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VOLUME
Vol.05 Issue05 2025
PAGE NO.
255-269
10.37547/ajsshr/Volume05Issue05-54
English as an Instrument of Power: A Study of Literary
Texts from a Social Critical Perspective
Naser Idan Fadheel
Ministry of Education, Wasit Education Directorate, Iraq
Received:
14 March 2025;
Accepted:
26 April 2025;
Published:
30 May 2025
Abstract:
The study critically analyzed how English has been shaped and appropriated across diverse and often
antagonistic social, political, and cultural arenas. This study used lyric poetry and music lyrics from across Canada
and Cameroon to analyze socioeconomic issues. As said in the opening, the goal was to delve into the ambivalence
of English as a ubiquitous and occasionally pervasive language, providing fertile ground for local musical
interpretations and textual changes. Despite its ethnic dissimilarity and displacement, the analytic selection
upheld a lack of linguistic rights, justice, antagonism, reinvention, and patriotism/local-mindedness towards its
polysemy-afflicted language. The investigation uncovered a strategic, theatrical, and fruitful use of allusion, as
was the role of language and culture in global and cross-cultural dissimulation. In an overtly affirmative act with
its appropriation from the colonial masters, the coping mechanisms of adaptation, opposition, and promotion
were compared to loan-shifting. A new ontology and the rhythmicity of soft power in the war of discourses were
hinted at by the domesticates culled from texts imperiled by local and worldwide political intrigue.
Introduction:
In today’s world, any discussion of English as an
international language implies, among other things, an
awareness of its cultural and literate dimensions and a
sensitivity to the asymmetries that mark its various
manifestations. It implies a consideration of whether
the diversity of Englishes spoken in a globalized world
can have a place in a monolithic and imperial
representation of the world. In a context in which
English is still viewed as a language of the high status
culture, the multilayeredness of English would be seen
as a potential threat, if not a misguided attempt to
illegitimately appropriate a powerful language of the
rich. Wherever competences and cultural capital are
unequally distributed, “the struggle over syllabuses, on
the one hand, and the struggle over the form and
content of the artistic object on the other” are likely to
be irreconcilable.
It is common knowledge that a principal point of
tension between colonial and native writers in English
is their use of the language. This historical baggage
rears its head, apart from the distinctive literate worlds
that separate them, in cultural and stylistic instances
that are difficult to construe by merely consulting a
colloquial dictionary. Although the imposition of
English by a colonial regime would forever mark its uses
by local writers, this uneasy relationship is a conflictive
one that cannot be reduced to automatic obedience to
the colonizer. The technologies of the “coloniality of
power” have as their corollaries struggles to contest
and
reappropriate those technologies “as modes of
insurgency and empowerment” (Cimarosti, 2015). In
the hands of native writers, English has proven
effective in reaffirming their identity as subjects
capable of thought, ridicule and grace; in noting the
inconsistencies of the colonial picture of the Other; in
absorbing local cultures into a form that is still English,
that is localised, vernacularised, and “postcolonial”.
This essay investigates English as an instrument of
power in literary texts by writers from the Anglophone
world, consisting of Britain, the United States, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, and certain Caribbean nations,
as well as across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In
studies on English usage, power relations are most
commonly addressed in terms of the multiplicity of
Englishes. There is an urgent need to investigate the
broader imposition of English as an instrument of
power. An investigation of this aspect can yield insights
into Englishes, prestige and imagination, a topic which
is crucial to the ongoing theorization of World
Englishes.
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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Based
on
poststructuralism
and
numerous
contributions, social criticism has been regarded as a
distinct and overarching tradition (Sousa, 2017). The
basic tenet of social criticism is that no texts are
innocent and all have political import which works to
support or undermine a particular social order. Thus,
the primary goal of a social critic is to understand how
these orders are maintained naturally or actively in
their manipulation of representations. The theory
possesses a series of assumptions including the view
that all stable meanings emdiv a version of reality
that belies a struggle. Other assumptions embrace the
view that the power of meaning, whether it be
expressed in printed, visual, spoken, or acted forms, is
achieved through social processes of distribution,
endorsement, and consumption, and the view that
criticisms expose the meanings/excuses which mask
and sustain a dominant social order. Finally, there is the
view that human understandings and representations
of reality can be scrutinized and interpreted.
The principle of reading beyond the lines leads
individual readers to elicit alternative readings of texts
deemed conventional or natural (Miriam Rodrigues
Correia, 2011). Individual voices unsilenced via the
exposure of problematic representations allow
marginalized
groups
to
achieve
collective
consciousness towards a group identity. There does
exist a very extensive div of literature espousing the
instrumental use of literature, though rarely does a
similar div exist addressing the critical part or value
of literature. One of the most critical aspects of
literature considered in pedagogies is its promoting of
different cultural and social perspectives than those
addressed in textbooks. There is subsequently
generating difference between readers’ perspectives
and those of the text. This results in a critical awareness
feedback loop, whereby readers become conscious of
differing perspectives and how they arise from
different representations which encompass texts and
reading communities. Interactive constraints exist,
largely due to the lack of pedagogical stylistics
publications in pedagogical critiques.
Despite the theoretical currency and stability of
definitions surrounding literacy, publications on the
practical and applied aspects of the approach in
increasingly
diverse
contexts
remains
scant.
Subsequently exposition of the approach, there is an
attempt to inspire readers to engage with the approach
and generate analyses of more textual types than those
addressed.
2.1. Social Critical Theory
Discourse analysis theory originated in the 1960s,
which has far-reaching influence on cultural studies,
linguistics, and education. In a broad sense, discourse
is the study of meaning as it is socially rooted and
shaped by socially constituted ideologies evident in
forms of language use in people’s lives in favour of
social needs. Grounded on the perspective that
language and society form a dialectical relationship, the
working of society is argued to be systematically
encoded in linguistic expressions. Thus, texts are
conceived as solid material artefacts at the social level,
which realise the meaning potential of the multimodal
semiotic systems at the functional level and the cultural
resources operating at the ideological level (Elkan Cahl,
2016). Power, ideology, and social capital are
embedded and inscribed in these social practices of
text production and reception, and they are aimed to
mediate and construct the social world by manipulating
the cognition and designing the social behaviour of
social agents. On the contrary, texts are notorious as
the vehicles of power and ideology. Social institutions
—
as the textual practices of discourse
—
act to
preserve, reproduce, and/or transform the orderly
relations of power, ideology, and social meanings in
society. From this perspective, the structural
relationship between discourse and power consists of
discourses producing the social infrastructure, on
which flows the wider discourses to the local sites of
production and consumption.
But it has also been established that such textual
practices are not all positive, nor fixed or uniformly
negative. They could be resisted, resisted, and
recontextualised by social agents creatively. The power
of discourses is always unevenly distributed, and the
access to and the control of discourses is inextricably
linked with the possession of wider socially structured
forms of social capital and resources. Power will
operate on the premise of control or constraint, though
it is seldom consummated in domination. But as the
social educators and guardians per se, the teachers of
literature in the ESL classrooms are not in the centre of
periphery considerations of power. But where does
that leave the English language learning and the
learners? And are they and both doomed to be the
victims of the dominant societal discourses?
