ as it were. Resistance perspective, for
example, perceives mold bias among reproduction scholars whose unwitting goal may be
to fit postcolonial actors into the imperial structures the scholars have conceived (a
criticism I have by now thoroughly explored). Mold bias is probably primarily the result
of habit—one might think of it as a kind of intellectual inertia. Unlike the following
three, this bias now enjoys a prominent place in scholarly World Englishes discourse.
As I have already noted, resistance perspective is less a theory than a form of
abstinence from scholarly prejudices which seem to stem from a history of self-
Four Popular and Scholarly Biases 46
aggrandizing philosophizing within a scholarly tradition which has long maintained that
it is steadily progressing along a continuum toward enlightenment. The current migration
away from monolithic assertions toward precise examinations of specific circumstances
(however time-consuming it may become) seems valuable insofar as it is a movement
away from illusory progress on a grand scale (predicated on mold bias) to small steps of
progress on a modest scale (admitting the unique complexity of external power
structures). The main function of the last two decades of postcolonial World Englishes
scholarship has perhaps been the slow reigning in of the indulgent tendency toward grand
theorizing among scholars in favor of slower approach more cognizant of the gaps in our
own knowledge and experience.
However, resistance perspective has not yet taken us far enough down the road
toward an inclusive agentive outlook; we still face prejudices prizing birthplace and other
externally observable traits of individuals, generalizing to the institutional level and
anthropomorphizing institutions, and taking for granted the legitimacy of linguistic
prestige standards. Unfortunately, we are likely to find (in the best case) more and more
that we are merely extricating ourselves from our own biases rather than surging toward
an actionable model for responsibly ascribing symbolism.
Externality Bias
As I have noted in my overview of the contest to depict the ideal distribution of
English, many scholars both foresee and advocate the emergence of a global prestige
standard of English ‘beneath’ which center and periphery standards will equally coexist.
Their implicit assumption is that a prestige standard is a good thing as long as it is not
regionally exonormative.
This tendency to award geography legitimacy as a factor for determining the
propriety of linguistic subjugation is typical in our discourse. What this birthplace
bias presupposes is that powerful elements have the authority to prescribe norms to
subordinate local elements possessing less influence—though if this assertion of will is
taken overseas, it is suddenly assumed to be illegitimate.
Actually, birthplace bias is just one component of externality bias; authority in
popular and scholarly discourse is typically withheld not only on a geographic basis, but
also when the impositions of the would-be linguistic authority are culturally, racially,
sexually, or by citizenship exonormative. Externality bias denotes this tendency to award
authority discriminately based on the external traits (externalities) of the individuals in
question. Often the level of geographic, cultural, racial, sexual, or state-membership
commonality between the would-be authority and the potential subordinate is evaluated
when deciding the legitimacy of power relationships.
I propose that internal traits (internalities) would be a better means of evaluating
power distributions. If we are going to assess whether an individual can rightly hold
power or be subordinated to it, the behavioral histories, share of societal power, attitudes,
axioms, ethics, beliefs, and character attributes of individuals are surely the fairest
metrics by which to do so. However, not only is this assessment made regularly on the
basis of externalities, but such judgements are also applied to groups on the basis of
externalities held in common, an act inhabiting a gray area between mold bias and
externality bias.
What is it about these externalities that makes the prescription of prestige
standards and proscription of insubordinate usage acceptable? Is it tradition? power?

status quo? a perceived ‘social contract?’ I cannot know what justification may be offered
for externality bias, since it is tacit, but it seems quite possible that for some, they are
simply axiomatic.
That said, I can conceive of three assumptions each of which might be seen to
justify externality bias. The first is that by sharing external traits with the authority, the
subordinate somehow shares ownership of the authority’s use of power and its
consequences. This plainly does not follow reasonably, since an authority often uses
power in ways its subordinates would not wish, sometimes even to their obvious
detriment. Yet it is common to generalize (moreso popularly than in scholarship) about
state populations as though every citizen could rightly be held responsible for
reprehensible uses of state power.
The second assumption by which externality bias might be justified is that
external factors may be viewed as constructs that correspond to internalities. Perhaps we
categorize using these descriptors because they are easily seen and we consider
individuals to represent somehow an amalgam of these factors, as though these might be
components of a lawful process producing identity. It is impossible to evaluate the extent
to which this allows us to accurately predict internalities as opposed to the extent to
which it merely prejudices our expectations; for example, is my maleness, in conjunction
with the fact that I live in Washington State, a reason to speculate that I must be a fan of
baseball and the Seattle Mariners specifically? Certainly not, even though many men who
live here do possess the internalities of baseball and Mariners fandom. I would argue that
externality-based constructs have totally unpredictable validity; they are at best
mere clues as to the identity of any given person, which may prove caricatures of
internalities, and they are at worst prescriptive constructions of identity that prioritize
expected behavior over creative behavior by individuals. A common instance of using
externalities as constructs is the common tendency to prescribe gender (a pluralistic
internality) on the basis of sex (a usually dichotomous externality), discouraging
agendered creativity in the construction of the individual’s identity. To give a relatively
benign example, I have been socially expected to care about sports competitions by virtue
of my maleness many times, but, since I do not care about them, I know that maleness
must not be a valid construct of the internality of sports fandom. When I was a child, I
did enjoy baseball; however, my favorite teams were not local; therefore I know that
geographic location also is not a valid construct for one’s sports-team preference.
We continue to create models premised on membership to groups which are
defined not by any axioms, goals, character attributes, or beliefs of the individuals
belonging to them but by externally observable traits that truly do not describe a
meaningful notion of identity for many.
The third possible assumption is that internalities are simply harder to perceive,
measure, and discuss generally than externalities. This is undoubtedly true, but if, as I
have suggested, externalities range from slightly helpful constructs to detrimental biases,
it would be ideal to cease using them even in the absence of a viable construct for
internalities; as I said previously, we may have to spend considerable effort extricating
ourselves from our biases before we can begin to produce useful models.
So, while most scholars ostensibly oppose exonormative impositions of standards,
the reality is that few individuals anywhere in the world will ever enjoy the freedom to
use endonormatively defined language on a broad social scale, and the externality bias
which legitimizes their subjugation to an authority with whom they share superficial traits
has generally not been a matter of discussion among scholars.
Besides this, externality bias still manifests prominently in the conventions of
EFL education. It remains common, though decreasingly so, for schools and governments
to hire only “native speakers” of English to teach in EFL capacities. Often this
designation does not even refer to the term “native speaker” from which most scholars
seem to be distancing themselves, but instead to an even more problematic version which
counts only inner circle speakers as native and, in some cases, rejects those of minority
racial appearance as not representative of the inner circle and thus not meeting the
connotations of “native speaker” from the perspective of the hiring body. I must admit
that I was hired under such considerations myself to work in Japan, like many others,
despite a lack of formal qualifications (themselves disputable as valid constructs, but that
question is for another discussion).
Finally, I would like to address a somewhat paradoxical aspect to this bias: while
externalities of physical features, birthplace, and sex do not, in my view, act as valid
constructs for most internalities, the fact that they are often treated as valid constructs has
resulted in prejudiced behavior on these bases. Having been subjected to such prejudice
is an internality; therefore physical features, birthplace, and sex (and potentially other
externalities) can be seen a highly valid constructs representing the subjection to this
prejudiced behavior on the part of the possessing individual, (though we cannot know the
extent or details based on them). We must be careful to differentiate between these
externalities as rather reliable indicators of past experiences versus detrimental
‘indicators’ of internalities such as personality, ethics, ability, potential, goals, identity,

