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The sacred cows of English

Braj B. Kachru
English Today / Volume 4 / Issue 04 / October 1988, pp 3 - 8
DOI: 10.1017/S0266078400000973, Published online: 17 October 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266078400000973

How to cite this article:
Braj B. Kachru (1988). The sacred cows of English. English Today, 4, pp 3-8 doi:10.1017/
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The sacred cows

of English
BRAJ B. KACHRU
Will 'native speakers' of English have to
change some of their most cherished and
least examined assumptions as the
language approaches the 21st century?

IN 1975, George Steiner observed that 'the

linguistic centre of English has shifted' (see
Panel 1). In his observation he was presenting
only part of the picture. He did not address
the global implications of the pluricentricity
of the language, nor the on-going concern
about diversification and standards of
English. However, the concern about'diversification conveys an important sociolinguistic
message, and one must analyze the message
carefully.
Linguistic interactions in English are now
of three types: native speaker and native
speaker; native speaker and non-native
speaker, and non-native speaker and nonnative speaker. The non-native speakers not
only outnumber the native speakers; they also
increasingly use English of different varieties
in cultural contexts not traditionally associated with the language.
In this situation, then, any speaker of
English (native or non-native) has access to
only a subset within the patterns and
conventions of cultures which English represents. A variationist looks at this diversification and its implications as a blessing.
However, for a purist or a pedagogue it is a
nightmare. And both have their reasons. The
sociolinguist may derive satisfaction from the
fact that, at last, we have an international
language which provides access across cultures and national boundaries. The purists
view the diversity as a mark of divisiveness,

as a sign of the decay of the language, and

perhaps more upsetting, as a threat to
Eurocentric, Judeo-Christian ethos of the
language. And therein lies the controversy.
The spread of English
In recent years, a large body of literature has
been written analyzing the underlying
reasons for the spread of English. However,
very little has been said on how the spread has
been instrumental in slaughtering sacred

BRAJ B. KACHR U is a professor of linguistics in

the Department of Linguistics at the University of
Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA. He was the head of
that department from 1969 to 1979, and is currently
Director of the Division of English as a Second
Language. Born in Kashmir, India, he received his
early education in Srinagar, Allahabad, andPune,
and his Ph.D. from Edinburgh University. He has
been Director of the Linguistic Institute of the
Linguistic Society of America (1978) and President of
the American Association for Applied Linguistics
(1984). His books include 'The Other Tongue:
English Across Cultures' (ed., 1982); 'The
Indianization of English: The English Language in
India' (1983); and 'The Alchemy of English' (1986).
He is co-editor of'World Englishes: a journal of
English as an international and intranational
language', and series editor of'English in the
International Context' published by the Pergamon
Press, Oxford.

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Steiner: the centre shifts

The first, most obvious point to make is

that the linguistic centre of English has
shifted. This is so demographically. Great
Britain now makes up only a small portion
of the English-speaking totality . . . The
actual situation is one of nearly
incommensurable variety and flux. Any
map of 'world-English' today, even
without being either exhaustive or
minutely detailed, would have to include
the forms of the language as spoken in
many areas of east, west, and south
Africa, in India, Ceylon, and United
States possessions or spheres or presence
in the Pacific. It would have to list
Canadian English, the speech of
Australia, that of New Zealand, and
above all, of course, the manifold shades
of American parlance . . . But this shift of
the linguistic centre involves far more
than statistics. It does look as if the
principal energies of the English
language, as if its genius for acquisition,
for innovation, for metaphoric response,
had also moved away from England . . .
George Steiner, Why English? (1975, pp.
4 and 5)

cows of different types: acquisitional, sociolinguistic, pedagogical and theoretical.

Some of the sacred cows are accepted on
faith, and others, hydra-like, have a way of
vanishing and then reappearing in one form
or another. Whatever their nature, such
sacred cows have relevance to the issues
related to the spread of English, and to our
understanding of the daunting questions
concerning diversity and standards.

Acquisitional sacred cows

In second-language acquisition, 'interference'
has become pivotal, providing the current
major paradigm of research and analysis.
However, the way the concept is used distorts
important facts about the institutionalized
varieties of English in the Outer Circle (see
Panel 2). The major problem is that creative
aspects of 'interference' from other languages
and cultures are ignored. The 'interference'
paradigm has created a conceptual trap perhaps unintended - from which a non-