2.2. Literary Analysis Approaches
This chapter considers literary analysis approaches
which could assist in the analysis of the literary texts
selected for this research project. It begins with the
work of Simpson from the stylistic approach. Simpson’s
proposal is pertinent to the text analysis to be done in
this research. Discourse analytic work devised by
Fairclough, Wodak, and van Dijk is also discussed.
These approaches to discourses and texts offer new
frameworks for redressing the dominance of the
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sociopolitical in much of the social critical perspective
on the analyses of English in contexts such as those of
PHs in Vietnam. The critical analysis framework is based
upon the sayings, doings, and relatings within the text
which enable the possibilities of imagining the world
and positioning its inhabitants. Finally, the literary
psychoanalytical perspective is posited as a means of
examining attitudes to English and the changes in the
imagery of English in texts over time.
As a theory, stylistics has an interdisciplinary nature
and is located at the boundary of linguistics and
literature. It overlaps with the fields of stylistic literary
analysis, pragmatics, semiotics, and social-linguistics,
each having its own limitations. This analysis applies
insights from stylistics to uncover the inner world of
cognition and emotion, and from literary criticism to
explore the implications of ‘intertextuality’ for meaning
construction and interpretation. Stylistic ‘imposition’ is
the way literature affects and even transforms society
by changing experiences, thoughts, and behaviours in
subscribers of texts, and the possibilities of imaginative
reconstruction of social worlds constructed in texts
informing, persuading, or enchanting the readers. A
‘reading along’ approach is proposed . Given the
importance of teaching pictorial texts, how can cultural
and symbolic meanings be read? How can cultural
codes and ‘myths’ that are socially situated and
distributed across different kinds of texts be analysed?
Is the English chosen as ‘the language of international
communications’ therein by native speakers of EFL
languages the same? The analysis here illustrates how
this can be uncovering the hidden messages of pictorial
components and thereby the underlying ideologies and
biases in assessing the bigger picture.
3. Historical Context of English Language Power
In order to take control of the mind, one must take
control of a language. It is well known that there was a
time prior to 1947 when the whole of the subcontinent
was ruled through English education and literature.
Even the Indian Education Commission of 1882
observed that “by a persistence of folly the English
language is still taught in this country” (Rassendren,
2005). During this time, only a few English Schools and
Colleges could control the education system and
possess vast power. Therefore, to take historical
revenge on the British Raj, it was necessary to attack
their language first and foremost in order to liberate
the mind from the clutches of their thoughts. This
section analyses different contexts of English for power
purposes. In the historical context, it focuses on the
role of language as an instrument of power during the
colonial period. It examines the imposition of English
Language in the educational system, the conflict that
arose after its introduction in the Madras Presidency,
and the hypocrisy of English Educated Indians. This
section explores the conflicts during the imposition of
English Language in education.policy. The way of life in
South India before the introduction of English was that
of beatitude. The life of the people was free from all
modern cares and worries. The advent of the British
changed the ancient scenario. With states becoming
associated with personnel, politics took a turn towards
perusal of some subclasses at the expense of the
masses. To retain power and control over the masses,
the Britishers altered the established way of life. The
South Indian states, like the others in India, were
persuaded to adopt a new language, which had
sacrosanct status and could assure position, property,
profit, pleasure and power. The language thus adopted
was English.
3.1. Colonialism and Language
In what sociolinguist Braj B. Kachru describes as "the
second diaspora of English," the English language
accompanied its conquering speakers in imperial
expansion throughout the globe. The language of that
small island off the west coast of Europe became widely
established in five continents as "a primary tool of
communication,
administration,
elitism,
and,
eventually, linguistic control." Through Britain's
acquisition of empire, the English language gained
status and power from its conquering speakers
—
often
at the expense of the colonized peoples and their
languages. Expressing ideas similar to , African thinker
Ngugi wa Thiong'o states that through the imposition
of the colonizers' language, English, the "colonial child
was made to see the world and where he stands in it as
seen and defined by or reflected in the culture of the
language of imposition." Through the language-
conveyed cultural values, the English-speaking colonial
child connected "his own native languages ... with low
status, humiliation, corporal punishment, [and] slow-
footed intelligence and ability or downright stupidity."
In this way, Ngugi asserts that the English language
influenced the relationship between colonizer and
colonized by illuminating the conflicting paths toward,
on the one hand, social mobility, industrialization, and
economic growth but, on the other, devaluation of
indigenous culture, peoples, and languages. Thus,
when selecting which language they would speak,
members of indigenous groups were often forced to
choose between progress and ethnicity, social status
and cultural tradition, alienation and shame. Thus do
many postcolonial intellectuals, such as Chinua Achebe
and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, retrospectively perceive
language's role in colonialism (K. Tatko, 1998).
This view of language and social power must be
understood as having a cultural, historical, and
ideological dimension. Language is a source of cultural
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identity. An attack on language is therefore an attack
on the culture itself. Analytically speaking, language is
an expression of socio-political power by which a group
marginalizes or even excludes another group from the
benefits of its own cultural domination (Cimarosti,
2015). At this level, the place occupied by world
Englishes
—
as both hegemon and resisted
—
is one of an
instrument of economic and cultural globalization. In
contexts as diverse as Jamaica, Singapore, Nigeria, and
India, it facilitates corruption, discrimination, and
marginalization. There is a bitter irony in this process:
English, relevant for many as the key to a modern life,
is also the means by which many people are defined as
submodern.
3.2. Globalization and English
The spread of English and its globalization have become
one of the hotly-debated issues in recent years. The
phrase “World Englishes” has become a common,
inevitable and ineluctable term for many disciplines like
linguistics, discourse studies, language studies,
language pedagogy, philosophy, and culture. Further,
more “Englishes” are yet to be identified and discussed.
The question of English as a global language has
sparked heated, scholarly discussions regarding the
effects and consequences of globalization on English
language and usage. Along with the emergence of
“World Englishes,” “English spread,” “English across
cultures,” “Global Englishes,” “Global English,” “English
as a Lingua Franca,” “English as an
International
Language,” “International English,” and many other
phrases have simultaneously emerged in this regard.
However, none of them are free from the mental
baggage of extra-linguistic elements like attitudes,
ideologies, prejudices, and fetishization of the
Western, native speaker culture. Typically, English
speakers today are more likely to be non-native
speakers of English than native speakers. Mutual
communication in English between different groups of
non-native speakers has evidently outstripped that
between native speakers and non-native speakers. It is
also commonly claimed that non-native speakers are
currently most likely to use English in communication
with other non-native speakers. In this context of
globalization, it is thus necessary to take note of how
English is globally shared through the use of its varieties
and cultures.
March 2020 marked the fifth year of a landmark in
history with report announced by a group of linguists in
the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The report,
delivering the result of a five-year long study
commissioned by the then state government, project
some “landmark milestones” in the English language
education and literacy in the state pragmatically
proposed by Prof. David Crystal. The report, entitled
“Andhra Pradesh’s Journey to English Language
Literacy,” described the 2015
-
20 period as the “Golden
Age” for English in the state. In this period, the
exponential, far-reaching expansion of English, and its
unprecedented elevation to the top-most, privileged
positio
n as ‘the language of power’ had taken root in
parallel to the others languages of the state: Telugu,
the language of most inhabitants; Urdu, spoken by the
state’s smaller Muslim population; Hindhi, Tamil and
Malayalam, and other languages spoken by relatively
small migrant groups from the states near Andhra
Pradesh; a well-established socio-political and
academic minority; and a thriving Tamil and Malayalam
film industry, agency of employment to many. In a
country where mismanagement of multilingualism had
tremendously complicated politics and education,
English was sought after by the government of AP and
other states to logically bridge socio-economic
disparities for development. Examination of the role of
English
in
communication
has
experienced
fundamental changes as a result of dramatic
globalization (Solhi Andarab & Inal, 2014).
