Wanted: A Braj Kachru Bibliography

As the "father" of World Englishes, Braj Kachru has authored a staggering assortment of books and articles on the subject since the 1960s. Unfortunately, to my knowledge no one has ever assembled a complete bibliography of these works.

I'm pretty keen on the idea of comprehensive bibliographies on any scholar, and I appreciate those scholars who make their CVs available online so I don't have to run all over the place seeking their publications. Google Scholar is suitable in many cases, but Kachru is so prolific that I give up easily.

I asked Suzanne Hilgendorf, who studied with Kachru, if she could suggest anything. She suggested the following as the most essential resources (in reverse chronological order, I believe) for assembling a bibliography:

• The Handbook of World Englishes
  Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Cecil Nelson
• World Englishes in Asian Contexts
  Yamuna Kachru, Cecil L. Nelson
• World Englishes: critical concepts in linguistics, Volume 3
  Kingsley Bolton, Braj B. Kachru
• The Other Tongue
  Braj B. Kachru
• The Alchemy of English
  Braj B. Kachru

Mollin's Euro-English

Just ILL'ed a copy of Sandra Mollin's book Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status. A quick skim reveals that it includes 3 studies - she determines that these 3 things need to be sorted out in order to assess whether a lg merits "variety" status:

1. FUNCTION - synthesis of previous statistical research on uses of English throughout EU states.

2. FORM - Mollin created her own corpus and mapped it to the ICE-GB. Don't know how features were singled out for analysis/explanation -- need to look into that.

3. ATTITUDE - Large survey of European professors, including a section on evaluating samples of Euro-English (oddly, not taken from the corpus, but based on "stereotypical" features from previous research - this seems a problem, but I think I understand why she did it), as well as questions about attitudes toward English in general.

To what extent could/should one try to replicate these in other contexts? Could they be single countries, or would it be better to look at analogous associations -- "the Sinosphere," ASEAN, Africa, etc?

How do you get at the question "What is a language?"

Other than a dialect with an army and a navy, I mean.

"What is English?"

Well, um, it's a language, a system with its own rules of morphology, phonology, orthography, syntax, etc., which can all be described by very specific references to...well, to itself, I suppose. That is interesting. One begins to understand the distinction between the "traditional" study of language-as-system and the "less traditional" study of language-in-use. Where does the system come from? Who makes it? While we all seem to have the innate capacity to understand and do language, we don't really map out the system ourselves. Nobody has the blueprints (despite what L'Academie might wish), yet we are constantly building. Bakhtin tells us that no one short of God has made an original utterance (and that I assume he means metaphorically).

The thing is, then, that language is made and re-made and grows and changes constantly. Maybe the changes take a while -- half a century to get the current connotations of, say, gay in English or tongzhi in Mandarin --but language is what it is because we keep on making it what it is. (Why? I have no idea what causes us to keep changing it. Maybe it has something to do with boredom.)

What I'm getting at is, I used to think that the most important thing for getting at a definition of a language -- or specifically, a variety of English -- was a hardcore analysis of the stuff of language itself -- linguistic or rhetorical or discourse analysis. What I think I think now (not a typo), though, is that those kinds of analysis are very good for some things, but they're not necessarily ideal for answering the question "what is this language?" (Well, there's also corpus analysis, which I used to think was overly sciencey and academic, but which I am more and more interested in since it is based on real samples of language-in-use.)

People -- everyday schlubs like you and me -- are the ones who make language, and the ones who decide what it is. So one of the best ways to figure out what a language is -- and this is going to sound so simple and naive as to be almost absurd -- is to ask people what it is.

Is this English?

Is this good writing?
Is this standard English?

Is this a well-written sentence?

Is this grammar OK?
What does this mean? Would you write it that way if it was your essay?

Why?

Why not?

Notes about advancing to candidacy in LLED

Comps

Option C: The Doctoral supervisory committee, in consultation with the student, determines the topics for three papers before any writing begins. The student may propose the three topics and/or draft three possible questions or outlines to present to the committee. The student may also provide initial reading lists (prior to Sept. 2010 all students were required to complete 3 comprehensive papers, as described here).

