Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon

This volume provides a contemporary record of the development and use of the English language across Asia. It discusses the language from both literary and linguistic perspectives, highlighting its flexibility, vibrancy, and inclusive nature. society and language across Asia, argues Braj Kachru, are parting ways with the traditional conons of the Raj. New metaphors are being used to identify the emerging nation states-India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, to name a few-‘the roaring Asian tiger’, ‘the awakened giant’, and ‘the yawning elephant’. And the newly awakened Asia has heralded in ‘the Asian age’. Consequently, the English language has been re-crafted at various linguistic, sociological, and cultural levels and relocated in an Asian milieu. English was once perceived to be a colonial language, waiting to be discarded from a pluralistic Asian subcontinent in the 1940s. But-gradually, unexpectedly, and rather interestingly-what actually happened is that the language turned into a linguistic commodity with nativized ideological and functional reincarnations in Asian context. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Asian Englishes will be useful for students, teachers, and researchers of English both as a classroom text as well as a resource volume. It will also be interesting to a lay audience curious to find out about the pre-eminence of the English language in societies and cultures across Asia.