native user of English seems to have no

escape. Particularly when other concepts
such as interlanguage, error analysis, and
fossilization are used in an uninsightful way.
Sociolinguistic sacred cows
Two sociolinguistic questions are important:
(1) What has been the result of the
'pluricentricity' of English? and (2) What has
English itself contributed as an instrument of
ideological change?
The most important outcome of pluricentricity is that the traditional English canon
has been de-mythologized and new canons
have been established with their own
identities: literary, linguistic and cultural.
As an exponent of cultural and ideological
contact and change, the English language has
acquired two faces: One representing the
'Westernness', the Judeo-Christian tradition;
the other (more pertinent to the present
discussion) reflecting the non-Western identities. The second face of English - the more
obscure face - reflects what for some is the
elusive concept of Asian or African identities,
or the Third World identities.
What we see is that in Asia and Africa the
Western-educated local elite turned the
Western weapon into an effective tool of
national uprising against the colonizers. In
ethnically diverse and linguistically pluralistic
societies, English brought together the
politically conscious local leaders who articulated local aspirations in a language which
had international currency and regional
neutrality. (At last the linguistic weapon was
backfiring.) The English-knowing elite provided a perspective which was both inwardlooking and outward-looking. The 'inwardlook' contributed to creating a perspective of
nationalism which was above traditional
caste, class and regional politics (That
English created another social class takes us to
a digression not relevant here).
The 'integrative' role of English was
diametrically opposed to the aims and
political intentions of those who brought the
language to the colonies. To the dismay of the
colonizers. English became a valuable
resource for understanding the dialectics of
anticolonialism, secularization and panregional communication.
English was indeed an important tool for
Westernization. As regional uses of English
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Three Concentric
Circles of English
The spread of English may be viewed in terms of three concentric circles: The
Inner Circle, the Outer (or Extended) Circle and the Extending Circle. These
circles represent the types of spread, the patterns of acquisition, the range of
functional domains, and the societal penetration of the language.

THE'OUTER'(OR EXTENDED)
CIRCLE e g .

/
THE'INNER CIRCLE'
USA
UK
Canada
Australia
New Zealand

242,200,000
56,458,000
25,625,000
15,763,000
3,305,000

/
/
f

I
\
\
^A

THE 'EXTENDING CIRCLE", e.g

\
\

Bangladesh
Ghana
India
Kenya
Malaysia
Nigeria
Pakistan
Philippines
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Tanzania
Zambia

104,204,000
13,552,000
783,940,000
21,044,000
15,820,000
105,448,000
101,855,000
58,091,000
2,584,000
16,638,000
22,415,000
7,054,000

/
/

[
\
\
\

China
Egypt
Indonesia
Israel
Japan
Korea
Nepal
Saudi Arabia
Taiwan
USSR
Zimbabwe

1,045,537,000
50,525,000
1 76,764,000
4,208,000
121,402,000
43,284,000
17,422,000
11,519,000
19,601,000
279,904,000
8,984,000

Estimates about total users of English.

Conservative:
350 million native
400 million non-native
2 billion
Optimistic:

increased, it became more localized. The

distance from Mother English widened. I do
not mean that the pluricentricity has obliterated the British or American identities of
English: far from it. Rather, the language has
succeeded in gaining other identities; cultural, social and linguistic. This raises two vital
questions: Whose culture does the language
represent in its Asian or African varieties?
And, who are the intended users of the texts spoken or written - produced in these
varieties?
English is now essentially an exponent of
local cultures in the Outer Circle. In a
majority of contexts, the shift is from the
native-speaker-oriented text to the localized
text in which the bilingual and bicultural

competence of an interlocutor is taken for

granted. And as the localized character of the
language increases, naturally the diversity
becomes more marked. This sociolinguistic
reality has yet to be seriously recognized by
the professionals. Often economic, political,
and attitudinal reasons stand in the way of
such recognition.
Pedagogical sacred cows

The pedagogical paradigms are not sensitive

to the local sociolinguistic contexts, educational systems, and economic resources of the
Outer Circle. This is clearly evident in
essentially Western debate on issues such as
the following:

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1. Models for teaching English, e.g.,

endonormative or exonormative and the issue
of varieties within a variety; i.e., whether the
standards come from within a community or
are derived from an outside source.
2. Methods of teaching, e.g. pragmatically
unjustifiable claims of universality for teaching techniques and methods, when every
community is unique and has particular
requirements.
3. Motivations for learning and teaching
English, e.g., integrative vs. instrumental,
whether one wishes to join a 'club' or simply
to use a tool.
4. Materials and syllabus design, e.g.,
communicative approach vs. other
approaches; contextual appropriateness of
English for Special Purposes or ESP in the
Outer Circle.
Theoretical Sacred Cows
The spread of English and its unique
implications make it essential to re-evaluate
and further discuss three basic linguistic
concepts: the speech community, the ideal
speaker-hearer, and the native speaker.
The term 'speech community' is both
controversial and elusive. The literature on
this topic reveals significant disagreement. As
people acquire English and give it new
identities, one has to recognize that the
members of an extended speech community
have two distinct characteristics: (a) Bilingual
competence in languages and literary conventions which have traditionally not been within
the linguistic repertoire of the Inner Circle
and (b) Multicultural competence, including
cultural experiences not shared with the
Inner Circle.
The second concept, an 'ideal speakerhearer', is an idealization. However, it does
imply sharing cultural and pragmatic conventions, or sharing sociolinguistic bonds. What
are the 'shared conventions' of the users of
English? In this we notice two tendencies in
the Outer Circle: (1) A conscious (or
unconscious) attempt to resist identification
with the shared conventions of the Inner
Circle; and (2) Development of local distinct
linguistic and cultural conventions patterned
after local sociolinguistic expectations.
The third concept, the 'native speaker', has
been accepted as a cardinal concept. This is
an age-old sacred cow carrying immense

