Reviewing the Role of English Studies in a Global Cultural and Linguistic Context

English Studies and its role are surrounded by unresolved controversies, speculations and expectations from its very beginning as an academic discipline. The phenomenon of Globalization makes it more complex. Due to its colonial legacy and socio-economic changes at present time, English language teaching is being accused of doing away with our cultural and linguistic diversity. English language teaching is perceived as a process of Cultural and Linguistic homogenization that kills our indigenous culture and languages. Globalization and international status of English language locate English teachers as mediators of both language and culture. In English teaching, differing interpretations, contesting ideologies and struggles between frames for meaning are central to the concerns of globalization. This paper reports on an investigation of English Teachers' perception of their role as mediators between language and culture and how globalization is (re)shaping and (re)defining literature, language, composition and mass media in an expanded set of possible identities, discourses, subjectivities, communities, and modes of interpretation. This paper describes how English teachers can locate themselves between the two extreme positions of cultural homogenization and harmonization by teaching English language and literature through inter-cultural reader response theories of literary interpretation, socio-cultural methods of language-study, and juxtaposed multimedia representations.