Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

162 Language Planning and Education
Service, All India Radio, the Straits Times and the Japan Times of Tokyo, is the most
appropriate model (Quirk 1985: 6). Supporting this position, he argues first that
‘non-native’ varieties are uncodified and non-institutionalised, and second that there
is in any case an important qualitative difference between ‘non-native’ and ‘native’
varieties. Here, Quirk adduces psycholinguistic evidence, derived from Coppieters
(1987), that natives have ‘radically different internalisations’ from non-natives’, the
implication being that ‘non-native teachers need to be in constant touch with the
native language’ (Quirk 1990a: as reprinted in Seidlhofer 2003: 13–14).
Taking a directly opposed outlook and rejecting what he regards as Quirk’s deficit
view of the New Englishes, Kachru (1985, 1988, 1991, 1992b) argues for a greater
degree of sociolinguistic realism, one that would acknowledge that spread inevitably
entails some divergence from British or American norms as the language ceases to be
the exponent of any one culture, and that would recognise that if English is to be an
international language, then the native speakers need to accept that they ‘have lost
the exclusive prerogative to control its standardisation’ (Kachru 1985: 30; see also
Widdowson 1994).
He also calls for greater educational realism, making the practical point that it is
often simply not possible for teachers in the outer circle to remain in constant touch
with the native language as modelled by native speakers. As for the radically different
internalisations of native speakers, Kachru (1991) invites us to consider just what
these internalisations are internalisations of: native speakers certainly have internalised
representations of their native language (their L1), but users of English in the
outer circle, some of whom are in fact native speakers of localised varieties, may also
have internalisations ‘linked to their own multilinguistic, sociolinguistic and sociocultural
contexts’ (Kachru 1991: as reprinted in Seidlhofer 2003: 21).
Kachru goes on to argue that Quirk’s position rests on a set of false assumptions,
specifically:
1. That in the outer and expanding circles, English is mainly learnt to interact
with native speakers. In fact, Kachru suggests, its main use is in communication
with other L2 users, intranationally or internationally;
2. That English is learnt to understand British or American culture. In fact, in the
outer circle, it imparts and expresses local cultural values and identities;
3. That ‘non-native’ varieties are interlanguages, when, in fact, they are ‘varieties
in their own right rather than stages on the way to a more native-like English’;
4. That native speakers – as teachers, administrators and materials developers –
are heavily involved in the global teaching of English, when, in fact, most of
the teaching of English worldwide lies in the hands of L2 users (Kachru 1991:
as reprinted in Seidlhofer 2003: 28).
Kachru’s position, then, is that the New Englishes are stable varieties indexing
local identities and capable of imparting local cultural values, and that they should
therefore have greater recognition in the teaching of English in outer circle contexts.
Surveying recent literature (for example, articles in English Today and book-length
publications, such as McKay 2002), one senses that in the applied linguistics