attitudinal and linguistic burdens. And the

spread of English has introduced further
intricacies to the concept: First, by bringing
within the fold of English non-Western
traditional bi- or multilingual societies.
Ferguson (see Panel 3) has lucidly presented
this dilemma. Second, the multilinguals'
creativity has introduced a wide range of
innovations, linguistic, literary and sociocultural, which are not within the canon of the
Inner Circle. Third, an attitudinal dilemma;
here two distinct groups are involved - those
who consider themselves the 'native
speakers', and those who use English as an
'additional' language in their verbal repertoire.
Two examples will illustrate the point. The
first example, from Paikeday (1985), shows
that the 'us/them' distinction in dividing the
'native' and 'non-native' users is 'directly
linked with the nationality in the legal sense'.
The other example is that of my wife, a
speaker of Hindi, Marathi, and English. As
her parental language, she was exposed to a
diaspora variety of Marathi, Tanjore Marathi.
However, she feels more comfortable with
Bengali, Hindi, and English. In fact, those
Bengali and Hindi speakers who do not know
her linguistic background consider her a
'native speaker' of Bengali and Hindi
respectively. Once they know her linguistic
biography, they immediately call her a 'native
speaker' of Marathi which, linguistically
speaking, is far from the truth. In her case,
then, parental history seems to determine the
'native language'.
The implications of the spread
The major implications of the spread of
English are the following: First, change in the
traditional linguistic periphery of English.
True, in the past the Inner Circle Englishes
have been influenced by elements which may
be considered non-traditional for the language: e.g. the impact of American Indian
languages on American English, and that of
Maori on New Zealand English. However,
these influences have been marginal. The
periphery shift not only entails the development of new varieties in the Outer Circle, but
also results in the transfusion of linguistic
innovations from the Outer Circle in the
Inner Circle.
Second, the extension of underlying shared
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and non-shared cultural conventions of

English. This extension shows in new
localized norms for text organization and
'interlocutor expectancy' (what people expect
to encounter), culturally appropriate conventions, and the awareness of identities.
A particular type of text organization may
be chosen to send a signal that the 'native
speaker' is irrelevant to such stylistic
experimentation. Indeed, an attempt is made
to cross over the linguistic and cultural
conventions traditionally associated with the
Inner Circle of English. The text is
'particularized'. It is in this sense that Chinua
Achebe's creativity is 'local and particular',
Amos Tutulo works within 'Yuruba thought
and ontology' and Raja Rao emphasizes his
'Indianness'. These are linguistic indicators
of 'decolonization' of English. Again, the
most forthright statement articulating the
localization is from Achebe (Morning Yet in
Creation Day, 1976:11): 'I should like to see
the word universal banned altogether from
discussions of African literature until such a
time as people cease to use it as a synonym for
the narrow, self-serving parochialism of
Europe'. Yes, it sounds like a political credo,
but it does reflect an attitude, a pragmatic
motive for diversification. And, the purist
must ponder over these statements since
these mark attitudes and identities.

Context of diversification
The contexts of diversification are not just
acquisitional deficiencies, the constraints of
interlanguage, the grid of fossilization, as is
generally presented by the pundits. There are
far deeper sociological, linguistic, attitudinal
and cultural reasons. The diversification
(conscious or unconscious) often is symbolic
of subtle sociolinguistic messages which
include the following.
1. Exponent of distance: The message here
is, 'I am distinct from you - culturally,
socially and attitudinally - and let my variety
of English (linguistic creativity) say it'. And,
equally important is the fact that one might
want to convey that 'I will use English as a
tool for my culture, my identity, my
conventions'.
2. Marker of creativity potential: The aim is
to exploit the creative potential of English as a
pragmatically appropriate interactional tool

