Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:28:08.615Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

English and the Language of Others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2009

Robert J.C. Young
Affiliation:
Faculty of Arts & Science, English Department, New York University, 19 University Place, 514, New York, New York 10003, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Any consideration of English in the context of a literature for Europe prompts the question of whether English can be contained within the paradigm of Europe, whether it could or should ever be restrained from overflowing its edges and boundaries. While English was created from the crucible of European languages, its filiations have long since stretched far beyond the borders of the continent. Close observation of the dynamics of English, and of English Literature, it could be argued, illustrates one reason why contemporary Britain finds it difficult to limit itself to an exclusively European dimension.

Type
Focus: European Literature
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. D. Crystal (2005) Mother-tongue India. Talk for Lingua Franca (ABC, Australia).Google Scholar
2. W. Scott, Sir (1996) Ivanhoe, edited by I. Duncan (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
3.Mahal, B. K. (2006) The Queen’s Hinglish: How to Speak Pukka (Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers).Google Scholar
4.Saadi, S. (2004) Psychoraag (Edinburgh: Black & White).Google Scholar
5.Malkani, G. (2006) Londonstani (London: Fourth Estate).Google Scholar
6.Nagra, D. (2007) Look We Have Coming to Dover! (London: Faber).Google Scholar
7.Chien, E. N.-M. (2004) Weird English (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.Saro-Wiwa, K. (1985) Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English (Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Saros).Google Scholar
9. For a recent collection of ‘rotten English’, see D. Ahmad (ed.) (2007) Rotten English: A Literary Anthology (New York: Norton).Google Scholar
10.Crowley, T. (2003) Standard English and the Politics of Language (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11.Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press).Google Scholar
12.Voloshinov, V. N. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by L. Matejka and I. R. Titunik (New York: Seminar Press).Google Scholar
13.Das Gupta, J. (1970) Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
14.Chaudhuri, A. (2001) The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature (London: Picador).Google Scholar
15.Mukherjee, M. (2000) The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
16. V. Chandra (2000) The cult of authenticity. Boston Review, February/March.Google Scholar
17. G. Das (2005) Inglish as she’s spoke. Outlook India, 3 May.Google Scholar
18.Sadana, R. (2007) A suitable text for a vegetarian audience: questions of authenticity and the politics of translation. Public Culture, 19(2), 307328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19.Roy, A. (1997) The God of Small Things (London: Flamingo).Google Scholar
20. Kothari argues, on the other hand, that the treatment of caste in The God of Small Things is romanticised and relatively superficial, see R. Kothari (2003) The elephant and the ant: Indian literature in English/Translation. Critical Practice, 17.Google Scholar
21.Jadhav, N. (2005) Untouchables: My Family’s Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India (New York: Scribner).Google Scholar
22.Macwan, J. (2003) The Stepchild [Angaliyat], translated by Rita Kothari (Delhi: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
23.wa Thiong’o, Ngugi (1982) Devil on the Cross, translated by the author (London: Heinemann).Google Scholar
24.wa Thiong’o, Ngugi (1986) Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey).Google Scholar
25.Synge, J. M. (1907) The Playboy of the Western World: A Comedy in Three Acts (Dublin: Maunsel).Google Scholar
26.Joyce, J. (1917) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (London: The Egoist).Google Scholar
27.Joyce, J. (1914) Dubliners (London: Grant Richards).Google Scholar
28.Derrida, J. (1998) Monolingualism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of Origin [1996], translated by P. Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
29.Anand, M. R. (1935) Untouchable. With a Preface by E. M. Forster (London: Wishart Books).Google Scholar
30.Rao, R. (1938) Kanthapura (London: George Allen & Unwin).Google Scholar
31.Sethi, R. (1999) The nativisation of English. In: Myths of the Nation: National Identity and Literary Representation (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 3958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32.Desani, G. V. (1948) All About Mr. Hatterr [sic] (London: Aldor).Google Scholar
33.Achebe, C. (1958) Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann).Google Scholar
34.Rushdie, S. (2006) Midnight’s Children [1981] (London: Vintage).Google Scholar
35.Jakobson, R. (1959) On linguistic aspects of translation. In: Brower, R. A. (ed.) On Translation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 232239.Google Scholar
36.Pollock, S. (1998) The cosmopolitan vernacular. The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(1), 637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar