World Englishes and Culture Wars

This chapter addresses two issues that continue to be debated internationally about the presence of the English language in the global context: one of celebration and triumphalism, and the other of the use of the language as part of the arsenal in what have been termed civilizational “culture wars”. The Cassandras' sociolinguistic speculations about English are based on what they see in their ideological crystal balls, and beyond the end of the millennium, in which English is vigorously being related exclusively to western civilization and to the conflicts in the “remaking of world order.” The multiple canonicity of world Englishes manifests itself in many subtle ways: formal and attitudinal, one overlapping with the other, and in turn, each contributing to distinct canons with one shared thread – that of the medium. One sees several major approaches for establishing local literary and linguistic identities for English.