“NO LISTEN THE ASK”Emerging Englishes & Trasnational Identities

Summary

1 Online language: performance & identity

2 You Tube: emerging Englishes in a transnational space (Kevin Wu)

3 “A relaxing cup of café con leche” (Ana Botella)

4 Conclusions: Legitimate users of English - voice & performance

1 Online language: performance & identity

“Stance-taking has become a key discursive act in online interaction... many want to assert a unique sense of self, to stand out in a larger community of stance takers. Stance is a public act.” (87)

Language Online: Investigating Digital Texts & Practices (Barton/Lee) Routledge 2013

2 You Tube: emerging Englishes in a transnational space

“I’m not cool” Kevin Wu

7.2 M views / 44.500 comments (8/2011 - present)

Categorizing the comments

1 Direct quotations

2 Evaluation

3 Declarations of love / admiration

4 Alignment with experience

Direct quotations

E. W. Chun, Ironic Blackness as Masculine Cool. Applied Linguistics, Dec 2013 (600)

3 “A relaxing cup of café con leche”

2.4 M hits, 8,200 comments

Comments1 Direct quotations

2 Evaluation of a) the speech, b) the impact of the speech, c) the “relaxing café con leche”

3 Comparison with other speakers / alignment with experience

4 Positive comments

5 Points of reflection / debate

positive comments

4 Conclusions

Legitimate users of English - voice & performance

'Inequality has to do with modes of language use, including judgements passed on such use, not with languages, and if we intend to do something about it, we need to develop an awareness that it is not necessarily the language you speak, but how you speak, when you speak it, and to whom that matters. It is a matter of voice, not of language.’

Bloomaert, (196)

'One thing looks quite certain: in a world in which patterns of mobility mean that more and more communication has the characteristics of an unfinished product, less and less analytic relevance can be attributed to conceptions of language that are based on the 'standard' varieties and images of it.

Bloomaert, (134)

What about our students?

“Most students will be, and may well want to be, mobile across locations and their repertoire of linguistic resources, encompassing both L1 standard and ELF variants, may need to reflect this”

Ferguson quoted in Mackenzie, Ian: English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing & Teaching English (166) (Routledge, 2013)

You are proficient in a language to the extent that you possess it, make it your own, bend it your will, assert yourself through it rather simply submit to the dictates of its form”

Widdowson quoted in Mackenzie, Ian: English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing & Teaching English (169) (Routledge, 2013)

“It would be irrepsonisble to encourage the learners to assume that they can do without standard forms of the language”... A reduced form of ELF risks bringing L2 users “stuttering onto the world stage...”

Prodromou quoted in Mackenzie, Ian: English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing & Teaching English (168) (Routledge, 2013)