Asian Englishes

This book provides crucial reading for students and researchers of world Englishes. It is an insightful and provocative study of the forms and functions of English in Asia, its acculturation and nativization, and the innovative dimensions of Asian creativity. It contextualizes a variety of theoretical, applied and ideological issues with refreshing interpretations and reevaluations and can be used both as a classroom text and a resource volume.

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-Champaign.

"'Asian Englishes is a most comprehensive, globally-informed, richly-documented, and insightful reference on English in Asia, written by the guru of gurus on the development, the local ethnographic functions, the world status, and structural characteristics of indigenized and other non-"native" Englishes. It's a piece of scholarship no serious student of these varieties can afford to ignore. The reader will also enjoy its author's witty and very accessible prose.' - Salikoko S. Mufwene, Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago; 'In this latest addition to a distinguished series of contributions to English studies, Braj Kachru makes the most comprehensive and cogent case to date for a more nuanced and pragmatic understanding of Asian Englishes. Readers will find his analysis and redefinition of familiar constructs and conceptualizations provocative, even controversial as well as fresh and incisive. But true to form, Kachru does not shy away from scholarly debate or the liberation of sacred linguistic and pedagogical cows as he argues for the acceptance of English "on Asian terms".' - Margie Berns, Professor of English Language and Linguistics; Director of English as a Second Language, Department of English, Purdue University; 'This book by the proponent and authority of World Englishes provides a comprehensive description of past, present, and future of Asian Englishes. It is informative, academically stimulating, and intellectually entertaining with the author's vast knowledge, profound insight, and sometimes provocative reinterpretations on issues Asian Englishes have with their contradictory functions of localized endonormative creativity and international communicability.' - Yasukata Yano, Professor of Linguistics and English, Department of English Language and Literature, School of Education; English Division, Graduate School of Education, Waseda University, Japan; 'Braj Kachru is the foremost authority on World Englishes, a field he initiated and played a major part developing. Nearly half a century of incomparable work is distilled in Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, which lifts this vital area of study on to a higher plane. It is the book that language and literary specialists, sociologists, educators and policy makers and others have been waiting for.' - Edwin Thumboo, Emeritus Professor and Director of the Centre for the Arts, National University of Singapore"