and so on.
Institutional Bias
Institutional bias indicates the tendency to project agency onto institutions,
assigning them singular agendas, attitudes, norms, priorities, and behaviors, where in
reality they are unthinking demarcations of (potentially widely varying) individuals
belonging to a group. The real commonalities among the individuals composing an
institution are usually externalities; in the case of states, birthplace or blood relation often
determines membership, for example. Yet institutional bias relates to externality bias in
that we often arbitrarily extrapolate from these external commonalities internal
commonalities.
Even in cases in which membership is voluntary, individuals may participate with
agendas contrasting with those formally advertized by the institution. An acquaintance
recently suggested to me that once, only Catholics were permitted by the state to own
land in Texas—and that everyone was Catholic as a result.
Similarly, if I am inducted into the Catholic Church as a baby, the Pope will
presume to represent me as the head of the institution that is the Church. I may or
not feel represented, however—I may regard myself as not a member, or perhaps even
hostile to the Church’s goals. I may join the Church specifically in an attempt to subvert
and undermine it. This would be an example of extreme dissonance between the
institution and the member, falling on the far end of a scale on the other end of which
there is much greater—but still never complete—agreement between the individual and
the institution’s formal attributes. Consider the Pope: he resides near the opposite pole of
this scale due to his great influence over the institution, yet he also must defer to every
other influence that affects the dispositions of any member.
From these examples, it is apparent that the component members of an institution
clearly cannot be assumed to share internalities. Instead, the behaviors that ultimately
emerge from institutions, as well as the internalities popularly associated with them, are
largely accidental.
Some of these associations are the result of an averaging-out of the internalities of
all members, weighted according to their popular visibility. While every member may be
struggling to move the institution toward association with a specific set of internalities,
the ‘final’ manifestation of the institution will not be anyone’s exact ideal. If you will,
envision a meal prepared by several cooks. Each of these cooks adds what ingredients he
or she believes will create the best meal, in the amounts he or she believes each cook
should add, and encourages others to do the same. In the end, however, the differences of
opinion among the cooks result in each contributing according to his or her own plan and,
ultimately, in a meal that does not agree with anyone’s plan (though it differs in degree of
approximation for every cook). Because of institutional bias, the proficiency of this team
of cooks is popularly rated uniformly in accordance with the undesired outcome of their
efforts.
The other internalities associated with institutions are the result of behaviors that
members never wished to be associated with the institution. Returning to the example of
the Catholic Church, we can consider the unfortunate popular association with pedophilic
priests with which it has been widely stigmatized. In this case, behaviors that priests
never vied for the Church to project (indeed, they never wished them known whatsoever)
became associated with the institution to outside parties due to a broader social response.
Like the first kind of institutional association, this kind is accidental; this kind, however,
does not represent an average of individuals’ contributions but an unpredictable anomaly.
Every time we attribute internalities to large groups of people (unless we select
the members of that group on the sole criterion of that behavior), we exhibit institutional
bias. If we base linguistic authority on the institutional membership of the would-be
authority and subordinate, or award it to institutions on the basis of their presumed
internalities, we defer to this bias. To recognize and refuse the institutional bias clouds
greatly the notions of imperialist actions—to identify the imperialist suddenly becomes
quite complicated—and of group resistance.
Standards Bias
The fourth and final bias is standards bias—the tendency to take for granted the
necessity or beneficiality of maintaining prescriptive prestige standards of language.
Seldom is this assumption questioned in scholarship or any other public discourse. While
I find it likely that this is true primarily as a matter of habit (a case of mold bias), I am
also sure that many will argue in favor of maintaining such standards should it be brought
to their attention. For that reason, I will go into some depth to rebut those arguments I
would expect to hear or have heard before.
Justifications for standards bias might include the argument that standards are
necessary to maintain society. Certainly, this is true of some kinds of standards: for
example, some behavioral standards are probably necessary to maintain quality of life. It
would not follow, however, to generalize this necessity to linguistic standards, which will
require their own proof of necessity.
Perhaps it may be argued that law and order rely on documentation such as
contracts, laws, legal opinions, and informal documents which may constitute evidence in
a trial. Justice may then require a universal standard according to which all of these may
be interpreted, to ensure fairness. I would argue, though, that the notion that our natural
languages are truly so precise as to carry an exact denotation is untrue; despite
comprising a considerably ‘evolved’ legal vocabulary, our laws still require the
interpretation of career professionals. Certainly, informal documents are not written with
the intent of universal interpretability, so these do not benefit from universal standards
anyway.
Not only that, but the legal jargon we have amassed also acts as a linguistic
weapon, a gatekeeper by which the established may limit the power of those not versed in
the prestige standards of local law. In the case of legal language, we then see that prestige
standards can manifest not only as helpful, but also as a mechanism of oppressors for
reproducing the status quo. Legal documents are the subject of much debate as to their
meaning anyway; to write them in unencoded, plain language merely universalizes the
power to interpret them—currently the domain of a small, well-paid minority.
A second argument for maintaining prestige standards might be that existing
varieties might as well be used, since they are already widely understood. This argument
fails, however, in light of the fact that acrolectal standards are the domain of a minority of
speakers; why should a large majority be expected to converge toward them?
One might then suggest that languages inherently improve over time as their
vocabularies grow richer and their structures more nuanced and expressive—that our
existing prestige standard is the culmination of English’s ‘progress’ to this point, and that
we must take care lest it be ‘corrupted.’ It might be suggested in tandem that existing
prestige standards are selflessly preserved (rather than selfishly guarded) by prestige
users. But even if languages do improve naturally (and I believe they do), it does not
follow from that fact that the maintenance of standards aids in this process—indeed, I
would argue that it inhibits it.
Perhaps we can agree, for the sake of argument, that the quality of natural
languages (if we are to entertain such an uneasy concept) is decided by their specificity
and expressiveness, and that through usage these traits improve organically. (Other traits,
such as intuitiveness, may compose a better metric, but these favor my argument rather
more overtly.) Indeed, whatever metric we suggest, we can surely agree that new and old
forms should compete on even footing in a natural selection process to allow the form
considered ‘best’ by the widest possible demographics to emerge socially dominant. Why,
then, do we pit new forms against the series of social obstacles necessitated by our
devotion to extant acrolects—including the overt condemnation of variant forms in public
education? Ironically, while languages do improve through adaptation to local and
contemporary needs, they are actually constrained from their natural growth by the
implementation of standards. That we continue to push students (and one another) to
converge toward acrolects—and to take their presence for granted—therefore appears to
me to rely on unreasoned bias.
In addition to the case of legal language already stated, another example of the
debilitating effects of espousing prestige standards is the inelegant and unintuitive
standardized spelling of the English language. The “freezing” of spelling is widely
attributed to the nascence of the printing press and subsequent mass-publication
(Millward, 1996), before which the written language existed without a unified prestige
standard. To quote Millward, “we are still spelling a language that has not been spoken
since the fifteenth century” (p. 224). I am sure little explanation is needed: our standard
spelling contains as many exceptions as rules, most often does not alphabetically
correspond to pronunciation, does not employ a wide enough character set for our
phonology, and therefore poses a considerable barrier to prestige standard English
proficiency.
Not only do such observations illuminate the truth that our existing prestige
standard clearly does not necessarily represent an ideal variety of the language (or even a
variety in harmony with its users), but they also suggest that standards themselves have
been an impediment to developing a more intuitive, universal variety. Imagine if our legal
systems allowed no possibility for changing laws under the pretense that our existing
laws were ideal. Then extend this obstinacy over five centuries—would you expect an
ideal system to still exist? Now, suppose the laws did change, but only at the behest of the
very powerful or in unpredictable ways independent of any human intention; this better
approximates the reality of our prestige English standard.
The Bias Process
Jointly, the biases contribute to a mental process that makes meaning on the basis
of accidents—it legitimizes the authority of accidental groups and bases membership to
these groups on accidental characteristics. Common to the biases is their tendency to treat
accidental characteristics, groups, and systems (such as language) as possessing or
resulting lawfully from human cognition. In empirical research terms, externalities,
institutions, and languages themselves lack construct validity—that is, they do not
represent the internalities we often suppose they do; in the case of languages, they are not
the results of cognitive processes of humans or even natural selective organic
growth. Rather, they are amalgams of historical flukes. In the case of English, the
language can be described as accidental in the sense that its evolution has been guided by
the spread of Roman Catholicism, the Viking invasions, the Norman Conquest, and the
invention of the printing press, none of which represent deliberate or even intuitive,
unconscious ‘improvement’ to the language.
This process begins with standards bias; the intellect first assumes that standards
are desirable, failing to recognize that standards themselves are primarily the products not
of consideration, but of accidents. As I have argued, the properties institutions formally
espouse do not represent the true priorities of any member. Language standards evolve in
the same way: historical accidents occasionally allow an individual or minority group to
assert a greatly disproportionate influence on standards, while at other times they bypass
human intention entirely and carve unpredictable changes of indefinite duration into the
language standard. The resulting hodgepodge was never deliberately instituted for its
superior qualities, nor does it represent anyone’s notion of what the ‘perfect’ natural
language might be.
From this foundation, the mind accepts received demarcations of institutions
and/or proceeds to externality bias, organizing individuals into groups based on like
externalities. Again, accidents are prioritized in the process, since these externalities are
accidents of birth or ascriptions accidentally assigned by society in the same
unpredictable combinatory process that results in ascriptions of internalities to
institutions.
Once institutions are defined, the mind assigns them monolithic internalities in
accordance with institutional bias, a process whose accidental character I have already
described.
Finally, institutions and other groups are subsequently compared to one another
(subject to mold bias) on the basis of these internalities, and symbolism is extrapolated
from their relationship, followed by value judgements and consequent behavioral choices
—all ultimately predicated on an evaluation not of human intentions or behaviors, but of
accidents of birth and history.
We see, then, that the rough order of the process is standards bias, externality bias,
institutional bias, and mold bias. I don’t want to make too much of this order—processes
of the mind are not well understood; it’s certainly impossible to chronologically pinpoint
any internalization of the biases; and furthermore it seems perfectly possible for an
individual to skip steps in the process. The important thing is to recognize that, when
consciously reasoning about these biases in relation to linguistic power relationships,
there is a foundational hierarchy at the root of which is the assumption that establishing
and maintaining prestige standards is a healthy pursuit. This may well be the last bias to
be popularly decried, however, as the layers of bias are more likely to be slowly peeled
away than attacked at the root (should they ever be negated, that is), as we now see the
advancement of resistance perspective, attacking mold and institutional bias, into
contemporary discourse.
The Four Biases in Contemporary Scholarship
Mold Bias
Mold bias is certainly possible in any scholarship, but I cannot connect it
discreetly to any perspective. Certainly, neocolonialism and Marxism posit a recurring
pattern of subjugation by imperial states—but whether they presume the simplistic
success of reproductive efforts is a separate question which ought to be asked of
individual scholars. Even with regard to models such as Marxism, which Canagarajah
classifies as reproductionist, it seems dubious to assert that adherents necessarily are
disregarding the complex interplay of individuals, institutions, and norms in favor of a
genuinely monolithic model; rather, it seems to me that these adherents are attempting to
use the mental tools provided by their framework to identify patterns within complex
pluralities of economy, culture, and language—the whole intention of theoretical
approaches in the first place. With scholarly criticism of this bias seemingly on the rise, I
expect there is now little need to seek out and debunk it.
Externality and Institutional Bias
Externality bias and institutional bias, on the other hand, remain massive
obstacles not only to considerations of making meaning with regard to linguistic power
hierarchies, but to theoretical scholarship in most other fields (and to other societal
domains). As racism, sexism, sexual orientation prejudice, and even linguicism have
emerged as major topics in academia, our awareness of these biases has actually
improved little.
For instance, let’s look at Pennycook—certainly one of World Englishes leading
progressive writers, one whom I admire, and one who had argued all the tenets of
resistance perspective in The Cultural Politics of English as an International
Language (1994) five years before Canagarajah (1999) coined the term. In the same
book, Pennycook notes the necessity to create a pedagogy that includes, for example,
ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians, and working-class students. But what
progress does such a prescription really represent? Granted, it cuts the ‘pie’ of societal
categories into smaller pieces, which modestly alleviates institutional bias by reducing
the size of generalized groups—but it still adheres to the notion that these groups can be
evaluated collectively (institutional bias). Furthermore, it is still predicated on value
judgements made based on the accidental externalities of race, birth culture, sex, and
sexual orientation. Ethnicity seems to have the highest construct validity here (as it is a
messy combination of internality and externality) excepting working-class student status,
which stands alone among Pennycook’s examples as something that represents
internalities—in this case the share of societal power of the student and a life choice he or
she has made.
Resistance theory remains robust insofar as it highlights the ability of individuals
to use language for their own purposes in ways not intended by the imperialist. When this
observation is extended to describe the once-colonized state, however, it becomes
dubious.
First of all, if one accepts the notion of institutional bias, there can be no intention
attributed to the group of people we call a state, so it cannot be said that that state has
strategically reconstituted the language. Secondly, the governments of postcolonial states,

