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Series editor’s preface
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Series editor’s preface A new book from Professor Braj B. Kachru is nothing less than an event. The contribution of Braj Kachru to linguistics and English studies over the last three decades has been legendary. That academics today routinely talk about the ‘Englishes’ of the world is due in no small measure to the fact that when Braj Kachru and Larry Smith assumed the co-editorship of the Pergamon journal World Language English in 1985, they insisted that its title be changed to World Englishes (now published by Blackwell, UK). Braj Kachru’s distinguished academic career began in India in the mid1950s and subsequently took him to Edinburgh University in the late 1950s, during the era of David Abercrombie, Michael Halliday, and J. R. Firth (then Visiting Professor after his retirement from London University). It was here that Kachru completed a ground-breaking thesis on Indian English, one of the very first studies of world Englishes. On leaving Edinburgh, Braj Kachru taught for a year in India and then took up a post in linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an engagement that has continued to the present. At Urbana-Champaign he gained the rare distinction of simultaneous Professorial appointments in Comparative Literature, Education, English as an International Language, and also served as the Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Center for Advanced Study Professor of Linguistics. However, although Braj Kachru’s academic career has been very closely associated with the field of ‘world Englishes’, his research interests have also spanned many other areas of linguistics, such as South Asian languages (including Kashmiri), contact linguistics, lexicography, and the creativity of new literatures in English. At Urbana-Champaign, Braj Kachru and his wife Professor Yamuna Kachru have supervised some three score PhD students, many of whom now hold influential positions at African, Asian, and US universities. Professor Braj Kachru has made the kind of academic contribution that many others of us may aspire to but rarely achieve. His contribution has been as a researcher and as a theorist, but also as a teacher, a guru, in the multiple senses of this word, for the many scholars that have been inspired by his work and the many students touched by his guidance and kindness. xiv Series editor’s preface This volume, Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, brings a range of previously published material (substantially revised and updated) together with new chapters specially written. The volume comprises five main sections: Part I on ‘contexts’ (Asian Englishes, South Asian English, English in Japan); Part II on ‘convergence’ (contact linguistics and Englishization); Part III on ‘mantras’ (literary creativity); Part IV on ‘predator’ (English as a ‘killer’ language); Part V on ‘pedagogy’ (approaches to learning and teaching); and Part VI, ‘afterword’ (current debates and controversies). The scope of this book is innovative and multidisciplinary, and moves from linguistic description to literary explication, from intercultural communication to critical commentary. This work is a major contribution to the Asian Englishes Today series and will attract a wide international audience among students and scholars of linguistics, cultural studies, literary criticism, and all those interested in the continuing story of English in the Asian context. Kingsley Bolton November 2004 ...