The papers typically cover the following three general areas:

1. The student’s area of specialization within Language and Literacy Education

does this mean TESL, or more specifically, L2 writing? How specific am I supposed to get here? ESL/EFL gap, NESTs and L2 writing, English writing in China -- some specific question about those?

2. One additional area or group of areas of special interest

Presumably world Englishes? Relationship of WEs to "China English?" Just English in China, broadly?

3. Appropriate research methodology

Review of survey/interview studies in WEs? In EFL writing? In Chinese ELT? In TESL, broadly?

Or....Dr Shi has suggested the papers should be:

1. Theoretical framework (Is WEs a theoretical framework? Should I delve into Bourdieu & Bakhtin as I did in an earlier paper that I totally fudged?)

2. Research Methods (I've heard it said this can be hard because it tends to be vague and not tied to anything real...Obvs need to do this at some point, but how shall I approach it?)

3. Empirical review of previous studies (To be folded into diss. Question is: Which studies? English in China? Probably, right? But if I'm influenced by other "is this a WEs variety" studies -- e.g. Europe, Singapore, India, Africa -- shouldn't those be just as necessary?)

Actually Dr Shi's way makes more sense to me...and it's basically half the dissertation. Yeah.

Proposal

(from the new procedures; comps above are based on old procedures. I have a choice. Not sure which one to go for with proposal -- new way is more work but more feedback.)

After the coursework and comprehensive examinations, the research design for the dissertation is brought together in the form of a proposal. The proposal for the dissertation includes the research problem, theoretical framework, methodology, a thorough review of the research literature and the context for the work within relevant literature, the significance and limitations of the study. Including a time line and summary of the scope of each chapter of the thesis is also recommended. The proposal should be about 40 pages in length.

The research supervisor, in consultation with the student, will determine when the proposal is ready for examination. The student will then submit the proposal to the supervisory committee and circulate it to members of the department. The proposal presentation date should be scheduled at least three weeks after the proposal has been circulated. The defence will comprise two parts: a public presentation with questions from the supervisory committee and others (maximum of one hour) and a closed session with the student and the supervisory committee. Although the dissertation proposal will be the focus of questioning, the student should also be prepared to answer questions on areas relevant to the study.

I like the sound of that a lot, actually.

Is there such a thing as Christian sociolinguistics?

Berry, W., (2005). Standing by Words : Essays. City: Shoemaker & Hoard.

Coates, R., (1998). Christianity in Bakhtin. Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press.

Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Kristjansson, C. (2007). “The Word in the World: So to Speak (A Freirean Legacy)” in Smith, David I. & Terry A. Osborn (eds.),Spirituality, Social Justice and Language Learning. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Steiner, G., (1991). Real Presences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Percy, W., (2000). Lost in the Cosmos. New York: Picador USA.

Poythress, V., (2009). In the Beginning Was the Word. Wheaton: Crossway Books.


Also the pope's Verbum Domini seems important maybe.

Methods

Carmen Isabel Luján García, in her review of Sandra Mollin's 2006 book Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status (in which Mollin rejects the existence of such a variety):

"For this research, a questionnaire survey was used as the unique method of studying attitudes towards English across Europe. It was administered via e-mail, and the sampling was the population of academics across Europe, as university lecturers’ e-mails are easily accessible. The total number was 4230 addresses from 21 countries. The questionnaire was composed of three sections; the first being elicited to analyse the error correction by means of a set of sentences that had to be checked by the respondents offering a correct alternative in case of mistakes; the second section asked for personal data required as sociolinguistic variables: age, country of origin, mother tongue and branch of science (Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, or the Arts); the third targeted the respondents’ general beliefs and attitudes towards English by questioning their agreement or disagreement on a scale of five items that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Two rounds were necessary. After both were completed, 746 completed questionnaires were obtained."

