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Reviewed by:
  • English in the world: Global rules, global roles
  • Madia Thomson
Rani RubdyMario Saraceni (eds.) 2006. English in the world: Global rules, global roles. London/New York: Continuum. Pp. vi + 218. US $70.00 (softcover).

From its origins amongst the people of the British Isles to its rise as a language of international trade, English has shown a remarkable adaptability. Its current form—its usages and vocabulary—reflect the diversity of cultures and peoples who either colonized or were colonized by these ubiquitous Britons. There seems, therefore, little need to question its place as an international language. Yet, it is this very question that guides much of the discussion in Rani Rubdy and Mario Saraceni’s edited volume, English in the world: Global rules, global roles.

The book consists of a series of articles collected from some of the leading thinkers in the field of English as a Second Language. Their interests as writers and the purpose of the book are quite clear: to understand English as a global phenomenon and consider what it means for language teaching. The book has two sections appropriately titled “Conceptualizing English as an international language” (Part I) and “Pedagogical implications of English as an international language (Part II). Part I examines theories of global English, referred to alternately as English as an International Language (EIL), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), or simply World English. One sees a priori no apparent complication of ideas and it is only after reading an introduction that actually inverts the order of the section themes that one begins to see what the difficulties are and where they might lie. The underlying assumption of many of the authors—that English as it is already known and [End Page 119] taught is somehow inappropriate to its role as an international language—is not the least of these difficulties. The remainder of this review discusses this conceptual complication, and then focuses on the chapters that seem to offer a better sense of what the editors might have had in mind when planning the book.

The book begins with a brief discussion of an interview with World English specialist Tom McArthur. After explaining how he came to his field—while living and teaching in India—Tom McArthur comments that non-native English speakers’ unwillingness “to break the rules” prevents them from being creative with the language (p. 22). Using a rather bad example, he goes on to say that creativity and the fear of it is one of the more pressing issues for the field. The idea itself is sound; fear of making mistakes is a common problem. It does, however, raise the question of what rules are to be considered here? McArthur does not offer any real answers to this question. Subsequent discussion about standardizing English as an international language, that is, finding rules that serve as a guide to all speakers of English who might want to speak to one another, do little to resolve the problem. In fact, the issue itself remains fuzzy for the rest of Part I, with various contributors saying what they want to do without always writing about what they actually do.

One exception to this position is Luke Prodromou’s article “Defining the ‘Successful Bilingual Speaker’ of English.” Prodromou begins by situating his discussion of ELF in the context of bilingualism; in doing so, he gives the reader a particular context in which to consider his proposals (pp. 53–54). Not only does he suggest ways of evaluating the successful bilingual, but also does he mention his concern, as do other authors in Part I, about the use of native-speaker speech as a model for non-native speakers of English. He then leaves the realm of the general to present an example of a real project designed to address the problem of ELF standardization, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and the work of one of its vocal proponents, Barbara Seidlhofer (p. 55). In this way, the concepts suggested in the title of Part I are examined in the context of a real world project that they generated. Not only do we know that there is a problem with establishing...

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