Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

English as an International Language 109
the development of moral virtue to promote a static social order.
(Le, 2004: 169)
In his rhetoric then the West is linked with ‘the cultivation of intellectual
skills’ while the East is linked with a ‘static social order’. He continues
this Othering in his characterization of the role of teachers in the two
cultures when he states:
The confrontation between Asian and western educational ideologies
lies in opposing views of the teacher’s role. If Asian teachers are
expected to be transmitters of culture who are to maintain the status
quo in schools and transmit prevailing culture, western teachers are
considered to be the transformers of culture. (Le, 2004: 171)
Once again, the West is depicted in positive terms as ‘transformers of
culture’ while the East ‘maintains the status quo in schools’ and transmits
‘prevailing culture’.
The question of standards
A fi nal concern that needs more attention is the notion of standards in
reference to an international language. The spread of English has brought
with it the development of many new varieties of English, which has led to
much discussion regarding what standards should be promoted in the
teaching of English. Implicit in discussions of variation are the notion of
standards, a standard language, and issues of power and identity that are
built into such concepts. Standard language is the term generally used to refer
to that variety of a language that is considered the norm. It is the variety
regarded as the ideal for educational purposes, and usually used as a yardstick
by which to measure other varieties and implement standard-based
assessment. The related notion of language standards has to do with the language
rules that inform the standard and that are then taught in the schools.
The challenge that World Englishes present to the Standard English
ideology is one of plurality – that there should be different standards for
different contexts of use and that the defi nition of each Standard English
should be endonormative (determined locally) rather than exonormative
(determined outside of its context of use). However, if there are different
forms of Standard English, the concern of mutual intelligibility emerges.
The fact that some speakers of English use a variety of English that is quite
different from a standard variety of English has led some to argue that the
use of these varieties of English will lead to a lack of intelligibility among
speakers of English. It is this fear that has led to a widespread debate over
standards in the use of English.
One of the early debates over standards occurred at a 1984 conference
to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the British Council. At this conference,
Randolph Quirk and Braj Kachru, two key fi gures in the growing debate