Thoughts:

1. Part 1 is a lot like what I have been proposing for my study. Good! That means it's legit.

2. 4,230 people were contacted? Yeesh! Maybe I should set my own sights a little higher. (Like sampling professors at Project 211 schools, maybe?)

3. I need to read this book.

4. García suggests the study would be stronger if follow-up interviews were used. I'm proposing to do so!

More CE brainstorming

I had a weird conversation with somebody recently: I said something like "yeah, it's interesting how English is becoming a big part of Chinese society, it's pretty fascinating since it doesn't have much of a history there compared to some other countries" [yes, I am aware that there have been English/Chinese interactions for hundreds of years, but in terms of English really taking hold in the PRC, it's relatively recent] and she made a somewhat confusing comment like "that's a very typical attitude of an English-speaking person." I didn't really get what she was getting at -- maybe she was saying that only an L1 English speaker would think English in a non-English-speaking country was fascinating/interesting/worth studying?

Anyway, I think I need to be leaning even harder than I thought on the "I'm not Chinese" angle. And I want to actually embrace the connection between native English speakers and Chinese English. I exchanged brief thoughts on this with Oliver Radtke last year -- he's interested in looking at both Chinese and non-Chinese attitudes toward Chinglish, which in his case I think refers more to the ludicrous signage one often reads about in popular articles on the topic. Most previous studies in "my field" (i.e. ESL/L2 writing/World Englishes) focus on Chinese English speakers' attitudes about CE/Chinglish. Hu included some NESs in her studies but again, those were generic 'attitude' studies.

How about just "English"?

Thought:

The best way to get at "China English" is not to call it that. Just call it English and see what happens.

IAWE 2010 = Success

Full recap coming soon -- notes:

- presented with my classmate Ai Mizuta on Chinese and English ed in Vancouver - well-received!

- Had a chance to chat with Fan Fang, Xing Fang, Xu Zhichang, Peter Sayer, & Kingsley Bolton (!) on China English stuff -- very stimulating, will definitely recap this!

- Bought Xu's new book "Chinese English," and Lo Bianco's "China and English" (to be shipped -- only $20, free shipping! Thanks Multilingual Matters!)

- A lot of fodder for thinking about how to approach my dissertation proposal

- Found out you can buy TEM transcripts from the Chinese MoE! Amazing! Can you get the writing test data? How freaking great would that be? Can get CET also, I wonder?

The Dilemma of the ESL Ghetto in Vancouver

"When entry into an English-speaking students’ peer group was not deemed feasible because they were taking ESL courses and English-speaking students were taking mainstream courses, they turned to students of the same ethnic origin for friendship. By the same token, once the high school Chinese immigrant students in this study decided to seek company of fellow compatriots and to continue being part of the Chinese-speaking community, learning English could become peripheral to them. They could minimize their investment in English and invest more in Chinese to keep the membership of a compatriot peer group."

- "Identity and Language Functions: High School Chinese Immigrant Studentsʼ Code-Switching Dilemmas in ESL Classes" by Liang Xiaoping

Textbooks for TESOL & Culture Class - ideas?

Re-opening comments for the first time in a couple of years for this question...

I'm teaching an "Intro to Teaching ESL" course later this summer as part of a sequence of classes. The first class will cover a lot of the "practical" aspects -- teaching the 4 skills, methods, materials, strategies, etc. -- and my portion will mostly cover "cultural" aspects of TESOL.

Question: what textbook should I use? The hope is something broad, not too theoretical, and cheap.

