Investigating Unequal Englishes

Investigating Unequal Englishes sheds light on the dominance of Anglocentrism and monolingual biases and ideologies, and hegemonic language policies and practices favouring the English language across the world. It highlights the questionable and hierarchical status, role, function, and use of Standard English and the perpetual linguistic inequalities and injustices faced by speakers of different varieties of Englishes. The edited volume rightly argues that only the critical and metalinguistic awareness of policy-makers, ELT administrators, teachers, students, and community members can make them sensitive to individual and collective marginalisation and disempowerment based on languages. Hence, the volume is a must-read for academics, researchers, and language practitioners, intending to initiate the process of decolonisation at grassroots levels, work for the de-eliticisation of English, and promote and nurture linguistic and epistemic equity in the world.

Shaila Sultana, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Joined by experts from around the world, Ruanni Tupas, the renowned scholar responsible for the concept of “Unequal Englishes,” explores the realities of hierarchical power structures among varieties of English in various contexts. This is a highly significant volume which investigates one of the most fundamental aspects of language in society, and thus should be read not only by researchers of World Englishes and critical applied linguistics but also by everyone involved in language education.

Nobuyuki Hino, Otemon Gakuin University and Osaka University, Japan

There are undoubtedly benefits to the global spread of English, most obviously in the facilitation of communication across different cultural contexts or increased access to varied opportunities. However, are such benefits evenly distributed? As Tupas and colleagues show, it is no longer possible to treat the inherent and emergent inequalities in Englishes as a problem facing only a minority of speakers and communities. It is indeed a globally pervasive problem, but this volume helps us to identify its underlying causes while imagining potential ways forward.

Jerry Won Lee University of California, Irvine, USA

Delving deeper into the lens of Unequal Englishes with new contexts and encompassing methodologies, this volume is essential reading for researchers of the growing social inequalities in the pluralization and localization of Global Englishes. A key text for new generations of critical applied/sociolinguists.

Virginia Zavala, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru