ABSTRACT
The globalization and pluralization of English are actually inextricable processes of the same phenomenon, even if they are analytical categories that are usually treated separately both in academic and popular discourses. The mark of the success of the globalization of English is its having been firmly localized in communities of speakers, while the emergence and stabilization of (localized) Englishes have been mobilized by conditions and processes of globalization. Thus, the globalization of English in ‘Global South’ communities has not only altered linguistic ecologies, but also amplified historically formed class-based relations between multilingual speakers and learners of English. The localization of English has not been homogenous as has been assumed by nation-based perspectives on the study of Englishes; in fact, the language has pluralized in and through multiple mechanisms of power and social relations, leading to some Englishes within nationally marked speech communities to be valued more than others due to their associations with indexicalities of social class, ethnicity and regional ethno-linguistic affiliation, to name a few. While the celebratory discourses of ‘global English’ embed past recent policies on official languages and English as medium of instruction, and while ‘post-colonial’ views of pluralization remain fixated on the resistive and transformative nature of Englishes, the glossed-over role of the enduring conditions and discourses of coloniality and neoliberalism mobilize the way these Englishes are distributed locally and globally. Unequal Englishes configure the unequal relations between speakers and learners of English in the Global South.