far from championing local identification, often represent one of the strongest footholds
of the imperialist, who usually partners with influential state actors to enact imperial
strategies.
Neocolonialism and Marxism actually embody the strongest resistance to
externality bias among the schools discussed in this thesis. This stems from the fact that
these schools make value judgements on the basis of an actor’s share of societal power—
an internality. Unfortunately, neocolonialism often then falls victim to institutional bias,
ascribing these internalities generally to whole countries, and there is, of course, the
danger of mold bias in the fatalistic casting of oppressor and oppressed.
Resistance perspective theoretically inverts the strengths and weaknesses of
neocolonialism and Marxism. While resistance refuses mold bias most obviously, there
are allusions to institutional bias as well in the work of Pennycook and Canagarajah.
Pennycook (1994) exhibits a rare acknowledgement of institutional bias, specifically with
regard to nations (a term used here, it would seem, in place of state or government):
A rather bland optimism seems to operate in discussions of international
affairs…Both the national…and the international…are accepted as
‘givens’ of the modern world. The nation seems to be taken as an un-
questioned norm that takes care of our local concerns, a generally positive
entity that forms part of our collective and personal identity. (p. 39)
The bias Pennycook describes is not exactly the institutional bias I have posited,
but it is certainly related: the state seems to be the most commonly taken-for-granted kind
of institution in general, though in scholarship the Academy is probably even more so.
The phrases “[a] rather bland optimism seems to operate,” “taken as an unquestioned
norm,” and “a generally positive entity” are witheringly stale and convey a feeling of
helplessness, suggesting practically no sense of agency among those to whose discussions
Pennycook refers. This instance—alone in my research—of explicitly recognizing state-
centrism as a form of bias, though somewhat of an aside, is therefore all the more
encouraging, particularly coming from a widely respected writer.
Canagarajah (1999) also ventures some observations in the vein of recognizing an
institutional bias:
The classroom…is not inexorably determined by the interests of any
specific macro-level institution, although it may be considerably
influenced in its functions by such institutions…hiding these unpredictable
multiple tensions might itself be an ideological ploy by dominant
institutions to create the myth of efficient organization, monolithic
structure, and uniform function....
By insulation (i.e. the suppression of gaps and dislocations evident in
society and institutions) dominant agencies can reduce the complexity of
social reality so that it appears more pliant and tractable. People may also
fail to discern the potential for resistance underlying the inconsistencies
and complications characterizing social reality. (pp. 80-81)
Canagarajah envisions the classroom in much the same way I have described
institutions in general: it is not normally monolithic, its internalities being determined by
“unpredictable multiple tensions,” a process I have characterized as accidental. Here he
suggests that maintaining an institutional structure and concealing the pluralistic nature of
institutional identity can be central strategies of authorities to accomplish the

reproduction of status quo.
When Canagarajah notes that “People may also fail to discern the potential for
resistance underlying the inconsistencies and complications characterizing social reality,”
he invokes the same creeping malaise of which Pennycook despairs—one he hopes to
answer with resistance perspective.
We can certainly establish that a goal of resistance perspective is to look
specifically at the individual with no presumptions. This approach eschews institutional
bias quite well, but, as we have seen in the Pennycook example, can lead to ‘falling back’
on externality bias in its place. Generally speaking, however, resistance perspective
appears fairly robust in its avoidance of these biases.
Within the sphere of linguistic human rights, Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson
(1995), and Leontiev (1995), in wrestling with whether a given right is “individual” or
“collective,” demonstrate institutional bias by awarding certain rights only to groups
above a certain size, making provisions that are unavailable to individuals who lack
membership to a group of sufficient size, thus legitimizing the group as a singular entity.
Among the “collective” rights they would award is that of any “ethnos” to organize its
own education. This way of thinking prescribes to every individual yet another
sociocategorical label by which to define him- or herself and deviation from which
entails the renunciation of societal privileges.
These categorizations cannot be descriptive, since they do not measure an
internality, and their prescriptive character seems similar in function to that of
institutionalized religious categorizations. For example, there are a presently a number of
privileges in the United States available only to professed members of religious groups (a
case of externality and institutional bias)—even marriage is still legally rooted in religion
in many states. The right to proselytize, use drugs, and marry under circumstances
normally illegal has been given extra legal consideration (and variously affirmed or
denied) on the basis of religious membership. In the case of using “mother tongue” to
establish societal categories, accidents of birth are used to determine societal privileges, a
clear instance of externality bias. Officially recognized categories of this kind serve
mainly to intensify the disconnect between the external constructs society uses
(presumably) to measure internalities and the reality of those internalities, because they
encourage individuals to project a false construct of their internalities.
As noted previously, Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson assert that a “mother
tongue” is “the language(s) one has learned first and identifies with” (1984, as cited in
1995, p. 71). Again, the presumption here is one of externality bias; the supposition is
that the first language, an accident of birth and thus externality, is the language of
identification, a construct for internal self-identification. There is no reason to believe
that this construct is valid—indeed, it seems easy to point to cases of self-identification
with a language that does not correlate with that language’s first-language status.
Nationalized immigrants may proudly identify with a second language. Those from
bilingual homes may prefer one or the other of their first languages, perhaps due to its
parental association. Lingua franca acquired mainly outside the home are also languages
of identity for many: for instance, Singaporeans who prize their Singlish.
Standards Bias
Among the four biases, this is the most explicitly related to linguistic power
struggles. While it may also be the second most considered in scholarship (following
mold bias, which is now quite prominent), the question usually entertained in discourse is
not whether we ought to lend our support to prestige standards, but to which standards
should we lend it—a determination often further based on these biases.
Perhaps the most troubling exhibition of the four biases in scholarship is the
common idealization of a global prestige standard of English (to which I have referred
previously). A preponderance of prominent scholars (Crystal, 1997; Görlach,
1988; McArthur, 1987; Modiano, 1999a, 1999b; Widdowson, 1993) prize a worldwide
geographically decentered prestige standard English as a worthy culmination of English’s
global proliferation. This aspiration stems from the standards bias, of course, but also
seems to be predicated partially on mold bias, since it generalizes a model familiar to the
aspirant to the entire English-speaking world. The majority of the oversight, however, is
due to externality and institutional bias.
Putting aside, for a moment, the search for a specific graphical incarnation of
English’s distribution, let us we acknowledge that any such graphic will depict the
direction of linguistic normal emulation, we must realize that the great majority of the
world presently emulates toward the ‘top’ or ‘center’ of the model (and away from the
‘bottom’ or ‘outside’), converging toward one minority acrolect (or any of a very few
extremely similar ones). Indeed, this is the case for Görlach’s, Kachru’s, McArthur’s, and
(both of) Modiano’s models. In our best-used descriptive model, Kachru’s circles,
convergence is depicted from the expanding circle inward. Agreement that we presently
suffer from an imbalance of linguistic power is nearly universal in scholarship.
However, to those who idealize a world standard, this unidirectional flow of

