Is English an Asian Language?

232 Pages·2020·3.392 MB·

by  Andy Kirkpatrick, Wang Lixun

Is English an Asian Language?
Asiaisnowhometosome800millionmultilingualspeakersofEnglish(more
thanthetotalnumberofnativeEnglishspeakers),andhowtheyuseEnglishis
continuallyevolvingandchangingtoreflecttheirculturalbackgroundsand
everyday experiences. Can English, therefore, be considered an Asian
language?DrawingupontheAsiancorpusofEnglish,thisbookisthefirst
comprehensive account of the roles, uses and features of English in Asia,
encompassingseveraldifferentvarietiesofAsianEnglish.Chapterscoverthe
distinctivelinguisticfeaturesofEnglishindifferentsettings,suchasinlaw,
religionandpopularculture,aswellastheuseoflocalrhetorical,pragmatic
andculturalstylesanditsuseasalinguafrancaamongAsianmultilinguals.It
also examines the role of English in education – from primary through
tohighereducation–andconsidertheimplicationsofthisforotherlanguages
ofAsia.
andy kirkpatrick is Professor in the Department of Languages,
HumanitiesandSocialSciencesatGriffithUniversity.Publicationsinclude
WorldEnglishes(CUP2007),EnglishasaLinguaFrancainASEAN(2010),
TrilingualEducationinHongKong’sPrimarySchools(2019).Heisco-editor
ofTheWiley-BlackwellHandbookofAsianVarietiesofEnglish(2020),and
co-editoroftheRoutledgeInternational HandbookofLanguageEducation
PolicyinAsia(2019).
wang lixun is Associate Professorin the Department of Linguistics and
Modern Language Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong.
Publications include Introduction to Language Studies (2011), Academic
Writing in Language and Education Programmes (2011), Trilingual
EducationinHongKongPrimarySchools(2019),andIdentity,Motivation,
andMultilingualEducationinAsianContexts(2020).Heisco-editorofthe
Springerbookseries‘MultilingualEducation’.

Is English an Asian Language?
Andy Kirkpatrick
GriffithUniversity
with Wang Lixun
TheEducationUniversityofHongKong
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www.cambridge.org
Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781107134683
DOI:10.1017/9781316471166
©AndyKirkpatrickwithWangLixun2021
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Firstpublished2021
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To Iris,
For Lucy and Cody

Contents
ListofFiguresandTables pageviii
Introduction 1
1 HowEnglishCametoAsia 12
2 TheAsianCorpusofEnglish 30
3 AsianVarietiesofEnglishvsEnglishasaLinguaFranca(ELF)
inAsia 53
4 WhatDoAsianMultilingualsTalkaboutWhenUsingEnglishas
aLinguaFranca? 71
5 TheTransferofFeaturesandCommunicativeStrategies 90
6 BorrowingWordsandWritingAsianEnglishes 111
7 Non-standardFormsinAsianEnglishesandELF 128
8 EnglishinLaw,ReligionandPopularCulture 148
9 EnglishasaLanguageofEducationinAsia 162
10 ImplicationsforEnglishLanguageTeachinginAsia 179
11 Conclusion 196
References 202
Index 217
vii
Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 ScreenshotofACEonlinehomepage page38
2.2 ScreenshotoftheBrowseCorpusinterface 39
2.3 Screenshotoftranscriptofaspeechevent 40
2.4 ScreenshotofplayingsoundrecordingsinACEonline 41
2.5 ScreenshotoftheContactUspage 42
2.6 ScreenshotofSearchACEOnlinepage 42
2.7 Screenshotofconcordancesfor‘so’intheLeisuresub-section
ofACE 43
2.8 WordRightcollocationpatternofthesearchword‘so’ 44
2.9 Furthercontextsofaconcordancelineshownonthescreen 46
2.10 ScreenshotoftheWebconcordancerforsearchingthetagged
ACEcorpus 47
2.11 Screenshotoftheconcordancesfortheverb‘record’inthe
Malaysiansub-corpusofACE 48
3.1 Theidentity-communicationcontinuum 54
Tables
A KnowledgeofEnglishinoutercircleAsiansocieties 10
B KnowledgeofEnglishinexpandingcircleAsiansocieties 11
1.1 EnglishinChina 17
2.1 SampletopicsofspeecheventsinACE 34
2.2 Toptwentymostfrequentaction/mentalverbsinACE 49
2.3 everybody/everyone/nobody/he/she/it+verb(non-markingvs
markingofthirdpersonsingularinACE) 50
3.1 ThesemanticdomainsofArabicloans 59
5.1 CommunicativestrategiesofELFusersinACE 109
6.1 ExamplesofGayspeak 118
6.2 Examplesofchangesbetweenloanwordsandthesourcewords 119
7.1 Caseendingsforstan(stone)inOE 129
viii