ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The studies in the fourth part of the book are located within a postcolonial context in South America. They involve languages, cultures, knowledge and people whose presence is marked by a history of colonization. Moving beyond colonial-style encounters in order to engage with a "pluralist vigour" perhaps entails first perceiving the complexity behind what Bhabha calls "diversity" and "difference". In performative meaning-making process, from the standpoint of difference, it is the subject, located materially in a particular time-space configuration and as a member of and constituted by multiple communities of language, culture, gender, race and sexuality, who provides the starting point for the meaning-making process. For Bhabha on the opposite pole to the pedagogic stands the performative. Khubchandani illustrates his call for a pragmatic, performative and pluralist perspective on language description and use by proposing a "three-dimensional model of language".
