Is English an Asian Language?Asia is now home to some 800 million multilingual speakers of English, more than the total number of native English speakers, and how they use English is continuously evolving and changing to reflect their cultural backgrounds and everyday experiences. Can English, therefore, be considered an Asian language? Drawing upon the Asian Corpus of English, this book will be the first comprehensive account of the roles, uses and features of English in Asia, encompassing several different varieties of Asian English. Chapters cover the distinctive linguistic features of English in different settings, such as in law, religion and popular culture, as well as the use of local rhetorical, pragmatic and cultural styles and its use as a lingua franca among Asian multilinguals. It will also examine the role of English in education - from primary through to higher education - and consider the implications of this for other languages of Asia. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
How English Came to Asia | 12 |
The Asian Corpus of English | 30 |
Asian Varieties of English vs English as a Lingua Franca ELF in Asia | 53 |
What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk about When Using English as a Lingua Franca? | 71 |
The Transfer of Features and Communicative Strategies | 90 |
Borrowing Words and Writing Asian Englishes | 111 |
Nonstandard Forms in Asian Englishes and ELF | 128 |
English in Law Religion and Popular Culture | 148 |
English as a Language of Education in Asia | 162 |
Implications for English Language Teaching in Asia | 179 |
Conclusion | 196 |
| 202 | |
| 217 | |
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