Volume 2022, Issue 277 - Special Issue: Linguistic justice and global English; Issue Editors: Josep Soler and Sergi Morales-Gálvez

The global spread of English and its impact on the pursuit of linguistic justice has been a topic of concern for scholars in a wide range of different fields in the humanities and social sciences. Firmly convinced of the usefulness of cross-field collaboration to advance our understanding of the expansion of English globally, in this special issue we bring together experts in sociolinguistics and political theory with two goals in mind: (1) to illustrate, empirically, its consequences for speakers in situated contexts; and (2) to propose potential normative responses to the global spread of English. In order to frame the overarching theme of the special issue, and to show our stance as guest editors in connection to global English, in this opening piece we develop a critique to Philippe Van Parijs’ notion of linguistic justice. In particular, we take issue with his vision that promoting English as a global lingua franca is a good idea in order to enhance everyone’s equality of opportunities (e.g., in the labour market). We question such an assumption from both a theoretical and empirical point of view, and argue that having equal access to English is not sufficient to equalize everyone’s opportunities.

This paper focuses on English as a lingua franca, an area of research that has gone through several phases of reconceptualization over recent years. What has not changed despite the reframing is the insistence that ELF, with its focus on intelligibility rather than formal accuracy, is not to be judged on the basis of standard English norms. In response to these claims, researchers have argued from linguo-political and philosophical perspectives that re-labelling English ‘ELF’ does not remove native-speaker privileges and linguistic injustice. This paper addresses the topic by presenting some results of an investigation into students’ language choices and practises during study abroad. Drawing on data gained by means of a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, it will show that, despite their use of English in lingua franca situations, a considerable number of students adhere to standard English as an appropriate model and measure their own proficiency in English and progress in language learning against native-speaker norms.

Accentism refers to the ways that “unequal English accents” become re-allocated in particular English-speaking dominant contexts, creating different presumptions, ideologies and attitudes towards the English accent and pronunciation of English speakers. Using data derived from two larger ethnographic studies, this article aims to explore the ways that English as an Additional Language (EAL) migrants experience covert accentism  – the social exclusion caused covertly when the dominant members of society misunderstand the accents of EAL users. Our study shows that EAL users express their worry of being stereotyped for their English accents, which interferes with their social and daily life. In particular, the participants noted forms of social exclusion such as a lack of interest in them or their experiences, and deficit perspectives surrounding their overall English practices including their accents. We conclude that such instances of covert accentism can lead to more serious implications, such as having difficulty fostering relationships with members of the dominant society, accent bullying, and psychological damage.

The rise of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) has prompted concerns over linguistic injustice, educational disadvantage, societal inequality and epistemic homogenization. As EMI tends to generate heated debates, its drivers need to be better understood. Borrowing conceptual frameworks from political science, this article proposes a new understanding of the drivers of EMI, pointing to the introduction of new steering tools in the 1980s to govern Europe’s higher education institutions. Conducting Process Tracing in a Dutch university, and drawing on document analysis and interviews with nine “elite participants” – Ministers of Education, University Rectors, Members of the University Executive Board, Faculty Deans and Programme Leaders – we argue that the very first EMI programme at our case university may be traced back to a set of governance reforms in the Dutch higher education sector that introduced key performance indicators and institutional profiling. Responding to calls for linguists to engage with the political economy, we identify previously under-illuminated links between political processes and EMI. We conclude that close attention to the political economy is key to understanding the rise of EMI, and more generally language shift, and ultimately to tackling linguistic injustice that may follow in its wake.

The global expansion of English-medium lectures (EMLs) in higher education has predominantly been approached in the context of globalization characterized by neoliberalism. While the spread of EMLs has been viewed as an outcome of institutional pursuit of global competitiveness and internationalization, ongoing global approaches risk overlooking local elements critical for the ascendance of English in specific local contexts. This paper seeks to balance the scholarly inquiry into EMLs by offering a local historical perspective, with the higher education sector of South Korea as a key site of investigation. A focus is placed on the intellectual habitus of Korean higher education which the paper argues has served as a fertile ground for EMLs to take hold. Within the context of the global centre-periphery binary, the article specifically examines how the binary relationship has been internalized in Korean higher education through local historicity in which the U.S. has metaphorically been established as the centre. The superior-inferior binary divisions between the U.S. and Korea have contributed to the construction of the local intellectual habitus marked by the domination of American educated elite groups and the emergence of English as the language of the centre. In conclusion, the paper challenges the normative claim of English as a global language by illustrating EMLs in Korea as a historical-structural construct resulting from the interplays between the global and local power inequalities.

