Release date 30/05/2002
Oxford Guide to World English
A fascinating survey of English both as a pre-eminent world language in its standard British and American forms and as a family of increasingly diverse regional varieties.
Tom McArthur argues that:
- There is no centre to English now due to the significant presence of the language on every continent
- English is the most powerful language ever, the biggest member of a 'language ecology' in which lesser languages are at risk
- English is a commodity, a global resource owned by nobody and everybody, and sought for their children by the middle classes everywhere
Organized by continent, the Oxford Guide to World English contains chapters on Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australasia, Oceania, and Antarctica. Tom McArthur takes note of the world's many varieties of English in an interconnected way and covers the ties that bind varieties and regions that happen to be geographically far apart, as with, for example: West African English and African American English; Scots, Ulster Scots, the Scotch-Irish migrations to Appalachia in the US, and country and western music; and aspects of Australian, New Zealand, South African, and Falklands English as southern-hemisphere varieties.
A concluding chapter studies the nature and power of large languages; such issues as gender and political correctness; the role, status, and nature of broken and/or fractured English; the worldwide English language teaching industry; and the issue of standardness, considered both locally and globally.
The Oxford Guide to World English will be published
on 30 May 2002 at £19.99 (Hardback).
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