Ideas so far (with Canadian price):

Language and Culture by Claire Kramsch ($23) - short, many short collected readings, but not TESOL-or-teaching-focused per se

Teaching Culture: Perspectives in Practice by Patrick Moran ($40) - tons of exercises, examples, etc, but written by a foreign lg teacher (French) and focused on teaching culture rather than "cultural issues" in teaching

Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning by Eli Hinkel ($22) - I like this one, and I think even though it was written in 1999 it gets at a lot of issues (and has stuff by a lot of different authors)...leaning toward it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

From the new issue of World Englishes

Always a fascinating journal, but these articles particularly caught my eye. Hope to read soon:

Chinese perceptions of Inner Circle varieties of English

from World Englishes by BETSY E. EVANS

Research from populations around the world on attitudes to varieties of English is essential in order to have a better understanding of how the complexities of globalization play a role in the form of English as a world language. To that end, university students in China were asked to name countries around the world where they believe English is spoken and indicate what kind of impression they have of those varieties without the presentation of voice stimuli. This type of data elicitation enables the participants themselves to provide the researcher with evaluative categories and avoids problems associated with using voice stimuli. The results indicate that the effect of the cultural hegemony of US English as a variety is complex, and that, contrary to assumptions, US English is unlikely to be a model for a 'standard' variety of world English in the traditional sense.

Linguistically privileged and cursed? American university students and the global hegemony of English

from World Englishes by CHRISTOF DEMONT-HEINRICH

This paper analyzes written discourse generated in response to an open-ended questionnaire administered to 136 students at two different universities in the southwestern United States and to 15 non-American students at a large Danish university. The questionnaire aimed to inspire reflection about the impact of the global rise of English on American mother-tongue speakers of English as well as on those who do not have English as a mother tongue, especially with respect to the question of mono vs. multilingual practice. Most American and non-American respondents represented the learning of a foreign language as something American mother-tongue speakers should do but as something which is not necessary. There was widespread, though not unanimous, agreement that English is necessary for non-mother-tongue speakers. Responses are also grouped, discussed, and analyzed in terms of the instrumental, multicultural, or mix of multicultural and instrumental logic used. The author is especially concerned with the intersections between the global hegemony of English and the learning of foreign languages. The study and analysis conducted here offer insight into these intersections. Given that so much is at stake in terms of the relationship between the global expansion of English and foreign language learning, the author concludes that further research into this relationship is needed.

Ying Ge Li Shi

Is this racist? I got distracted by YouTube videos of people of Asian heritage showing "how to speak with a Chinese accent" (aka making fun?) a while back and Sarah told me to stop because she thought it was racist.

You can see that the person who made this video is using one of those books which purports to teach "English" by giving Chinese characters that are vague equivalents of English sounds. See if you can tell what she's saying. And whether you think it's mean.

Books for me to check out

keep this in mind for teaching this summer -

Writing across the curriculum in secondary classrooms : teaching from a diverse perspective

• Author: Harriet Arzu Scarborough
• Subjects: English language -- Composition and exercises -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- United States ; Interdisciplinary approach in education -- United States ; Multicultural education -- United States
• Description: Introduction / Promoting Literacy in Science Class / Math and Science in My English Class? Why Not? / Writing in a Law-Related English Class / Using Writing for Political Awareness / La Voz Liberada: Writing to Learn in a Sheltered English Class / Writing to Learn as a Way of Making Sense of the World / Real Live Audiences for Real Live Communication: Writing to Learn and the Possibilities of Technology / Writing Teacher Learns / "Forever on the Morning Wind": Expanding the Canon of American Literature / Place Poetry: A Form of Self-Expression / Perspectives on the Three-Voices Narrative / Bridging the Gaps and Spaces among Learners in a Writing-to-Learn Classroom / Making the Transition from High School to University Writing Across the Curriculum / Rearranging Desks /
  
• Publisher: Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Merrill
  
• Creation Date: c2001
  
• Language: English
  
• Format: vi, 218 p. ; 24 cm..
  
• ISBN: 0130224898
  
• Type: Book

ALSO THIS

Language and learning across the curriculum

• Author: Marion Crowhurst
• Subjects: English language -- Study and teaching (Elementary) ; English language -- Study andteaching (Secondary)
• Publisher: Scarborough, Ont. : Prentice-Hall Canada
  
• Creation Date: 1994 [i.e., 1993
  
• Language: English
  
• Format: xi, 311 p..
  
