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Friday 22 October 2010

Session 3, 21 Oct 2010: Ownership & imperialism

Both notions examined in class are ripe for your own detailed discussions and explorations. The claim that some form of ownership can be manifest in various ways, as can orientations to other people's orientations - not least in micro-terms, i.e. in social interaction - need to be examined carefully. How, for example, is 'ownership', in its various guises, displayed in spoken interaction, when people talk to each other, in various social settings? How is 'ownership' manifest in the L2 classroom, or in ELF encounters outside the classroom? Does setting make a difference? How? Why? Such questions would form the basis of a very nice research project.

Linguistic imperialism is a warning to all who feel ELF/EFL/ESL triumphalism coming on. Phillipson is right to warn of the 'darker side' of the spread of English. But is he going too far the other way, one wonders? Does he not have perhaps a too-jaundiced view of the global spread of English? This too is a rich area to explore and certainly worth considering as an assignment topic - perhaps combining it with the question of how might 'linguistic imperialism' manifest itself at the level of social interaction?

Please ensure you are well prepared for next week's class - we'll be looking closely as jenkins' 'ELF Core' idea.

Enjoy the fleshly-made salad: (look carefully)


Thanks to Richard Gunion for the photo!

2 comments:

  1. it seems that my university linguistic professor introduced us an article on ELF and said it was a good idea to set up a blog to contact studnets. I guess maybe she saw your english inthe world website,haha.
    I enjoyed ur classes, very thought-provoking and deeply logically thought! Now some different ideas on english learning and teaching start to occur to me which never happened before,exciting!

    looking to next session!

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  2. Actually, I do not agree with Phillipson partially. The so-called threatening of English, or the imperialism of English could become the catalyst to increase the development of human's language. We need to call people's attention to realize that it's time to make a change. The yardstick to measure this could be the only way:that is , to spread the imperialism of English. It is not only the convenient way to contribute to social interaction ,but also the easy way to eradicate the terrible conflict caused by the patriotism due to the language we use.Anyway, I could quote Darwin's Evolutionary Theory, "natural selection" ,by the same token, the world of linguistic also could adop this theory.These are stupid ideas by a new guy who is on the way of making cntribution to the imperialism of English all over the world. Haha! Finally I know the reason why the photo used by you often containing Japanese, Richard contributed it.
    All in all, thanks!
    Dove

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