4. Case Studies of Literary Texts
“Admission by Exploitation” is a narrative that recalls
some of the protagonist’s experiences of learning
English and feeling part of the Anglo-American culture.
As a pre-teen, Fatima was inspired by the fantasy film
“The Neverending Story,” which led her to decide to
learn English by reading the book. At that time, books
were practically inaccessible to her, so she immediately
translated the first chapters, but her effort was in vain.
Moving back to Iran, she had access to a wider variety
of films, especially those produced by the Western
industry. Eventually, with the support of her mother,
she had access to a magical, fantasy world, which
coincided with the opening of the markets to pirated
copies. This time she understood the importance of
English: to learn the culture and language in order to
access cultural commodities. This period was marked
by an overexploitation of the family’s financial
sources.
However, her self-explicit learning efforts came to an
end once again. It took Fatima five years to obtain the
original word of her magical language for the
‘unofficial’ practice in which she had engaged. Her
current relation with English is complex, denouncing
the contradictory cultural patronizations of learning
the language due to its political and economic
empowerment, while giving a sense of magic. The
academic training related to English, particularly
linguistics and text analysis, works on recognizing the
political and economic exploitation of cultural power
through constructions of identity.
4. Against Entropic Rush
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In “Against Entropic Rush” (Dyer, 2007), the narrator
feels the constant rush in one’s inner and outer worlds.
He tries to remember how he moved to English, where
he stood in regard to time: the past-tense inflections
were meticulously coached. However, the ‘mechanism’
is no longer functioning, and searching for an ‘insider’
as to his connection with the language fails. All the
details of the learning process become affine and
indistinct. Where the act happened and who the
witnesses were, as well as the words uttered, vanished.
This ‘whiteout’ is startling, wreaking havoc with earlier
assumptions and pushes him into an unseen panic. It
leads to a suspicion regarding a repressed trauma to
accept an estranged place where the passivity of
reading rises. His relation to English swallowed his
earlier explanation
—
a conscious and controlled
emergence of a production system, leaving him
subject-ed by the mere usage of a vehicle. In the
dynamic inter-set of circles with various velocities, the
adult’s head
-spinning includes a failure to keep up with
the adaptation process. History starts with some broad
outlines, language alone seems a lost cause.
4. Postcolonial Literature
In the 1970s, Western literary studies were compelled
to consider how language had been used to subjugate
and colonize. This broadened the field to incorporate
literature from the historically colonized world and
fanned hot debates about the relative merits of
English-written postcolonial literature. To counter
hegemonic authority, it was argued, the use of the
imperial tongue had to be cast aside. The fact of the
matter continues to be that Cameroonian literature
mostly written in French represents a literary desert
when contrasted with the output in English from
Nigeria or South Africa (Ngiewih Teke, 2013).
Nonetheless, it must be conceded that it is redundant
to cast aside a language that hosts Crodet, Wankomah,
Muna, and many more. Defusing imperial language for
compensatory potency is not just the only necessity. A
further voyage into how the language might be a
powerful weapon is an urgent desideratum.
Using the term postcolonial to refer to 'all the culture
affected by the imperial process from the moment of
colonization to the present day', it is asserted that
nearly four-fifths of the globe have been affected by
colonialism. This suggests that it is important to
examine the intertwinement of history, theory and
politics to grasp power relations between the
colonizers and the colonized. To determine the precise
nature of postcoloniality, it is necessary to clarify the
complex structure of historical stages, and to
distinguish between settler and native. The
postcolonizer-postcolonized oppositionality need not
correspond to the binary of settler-native.
Contemporary Fiction
Contemporary fiction is the object of study in this
section, as language and power are both equally
addressed through it, and fiction refers to how
meaning is formed not so much in language itself but in
narrative construction. Each text in this section is
complemented with a summary of its plot-line and
analysis is centred on the social critical approach to the
texts, with the study of their representation and
aesthetics as subordinate themes.
Fiction in English comprises a range of texts published
in the late 1990s and early 2000s or set in these
periods. Fiction was chosen due to being vehicles of
attitudes and values, and also the activity of ‘reading
fiction’ itself brings social, cultural, political and
ideological issues to the fore. In the fictive world the
representations and their aesthetics can seem mutable
and conditioned by broader social structures affecting
life in the world outside literature. When treated as
exceptions
to
the
everyday
order
these
representations can contribute to contest this order
and make it social again. Having fiction as both object
and means of research, social critical linguistics seeks
to contribute to the exploration of the construction of
power and identity in and through English, and to the
de-mystification of the reasons behind the spread of
English. Literary texts, viewed as social practice, can
help weave the web of social practices in which English
is engaged.
Focussing on some of the resources that accomplish
these representations, the different ways in which they
inscribe readers in them and how these concerns are
attended to, the study addresses the labels attributed
to English and the ideologies inherent to them. These,
on the one hand, can be vexed and perverse and, on
the other, benevolent, resilient and strengthening.
Describing the form of representation in which these
resources are embedded is also explored in order to
relate it with other aspects of the representation and
the points from which it is addressed. Fiction is
‘inexhaustibly open to interpretati
on, because it is
replete not only with suggestions of meaning but also
with possibilities of formal elaboration’.
Poetry and Language Power
In exploring the insistent assertion of identity in
contemporary literature, critical attention is drawn to
the metaphor of place. The conflation of place and
identity, and the recruitment of landscape to articulate
and assert a distinctively indigenous identity have
strong precedents associated with what had described
as the romantic tradition in literature. The
appropriation of the poetic landscape in full flood in the
early 1990s is remarked. Local place names occupy a
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prominent position in the descriptive verses that
reverberate with a sonic intensity of a myriad of
clashing clangours.
However, place as a metaphor seems unimposing in
comparison with the prowess of the poetics of haiku.
Its brevity imparts unparalleled lyrical precision as well
as depth. The hegemonic developmental paradigm
blind to the complexities of climate, altogether dismiss
the multi-dimensional fragile ecosystem, the cultural
and metaphysical domain that constitute a microcosm
of co-existence. Poems are vehicles embedding
prestige codes and deep appraisal of language
characteristics, ability to play with sounds as well as
meanings, and rhythms however subconsciously. It
represents thought through its inflections, and requires
material substance to instil and imprint a careful
selection of words in imposing verses. The lemma
derived from language power is the title ‘Language
Power’. It conveys elo
quence and seduction as in
poems however imperfectly crafted.
Language power has always been a linguistic scholar
research domain. The power of suggestion is
uncovered by the simple statement of disparate
objects within the same sentence. Ideologically
suggestive co-placement phenomena are captured,
including those considerably from oral tradition
mythical ginger ale, slimy tongue, green tea and
ginseng vegetables, buttock houses, abounding grape
scenery, and outstanding portrait poets. In a
microcosm of a fragile ecosystem and complex
conformation while at the same time dissolving human
endeavours, climate, hydro-morphology, topography,
vegetation, fauna and insects are enshrined in depicted
expressions exquisitely crafted by the ability to play
upon sounds as well as meanings.
