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Zoya Proshina The abc and Controversies of World Englishes ббк 81


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Introduction


We happen to live in the era of “lingual revolution” (Кабакчи 2002) when one language has overcome all possible national borders and penetrated various domains of our life: business, media, education, culture, research and science, and many others. This language is English. It can be found in all continents and many countries. With this spread of English, we have realized that we live in a small world as this language linked so many ethnic cultures and made it possible for all peoples to know each other. That is why today’s English is labeled global, international, multi-ethnic, multicultural, language of wider communication, or world English. At the same time it is clear now that due to this plurality of actualizations, English has changed and has become diverse – so there appeared world Englishes.

A new linguistic paradigm, called World Englishes, came forward in the late 20th – early 21st centuries. While being established, it has caused so many disputes and debates among linguists all over the world. However, in Russia rather few scholars and educators have been engaged in these disputes, which might have had several reasons: on the one hand, this period almost coincided with the turning point in the history of Russia (perestroika) when scholars and teachers had to solve survival problems; on the other hand, shortage and even in many places lack of sources resulted in the fact that this paradigm has not received adequate attention from Russian linguists and is even less known to students of English in Russia.

Meanwhile, independently from the mainstream of the WE paradigm, there have been some achievements, though not numerous, in this field of Russian linguistics. Linguistic interest of Soviet (at that time) researchers focused basically on the countries of the Inner Circle: Canadian English lexis was studied synchronically and diachronically (Попова 1978; Быховец 1988), Australian English was described in (Орлов 1978), and the comparison of British, American, Australian and Canadian phonetics (Шахбагова 1980, 1982, 1992) and semantics (Ощепкова 1989) was made. The New Zealand variety of English was also included in the research (Ощепкова 1989). Later V.V.Oschepkova devoted her energy to collecting culture-loaded words related to Australia and New Zealand. Her effort resulted in the Dictionary of Australia and New Zealand, a dictionary of the linguocultural series (Австралия и Новая Зеландия 1998). In 1999, at Moscow State Pedagogical University S. Pryadko defended his Candidate dissertation on the cultural component of Australian English lexicon (Прядко 1999).

Until recently next to nothing has been known about “new” Englishes of the Outer Circle, i.e. institutionalized Englishes functioning as second, official languages or, the more so, about Englishes used as performative varieties, or EFL in countries of the Expanding Circle. One of the first significant works – “English in Developing Countries: Problems of Sociocultural Varying” – was a Doctoral dissertation by O. Semenets defended in Kiev in 1985 (Семенец 1985). Another dissertation of Candidate of Philology was defended also in Kiev in 1990 by Yu. Knurov (Кнуров 1990). This work presented the research on English functioning in Ethiopia. In 2000, a book on divergence and convergence of regional varieties of modern English was written by R. Kritsberg and published at Kiev Linguistic University (Крицберг 2000). The traditions of studying African Englishes are continued at Pyatigorsk Linguistic University where in 2002 E.Krainyuchenko (Крайнюченко 2002) defended her Candidate dissertation on contrastive analysis of the English language transformation in South Africa. In 2004 at St.Petersburg Pedagogical University, another Candidate dissertation - on Ghanaian English - was defended by N.Siaka (Сиака 2004).

