Festschrift for Ingrid Westin
Discussion of the development of English as an international language in Europe against the backdrop of plurilingualism and monoculturalization. The Development of Euro-English, and policy making in the European Union.
Discussion of the manner in which the conceptualization Lingua Franca is impacting on European ELT
Reprint of Jennifer Jenkins, Marko Modiano, and Barbara Seidlhofer, Euro-English, English Today 17, No. 4, 2001, pp. 13-19.
Review-article of Sandra Mollin, Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status
Cultural studies, foreign language teaching and learning practices, and the NNS practitioner
This anthology offers a variety of learning opportunities and a chance to sample the work of scholars across a number of subject areas. Challenging all of us to venture beyond the holders of our own disciplines, moreover, these essays invite questions about what we do as academics, compelling us to think deeply about our profession, our educational aims, our personal commitments, and how aims and commitments are inevitably rooted in social and political networks.
A discussion of globalization is presented that focuses on the pros and cons of English spread. The postcolonial theoretical basis for promoting the status of second-language varieties of English, and how this impacts on the foreign-language speaker of English in the European Union, is investigated. Three primary factors, linguistic Anglo-Americanization, the decline of standard British English as an educational norm, and the monoculturalization that accompanies English language learning, are addressed. While the spread of English is beneficial in some respects, Anglo-Americanization is seen as threatening to the social and cultural integrity of non-native speakers of English. The construction of identity within foreign-language learning, of importance to learners of English worldwide, is discussed. It is held that a theoretically neutral program for English, which is growing out of the Euro-English and English as an international language paradigms, is the best possible platform for the teaching and learning of English.
Discussion of monoculturalism and the rise of English in the European union. Discussion of Crystal and his concept of linguistic relativism.
Response to Martin Schell's article introducing the idea of colingualism.
The article shows how postmodern literature offers new ways of re-thinking and re-reading Eros, how it responds to the changing mentalities and social morals and how it provides insight into the social-cultural paradigms, with which it enters a mutual relation of dialogue, contestation and parody. The ethics and aesthetics of Eros, that is, the literary representation of love, desire and sexuality, has dramatically changed during the last decades due to the influence of postmodern theories and the explosion of sexual discoursees in the public sphere. As a result, postmodern literature challenges the ethics of sexual identities and differences, interrogates stereotypes and conventions and heightens our critical awareness of them. It extends the modes of femininity and gender identities, and ultimately broadens our view of love, desire and sexuality.
The study shows why contemporary fiction represents a definite step forward and a social critique in its exploration of ethical and political questions related to the impact of Eros on identity and its links to gender, power, violence, race and politics. Former taboos have been shattered by an aesthetics of the obscene, and the romantic utopia of love has been deconstructed by feminist gender theories. Literary narratives have foregrounded female sexuality and unstable borderline and homosexual identities, binding together sexual alterity and aesthetic innovation.
Arbetet går in på följande frågeställningar:
Hur gestaltas och konstrueras kulturella gränser och identiteter i nutidslitteraturen? I vilken mån återspeglas sociokulturella förändringar och nya, interkulturella identitetsformer? Hur bidrar litterära berättelser som bärare av kulturellt minne till en konstruktion eller subversion av kollektiv identitet? Hur kan de främja interkulturell, gränsöverskridande emancipation? Hur präglas narrativa former av tidsenliga historie- och identitetsbilder?
What can contemporary German-speaking writers, with their obsessive preoccupation with the past, tell us about the cultural conflicts of today?
After looking at former literary periods and at specific literary essays, then focusing on a large number of contemporary literary case-studies, this work explores the spiritual resources and the aesthetical impulses by which literary approaches can enlarge our intercultural experiences and horizons. The studies examine how German-speaking narratives deal with migration, ethnicity and xenophobia, as well as how they sustain or disrupt national, religious and ethnical boundaries. In a time of ambivalent tendencies, when both globalization as well as ethnic-cultural conflicts are ever-increasing, this study tries to reveal the potential for tolerance contained in the German literary memory, to demonstrate how the representation of "the Other", of cultural and identity and alterity have become increasingly nuanced, and how this stimulates the dynamics of transcultural interconnection.