linguistic emulation is perfectly acceptable once it is geographically uprooted. Indeed,
Baugh (2002) explicitly argues that we must accept the validity of other varieties of
English, but then asserts that “Good English is the usage...of cultivated people in that part
of the English-speaking world in which one happens to be” (p. 347). This outlook typifies
externality bias and institutional bias—it seeks to limit authority over the acrolect to the
hands of the established, where it will surely be used as a gatekeeping mechanism—a
state of affairs different to our present one only in that the awarding of acrolectal
authority will not be based on the externality of geography. This perspective is fraught
with the detrimental concept of ‘us and them;’ ‘we’ mustn’t judge ‘their’ English, though
all may judge that of their neighbors. Debating which externalities ought to inform our
value judgements is entirely beside the point. Not entertaining the idea that we may be
better off without a prestige standard, these scholars are also abiding standards bias.
Canagarajah (1999) wisely does not promote a world standard—but remains
adherent to standards bias nonetheless in his idealization of multiple prestige standards.
Returning to visual metaphors for a moment, if we envision the ideal proposed by ‘world-
standardists’ as a prestige pyramid, we might liken Canagarajah’s to prestige pillars: a
minority retains authority over a majority in any case. Furthermore, this authority is
justified, presumably, because it is local—a prizing of geography that falls under
externality bias. Like the others, Canagarajah has only solved the ‘problem’ of
geographic exonorms, not the problem of unjust linguistic power hierarchies.
Similarly, Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson (1995) adhere to standards bias in
their espousal of the linguistic human ‘right’ “to learn an official language in the country
of residence, in its standard form” (p. 71). Again, the propriety of the standard is taken for
granted, and the detriments of being indoctrinated within a prescriptive language standard
are overlooked. This also exhibits externality bias, since it assumes the legitimacy of
exonormatively prescribed standards as long as they are not exonormative by “ethnos.”

68
Chapter Five: My Perspective
Responsibly extrapolating symbolism and judging value requires refining one’s
worldview by negotiating the ideas of others while incorporating one’s own observations
and admitting the limits of what can be known and observed. My attempt to do so with
regard to unequal linguistic power relationships culminates in this section, the purpose of
which is to explain my theoretical perspective on making meaning of these structures. I
will relate my opinion of what is useful within existing theory and weigh in on the
prominent subject matter of contemporary discourse. Ultimately, as I have said, this
thesis represents the process of my arrival at this perspective—a process of ascribing
symbolism and making value judgements. I have partially carried out the final step of
making meaning, behavioral response, by my documentation and submission of this
process, but this response will mostly occur in the wider world and especially in my
pedagogy, once I am teaching again.
I do not intend to name my perspective or suggest that it is a nascent theoretical
school; it is simply my perspective. If a ‘model’ or ‘theory’ is a set of interdependent
observations, the failure of the whole occurring if any of these prove flawed (at which
time a new ‘theory’ rises in its place, changing out only this one imperfection), then I
don’t want to create one. I hope you will not reject my perspective wholesale on the basis
of any partial disagreement. I further hope that you will insist on owning your own
perspective in your own terms, for I believe that any person’s true beliefs are rarely
cogently enumerated by another’s writings. If there is a central thrust to my perspective,
it is probably that injustice in linguistic power structures will not disappear without
dismantling the structures themselves.

My Perspective 69
In my case, incorporating my observations into what I have learned of others’
ideas means filtering existing scholarship through the four biases I have observed, as I
have done in the preceding chapter. All the biases occur, perhaps, for the lack of a better
way to organize our thinking—after all, we cannot know the goals, beliefs, and internal
self-identifications of all people. But the externalities we use as constructs are inadequate
to the point that their usage is likely detrimental; if I know the location, sex, religion,
birthplace, skin color, citizenship, and sexual orientation of a person, I may be able to
fairly reliably predict what share of societal power they possess (because I know that they
have probably been treated largely according to the biases), but I can only hazard wild
guesses as to their attitudes, goals, character, worldview, and other internalities. This,
combined with the problem of the personification of institutions and groups and the
ascription of cognitive processes to these and languages must all be avoided in
formulating my perspective, which leaves a narrow set of options remaining to me; it is
much easier to find flaws in others’ models than to construct a useful new one.
I find that the Marxist and neocolonialist approaches hold up rather well in
general, as they measure according to perceptible behaviors and shares of power (both
internalities); the potential danger of these schools is that they may ascribe these
internalities singularly to institutions, so our discourse in this vein needs carefully to
avoid this bias. If we speak of one state oppressing or exploiting another, we need to
investigate the massively complex roots of the human-like will we are ascribing to the
state (which is itself not a thinking entity) instead of assuming that the actions of some
governmental members represent the country as a whole.
There are really no such things as the actions of a state; these are really the actions
My Perspective 70
of certain individuals, which might be informed by any number of accidents, and
certainly do not represent a collective conscious effort. Similarly, a postcolonial state
cannot be said to collectively reconstitute English for its own purposes, though
individuals within the state may well do so. In fact, periphery governments are often
among the most reluctant actors to accept nationalistic shifts toward global
endonormative national identities. We must remember that institutions are accidental
amalgamations—even periphery institutions can replicate center norms accidentally; the
‘will’ commonly ascribed to states in discourse is a reductive attribution. For this reason,
we must be sure to think globally—holistically and yet at the greatest level of detail—
rather than ‘internationally’—as though nations or states are the smallest perceptible
actors and possess construct validity as signifiers of group will.
EFL teachers observing the world through these lenses must remember that the
struggles posited by these schools surely do exist, but that they are played out down to an
incredible level of detail. Indeed, this is one of the reasons that a teacher’s own agency is
of such importance.
Resistance perspective seems to indicate a progress in scholarship toward
eschewing the four biases, with Canagarajah’s ethnographic work taking great pains to
give detailed accounts of internalities. There is not much here to disagree with; my only
contentions are that resistance has not taken us far enough yet and that it is not really a
theory, but as I have already said, we are likely to spend a great deal of time divorcing
our discourse from our prejudices before we can successfully introduce to it new and
applicable models.
None of these perspectives offers an explicit opinion of the merits of linguistic

My Perspective 71
prestige standards. Acrolects and basilects are usually accepted as a matter of course; it is
this which I would challenge both scholars and teachers of English to consider deeply.
We must ask ourselves two questions: who benefits from the existence of these linguistic
dichotomies? and what is their function? As most EFL teachers are teaching a
geographically, culturally, and economically prescribed exonormative prestige standard
variety of English, they most certainly must entertain these questions if they aspire to
make meaning responsibly.
If we are to attempt to make value judgements as to how linguistic authority ought
to be apportioned, we must bear in mind not only that such attempts are probably
predicated on standards bias, but also the tendency toward judgements based on
externalities and the imperfect assignation of singular internalities to pluralistic groups. It
is difficult for me to accept that the authority of an internally conflicted group of people
to prescribe language standards—themselves products of historical accidents and
occasionally assertions of the will of a small number of people, rarely in an explicit effort
to make the language more universally accessible—to a large majority can be legitimate.
Rationale for Terms
I have carefully avoided the four biases in the definitions in my introduction.
Here I will offer some rationales as to my terminological preferences. For persons, EFL
teachers especially, who aspire to global-mindedness, it is critical to be aware of the
specificity of language and to avoid ambiguous terms (except where they must be
engaged due to their widespread popularity) in their personal and formal discourse. The
terms and definitions I have offered in the introduction and here are the culmination of
my efforts to think in concise terms that eschew the biases I have noted.
My Perspective 72
A quite common example of potentially detrimental language use is the use
without differentiation of the terms country, nation, and state. In political science, these
terms are usually differentiated: briefly, a country is a state with land, a nation is a group
that feels it belongs together under a government, and a state is a group which is in fact
together under a government. This is important to World Englishes discussions because
the term international frequently creeps into discourse in place of worldwide or global.
Such usage frames the global scene as the stage of nations, countries, or states (in these
cases it is difficult to know what denotation is intended), when in reality the global scene
cannot be sufficiently understood if these are regarded as the smallest, or even as discreet,
agentive, actors. Distancing ourselves from the casual overgeneralization of international
is an important step in abandoning institutional bias. The challenge is to find a middle
ground from which we can identify perceptible patterns with which to better understand
the world while, at the same time, avoiding overgeneralization.
My definition of culture also carefully avoids institutional bias by refusing to
suggest that a singular normal standard can define a group of people. Rather, I have
suggested that cultures are defined by the conflicts among their members to promote
values and behaviors. Popular political culture in the United States, for example,
legitimizes political opinions that fall along the multiple continua of Democrat and
Republican party lines, while political discourse outside of this mold is usually ignored or
disparaged. Neither of these parties (similar though they may be) represents perfectly the
norms that define U.S. political culture; rather, the continua themselves define it by
setting the limits of acceptability.
Regarding externality bias, eschewing the tendency to predicate value judgements

My Perspective 73
on externalities is the motive of my definition of endo- and exonormative. Typically these
terms are used to refer to a collective relationship to norms of a group. My definitions
bear the distinction of taking the individual as the smallest discreet unit to which a single
relationship to norms can be ascribed. This refuses the notion of homogeneity within
groups (institutional bias), though it still presumes a fairly simplistic relationship to
norms for each individual. While this presumption may be rough, we lack the tools to
examine with sophistication the individual as a potentially conflicted multiplicity of
component beliefs and values.
Scholarship seems generally inclined to assign endo- or exonormative status to
languages for an entire group on the basis of the distinction between norms defined
within that group’s state boundaries and those from without. I would argue, however, that
political geography is only one of multiple factors that can inform the endo/exo
distinction. The difference among internalities within a single geography seems at least as
important a criterion. The impoverished, for example, as a group with almost no share of
power (an internality), are typically expected to receive norms from the prestigious in
order to advance their own prestige and so must choose in a given situation between
adherence to the exonormative prestige variety or use of the endonormative variety with
which they are more likely to identify.
As I noted when defining my terms, the terms native language and mother tongue
remain popular designations in scholarship (though they may be on their way out).
Besides being vague, each is also dependent on externalities for its definition. This is
acceptable insofar as the terms themselves denote an externality—the circumstance of
learning a language from birth. But again, this externality lacks construct validity
My Perspective 74
regarding how speakers internally symbolize their own language. Actually, it seems
unusually accurate as a construct for communicative proficiency, but of course it is far
from perfect in this aspect either.
Depicting the Growth of English
A Descriptive Model
Here I will offer my graphical depiction of English’s global distribution. My
model attempts to depict the correlations that presently define the character of English
prestige. As I noted previously, I believe that a model not steeped in geography is needed
and that a three-dimensional model may be able to illustrate more nuance than Kachru’s
three-circle model, though I will not depart from it entirely. I suggest that we envision
Kachru’s circles laid over a dome, with the inner circle occupying a small area at the
top19:
19
Figure 4: My dome model of English prestige
My Perspective 75
Figure 4: My dome model of English prestige
This model’s diameter illustrates normal and institutional density: proceeding
from the inner circle outward, we observe a corresponding increase in the diversity of
cultural and linguistic norms as well as the number and variety of character among
institutions of which English speakers tend to be members. The model’s height illustrates
access to prestige English, the greatest access occurring at its apex.
The dome’s broad base represents the majority of English speakers, lacking
institutional and normal cohesion. Though a majority, this population nevertheless
emulates upward toward the prestigious standard of a small minority (the population the
inner circle) who enjoy close institutional proximity to one another. This reflects their
My Perspective 76
membership in a relatively small and, more importantly, similar number of states,
businesses, churches, and so on.
The prestige standards that presently dominate the globe come from the inner
circle. As an individual converges further toward a global prestige standard (American
Prestige English, British Prestige English, etc.), his or her Y-axis value increases. The
intent of the model is not to depict proportions mathematically, but to illustrate
correlations: the crux is that an individual’s ‘upward’ convergence toward prestigious
language entails simultaneous ‘inward’ movement—convergence with the cultural
expectations and participation in the institutions of the center. The model suggests the
impossibility of accessing prestige varieties without reducing the possibilities of behavior
and institutional membership. There is nothing wrong with an individual making this
decision on an informed basis (life is full of such decisions), but EFL teachers must be
aware of the argument that strategies and materials originating from the center
deliberately use the motivation to learn a prestige language as a pretext to ‘teach’ students
toward the homogeneous norms and institutions of the center and away from the
unpredictable periphery—a decision which should belong to the student, not the teacher
or the institution.
As in Foucault’s reimagined global panopticon, the upper areas of the dome can
“see”—that is, monitor, supervise, and influence—all that is beneath them. The lower
areas of the dome can see only along their own horizontal plane plus whatever is
deliberately revealed to them from above. This is exemplified by the fact that English
learners are unaware of the details of the variety toward which they are converging—
indeed, they may be converging variously with a number of Englishes, and not all of
My Perspective 77
these need be acrolectal.
Conversely, as one emulates upward along the Y-axis, there is an accompanying
expectation that one will assume a monitoring, supervisory, and prescriptive role, which
is often blithely assumed (in accordance with the four biases). The responsibility of a
teacher, however, is not to ‘push’ students toward the acrolect, narrowing their horizontal
scope (that of their potential participation in norms and institutions not of the center).
Neither should this be the function of the university or of education in general, nor need it
be.
One could, potentially, map every institution, English variety, and geographic area
to a region of the semisphere’s surface, but this would entail much speculation and
overcomplicate the message of the model. The intent of my model is to illustrate the
correlations that exist between linguistic prestige and normal and institutional
assimilation; fundamentally, increasing one’s linguistic prestige is a matter of converging
with cultural expectations and participating in the institutions of the center.
The essence of my model is not particularly different from that of Kachru’s. Both
highlight the widespread global convergence toward a single standard (or group of quite
similar standards) that still seems to prevail today, though I believe my model
demonstrates elements that his does not and is not subject to geographic externality bias.
A Prescriptive Model
The recognition of nascent outer circle standards as ‘highest-tier’ varieties does
represent progress in that it is somewhat more globally inclusive. If we were to map
English varieties to the surface of the semisphere, we would see a great deal of overlap
My Perspective 78
between prestige varieties such as British English and American English, but also
considerable overlap between these and outer circle varieties such as Indian English. As
areas of the dome’s surface mapped to outer circle varieties become elevated to inner
circle status, the burden to converge is lightened on those populating that area. However,
this is progress of an incremental, linear character, rather than the kind of paradigm shift I
believe is warranted.
We can also expect that the establishment of a geographically decentered global
acrolect will move the Y-axis only slightly to a new position, changing very little indeed,
since such an acrolect will likely emerge from prestige forms. Even if it were to move a
great deal, any repositioning of the Y-axis serves only to ease the burden of expected
assimilation for some speakers while increasing it for others. Even if we see the size of
the inner circle increase to encompass the entire dome, what will have been gained? All
we will have accomplished is the elimination of one externality—geography—from our
determination of who legitimately holds linguistic authority. The ‘mutual’ acrolect will
remain exonormative in terms of power share, goals, attitudes, character attributes, and
other internalities (as well as externalities, incidentally) for most people.
If we still hope to assign legitimate linguistic authority, there are two responsible
courses available to us. The first is to award it on the basis of internalities; we might try
to select those who demonstrate a plausible plan to make the language ‘better’ (more
universal, more accessible, more intuitive, more complete, more exact, etc.) and who
demonstrate an altruistic attitude toward improving society to champion as a linguistic
authority. We should note, however, that such a person or group is unlikely to emerge,
much less into a position from which our support can actually bolster them to power, and
My Perspective 79
further unlikely to be succeeded by those who will carry on the project in good faith.
The second possibility is to assume that linguistic authority is equally held by all,
which is tantamount to refusing the notion of legitimate prescriptive linguistic authority.
Were this notion ever actually repealed, language would evolve without the natural
impositions made by governmental members, educators, and other individuals acting
under the guise of institutions. This scenario also seems unlikely, though even the
artificial constraints we create cannot hold up to the inevitable adaptation of language
over time to the real needs of people. It is not impossible to eliminate language prestige
standards, certainly not impossible to advocate their elimination, and perfectly plausible
to refuse, as teachers, conventional notions of ‘correctness’ and ‘incorrectness’—words
espoused by the powerful to cloak the true nature of indoctrination and insubordination to
linguistic authority.
It seems true that a compromise standard negotiated among nations (however
unlikely) would be better than a center-prescribed one, but it is still not my ideal. Because
I am unable to justify linguistic authority according to the externalities by which it is
regularly granted, I would argue that forms should emerge naturally according to the
needs of speakers. There is also no reason for them to subsequently solidify into canon,
preventing future adaptation to unpredictable needs.
This abolition of prescribed standards is my ideal for the future of English.
Because there will be no formal prescription, there is hardly a need for a visual depiction:
simply envision a sphere, if you will. Unlike the dome we now live with or the tiers
underlying the various prescriptive models I have criticized here, this sphere has no fixed
summit. There is no such thing as lateral movement or regression; no societal sacrifice is