5. Language as a Tool of Oppression
Language is a potent instrument of power. It has been
established that, as a unique cognitive faculty of human
beings, language guarantees them a powerful means of
copying their behaviour of comprehension of the world
and expression of their knowledge of such
comprehensions and perceptions. Language describes
the world. Each language obliquely relates with the
world and fashions it according to conventions which
biotechnology of the race has engendered. The
structure of the language therefore controls and
moulds habitual thinking and influences the
interpretation of the accredited universe. Language is
therefore capable of controlling and limiting thoughts
and perceptions. The repression of thought, behaviour
and perception is thus possible through a skilful use of
natural grammar and vocabulary by oppressors; and
mode of thoughts which the oppressors have set in
motion can gain a huge influence over huge multitudes
through lexical programming (ASHIPU & Otoburu
Okpiliya, 2013). There in the world of Nineteen Eighty
Four, government have solely but accurately
understood the power, potentialities and possibilities
which lay within ‘language’, the weapon of steadily and
gradually drawing the mental geography and coding
the mind of citizens/subjects into consistent and
consistent patterns. In their resort to focus upon the
parallel between the world view of controlled
‘Language’ as evinced in Newspeak fiction and generic
language in the design of social engineering. In
‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ George Orwell peeps through
the grand canvass of creation drawing the focus
towards the narrative of imagined past and inspired
future. The critique of an institutionalised and
manipulated language as substandard, ill-conceived
and basic inefficient hardly earns a glimmer of
acceptance, in the eventual story. In the anticipation of
perfect language, Festus Iyayi’s “Heroes” has far
-
fetched radical use of broken or nonsensical language
in a narration of good defeat. The seeming
superiority/efficiency of innovative broken language
only restores the soil in which poetic responses such as
heart, ideals, dreams, hope etc can elude framing
(Ngiewih Teke, 2013). The function which the invented
language has earned the minds of the mass is episteme
and reasoning which with standard codes of thinking
and provisions of unwritten rules for order have eluded
the chosen. The institution of knowledge here at
inordinate potential of good with all its isms beyond
credentials/premises claims a space to design the
world. Output is unlimited far in excess of sufficiency.
The prosences of an involved language on the other
hand whole but concrete is a one-tailed dagger digging
no thoughts, no fears, no past. It is thus the mixture of
both worlds that governs and guides humanity both in
dreams of humanisation and fear of thermosphere.
5.1. Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is an approach to studying written,
vocal, or signed language in use. The regulation and
study of communicative conduct in the entirety of
society have produced an interdisciplinary div of
theory and research, with a largely speech-based
linguistic origin, that may be characterized as discourse
analysis. The academic field of discourse analysis
includes approaches variously known as conversation
analysis (CA), critical discourse analysis (CDA),
ethnography of communication (EoC), interactional
sociolinguistics (IS), micro sociology of language, and
sociolinguistic discourse analysis (SDA) (Al Ghazali,
1970). Interest in discourse is widespread in the arts,
humanities, and social sciences, with research
examining instances of spoken, written, or signed
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communicative conduct in contexts as granular as
family interaction and as gross as global, geopolitical
relations, and class dynamic in an array of genres and
modalities (BABATUNDE & KOLADE, 2022). Analyzing
the text and conversational frequency helps
investigate, explore, and scrutinize how and to what
extent people use language as a tool of power.
Nowadays, activists, politicians, and bureaucrats
equally wield power through language. Language
undoubtedly plays a significant role in social life;
however, studies on its impact on structures of power
in society are scant. CDA seeks to understand, analyze,
and challenge social power abuse and economic,
political, and cultural dominance through text and talk
in socio-political contexts. The manner and extent to
which politicians, in this situation, utilize language to
catalyze social change in an unjust, unequal world is an
essential concern of CDA. Examining discourses of
politically charged texts, such as public speeches,
becomes pivotal to expose the ways the establishment
shapes political realities, perceptions, and ideologies,
and ultimately, the cultural mindscape.
5.2. Narrative Techniques
It is generally accepted that narration can mean both
the recounting of events or situations and the
recounting of acts or communications in words. This
means telling about what happened, or describing
power fights: telling about things in the world more
than in one small corner or showing the world of a
court room while describing a testimony. An alias
umbrella term for these forms of narrated
communication is referential strategies. Such strategies
are termed that way because they construct the
reference both of the narrating discourse as well as of
the narrative situations. The expression narrative
situation refers to the perspectives from which the
narrating discourse or the narrated communication is
constructed. During its representation of events and
communications a narrative text puts an indexical
reference to locations in space and time in the world
where the utterances take place, as well as to the
narrator, the narratee, and the bystanders.
Different narrative perspectives all refer both to
narrative aspects and narrative strategies. Narrative
aspects are temporal aspects, or to more complex
meanings, spatial aspects, or even hierarchies of power
relationships, which have an effect on the credibility or
the emotional involvement in the story and its speaker.
Narrative strategies are devices which deliberately
build the narrative aspect of the story. It means
interpretation frames which are operative in the
narrative and which shape the constructed narrative
world and the experiences during its representation. In
the following, five major groups of referential
strategies are overviewed.
Autonomous third person narration presents the
narrated events, or voiceover, textually free from any
index as to the narrating situation. Consequently, it is
the text alone, in all its width, which represents the
material objects, situations, their axiological properties
and most importantly the categorical meanings they
stand for. By this means, the narrated events and
situations are representationally locatable in the world
and reality of persons outside of the narrative text.
Therefore narrated events can be both virtual or fictive,
not existing in the story world outside of it, and actual
or
referential,
referring
to
historical
world
constructions.
Narrative presentation means that within an
autonomous third person narration one (or more)
embodied focalizers take part in the narration: they are
both narrators and characters of their narrating. The
narrated events are by means of the vocalizing
discourse presented from the point of view of the
embodied focalizers. Moreover, narrative presentation
parameterizes both the perspective of the voiced
utterances as to the identity, space and time, and
modality of the presented communication as well as
the narrating itself: the narrative indices of the
embodied narrators parameterize the personal index
of the narrating discourse, the spatiotemporal indices
of the narrating discourse and the point of view
towards the narrated events.
6. Resistance through Language
As a phenomenon in the transient sphere of language,
resistance is replete with the ambivalence of the word.
The resistance can be defined as ‘the quality of resisting
on account of a particular cause or circumstance’ or
‘antipathy, counteraction’, and ‘hindrance, hindering
force’. Tropical readers cannot but see this
ambivalence of the power of English as a tool of
resistance. Despite the fact that the mastery of English
can also be an expropriation of colonised identities, it
should still be seen as the best possible mean of inter-
cultural communicability. This ambivalence of
resistance should necessitate, and it ought to be
desirable for, steadily acquiring knowledge of English in
all forms of its infrastructural manipulations (Ngiewih
Teke, 2013). This steady acquisition of the knowledge
of English linguistic system has to be an incessant focus
of the formal school curriculum from primary through
tertiary education, lest the individual would be
linguistically stripped off her/his cultural identity and
epistemic commentary. This linguistically expropriated
individual should be seen as a posthuman. If this
i
ndividual should be reimagined as a ‘posthuman’, it
would be because this individual would totally be
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‘dehumanised’ in the sense that s/he could not be
comprehended.
