Abstract
With the growth of the Asia manufacturing and service industries, the prediction that China and India will have the first and third largest global economies within 30 years, a population that comprises over 50 per cent of the world’s people, and massive English language programmes throughout the region, it is no surprise that the role of English in Asia has become a major concern. Notwithstanding the difficulties in defining what Asia comprises — either in terms of geo-political scope (are Australia and New Zealand, Iran and Israel, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia part of the region?1) or in terms of cultural continuity (does it really make sense to talk about shared culture and knowledge across this region?) — it seems that it is nevertheless possible to talk at some level of ‘the Asianness in Asian Englishes and their gradual, yet marked, distinctiveness’ (Kachru 2005: xv). With increasing collaboration across the region, and the eventual possibility of an Asian economic and political entity that parallels the European Union, a comparison with Europe is intriguing. While Europe has sought to make its national languages the working languages of the EU (while also supporting some of the minority languages of the region), Asia has embedded English as the working language of many of its international organizations, such as ASEAN.
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© 2009 Alastair Pennycook
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Pennycook, A. (2009). Plurilithic Englishes: Towards a 3D Model. In: Murata, K., Jenkins, J. (eds) Global Englishes in Asian Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230239531_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230239531_12
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