My Perspective 80
made by using the most convenient, intuitive, natural, or immediate language available
under any circumstances—periphery or center. Naturally, the perceived eloquence of
language will remain a venue for social evaluation, but this will be based on how artfully
one creates and invents language, rather than how skillfully one adheres to and
memorizes it.
I do not mean to suggest that states of standardization and standardlessness are a
dichotomy; there is actually considerable gray area. After all, we know that individuals
have the capacity to resist and claim agency in their use of prescribed language and
language in general. One example is l'Académie française, the institution which advises,
in an official capacity, French lawmakers by way of prescriptive linguistic decisions. The
Académie’s attempts to drive Anglicisms out of common use in France have met great
resistance, thus failing to reproduce a linguistic status quo. Still, although it does not
successfully rule it out, the prescription of standards remains antagonistic to creative
language use. This struggle between prescription and resistance is much like that of
postcolonial situations, and illustrates that no geographic distance need exist for such
struggles to take place. We must be careful not to view this struggle too neatly: no
standards will ever fully prevent language from evolving, and, conversely, a natural state
of linguistic evolution will not prevent the emergence of de facto standards.
It’s important to realize that there will always be standards in a sense: there will
be lexical, syntactic, and spelling patterns that dominate. But if freed from the artificial
impositions by authorities of standards whose true function is to reproduce the status quo,
speakers may deviate, invent, and dispose of language according to their needs,
potentially leading to a more accessible, intuitive, and universal language. The standards
My Perspective 81
that will exist in this case will be living and mutable de facto standards with no widely
legitimized claims of ownership. Indeed, most of us have already internalized many
colloquial or dialectal de facto standards in addition to the central acrolect to which we
are meant to be beholden—furthermore, it seems that most of us are at our most relaxed
and most expressive not when using our central standard, but when allowed to improvise
and invent in the endonormative language of our personal use.
EFL teachers may be wondering how a teacher operates without a de jure standard
—I would suggest that the answer is to know the de facto standards with which one’s
students wish to converge. As Fischer (2005) puts it: “we need to ask ourselves, ‘Is
communication happening?’ rather than judge language by our own experience and
training” (p. 50). The notion that communication requires a central standard is absurd;
indeed, the formal standard often functions as a code to prevent communication between
parties by means of separating the established from the disadvantaged.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that emulation of prestige standard forms is not the only
avenue to societal power; access to a variety of language usually grants or improves
access to a corresponding social circle, so knowing multiple varieties is also important.
While I have concerned myself mainly with gaining access to those circles that hold
official political power and the corresponding ability to control resource distribution and
access and legal decision-making, there are other kinds of social power not necessarily
related to prestige standard usage. One example of this is artistic influence, which is often
much less beholden to prescribed standards; for instance, Black English Vernacular grants
greater power within the social sphere of rap music.

My Perspective 82
Predicting the Course of English
While most other scholars seem to predict the very outcome for which they also
hope, I don’t enjoy such expectations, unfortunately. It is hard to imagine a widespread
recognition of standards bias, a subsequent mainstream debate over the propriety of
maintaining a central standard, and a resulting change in mainstream attitude in favor of
abolishing a formal acrolect in any of the few countries with which I am quite familiar.
However, scholarship would be an excellent venue to begin such a process, as scholars—
and especially the universities and publishers with whom they work—generally possess a
great share of linguistic authority. If there is a field of scholarship ready to entertain such
a project, or a discussion of its worthiness, I expect World Englishes is such a field.
I disagree with scholars in their prediction of the establishment of a
geographically decentered global prestige standard of English, for reasons I have noted
previously: such a standard is not in the interest of current linguistic authorities or of
most established economic powers. Far more likely is that Canagarajah’s vision of plural
standards will be realized. In India, as in other outer circle and postcolonial countries,
local standards have displaced geographic exonorms and largely solidified. Furthermore,
new generations have grown up with such geographically endonormative variations and
probably consider them a matter of personal identity in many cases. Lastly, as countries
in such positions increase their global economic influence, their burden of linguistic
convergence is lightened while that of their trade partners, among them center countries,
increases. Based on the absence of a common standard between existing entrenched
prestige standards of English (such as Australian and Canadian English, for example), I
expect more speakers to become familiar with existing standards, including those of outer
My Perspective 83
circle countries, rather than to form new lingua franca varieties, especially a singular,
worldwide standard.
While I do not expect the notion of formal standards to be done away with, there
are factors, some of them historically nascent, that will likely contribute in unpredictable
ways to the trajectory of formal standards and our attitudes toward them. In particular,
electronic communications, since they have made written English an everyday norm,
seem potentially highly influential, as I addressed in an earlier work:
These communications are answerable to no authority other than that of
the recipient; they are not mediated by any kind of monopolist….
Widespread personal publication may eventually oversee a change in the
tendency of readers to acknowledge the validity of variations from the
standard [insubordinate usage], but the [formal standard] still seems to
determine the willingness of interlocutors to legitimize deviations. (2008)
Finally, regarding my expectations for the overall course of English, I would like
to quote at length from my writings last year:
Should English continue to grow as an international language, sheer
number of speakers and the shift of economic force away from the inner
circle will likely determine—and may rearrange—the hierarchy of
varieties of English internationally, but we are not likely, in my view, to
accomplish a state of recognized equality. Language ownership will
probably remain stratified according to prestige and class, as it has always
been...Furthermore, the fundamental details of usage, the norms to which
users will adapt in order to accomplish something, will always be rooted

My Perspective 84
in the practicality of achieving goals (usually economic ones); thus buy-in
to the standard will probably remain the only practical resort for the
individual...We may emerge, to some extent, from the paradigm of
linguistic submission (and into an environment of pure linguistic natural
selection) with the proliferation of international communication through
internet and other electronic media, but that will first require universal
accessibility to such communications as well as universal English
education….[assuming a] viral growth pattern for language, we can
hypothesize a gradual but indefatigable change in perceptions of linguistic
ownership. (2008)
Setting Goals
Part of the behavioral stage of responsibly making meaning is strategizing: what
tangible goals will I pursue, based on the value judgements I have made, and by what
actions? Here I will briefly address my own goals, which manifest differently as a teacher
and as a global citizen, short-term and long-term.
As a global citizen, I have the continuous goal of contributing to humanity and the
betterment of the world. While I view becoming a teacher as part of this, in my role as an
educator I must acknowledge my authoritative position and form a distinct set of goals in
that capacity. My long-term goals as a scholar and citizen include pursuing, to the extent I
believe I can be effective, my ideal of linguistic human rights, as detailed below.
As a teacher, my long-term goals have mainly to do with continuous self-
improvement and refinement of my talents and perspective, since I do not expect to have
any one student over a period I would consider ‘long-term.’ Thus, the teaching goals
My Perspective 85
relevant to the subject of this thesis I regard as ‘short-term.’ These have to do with
pedagogical strategies incorporating my perspective. Like others, I hope to adopt what
might be called a form of critical pedagogy, though I will define it in my own terms as I
have always done. Due to the necessary limitations of the venue of this thesis,
constructing such a pedagogy in writing will have to be a project for another day—one
which could easily rival this work in complexity.
One thing I would like to specify about my pedagogical goals is the ambition to
teach to the internalities, not externalities, of students. If I adopted Pennycook’s (1994)
plan to teach to the interests of ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, and working-
class students, my pedagogy would surely be more inclusive than one deliberately
teaching to wealthy, straight, white, males, but I would be missing the point: every
student has needs quite apart from these coarse categories. If I teach to externalities, as
Pennycook suggests, I am assuming correlative internalities that may not exist, and, if
they do not exist, I am violating the identities of my students by prescribing these
internalities. The proposition that “you are gay; I teach to ‘gay interests’; therefore I teach
to your interests” insults the intelligence and agency to create identity of students.
Instead, I propose to draw out the internalities of my EFL students by asking them
to write and talk in class about what matters to them—what constitutes their identities in
their own minds. Aside from what may be gained by taking an interest in students’ own
notions of their identities in class, some general internalities can be surmised through
other means. As an example, during the defense of this thesis, I was asked this: given my
notions of externality and institutional bias, on what textual theme might I base my
curriculum if I were to teach a class of eighty Pharmacy majors at a Japanese university?