As concerning literary writers, scrutinizing English
literature should remain a necessary tactico-strategical
information and a with evolving patina. Even analyses
of this literature in one’s language should contain first
hand texts of reason and revolution, the colonial
language. Hymoring as poetry is entangled would mean
though extravagance is full and firm on metaphorics; it
can grieffully smile no more magnificent than the full
and tragic vanity of graves (ASHIPU & Otoburu Okpiliya,
2013). The primary end of the advent in language and
literature should be an amicable complementarity in
deproductive expression reshapement in mutual with
darkness, lightness, and, the tussle of spatial tempos as
an interminable movement.
6.1. Subversive Texts
Representations of the war reflected the doubt about
the purpose of the war and led to general sample
language for questioning the culture and the
justification of the war. Despite various efforts to clarify
the hegemonic status of English, specific language that
emerged in texts revealed the power inequalities
between different languages and amplified attacks on
English long-standing hegemony. Further research on
Chinese uglification was conducted about various
reasons for this new fashion and its possible negative
impact on the Chinese language culture. Expressive
incongruity was acquired as a new strategy, which
made use of various forms of semantic incongruity such
as conversion, polysemy, and metaphor. In a very strict
sense, expressive incongruity disallows all truth-
conditional interpretations and should be similar to a
subversive text. If possible, such a subversive textual
form should be elaborated and compared with the
ones used in the other texts in both formal and
functional perspectives.
It had been envisaged that each of the three language
varieties would emdiv a quite distinctive contextual
language culture, which would mediate the mind of the
language community and should have different
distributions of certain properties. It was confirmed by
the comparative analysis that English was very
precisely personified in all texts. The textual language
was turned into a strong criticism and condemnation,
which had closely tracked the transformation of the
general representations of the war. The illustration of
knowingly instrumental participial clauses exhibited an
intricate linguistic activity of combating the pro-war
sample language and itemized English as a war
instrument in an exhaustive way. By contrast, in the
China texts, this genre as a way of text organization was
apparently avoided and in-text intentions to preserve
the word war were more frequently employed in the
discourse actions of clarifying the spatial scope of the
war.
6.2. Empowerment through Writing
Creative writing and experimental writing, especially in
English as a foreign language, have a much greater
impact on learners’ understandin
g and agency than
traditional grammar-based instruction. The broad goals
of the study are to explore EFL learners’ attitudes
towards creative writing and experimental writing
tasks inside the writing classroom at the university level
as well as their impac
t on learners’ language
acquisition, autonomy and empowerment, critical and
analytical thinking, and own identity construction. The
data was collected through a questionnaire, focus
group interview, and learners’ written essays and
journals. Based on the results, the ability to improve
the English Language and the development of creative
writing techniques are the most helpful factors in
creative writing and experimental writing tasks, while
there was no wide acceptance of these tasks since
many learners, especially in EFL contexts, are still in
favor of traditional rote memorization. Acknowledge
that the study is limited in terms of the context since
only one writing class was adopted as the research site
and university level language learners were focused on
(Sousa, 2017). The need for an additional study with
more diverse subjects, contexts, and participants is
recommended. In much of the literature, topics
mentioned in considering EFL learners’ voice in cartoon
comics have been formulated as being still neglected,
raising conflict and discontent, and needing activism. In
tackling these areas, the growth of EFL learners’
autonomy is seen as fundamental. In choosing these
topics, it was presupposed that EFL learners may have
come to voice discontentment with repressive
classroom practices and imposed worldviews, but have
also shown that they have the potential to make their
own classroom decisions and socially engage with the
world beyond their classrooms. However, the
opportunity for this voice to grow was believed to be
still neglected in their educational institutions. It was
further presupposed that their engagement with
cartoons/comics would activate their voice to express
discontentment about their EFL classrooms and their
socially constructed identities. As a result of their
encounter with cartoon comics, their engagement with
cartoons/comics was expected to broaden their sense
of agency over EFL instruction, EFL learning, and their
sense of self. However, it was further believed that
there were deep-rooted challenges in oneself and
context that manifested as a growing voice being
repressed again (Chopra, 1970). Some have hinted that
finding alternate hidden, suppressed, and individually
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constructed forms which diverge from traditional
classroom practices can be empowering.
7. The Role of English in Global Communication
English for International Communication, the most
spoken language on this planet, and a representative
member of Indo-European language family, is the
dominant global lingua franca with 1.5 billion speakers.
It is a national language in about seven countries and
an official language in about fifty countries. Almost all
academic journals, books, and conferences are
written/spoken in English alone or in tandem with a
few other languages. It is the language of the twenty-
first century and an official/working language of a
number of international organizations. So, as English
has become the dominant global lingua franca, the so-
called “English
-
only Movement” has emerged in a
number of countries, and regional and local languages
are oppressed in terms of their utility and prestige
accordingly (Solhi Andarab & Inal, 2014). The English
only dominance of academic environment could be
discussed in terms of social justice and equity of non-
English ‘speaking’ conditions, because academic
context is a substantial realm of knowledge and human
well-being. The existing imbalances are aroused by
English colonialism with regard to discipline and
conception of knowledge and thereby the distribution
of political economic power of knowledge destiny in
the globe. This applied socio-critical perspective in
investigating the world and Chinese mainstream
international journals in a major social science
discipline, with a particular interest on the ways in
which English dominance creates conditions where
socially injustice is magnified and dilemmas of local
knowledge irrevocably persist. A comprehensive
theoretical framework has been drawn on from
interdisciplinary
perspectives.
The
notions
of
centering/looking from a particular culture, reflection,
representation etc. have been commonly adopted in
metaliteracy studies, but the majority hold a
‘fabricated’ concept of culture in myopic and
protestant manners and thereby fail to adequately and
comprehensively amount to imbalances created in the
world. A few, defending multilingualism and regarding
English as a lingua importante, are here more relevant
but still consider too many issues as too dichotomized
regardless of exploring their inner relationships and
nuances. In neglecting ideals and examining their
consequences, indifference was taken on rational
acquisition of English dominance and luxurious
silencing of objection in discourses rationalizing its
status quo power, as well as on how they are exercised
in manifold institutions through material forms of
those same ideologies.
7.1. English in Academia
The three literary texts discussed in the preceding
chapter clearly belong to a category that goes beyond
mere literature. All three authors compose their works
and offer dialogues in the tradition of the literary
testimonial. They attempt to speak out against certain
injustices and abuses within the context in which they
have lived and created (Cimarosti, 2015). At the same
time, with globalisation giving rise to the rise,
importance, and predominance of English, these
injustices and abuses have become more acute. As a
result, the three authors make an effort to
contextualize and analyze the current growing role of
English through the lens of specific personal
experiences and events, while also attempting to
reflect on the questions of power, powerlessness, and
linguido-logicoisms (i.e. logic of language) as a whole.
In their critiques, these three authors address and
analyze specific linguistic practices of imposing,
enforcing, and regulating English. They also identify
and elaborate on the related social practices of
silencing,
anti-public
intellectualism,
and
in-
transparency. At the same time, they examine how the
practices they analyze may be understood in light of a
general social process, with roots in the wider
curricular and economic environment of the
universities in which they operate, and soliciting an
imagined complicit readership that might share certain
privileged positions vis-à-vis the same power quotidian.
