Reclaiming the local in LPP—Reflection 2

Disappear or Rebuild?

Yang ke

With the increasing speed of globalization, the world village enables human beings enjoy countless conveniences which they had never imagined before. But at the same time, it poses contradictions of distorted identities of race and culture in people’s life due to the increasing mankind migration, shifting geopolitical boundaries, cultural collision and integration. Thus the merge between the local and global discourses of language policy becomes one of the important studies for educators, language planners and policy makers. This is also what Suresh Canagarajah attempts to mention in Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. He wants people pay attention to the “greater negotiation between global processes and local conditions, leading to the construction of a diversified knowledge tradition that benefits from the richness of practices and values in human community’ (Canagarajah xiv).

To achieve this goal, scholars should always alert to the intervention of globalization, migration and various language use in the process of language planning and policy making. Just like Canagarajah says, “the local has negotiated, modified, and absorbed the global in its own way” (Canagarajah 9). The changes in the local positionality are either to resist the global and to achieve self survival. Thus it is important to have careful and detailed examination of the local knowledge for the reason that “local knowledge can motivate conversations between different localities, answering questions that transcend one’s own borders” (Canagarajah 20).

So the changes matter and languages keep disinventing and reconstituting. Personally, I will put the language users’ role in the priority place when thinking about the possible reason. With passing time, new things will come into being and old ones will disappear or die. It is a universal rule that people will change in different times, different places, and so people use different words to communicate. Just as Saussaure said, “Time changes all things: there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.” Since every generation will have their differences in using language from their last generation, thus it is true that language---as one of the forms of human being’s activities, changes. That is, new things exist in different forms, are named differently and mean differently.

 Take English as an example, the reasons for the spread of English are more about political, cultural, and economic reasons rather than just linguistic ones. The human being’s long history proved that language change often occurs in response to social, economic and political pressures and recorded many examples of language change fueled by invasions, colonization and migration. Actually, even without the abovementioned influences, English can change dramatically if enough users alter the way they speak it because the needs of speakers drive language change. It is especially obvious nowadays. With the development of science and technology, more and more new items are invented and need new words to name those things. Also science and technology affected people’s interaction with each other gradually, by using new and emerging expression and communication ways, people made the language change, too. Every English language user can represent a certain kind of local and thus put them together to make the big global by keep using them. So the changing English can be said as a result of interactions among social varieties, and among them, the user variation performs the leading role.

The widespread influences of English have made some people feel that they have escaped from the tower of Babel, but others have claimed that it is a kind of linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 2000). In The Problem of World English: Reflecting on Crystal and Phillipson, Douglas Chorpita analyzed the main ideas of Crystal and Phillipson towards English in this global world and introduced the readers the idea of caring approach (Chorpita, 2004-2005) which is helping in understanding the status of English. According to Douglas Chorpita, there is no problem with English but the people who use English have caused the problems and worries of the future of English and its relationships with other languages. To a certain extent, I agree with him because language has close interactions with its users and will be affected and shaped by the way it is used.

In terms of language planning and policy, I think educators and scholars should try their best to cultivate people’s “pluralistic mode of thinking where we celebrate different cultures and identities” (Canagarajah 20) and help people realize that there is no standardized Standard English due to the important influences of the language users. It is always the demands and practical usage of the language user that affect the form and the content of Standard English. Language is shaped by the experiences of the people who use it and changes with their changing needs. There is one more thing I want to make clear, that is, although languages change with time, as the needs of their users change, change does not mean evolutionary progress. It is language users who contribute to the positive and effective development of language. English differs with the user, and also with the different uses that speakers have for English.

All in all, diversification is one of the features of our world. Human beings prefer colorful life but they should know how to identify what they want among numerous facts also they should have tolerant heart towards those differences. Just like the combination of different colors which can create a totally new world and the creation will never be ended.

References:

Canagarajah, S. (2005). Reconstructing local knowledge, reconfiguring language studies. In S. Canagarajah (Ed.), Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice (pp. 3-24). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Chorpita, Douglas. The Problem of World English:Reflecting on Crystal and Phillipson. HS: English as a World Language. Wintersemester 2004/2005.

Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. (2007). Disinventing and reconstituting languages. In S. Makoni & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Disinventing and reconstituting languages (pp. 1 - 30). Clevedon, Buffalo & Toronto: Multilingual Matters.

Phillipson, Robert. 2000. Linguistic Imperialism. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.