My Perspective 86
My answer to this was the life and work of Norman Borlaug, the agronomist and “father
of the Green Revolution” who fed hundreds of millions through his work in Biology. This
was my attempt to offer a solution that teaches to one of the only internalities I could
know about the students in advance: they chose to study Pharmacy. Now, Borlaug’s life
might be better suited to Biology majors, and I’m certain there are many other excellent
(perhaps better) thematic choices for Pharmacy students, but the point I wish to make is
that I hope to identify and teach to the internalities of students, and the life choices that
have led them to school and directed their schooling are fair game where their external
features would not be.
Linguistic Human Rights
In my view, Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson’s (1995) and Leontiev’s (1995)
notion of linguistic human rights not only relies on institutional and externality bias, but
also does not go far enough toward protecting individuals from forced assimilation into
unequal power hierarchies.
These writers speak of determining whether a right is “individual” or “collective,”
but injustices wrought by the government cannot be measured this way. If someone is
abused for their language, it does not matter if there is one speaker or one thousand of
that language in the country in question. The notion of human rights is predicated on the
idea that they are universal and inalienable (if not inherent—a more tenuous claim), a
foundation which crumbles if one attempts to assign rights to a group based on its size
relative to other groups. Indeed, such a basis for deciding rights is one of the premises of
arguments used to legitimize oppression by majorities and the forced assimilation of
smaller groups (another such premise is birthplace bias).

My Perspective 87
If we are to codify a body of fundamental linguistic human rights, they must
apply to every individual. Certainly, Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson’s (1995) and
Leontiev’s (1995) proposed rights are far more practical as an intermediate step than any
attempt to immediately quash societal linguistic injustices would be, but as a result they
read more like sensible short-term legislation, not a philosophical manifesto proclaiming
inalienable rights. It would be absurd to promise every individual the right to access all
societal privileges via that individual’s preferred language, simply because it is obviously
impossible; therefore, these writers concede to practicality by proclaiming that such
availability should at least exist for groups of a notable size. While they assert that “It is
the minority, not the state, which has the right to determine how such modifying terms as
‘sufficient numbers’ should be interpreted” (1995, p. 27), such provisions still do not
imbue the individual with inalienable linguistic rights, since an institution predicated on
ethnicity becomes the linguistic authority over the individual in this case. Of course, it’s
better to protect some people than no people, but such concessions are nevertheless
tantamount to compromising, to accepting less than the ideal of inalienability and
universality.
Furthermore, these authors suggest that these rights entail a mirror “duty” to learn
the “mother tongue, an official or inter-ethnic language, and a foreign language within the
educational system” (p. 27). I would again argue that this goes against the very definition
of human rights, which are not intended to be won by bartering one’s energies, but rather
to be held equally by all from birth, inalienable and not predicated on participation in
certain societal institutions.
In the end, the only way to remove linguistic injustices from the formal systems
My Perspective 88
of states is to remove government involvement in language as a convention. Once again,
this means the abolition of formal prescriptive language varieties. Merely multiplying the
number of officially endorsed varieties is not enough, as such a strategy is based on
reasoning according to ethnicity, a nebulous and unreliable construct variously
approximating internalities.
Here, in no particular order, is my own minimal series of linguistic human rights
that ought to be inalienable and universal. In all public and governmental venues, as
well as one’s own private venues, every person is to be guaranteed the right to...
study and teach any language.
speak, write, and visually perform any language.
be free of governmental language standards in all venues.
be free from all governmental effort to control the use or reproduction of

languages in all venues.
access every kind of institution and privilege in plain language.
access laws, contracts, legal opinions and rulings, and any other kind of legal
or governmental documentation in plain language.
employ his or her own preferred usage when speaking, writing, or otherwise
performing any languages in an effort to communicate.
be free of punitive or discriminatory responses to his or her language or

usage choices.
Again, these rights are a long-term goal of mine as a global citizen. It would be
asinine to expect they will become a reality any time soon, but if we idealize certain
freedoms, how can we pretend to be content without them?
Lastly, it would be inappropriate to explicitly pursue these goals in the classroom;
it would be an attempt to indoctrinate students to my own way of thinking, where I have

My Perspective 89
espoused a conscious effort by educators to avoid indoctrination in every possible way.
However, insofar as I engage societal groups, including the scholarly community, on this
subject matter, I will advocate this position to the extent that I think I may have an effect.
90
Chapter 6: Conclusion
Ideas for Further Discussion
While I have resisted naming my perspective, the biases I have examined
certainly could be interpreted as a kind of framework from which to approach the critical
reading of scholarship. With the exception of standards bias, they are also quite relevant
to fields other than World Englishes. One could easily use them to examine other subject
matter, as I will likely do at some point myself.
The opposite possibility would be to challenge what I have suggested, though I
would note that disagreements often come down to a matter of personal axioms, which
are not easily swayed by reasoned arguments. Apart from these kinds of disagreement, it
would be my honor if my work were ever to provoke a scholarly response of any kind.
Lastly, there is simply much left to explore within the fields of World Englishes
and Applied Linguistics, and much that can be said through the loose framework I have
laid out. I had hoped to write more about pedagogy myself—critical pedagogy and its
many outgrowths are the subjects of much writing and deserve more attention than I have
been able to give them here. In particular, responding with a pedagogy based on my own
perspective would be a worthy and ambitious project.
Concluding Reflections
If we are to define a framework or model for interpreting linguistic power
inequalities throughout the world, it must be one which can concisely identify power
inequalities at the macro level. To do this requires categorizing individuals into groups on
the basis of similarities. However, most attempts to do so have been marked by as many
Conclusion 91
as four common biases: mold bias, externality bias, institutional bias, and standards bias.
Thus, scholarship faces a challenge it has always faced: how far are we willing to reduce
the world around us in order to identify patterns by which we can understand it? I cannot
say that I have answered this question. Within World Englishes as a field, however, there
is increasing resistance to reduction in favor of detail. Wherever scholars choose to take
their discourse, however, I am certain that as EFL teachers we do have the ability to
eschew these biases and teach to the internal priorities of students. If my perspective and
my criticism by way of the four biases is not evolved enough to help guide scholarship, I
still believe it can applied to our pedagogy, to everyday life, and to all interactions with
individuals in which we engage.
One of the major shortcomings of most of the scholarly theory surrounding
questions of post-colonialism, linguistic authority, reproduction versus resistance theory,
and so on, is that, despite nuanced differences in their approaches to political domination,
most theorists agree that our behaviors ought to empower the local nation against alien
norm-setting, but frequently ignore the problem for the individual of local norm-
setting. A line is drawn, arbitrarily, which states that geographically alien forces cannot
rightly impose linguistic prescriptions—only local ones can. We must remember that, no
matter the geographic relationship, practically all linguistic norms are imposed on, not
invented by, their users. At the heart of our biases, to me, remains a remorseless cleavage
of all people into communities to which individuals are assigned on the basis of birth and
other externalities and an acceptance of the notion that these accidents define and should
define identities.
Popularly and in scholarship, we continue to describe and categorize people

Conclusion 92
foremost by externalities such as sex, birthplace, and coloration, before allowing
definition (if we even go so deep) by attributes selected by the descriptee (beliefs, ideas,
behavior, choices, preferences, and other internalities). There are exceptions in that we do
weigh some internalities, notably power share. But even if we manage to introduce all
relevant internalities to our discourse, the importance of externalities must be refuted.
Recent espousals of “plurality” are perhaps tantamount to an admission that
academics have simply overreached in past attempts to make sense of things by
organizing them into reductive categories such as culture and state which do not equate to
any individual’s ideals, much less an entire group’s—a reliance on what I call
institutional bias. These things, as accidental amalgams evolving through processes
ridden with unobservable, undocumentable, and often accidental details, are not real
representations of the forces that propel human beings; they are only incidental
byproducts of those forces.
When we look at the example of Singapore’s government trying to convince its
people that English is not their mother tongue, we see an agentive effort, in a way, to own
the language. The government can be viewed as reconstituting English for its own
purposes; the problem is that the effort is propelled by institutions (mainly governmental)
—the real challenge in this area is that we as academics are legitimizing authority over
language by groups—mostly governments—that are only representative because they
hold a great share of power. We might think it’s wonderful for national standards to
proliferate around the world, but the reality for everyday people scarcely changes in such
a scenario as formal standards remain aloof, manipulated—the realm of the prestigious
and prosperous. Singapore’s government constantly reiterates the language of academic

Conclusion 93
postcolonialism in its efforts to combat the acceptance of English as a mother tongue, but
do these philosophical arrangements identifying the self with local authorities and the
other with foreign authorities ring true every citizen?
Advocating equal linguistic authority among states, as most World Englishes
scholars have done, represents a coarse method of assessing the legitimacy of authority
and will not aid those subjugated by their own governments. Many have idealized the
development of a global prestige standard variety of English, but is any standard really
what we need? Do standard forms of languages really stabilize according to the needs of
the community? Advocating equal linguistic authority among ethnic groups results in a
more accurate and desirable, but still imperfect, relationship between the construct by
which we attempt to gauge legitimacy and the internal characteristics by which it ought to
be measured. I have noted that this is incremental progress where a paradigm shift is
ultimately needed. Because we cannot assume indefinite good faith on the part of
authority and we cannot measure all (or even most) relevant internalities of individuals, I
have advised that we focus not on choosing actors to legitimize, but on undermining the
notion of linguistic authority entirely, abolishing formal language standards.
It is the rhetoric of governmental adherents that borders denote legitimate
divisions of the sovereign right to preside over the citizenry. We as scholars and teachers
ought to have the insight to recognize that governments, and even universities, are self-
interested institutions sustained not by unanimous agreement but by monopolies of
power. As such, they are certainly worth studying and may well be worth our
participation. EFL teachers and scholars must remember, however, that these institutions
are associated with agendas quite independent of the effort to educate and improve our
Conclusion 94
discourse and ourselves; thus we must ensure that our scholastic and pedagogical efforts,
which ought to be toward humanitarian ends, meticulously avoid merely reproducing the
worldview of the powerful.