Moscow linguists also lay emphasis on the idea of diversity of Englishes. In 1998, the disciples of Professor O. Akhmanova, supported by David Crystal, published a collection of articles on Word Englishes (World Englishes 1998). In May 2001, Moscow State University hosted the international conference “Global English for Global Understanding” which proved to be a landmark in Russian linguistics. That conference highlighted very important issues of World Englishes, interaction of cultures and global understanding, glocalization of Business English teaching, raise of cross-cultural awareness, cultural aspects of the language; varieties of English and English teaching materials and many others. The conference had a great impact on English language teaching in Russia. It stressed the problem of World Englishes as a key issue. The Moscow conference was followed by the Saratov international conference “English Unites the World: Diversity within Unity” held by the Russian National Association of Teachers of English in January 2002, and in 2004 the Pan-Asian Consortium and Far Eastern English Language Teachers’ Association (FEELTA) held the 5th international conference in Vladivostok where Larry Smith drew attention of Russian educators to the topical issue of Asian Englishes and intercultural intelligibility in the region. Four years earlier, in 2000, FEELTA held the conference “People, Languages and Cultures in the Third Millenium”. At this conference the concept of Far Eastern English was substantiated, meaning use of English in the Asian setting (Proshina 2000). That conference was a turn of Russian linguists to the interaction of Asian languages and English and the role of this interaction for Russian communicators in English Several dissertations on localized Englishes (Завьялова 2001; Прошина 2001; Богаченко 2003; Колычева 2004; Крыкова 2004; Уютова 2004; Ильина 2005; Лупачева 2005; Пивоварова 2005; Сычева 2005; Ревенко 2006) have been defended, with many more still in progress. The defended dissertations were dedicated to the role of English in communication between East Asian and Russian people; Asian accents in English, role of English in Russia, and history of Asian borrowed words in English.

In Russia the research on world Englishes is being done in six major dimensions: 1) lexicographic aspect (Shahbagova 1993; Австралия и Новая Зеландия 1998; Юзефович 2000, 2003; Kabakchi 2002; Ульциферов 2003; Богаченко 2003; Прошина 2004; Кузнецова 2005); 2) phonetic investigations of Asian accents (Шахбагова 1982, 1992; Завьялова 2001; Уютова 2004; Пивоварова 2005; Белоножко 2007; Слог и ритм 2007); 3) description of lexical and grammatical features of world Englishes (Ощепкова 1989; Кнуров 1990; Прядко 1999; Сиака 2004; Иванкова 2007) 4) sociolinguistic and linguocultural aspects (Швейцер 1963; Семенец 1985; Крицберг 2000; Крайнюченко 2002; Колычева 2004; Крыкова 2004; Ильина 2005; Лупачева 2005; Сычева 2005; Ревенко 2006), 5) translation studies and intercultural communication (Иванов 1985; Кабакчи 1987; Прошина 2001; Леонтович 2007); and 6) Russian and English language and culture contacts (Пономаренко 1965; Мартинек 1972; Аристова 1978; Беляева 1978, 1984; Елизова 1978; Аверьянова 1984; Карапетян 1988; Обухова 1991; Кабакчи 1993, 1998; Ларионова 1993; Сешан 1996; Lebedko 1999; Павленко 1999; Айтмухамедова 2000; Романов 2000; Лебедько 2002; Мангушев 2002; Митирева 2002)

The question of Russian English as a variety of world Englishes was not raised until 1987 when V.V. Kabakchi defended his Doctoral dissertation “The English Language for Intercultural Communication” in Saint Petersburg (Кабакчи 1987). In his dissertation and later in his books Prof. Kabakchi argues that translating Russian culture into English is a serious field of linguistics and Foreign Language pedagogy. It should be specially investigated and taught. Luckily, Prof. Kabakchi is not alone in his theory and practice. School of Foreign Languages at Moscow State University recently offered a new major to their students – Russian Studies in English. This can be considered as a great step forward in theory and practice – English as a global language will become a vehicle of our ethnic identity abroad, and we must work hard to facilitate this mission.

This textbook is aimed to raise awareness among students regarding this tool of communication, to foster the appreciation for world Englishes, to prepare future interlocutors to speaking with non-native speakers who come from countries neighboring with Russia. I deliberately restricted the target area of Englishes described in this book (excluding, for instance, African Englishes because Russian speakers in English do not have to deal with these varieties often). So the object of this textbook is the fundamental ideas and controversies, debatable a lot, about the main theoretical issues and their application to the practice of teaching and translating, as well as the description of the Englishes a Russian person faces frequently.

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