Since the early 2000s, the government of Kazakhstan has been promoting educational reforms in higher education including introducing English-medium instruction (EMI), trilingual education (education in Kazakh, Russian, and English), and requirements of students and faculty to publish in impact factor. Within this context, the purpose of this paper is to use the lenses of political economy and linguistic justice to interpret interview data from students, faculty, and administrators of six Kazakhstani universities implementing trilingual education. These data show that some stakeholders believe English is the language of science, and it is therefore necessary to read, study, and publish in English. Competing voices argue that privileging English will lead to a loss of knowledge from local scholars who are not proficient in English. The data indicate that stakeholders believe the pursuit of EMI and English academic publishing may achieve the goals of global competitiveness and economic development under a political lens, but at a cost to the linguistic justice of languages other than English and speakers of those languages.

Theorists of linguistic justice tend to assume that English (particularly its native varieties) has paramount and stable value as a global communicative tool. From this alleged value they identify several injustices for non-native speakers, like unequal opportunities and lower dignity, related to the instrumental and identity-related values of languages. In this article we challenge assumptions about the real-life value of English by engaging in an interdisciplinary dialogue that connects normative theories and sociolinguistic theories of value. Through the analysis of ethnographic case studies, we conclude that the value of English (and nativeness in English) as linguistic capital is highly context-dependent, to the extent that possessing native skills may have no positive effects for an English speaker. Both language-centred factors (linguistic awareness and adaptive skills) and non-language centred factors (markets and social indexicalities) determine this value. We highlight that normative approaches to languages cannot address instrumental and identity-related values separately, because identity is instrumental to communicative interactions. We conclude that multilingualism fulfils better than monolingualism (either in English or in state majority languages) the goals of linguistic justice traditionally associated with the latter. Finally, we engage in a critical reflection about the suitability and conditions of possibility of interdisciplinary research.

Tropical northern Australia is a region of high linguistic diversity, with dozens of language varieties each spoken by a small number of people. Traditionally, this level of diversity has been supported by egalitarian linguistic ecologies, where Aboriginal people use multiple languages alongside one another in each local region. In this study, I explore new types of multilingual practices that are emerging in Darwin, the only major city in the area. Aboriginal people from the homelands often visit Darwin, and some become permanent residents, which provides the context for new types of multilingual encounters. Kriol and English are also used as a ‘fall-back’ languages to mitigate gaps in understanding, which allows multilingual interaction to occur between people who have only partial knowledge of eachothers’ languages. I characterise these practices as ‘linguistic exchange’, used by speakers to establish their links to kin and country, while also showing respect for their interlocutor’s social connections. Linguistic exchange also supports the distinctive Aboriginal mode of demand-driven resource sharing. Aboriginal language use in Darwin suggests that urban mobility is not necessarily detrimental to the future vitality of the region’s rich linguistic heritage.

As part of a large survey project designed to examine language shift in Indonesia, we examine speakers’ categorization and labeling of the language varieties in their repertoire with respect to language ideologies and the language ecology of Indonesia. This paper is both a methodological paper – arguing for the usefulness of surveys in the investigation of language shift scenarios – as well as an initial report of findings from those surveys, focusing on how speakers in different parts of Indonesia name language varieties. We demonstrate the benefits of a survey with open-ended questions about linguistic repertoire in investigating the use of particular language labels as markers of local and national identity and discuss these in terms of differences in local language ecologies on the islands of Bali, Java, and Sumatra. In addition, we report on how language labels are used in different communities in Indonesia in the context of different local ecologies, and against a backdrop of widespread reported language shift from the local languages of the Indonesian archipelago to the national language Indonesian ( Bahasa Indonesia ), following decades of successful language planning efforts promoting Indonesian as a unifying language in a linguistically diverse nation.