90
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101
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Appendix B: Glossary
My negotiation with World Englishes discourse requires an understanding of the
following terms. Note that my definitions of some terms are quite particular; I explain
the rationale for these definitions in Chapter Five in terms of the bias framework
explained in Chapter Four.
An acrolect is a language or language variety, usually prescribed to all members
of a state (and frequently to other groups) by well-established authorities, that is the only
variety popularly considered by those members to be the most prestigious among
languages or varieties. A basilect is its opposite, associated with the lowest level of
prestige. These are adapted from Stewart (1964) and diverge from their original and
common application, which is to denote the prestige poles of post-creole speech
continua specifically.
Authority is power whose ownership is widely legitimized within a given group.
An authority is such an owner. Subordinate is a descriptor for any actor over whom
such an authority exercises power; a subordinate is such an actor. Insubordination refers
to the refusal of subordinates to act according to the pre- and proscriptions of the
authority.
When referring to culture, I refer to the complex of multichotomies and continua
of norms common to a group. A culture can also be the group identified by this complex.
External actors, however, usually identify a culture by those behaviors that emerge as a
prestige majority. An individual may be a member of a culture without exhibiting all or
any of the behaviors by which that culture is externally identified, since these behaviors
are defined by a prestige majority with which that individual may not agree. It is the
Glossary 108
individual’s tendency to define behaviors in terms of the culture’s complex which
indicates his or her membership to that culture. Furthermore, an individual may have
membership in multiple cultural groups (e.g. a nationality, an economic status, and a
religion may all be inlets to cultural membership).
I use the term endonormative language to denote any language of which a
speaker considers him- or herself a norm-establishing user licensed by his or her ability to
communicate in that language. An endonormative language is distinguished by its user’s
symbiotic relationship to his or her cultural groups, in which he or she receives identity
but also advertizes it; thus, not by denotation but as a matter of course, an endonormative
language is one which serves as a venue for defining and expressing identity.
This usage is largely in lieu of the widespread terms native language and mother
tongue because each seems denotatively inexact and has dubious implications outside its
denotative intent. Furthermore, endonormative language avoids the exclusion by these
terms of historically atypical ethnic users and second- or multiple-language users, both
detrimental omissions when attempting to denote a language definitive to the user’s
identity.
I use the term exonormative language to refer to the language of a speaker who
considers him- or herself an adherent to, but not an establisher of, that language’s norms.
An identity, in this thesis, is the set of all symbolic meanings an individual
attaches to the events and things in his or her life, and the personal narrative he or she
creates as a result.
By imperialism, I indicate the intentional domination of a people by a foreign
government (the imperialist or imperial state) in the interest of advancing that

Glossary 109
government’s own culture, power, prestige, and/or material wealth and carried out by way
of the reproduction of the state’s own norms. Linguistic imperialism indicates the
strategy, typically included in imperialism, of using language as a venue for this normal
reproduction.
To indoctrinate is to reproduce, as an authority (such as a teacher, politician, or
parent, for example), normal behavior and thought patterns in a subordinate by means
concealed from the subject and engineered to produce a specific outcome rather than an
informed decision by the subordinate.
An institution is a group of people organized according to a formal or de facto
structure and formally professed by the structure’s leadership elements to belong together
by virtue of one or more commonalities. Examples of institutions include states,
bureaucracies, businesses, churches, families, and any number of other non-commercial
organizations.
The term language planning encompasses goals, strategies, and actions of
governments meant to control under what circumstances and by whom languages are
spoken.
A language standard is a set of linguistic norms on which a speaker bases his or
her notions of the acceptability of speech or writing. In this thesis, it is frequently
shorthand for a formal language standard, which is a language standard officially
prescribed by authorities, usually by a government to its citizens or an educational
institution to its students. Most often a formal language standard and an acrolect are one
and the same language for a given population.
A nation is a group of people who feel that they belong together under a common
Glossary 110
government. By comparison, a state is a group of people under a common government.
A norm is a behavior, attitude, or way of thinking with which a group regards
convergence or divergence as a matter of appropriateness. Two members of majority
culture in the United States, for example, may disagree as to whether it is appropriate
under given circumstances to leave a gratuity for a server in a restaurant in the U.S., but
both will regard the final decision as imbued with a level of appropriateness and not a
‘neutral’ behavior, where a non-group-member might have no opinion on the matter.
Sometimes a norm is associated with a system of which it is a component (such as a
language, in the case of linguistic norms).
The term periphery denotes collectively those geographic areas in which English
speakers generally follow exonormative standards, while center describes a geographic
concentration of endonormative speakers who prescribe linguistic standards. This usage
is adapted from long-standing scholarly usage of these terms, and is chosen for its
economy, though more complex, non-dichotomous models for characterizing language
relationships are described throughout this thesis.
The word prestige denotes the overall extent to which one’s position in a group is
enviable to other members of that group.
The term symbolism is used to denote meaning creatively extrapolated from
actions, material things, and events.

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Language and Global Power:

Considerations for Preserving Political Autonomy

as an English Teacher in the Periphery

A thesis presented to Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Jesse Lee Tian-Davey

Political Autonomy as an English Teacher in the Periphery, as required to attain a

This thesis is licensed under a Creative Commons public license.*

It is freely available online at http://scribd.com/doc/17333036.

Jesse Lee Tian-Davey

(see Appendix A: Creative Commons License and www.creativecommons.org)

Englishes as members of a system that may (intentionally or unintentionally) use English

project to gain an understanding of the most prominent voices in World Englishes

Sarah, and Yun-Joo for supporting me by coming to my thesis defense.

predisposed as I am to skepticism about taking part in institutional traditions of which I

cease to reevaluate them—with my death, perhaps.

Why linguistic power struggles?

that I perceive in existing discussions of linguistic power structures.

encouraged my own zeal, including the members of my thesis committee.

of what I do in order to institute an ethical pedagogy.

seemingly stemming from largely incomprehensible biological, material, and cultural

mechanisms influencing one's thinking. Detached by definition from personal

is a tool applied variously in terms of desirability—it is not always consulted—and

obviously not perfect.

way of analyzing philosophical scholarship pertaining to linguistic power structures and

scholarly theory and my own ideas.

With regard to the first function of deliberate reason—following the dictates of

one's axioms—the discovery, improvement, and justification of my own axioms is itself

politics is a method of engaging my personal assumptions, it becomes an opportunity to

I do not consider the benefits of conducting scholarship self-evident. Rather, it

seems a functional pursuit prescribed either directly by one's axioms or by practical

While I am required to write this thesis to graduate, I am also internally compelled to

My interest in non-empirical scholarship begins and ends with its capacity to

role of language in sustaining unequal power hierarchies.

makes an argument for the symbolism that I perceive therein.

With regard to what is relevant to this thesis, I hold it as axiomatic that...

...I should pursue the realization of my full potential as a human being.

...I should be skeptical of the validity of everything I am taught and of my own

assumptions in order to discover beliefs that fit the contours of my mind.

difference of opinion of individuals often seems to be at the axiomatic level. Therefore I

take no shame in using my axioms as a kind 'evidence' to support my argument a few

merely attempting to make my invocation of my axioms explicit where it is typically

'proof' if my axioms are not accepted as given.

Goals and functions of this thesis

In short, I am attempting to arrive at conclusions which will further, better, or

improve by research and subsequent reasoning my perspective as to what linguistic

and (less crucially) that you might consider adopting them.

hope to be informative in this regard, I do not consider it my highest priority to provide

Secondarily, this thesis exemplifies the axiom-advertizing goal of reason in two

imperfect because I have to date failed to codify my impressions of the flaws of

scholarship in general, though in many ways my relationship with it remains uneasy. I

information and arguments; they seem at times welcoming of obtuse organization,

philosophical vagaries, self-aggrandizement, and excessive verbosity. I am guilty to some

cut-and-paste academics in which there is a prescribed relationship between student and

resistance to these institutions in an applicable way. Rather than do so recklessly under a

deadline, I have avoided resisting prestigious norms wherever I am conflicted as to the

ideal way to do so.

There is a subtler, more peripheral proselytizing aspect to this work as well—an

underdiscussed phenomenon which I believe detrimentally pervades prestigious academic

writing: the advancement of my own ego and advertisement of my own ability. To

of one's work is obfuscation. The inclusion of that damning word, I, reminds me of my

at least as proud of my critical attitude toward traditions, institutions, and myself as I am