Braj B. Kachru is Center for Advanced Study Professor of Linguistics and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Emeritus, at the University of Illinois at Urbana, IL, USA. He headed the Department of Linguistics (1968-79), directed the Division of English as an International Language (1985-91), and was director of University's Center for Advanced Study (1996-2000). He is the co-founding editor and advisor of World Englishes (Wiley Blackwell, Oxford). He was director of the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America (1978), president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (1984) and president of the International Association for World Englishes (1997-1999). In 1992 he was honoured by the Association of Indians in America for his contribution to Arts and Letters. In 1998 he was named Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Fellow in Hong Kong, and in 2001 an Honorary Fellow of the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (now English and ForeignLanguagesUniversity) in Hyderabad, India. His research areas include world Englishes, language insociety, and Kashmiri language and literature. He received the Joint First Prize in the Duke of Edinburgh Book Competition for The Alchemy of English (1986). His recently authored and co-edited volumes include Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon (2004), World Englishes: Critical Concepts (co-edited with Kingsley Bolton, 6 vols., 2005), Asian Englishes (co-edited with Kingsley Bolton, 5 vols., 2005), The Handbook of World Englishes (co-edited with Yamuna Kachru and Cecil L. Nelson, 2006) and Language in South Asia (co-edited with Yamuna Kachru and S. N. Sridhar, 2008).
WORLD ENGLISHES TODAY:
PANDITOCRACY VS PRAGMATIC REALITY
In the past five decades multiple constructs of world Englishes have been proposed by the pandits across the world. The debate, as expected, varies from constructive critiques to loaded emotional explosions. I propose to discuss the relevance of selected conceptualizations of world Englishes provided by the "panditocracy" in recent publications. This paper is a modest attempt to revisit "World Englishes Today" -- the theme of IAWE 2010.
Dr. Sue Wright
University of Portsmouth, UK
Focus: English in Europe
Sue Wright is professor of Language and Politics at the University of Portsmouth, UK and director of the Centre for International and European Studies Research (CEISR). Her research is concerned with language policy and practice and the relationship of both of these to events in the wider political and social context. She has published widely on language rights, language and citizenship, language and nationalism and the rise and fall of lingua francas. Her most recent monographs are Community and Communication: the role of language in nation building and Europeanisation (2000) and Language Policy and Language Planning: from nationalism to globalisation (2004). She has also published widely in the sector journals. She is coeditor of Sociolinguistica and the Palgrave series Language and Globalisation.
ENGLISH AND EUROPE:
THE LEGACIES OF NATIONALISM, THE REQUIREMENTS OF EUROPEANISATION AND THE INFLUENCE OF GLOBALISATION
Language played a pivotal role in the formation of European nation state.The aim of the new governments of young nation states was a linguistically homogenous population, differentiated in its language habits and practices from all its neighbouring groups. The FrenchRepublic was certainly not exceptional in its aim of un peuple, un territoire, une langue.
European nationalism proved, as we know, to be a very dangerous ideology and the second half of the 20th century witnessed a number of initiatives to build structures that would rein in the unfettered pursuit of selfish national interests. The Europeans were quite successful in this, constructing transnational networks and supranational institutions to do so. This brought many of them into constant contact.
There is thus a pressing need for a means of communication among Europeans. On the level of policy, the preference has been to promote multilingualism. The European Union, for example, opted for a commitment to formal equality for all the official national languages of its member states. This was inevitable since the linguistic legacy of the nation state remains strong and the national language continues to play a role in national identity. However, it is proving a difficult policy to respect, and, in practice, we are witnessing the spread of English as the preferred lingua franca for transnational contacts and as the most frequently learnt foreign language.
This paper sets out the context of language policy making in Europe, recognising that many of the factors that influence the outcome of policy derive from outside the continent. It asks the question whether official policies to limit the spread of English and promote multilingualism are doomed to failure, and what the consequences might be if they were able to do so.