Throughout, there are references to, and crisscrossing
with, the sometimes hidden, embarrassing, and
covered ways in which English has become dominant,
the rise of IE (International Englishes), and the paradox
of underprivileged and displaced new speakers of
Englishes.
Discussion of the three texts is situated within a
comprehensive theoretical framework that takes into
account a range of concepts, themes, and categories in
the sociolinguistics of English and Englishes, as well as
new-literacies studies and cultural studies. In
particular, the generally hegemonic function of English
as an instrument of social inclusion and exclusion
–
and
the development of a mirroring globe of Englishes that
are socially in- and out-of- power
–
are elaborated and
critiqued in light of the textual evidence presented
within the three literary works. The discussion also
incorporates critiques and alternative reaction to the
hegemony and legitimacy of English.
7.2. Business and International Relations
The business English enterprise has revealed itself to be
a truly global flagship brand of English enjoying a high
status as a currency in high demand. There is a plethora
of commercially-available business English textbooks
on the market. Along with Professional English and
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Exam English, business English accounts for one of the
three major areas of the ELT industry (Richard R.P. &
R.P. Gabbrielli, 2019). Global business involves trade or
investment across national boundaries. Thus, it can be
appreciated that teaching business English is a linguistic
action in the global economy. Not surprisingly, the ELT
industry has found it necessary to address not only the
role of language in business, but also the issue of
culture. This interest is visible, for example, in
encyclopedic works devoted to the culture of particular
nationalities, in the guides to international negotiation,
telephone conversation or written correspondence,
and in the textbooks on business situations, some of
which have an intercultural flavour. However, more
sophisticated responses are more recent.
There is a need to rethink intercultural learning
processes in terms of transculturality. Globalisation,
internationalisation, and cosmopolitanism are key
features of contemporary social debate. The impact of
globalisation on language teaching is of particular
interest. Intercultural capability poses a range of
challenges to intercultural orientation that are
theoretical
and
practical.
With
the
terms
intercultural/international/global business becoming
increasingly vibrant in the ELT and applied linguistics
industry, it is an appropriate moment to clarify what is
meant by ‘interculturality’ when applied to the
teaching of business English for communication in
international contexts.
8. Critique of English Language Dominance
In South Asian and East-Asian territories, English is
mounting as a tongue of power and prestige
eradicating the social, political and religious
repercussions involved in the phenomenon. Consistent
self-denial emanating from the studied texts
emphasizes how the eclectic nations and their people
are being utterly defamed and even dominated in the
otherwise age of liberalism and co-existence. Analyzing
the reflection of such inferiority complex on the lives of
Tony and Kiran alongside Middle-Eastern Muslims gives
out the idea that the native English speaking nations
though being just one-fourth of the world population
exercise their paramount power leveraging their first
preference over the otherwise vast territories. Kiran
shows how she is in constant need of reaffirmation and
acceptance from her husband only because she is non-
native. Kiran’s mome
nt of pure joy is just destructed by
the letter from another Briton trying to emphasize the
delicacies of speech perception in the days of ear-
craches! Another good example of this reeking
linguistic imperialism is seen in Tony’s life with his
Pakistani uncle. Even whilst having such intimidatingly
high degree preferences the Turkish aliens were found
to be laughing at the fellow-medicals mocking behind
Turkish pronunciation only with the latter’s lack of
staunchness to their mother tongue dominance. Thus,
it shows the brute reproach Arabs being subject to over
the highly-learned, high-profiled medical practitioners
who once worked in an antenna feed-horn project but
scuttled in down-trodden lives just because of
deviation
in
speech
accent.
Through
a
magnificitudinous anthology of bitter reality of fifty-six
such countries such linguistic exploitation alongside
vivid caricatures of mistrust, jealously, inferiority grind
and demoralization has been expounded. Empirical
evidence-laden critiques of the notion that language is
just a medium of communication and the dejection,
disgust and helplessness of people and culture
extensively echo throughout the writings rendering it a
fascinating read (Cimarosti, 2015). In addition to
everyday-tongue domination multiple layers of
resentful diglossia superiorities have also been touched
in the satirical books particularly in the plight of
linguistic capital-less Turkish expat. A positive,
clangorous note started with Marina finally voicing
defiance against Arabic-oppressed deprecations may
be the silently awaited solution by the intellectually
matured with social responsibilities.
8.1. Linguistic Imperialism
English linguistic imperialism is a theoretical construct
that aims to explain the hierarchy of languages like why
English is more dominant than others (Zeng et al.,
2023). It is formed by structural and cultural inequality
between English and other languages. Structural
inequality refers to inequality related to material
wealth. For example, since English countries are richer,
they dominate the world’s economy and research
capacity. In contrast, structural inequality refers to
non-material or ideological inequality. For example, the
fact that English carries better knowledge than local
native languages. Linguistic imperialism can also be
further elaborated in terms of positive and negative
polarization. The historical record demonstrates that
English imperialism is the culmination of a fragmented
process that began after WWII. It also provides
framework hurdles for combining insights on English
acquisition with power relations. More than 1.8 billion
people speak English worldwide, mainly due to colonial
legacy. It pointed out three phases, which linguistic
imperialism first came into being through colonization
and military power. When unequal power and resource
distribution remains, colonization, warfare, and other
strategies must reproduce by other means. Non-
whites, less educated, and speakers of minor languages
often bear the brunt of English accountability. The age
of globalization has been sharply reduced by English
linguistic imperialism’s scope and motivation. The
process of English linguistic imperialism must be
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amended. Analysis can also be extended to higher
education. The framework is mainly aimed at the
colonial and cold war periods. It clarifies how linguistic
imperialism developed and went through three stages.
1. Imposing on the colonizer’s power and language. 2.
Training local elites who serve the colonist. 3.
Ideological persuasion using media and technology.
Linguistic imperialism has already gone through the
first two stages in an age of globalization. Drawing on
the framework, as it warns, linguistic imperialism is still
relevant, and the new hierarchy has already been
formed. The superiority of the English language is
deeply rooted in the ideology of the educated in
postcolonial countries.
8.2. Cultural Hegemony
The post-structuralist thinkers Michel Foucault and
Judith Butler both offer theories of hegemonic
regulation that avoid notion of dominance and
emphasize instead targeting, normalization and
intervention. Danish criminologists’ Foucault and
Butler-
inspired research drawing on Foucault’s notion
of governmentality often criticizes the emergence of
omnipresent and self-regulating social control
mechanis
ms in today’s society. Recent studies of ‘soft
or creative regulation’ have suggested ‘power of the
other’ as one gentler option of power. This research
builds on concepts of a more pervasive and latent
societal control that inspires a disjointed not
regimented obedience to conventions like etiquette,
logics, norms and morals that Foucault’s panopticism,
Butler’s performative agency and historian Johan
Huizinga’s homo ludens alike. This research goes on to
suggest four ethically charged modes and styles of
social regulation each traversing discourse, knowledge,
symbol, and division, targeting and disturbing suspect
individuals and groups every day. Most of these studies
draw upon Foucaultian notions of power and
regulation and account for them well in relation to
recent social phenomena. However, critical social
theoretical work does not consider the textual-
regulatory control of the book. The present research
fills this lacuna mapping hegemonic target and
politeness strategies of mutually diagnostically
‘disasting’ Judith Butler performances mutating and
troubling the book.