• ISBN: 0205161340
  
• Type: Book

"long time" and "no see" separately

This could be interesting, too.

for example, from the OED:

No-see-um

1842 N. Amer. Rev. Jan. 100 In some parts of New England and Canada, is a kind of midge..which is sufficiently formidable to the feeling, though so minute to the eye that the Indians in Maine give it the name of No-see-'em.

---

"long time" in "standard English" has been around forever (like, "it took a long time for that egg to cook," or whatever), but look at these uses of "long time" in Jamaican English:

1961 F. G. CASSIDYJamaica Talk vi. 107 Long time means long ago (‘Him gone long time’). 1971 Jamaican Weekly Gleaner 3 Nov. 5/1 Tams are also in (well, we did have that long time).

Google as Corpus - "I took GRE" vs. "I took the GRE"

As a native speaker of English, for some reason I have this intuition that "I took the GRE" is preferable to "I took GRE."

However, "I took GRE" yields over 66,000 hits on Google, whereas "I took the GRE" only shows about 44,000.

So either I'm wrong (possible) or more non-native speakers take the GRE than native speakers (also quite possible).

It could also have something to do with "I took GRE classes" or sentences like that.

But still:

"I took GRE yesterday" - 587

"I took the GRE yesterday" - 241

However:

"I took SAT yesterday" - 2

"I took the SAT yesterday" 157

So...maybe more NNSs are taking the GRE and writing about it on the internet, while more NSs are taking the SAT and writing about it on the internet?

Long Time No See: Etymology

I'm now apparently obsessed with the etymology of "long time no see." I have a hunch that it is based on making fun of non-native English rather than a direct translation from Chinese, but I don't know how one might "prove" this. I'll let you know what I come up with. The earliest instance I can find it in written form is in Glenanaar: A Story of Irish Life from around 1895-1905 or so. That would certainly allow for contact with Chinese Pidgin English to make its way to England. But how trustworthy is early documentation of CPE? Then again, am I being unfair when I think it can't be "accurate" because it was so blatantly racist?

"Long Time No See" = "Chinglish" or not?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "long time no see" is an expression which originates from (American) Native speakers making fun of Non-native speakers of unspecified L1 background. The first recorded usage the OED has is a reference to Native American (not Chinese) speech.

While its similarity to 好久不見 (hao jiu bu jian)is notable, I haven't seen any proof that this is actually a "loan translation," and I'm not sure you could ever "prove" such a thing.

c. Colloq. phr. (orig. U.S.) long time no see, a joc. imitation of broken English, used as a greeting after prolonged separation.

1900 W. F. DRANNAN 31 Yrs. on Plains (1901) xxxvii. 515 When we rode up to him [sc. an American Indian] he said: ‘Good mornin. Long time no see you.’1939 R. CHANDLER in Sat. Even. Post 14 Oct. 72/4 Hi, Tony. Long time no see. 1940 [see HIYA int.]. 1959 D. BEATY Cone of Silence viii. 105 ‘Hello, Clive.’ ‘Long time no see.’ 1959 C. MACINNES Absolute Beginners 68 Hail, squire... Long time no see. 1971 D. E. WESTLAKE I gave at the Office (1972) 164 ‘Hello, Arnold,’ I said... ‘Long time no see.’

Pidgin English Sing-Song by Charles Leland

Free on Google Books -- "China English" (supposedly) from 1887!

The way he writes about it is super racist, but it's amazing how similar it is to the way we talk about "Chinglish" today!

Language in, as, for, and of development

"English has already played and will continue to play a significant role in the Lao PDR’s present socio-economic development (language in development).

[In East Timor] English is perceived by many as playing an important role in the country’s development. And there is plenty of aid money to support ELT both as an end in itself (language as development) and as a tool for other domains of development (language for development).

In order to become a legitimate speaker in project management, far more is needed than language competence and the right to speak at meetings. In part, this raises the question of the language of development, or the discourses that construct the ways in which development happens."

quotes from Language in development constrained: Three contexts by Ros Appleby, Kath Copley, Sisamone Sithirajvongsa, Alastair Pennycook