Open AccessExploring the Generic Nature of International English
Author(s) -
Allan James
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
elope
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.182
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2386-0316
pISSN - 1581-8918
DOI - 10.4312/elope.3.1-2.75-83
Subject(s) - hybridity , linguistics , sociology , realization (probability) , postcolonialism (international relations) , anthropology , philosophy , gender studies , mathematics , statistics
The article investigates the nature of English as an International Language (EIL) from a sociolinguistic and sociocultural point via the notion of ‘genre’. Genre, it is claimed, plays a central role in an understanding of the internal hybridity of EIL in that it represents the ‘using’ as opposed to ‘use’ (register) or ‘user’ (dialect) dimension of language realization. While all three dimensions as linguistic resources for different subjectivities can shape an ensuing EIL discourse (such mixes constituting the ‘interdiscursivity’ of (a) text), it is genre that expresses the actional (inter- and transactional) properties of EIL. Drawing also on other linguistic models of genre, the article concludes by interpreting EIL within the discourses of postmodernity, poststructuralism and postcolonialism and pointing to the possibility of developing a new ‘postlinguistics’ for the new millenium