Regarding canonical texts ‘gone’ lemon cousin by
canonists themselves a deep and sometimes painful
intimacy is required to make those obscurities fruitful
and discernible. Nevertheless, a sincere trust in EFL
teachers and teaching ‘culture’ as mediation and
turmoil between moreover potentially confounding
cultures and ‘histories’ strengthen reflection upon
cultural ‘product’ complexity rather than merely privy
‘pursuit’ (Alexandra Moffat, 2
004). Like Foucaultian
cultures, books as texts/cultural products produced on
a global market due to their wide-spread acceptability
of assault engage attention. Prioritized are those
English language literary texts designed to aid
production of target stu
dent ‘identity’ with OECD
nations ‘owned’ ‘cultures.’ Irrespective of an intimate
‘winning’ it is those texts that exclusively address a
most ‘disasting’ EFL book ecology. Drawing on Ortega y
Gasset’s typhoon of contemporary literature a
theoretical notion
of a ‘Rure malheur’ EFL book as a
‘movement’ of seven permeated heterodox strategies
is provisionally elaborated in a hoped brevity.
9. Implications for Education
The pedagogical implications spell out the consistent
aim of considering the operational principles of power
in education. To begin with, one of the major avenues
through which power is exercised is discourses. It
should be kept in mind that all discourses resist and
counter-discourses which must and can be exploited to
‘speak back’ to texts of p
ower. It is just a matter of
training to acknowledge the structural constraints
existing in the society. The conditioning to comprehend
the function of language in constraining perceptions of
the forces of power needs to be decoded. The necessity
for outlining the relations of power enacted through
discursive practices regarding the social practices is of
utmost importance. Thus, fear in the face of hostile
claims must be converted into redress. Like any other
ideological state apparatus, knowledge systems at best
favour domination. Any faith in the ostensibly innocent
nature of any discourse is misplaced. Regarding the
imposition of standard language by the ruling powerful
social groups and cultures, the most effective
resistance is a commitment to and celebration of
difference. To question the basis of imposition across
culture, religion, race, language, and nation is one way
to undo such impositions. Drawing on concepts such as
‘hybridity’ and ‘creole
-
ness’, this study is a muse for
resistance to dominant cultures, thus altering the
existing discursive conditions of identities.
It is hoped that the current study would incite the
minds of stakeholders in education to reconsider the
role of literature in education. In the process, examples
taken from secondary level ELT textbooks of a South
Asian Context are discussed critically. As literature cuts
across all boundaries and borders and transports
readers and listeners into a different realm, relevant
depictions in literature are expected to be a high
priority for ELT textbooks. A close examination of some
passages from textbooks available to LS and E learning
reveals the prevalence of the discourse of power and
domination, entitlement, and victimization in the
pertinent depictions. As these discourses represent the
forces of power and hegemony and act cumulatively, it
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is to be hoped that the study would pave the way for a
kind of turn-around or critical pedagogy that would
accommodate hitherto silenced, intimidated, and
under-privileged discourses comprising the most
widely read text: literature (Dyer, 2007). In a nutshell,
English as an Instrument of Power is about how English
operates as an instrument of power in both the macro
and micro senses through the analysis of literary texts
that have been carefully selected for critical exposition
(Elkan Cahl, 2016).
9.1. Teaching English as a Second Language
Even after the Japanese revision of their foreign
language learning policy in the late 1980s, English is
treated as a secondary language and as a subject
matter to be learnt rather than as a vehicle of
understanding and communication (Sousa, 2017).
Although the need to approach English as a
communicative means, to express oneself in the
language, means output-oriented learning, Japanese
educators appear to be overwhelmingly fixated on
input-oriented
exercises
such
as
recognition
discriminations and fill-in-the-blanks. As a result, the
need for discussing the process of expressing oneself in
a foreign language in a well-conformed analysis of an
occurrence or viewpoint appears to be met outright in
the educational and academic domain of EFL (English as
a Foreign Language) learning, perceptually much less so
than in ESL (English as a Second Language) leaning
environments. This collective behavior and general
feeling of discontent are in stark contrast to both SLA
(Second Language Acquisition) research and the SFL
(Systemic Functional Linguistics) theory on language
learning and education. Research in SLA, especially that
on learning to write in a foreign language, has now
reached a consensus that TELL (Teaching English
Language and Literature) should take the form of
developing literate discursive practices, rather than of
honing linguistic skills on grammar, lexicon, and
sentence structures. The practice of learning how to
write or reply to a question with only a single word or a
phrase as though writing one’s native language is
hardly ever adopted in any other language learning
environments, such as Chinese, French, or German in
Japan. This raises for consideration the question of why
Japanese educators and linguists, cognition of a second
language as a means, should be reticent in embarking
on the discussion about the issue of EFL writing. It has
finally to be noted that amongst the realms of
discourse types or genres, it is that discourse which is
humorous, jocose, verbal, or comical that is both most
difficulty to get across and most resonance across
borders of culture and time. This thought is left open
for future portrayal of the cases of Japanese
comedians’ humorous p
erformances and their learning
experiences of acquisition as a paradigm in the
anthropological study of language (Porto, 2019).
9.2. Cultural Sensitivity in Curriculum
Since language is embedded in society, it is best
understood and taught along with the elements of the
culture. While some countries view English language as
a means of preserving their culture and identity, others
have a more pernicious view of the language,
subscribing to the idea that this foreign tongue tends
to dominate and threaten local languages and cultures.
The cultural sensitivity in the English Language
Curriculum was studied in one case of Pakistan’s
Textbook on English For 9th Class. The place and
treatment of Pakistan’s culture in this textbook was
critically reviewed through the lens of sociocultural
theory (Kazim Shah et al., 2014).
Since language is embedded in society, it is best
understood and taught along with the elements of the
culture. Culture on the other hand is the central
concept in understanding any context and any
language. Language broadly includes writing and print,
oral discourse, images of history, identity and culture,
and the processes of socialization into language and
literacy.
And
understanding
language
entails
deconstructing the social arrangements of power and
hierarchy which form topical social contexts and
communicative practices in terms of genre, and which
pervade all forms of social, situated and systematic
meaning (Yann-Ling Lu, 1996). The language of
schooling is logocentric, centered on written texts and
literate practices. It also privileges European
epistemologies, ideologies, discourses and genres. As a
barrier to schooling, language practices are socially
stratified and communities of colour and working-class
communities are consistently marginalized because of
their racial, cultural, linguistic and economic difference.
The very notion of culture stems from such
understanding of language. Culture is viewed as
invariably tied to social power relations, politics and
history.
10. Future Directions in Research
Again, the scope of investigation can be further
enhanced by exploring additional Literary Texts from a
broader array of genres and languages. The relevance
of the critical examination needs no elaboration. This is
particularly important at a time when English is still
hegemonic and monopolistic over all other languages
in global and international domains. The present study
only inquired into two Literary Texts, although not
exhaustively. It is hoped that this study opens new
avenues for responsible, sustainable, social-critical
research, and scholarship.
