Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

English as an International Language 95
control but not its nature, and by so doing ignores power and struggle
in language. (Pennycook, 2003: 8)
In the end, Pennycook (2003) argues that the ultimate effect of globalization
on the use of English is neither homogenization nor heterogenization;
rather it is ‘a fl uid mixture of cultural heritage . . . and popular culture . . .,
of change and tradition, of border crossing and ethnic affi liation, of global
appropriation and local contextualization’ (Pennycook, 2003: 10). This, he
contends, is what the new global order is about.
Sharing Pennycook’s belief that more attention needs to be given to the
‘power and struggle in language’, I will use the term English as an international
language as an umbrella term to characterize the use of English
between any two L2 speakers of English, whether sharing the same culture
or not, as well as between L2 and L1 speakers of English. I will argue
that any examination of EIL must include attention to the global and local
aspect of English and explore the way in which a specifi c use of English is
impacted by issues of power and struggle. A specifi c example of English
use will help to clarify my perspective.
In our recent research (Kubota & McKay, 2009), we examined the role of
EIL in the linguistic landscape of a rural community in Japan where there
is a growing number of language minority migrant workers, mainly from
Brazil, China, Thailand and Vietnam. The local lingua franca is, of course,
Japanese. However, the current emphasis on EIL in Japan has resulted in all
children learning English rather than any of the minority languages spoken
in the local area. It has also resulted in a commonly accepted assumption
that the way to communicate with these migrants is through Japanese or
English rather than other languages. In fact, when one of the middle school
teachers found that a recent immigrant in her classroom did not understand
Japanese, she resorted to English, assuming that these young immigrants
should understand an ‘international language’.
While on the local level, bilingual speakers of Portuguese, Chinese,
Thai and Vietnam are sorely needed, the second language that almost
everyone is engaged in learning is English because as one teacher put it,
‘you can’t soar into the world with Portuguese.... Improving Japan with
Portuguese won’t let the country soar into the world’. It is situations such
as this that demonstrate the need to examine the power and struggles that
inform local uses of English. While in this particular local context Japanese,
not English, is serving as a lingua franca, still the global role of English is
exerting invisible symbolic power. My approach to current English use
then emphasizes the localized nature of interactions and the power and
struggle that informs these interactions. Often in the local linguistic ecology,
English plays more of a symbolic role than an actual medium of
communication.