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu
HowardUniversity, Washington, DC, USA
Focus: Africa
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu is Professor of linguistics and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at Howard University, Washington, D.C. He received his BA (Honors) from the Universite Nationale du Zaire (now Congo), and his MA and PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also received a Fulbright Award and, most recently, a Howard University Distinguished Faculty Research Award. In the past two decades his research has focused on language policy and planning, language and identity, and World Englishes. His publications have appeared in Chicago Linguistic Society, Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, The Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, Multilingua, TESOL Quarterly, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, World Englishes,and Language Problems and Language Planning, to name a few. He is also the author of the monograph The Language Planning Situation in South Africa (Multilingual Matters, 2001), co-editor of Language and Institutions in Africa (Center for Advanced Studies of African Society, Cape Town, South Africa, 2000), and editor of special issues on language and society in post-apartheid South Africa for the journals Multilingua (1998), International Journal of the Sociology of Language (2000), World Englishes (2002), and Language Problems and Language Planning (2004). Dr. Kamwangamalu currently is Polity Editor for the series Current Issues in Language Planning, member of the editorial board for several journals, past editor-in-chief of Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, and member of the TOEFL Board. He was invited as a plenary speaker at the 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (University of Wisconsin, 2005), and as a keynote speaker at the Symposium in Honor of Joshua Fishman's Eightieth Birthday (University of Pennsylvania, 2006). Currently he is completing a book manuscript, Sociolinguistics in Africa, due for publication next year by Multilingual Matters.
ENGLISH IN LANGUAGE POLICY AND IDEOLOGIES IN AFRICA: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS FOR VERNACULARIZATION
This paper discusses the impact of English on language policy aimed at vernacularization -- defined as the use of an indigenous African language in the higher domains such as the educational system not only in Anglophone but also in non-English-speaking countries in the African continent (e.g., Rwanda, Mozambique, etc.). Vernacularization has been at the core of the debate around language-in-education policies in Africa for half a century (OAU, 1986). What seems to have received relatively little attention in this debate, however, is how vernacularization can succeed against more powerful language ideologies such as linguistic internationalization, globalization, and what Blaut (1993) has termed "the colonizer's model of the world". This is "the idea that progressive historical progress results from unique characteristics of the European 'mind', culture, and/or 'literate' institutions, which allegedly provide models for the development of the non-European world" (Wiley, 2006: 147). The paper addresses vernacularization against the above and related language ideologies from the perspective of theoretical approaches to the spread of English (Fishman et al, 1996; Phillipson, 1992) on the one hand, and recent developments in the economics of language -- an area of study whose focus is on the theoretical and empirical ways in which linguistic and economic variables influence one another (Grin, 1996) -- on the other. It argues that efforts to promote vernacularization in Africa will not succeed, especially in the era of globalization, unless the indigenous African languages are assigned an economic value at least in the local linguistic marketplace (Kamwangamalu, 2004). It then suggests ways in which that value can be assigned, drawing on successful case studies of vernacularization informed by language economics in various parts of the world.
Blaut, J. M. (1993) The colonizer's model of the world: Geographical diffusionism and Eurocentric history. New York: Guilford Press.
Fishman, J.A., Cooper, R.L., & Rubal-Lopez, A. (1996) Post-imperial English: Status change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940-1990. New York: Mouton.
Grin, Francois (1996) The economics of language: survey, assessment, and prospects. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 121: 17-44.
Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M. (2004) Language policy/language economics interface and mother tongue education in post-apartheid South Africa. In: Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (ed.), Language Problems and Language Planning. Special Issue: South Africa. LPLP 28, 2:131-146.
Organization of African Unity (OAU) (1986) Language Plan of Action for Africa. Council of Ministers, Forty-Fourth Ordinary Session, Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, July 1986.
Phillipson, Robert (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
Wiley, Terrence (2006) The lessons of historical investigations: Implications for the study oflanguage policy and planning. In: Thomas Ricento (ed.), An introduction to language policy: Theory and Method (pp. 135-152). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Braj B. Kachru is Center for Advanced Study Professor of Linguistics and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Emeritus, at the 
Sue Wright is professor of Language and Politics at the University of Portsmouth, UK and director of the Centre for International and European Studies Research (CEISR). Her research is concerned with language policy and practice and the relationship of both of these to events in the wider political and social context. She has published widely on language rights, language and citizenship, language and nationalism and the rise and fall of lingua francas. Her most recent monographs are Community and Communication: the role of language in nation building and Europeanisation (2000) and Language Policy and Language Planning: from nationalism to globalisation (2004). She has also published widely in the sector journals. She is coeditor of Sociolinguistica and the Palgrave series Language and Globalisation.
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu is Professor of linguistics and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at Howard University, Washington, D.C. He received his BA (Honors) from the Universite Nationale du Zaire (now 