There Exist A Range Of Practices That Involve Local Appropriation Of English

By Author: Christ Pual
Total Articles: 55
Comment this article

Another problem is that even if we were to stick to national varieties, the model is unable to accommodate countries with political histories that fall outside the kinds of scenarios it presumes. In South Africa, for example, English is widely used in a range of institutional contexts such that the country can be described as having a variety of 'White South African English', which is 'in many ways comparable to Australian or New Zealand English in their respective settings'. However, this is complicated by the fact that alongside this variety of English is 'Black South African English' and 'South African Indian English'. The presence of these other Englishes complicates any attempt to Five Fingers KSO decide which circle the country ought to belong to, so that responses have ranged from categorizing South Africa in the Inner Circle and ignoring the non-White Englishes, or simply leaving it out of consideration altogether.

A third problem is that there exist a range of practices that involve local appropriation of English, most notably in ...
... the domain of popular culture, that are ignored in the model as they are often closely tied to the domain of artful performance compared with more codified varieties. One such example is 'raplish', or the use of English in rap music among rappers in places such as Korea or Japan. In such cases, actors draw on a range of linguistic resources (Korean, Japanese, and African American Vernacular English) to signal affiliations that operate simultaneously at global, regional, national, and local levels, a kind of border crossing that challenges the model's attention to national boundaries. These problems, it should be noted, are not merely descriptive ones, as highlighting certain varieties while omitting others and arranging them in a space dangerously reminiscent of a center-periphery dichotomy has unavoidable implications of power.

Thus, despite Kachru's (2005: 219) claim that the concentric circles are not meant to be seen as hierarchical, critics have pointed out that Vibram KSO the model at the very least has the unintended consequence of justifying and reproducing the hegemony of Inner Circle speakers and their Englishes. For instance, because the model 'locates "nativeness" according to these circles', it has been accused of continuing to 'privilege native speakers over non-native speakers, and then ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers (nationally defined) over EFL (English as a Foreign Language) speakers (nationally defined)'. Even Kachru's (1996) re-conceptualization into a binary distinction between norm-providing countries (which would include Inner Circle countries and possibly some Outer Circle ones) and norm-dependent countries (the Expanding Circle) seems reluctant to do away with the notion that Englishes from traditional native speakers somehow deserve special privilege.