At the time of composition, the need of critical reading
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was tenuous as English was not yet a global language.
Over time, however, the language of enormous power
increasingly and deathly spread through global
institutions, media and new aggregates. This epoch-
making awareness stimulated these transformations
on many fronts, including in literary studies. In many
respects, but not all, transformative research, writing
practices, text productions, consumption and
discourses were involved in these movements and
emerged arguably something unprecedented in world
literary historiography.
Today's functions of a language are massive and
sundry, ranging from a local tongue to a linguistic
device of untranslatability. Yet English is more than just
a language; it is an invention, notion, perspective and
system
violently
and
irrefutably
enforced,
homogenized, naturalized and ritualized on the entire
galaxy
in
modernity's
predominant
shape
governmentality. Anything or any space that escapes
the moorings of the English matrix is accessible for
punishment or securitization. Multifariously, colossal
Language Wars are unwittingly being fought by the
Englishes, with the others usually becoming indifferent
local varieties, creoles or dialects. Reality is ever more
being rendered relational and illusory, or simulacra,
through English being incessantly under scrutiny in a
transnational polyphony of colloquies, conversational
and social-critical investigations. Naturally, the same
transformative
problems
first
troubling
a
representative of so-called 'reality', loom larger in a
greater monument.
10.1. Interdisciplinary Approaches
The study models English literary texts, the fiction of
A.K.Ramanujan “A Marriage in India” and poetry of
Vikram Seth “The Tale of Melon City”, from social
critical approaches. Like other critical schools, social
critical criticism observes how social elements and
institutions are seen, affected and represented in texts.
Most critiques of social critical perspectives are aimed
at the theme perspective, the mood perspective and
the at individual text-level perspectives. Important
works of social critical study at a systemic level are rare
in India. Marvelous stylistic works abound, but those
fall short of a text-level modelling of English literary
texts from social critical perspectives. Though there is
some text-level analysis of literary works in English
from social critical perspectives in other languages,
texts in English have been largely neglected in this
creative aspect. This research may be a legitimate early
attempt in the direction of modelling text-level English
literary texts from a social critical perspective.
In linguistics too, there are towering figures who have
contributed a great deal to the development and
flourishing of the discipline in the broad areas of
Linguistics research and teaching in India. Those
contributions have been innovative and inspiring.
However, creative work at the social critical
perspective is scarce in India. There is considerable
application of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics
worldwide to the socio-critical study of newspaper
editorials, advertisements, cinema, political speeches,
novels, dramas, songs and poems (Rassendren, 2005).
Linguistic studies of English language literary texts at a
systemic level incorporating refinements, adaptations
and elaborations for an expressive modelling and
analysis from a social critical perspective are rare in
India and thus lack in quantity.
10.2. Emerging Literary Trends
Discourse on Postcoloniality in Written English. In this
respect, there may be a legitimate concern over
linguistic compartmentalisation, and hence an
untethered or inconsistent nature of understanding, by
readers who have only been introduced to the
liter
ature of Cameroon composed in “winnie” or any
other native languages. Anillo de Cristal, El viaje de los
tambores, or other fictions written in French by
Cameroon’s literary representatives, in addressing a
different readership, do raise difficulties of interground
as regard mutual comprehensibility. Nonetheless, it
should be expected that literature deserving the
epithet 'literary' gains its pride of place by virtue of
elevated and nuanced expressions of both form and
content in their native languages
—
not a pseudo or
juvenile poetry drawing from the banality of everyday
spoken tongue. It is ideal to have texts from
Cameroon’s rich linguistic diversity associated with
expressions such as “Lamnsophone literature”,
“Moghamophone literature”, etc. Too eager wou
ld it
be to conclude that this would resolve the problem of
linguistic compartmentalisation and uncommon
grounds of understanding. Besides the ever-
disseminating disondlosh, it is expected that every
literature rejects authenticity and seeks a broader
comity of cognizance, correspondence, and criticism
through fluency in more general or media-times. If a
colonial language can help in providing synergistic
space for inter-cultural comprehensibility, it is
therefore a commendable move.
This is partly a literary reflection on self-discovery. A
tongue worth its name
—
or grafted intuition
—
would
have a nameable diversity of beauty and terribleness.
The ex-colonised, conscious of possibilities and
limitations, long for consummate emotional nakedness
filtered through even the hazy prisms of the imperial
language. The best expression of a language and the
power it wields is in its creative texture (Ngiewih Teke,
2013). An immense part of Western ideology was
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American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research (ISSN: 2771-2141)
disseminated through its literature, thanks to that
country’s
long-existing print culture. Today, there is a
big distance between using English (and French) and
being Anglicised (and Francophoned). Here is a paradox
of extended mastery; the reason is not that the
coloniser’s tongue has been feigned for its illusione
d
sovereign baggage but simply that it was misused.
English is the same weapon with which the colonised
needs to fight against the prejudices caused on the
peoples of the colony, and so it is with the French, and
German too (Cimarosti, 2015). When this integral place
of memory is transposed to imperial language and
postcolonial transformations, the language which was
hitherto the most used against the colony is now the
postcolony’s fundamental weapon to disrupt that
dominance. Still, the question of power, whether it be
power to dominate and ravage or to shield and achieve
gain, appears; and just as the invader colonised
violently and corruptingly, so now, papa, mama, know,
the descendant abused dramatically and harrowingly
that shared beauty. The literature consummated in
W.T. is therefore an object of pride, wonder, on both
sides
—
not a trophy to hang on the wall or paint
ornaments on the ceiling; instead
—
one rarely as calm
or temperate as M.C. or W.H.P.
—
to find the heart
struggling within the prison walls in jest or outrage.
Conversely, such appropriation could not be
dissociated from the calcifying host, and nor could the
native vernacular escape from its frozen-in-wait.
CONCLUSION
The study provided a critique of the manipulation and
appropriation of English in a variety of conflicting socio-
political and cultural contexts. Using the social critical
approach, the analysis drew on poems and song lyrics
from across Cameroon and Canada. As addressed in the
introduction, the aim was to investigate the
ambivalence of English as a pervasive and sometimes
pervasive language which was cross-fertile for local
musical renditions and textual transformations. The
analytic selection sustained the absence of linguistic
rights and justice, antipathy, reinvention in censuring
the language of its polysemy, and patriotism and local-
mindedness
in
its
ethnic
dissimilarity
and
displacement. The analysis highlighted a tactical,
performative and productive engagement of allusion as
theatricality, and of language and culture in cross-
cultural and glocal dissimilitude. The coping modes of
adaptation, opposition and promotion were likened to
loan-shifting, in an openly affirmative act with its
appropriation from the colonial masters. The
domesticates garnered from texts endangered by
political intrigue were both local and international;
they pointed to a new ontology and rhizomicity of soft
power in war of discourses.
Language is never a settled matter. The transformative
residence of English and all translations of texts go
beyond the famous meme language into memes as
cultural transmission as sanctification or politicisation.
The findings evoke considerations for further research
on French as another eventful language of church and
politics in similar contexts. The analysis of the
transformation
and
appropriation
of
colonial
epistemic, political and linguistic structures from
France by two poetesses from former colonies would
be crucial. Ultimately, one pivotal question remains:
how are new memes launched and engaged in again?
The answer lies in new data and their critical analysis.
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