Ferguson: the mystique of the

native speaker
Linguists, perhaps especially American
linguists, have long given a special place
to the 'native speaker' as the only truly
valid and reliable source of language data,
whether those data are the elicited texts of
the descriptivist or the intuitions the
theorist works with. Yet much of the
world's verbal communication takes place
by means of languages which are not the
users' 'mother tongue', but their second,
third or nth language, acquired one way
or another and used when appropriate.
Some languages, for example, spread
widely as lingua francas between speakers
of different languages or serve as
languages of special functions in
communities of non-native speakers; this
kind of language use merits the attention
of linguists as much as do the more
traditional objects of their research. In
fact, the whole mystique of native speaker
and modier tongue should probably be
quiedy dropped from die linguists' set of
professional myths about language.
Charles Ferguson, The Other Tongue:
English Across Cultures (1982, p. vii)

in non-Western contexts. It emphasizes the

humanness of language.
3. Expression of the 'Caliban syndrome':
Diversification reveals 'the Caliban syndrome' in more than one sense. The Kenyan
novelist Ngugi Wa Thiongo believes that
English has 'the effect of a culture bomb'.
What the bomb does is to negate all that is
local, the names, language, environment,
heritage and so on. Why, then, use the
colonizer's language which is ticking like a
time bomb? There are a multitude of local
and external reasons for it. But the linguistic
bomb is somewhat defused by giving it a local
character of Indianized, Nigerianized and
Philippinized English.
4. Diversification vs. International English:
The spread of English has resulted in two
major roles for the language: International
(e.g. aviation, seaspeak, multinational corporations, science, technology); and intranational, as a localized extra-linguistic arm in
the verbal repertoire of multilingual societies.

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5. Managing diversification: And now the

purists' nightmare - the need for management of diversification. The reasons for the
'decay' of the language are generally traced to
indifferent teachers, irreverent media
moguls, and permissive sociolinguists. And
in the Outer and Extended Circles the decline
in the standards and consequent diversification is attributed to three additional
reasons: decay of proficiency in English,
decay in international intelligibility, and
indifference to the native speakers' role as the
guardians of English.
In discussing decline in proficiency, a
comparison is made with an idealized past of
the English language in the Outer Circle. The
hypothesis that the standards of acquisition
and teaching have gone down is faulty on
many counts - the major point is that there is
no empirical evidence to prove the point. In
fact, the contrary may be true. With the
unprecedented diffusion in education, the
core of the English-knowing and Englishusing population has substantially increased
during the post-colonial period, as has the
number of semi-proficient speakers and
ill-equipped English 'teaching shops'. Learning of English is no longer restricted to the
privileged urban segments of society. All
social classes are now keen to learn English
and have access to some kind of English
instruction.
Is there decay in international intelligibility? There is, of course, merit in the
argument that if English is needed for
international interaction, the users of English
should have international intelligibility.
However, defining the variables for intelligibility is not easy and one has to accept it with
several caveats: First, in the Outer Circle,
English is primarily used in infranational
functions. The domains for international
functions are restricted. Second, even in such
domains, the interaction takes place mostly

Underground poetry
Enormous numbers of people travel daily on the
London Underground, and since January 1986
poems have been travelling with them. Presented
by the organization Poems on the Underground
and ILEA (Inner London Education Authority),
and backed by the Arts Council, the British

between non-native users of the language

(e.g. Japanese with Indians, Singaporeans
with Sri Lankans). Third, the burden of
intelligibility is a shared undertaking in
which education must be imparted about
'variety tolerance'. Finally, there is a paradox
in this concern. On the one hand, international uses of English are considered desirable, but on the other hand, great concern is
expressed about the internationalization of
the language. The linguistic reality is that
internationalization of a language comes with
nativization and acculturation.
Conclusion
Whatever the concern of the purists, it seems
to me there is much to celebrate in the spread
of English as a world language. Where over
650 artificial languages have failed, English
has succeeded; where many other natural
languages with political and economic power
to back them up have failed, English has
succeeded. One reason for this dominance of
English is its propensity for acquiring new
identities, its power of assimilation, its
adaptability to 'decolonization' as a language,
its manifestation in a range of varieties, and
above all its suitability as a flexible medium
for literary and other types of creativity across
languages and cultures. One might ask: if the
plea of Jonathan Swift in 1712 had been
accepted and English had an academy for
'. . . Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining
the English Tongue', would this spread,
cross-cultural creativity and acculturation
have been possible? One does not know.
Another lingering question it: As a result of
this global power and hegemony of English,
are the cultures and other languages of the
world richer or poorer? This indeed is a very
tricky question to answer and deserves a
prominent place on the agenda for discussion.

Library, publishers, and public donations, these

poems occupy advertising space above the
windows in every carriage - alongside ads for
temps (temporary secretaries) and maps of the
Bakerloo, Northern and other Lines. This
summer, the poems have been by students from 22
London schools.

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