Suresh Canagarajah, Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. viii+216. Pb. $24.95.

Abstract

As eighth-grade students of English in a “periphery” community school in India, we were assigned to discuss and to appreciate a piece of prose, from our textbook, called “On not answering the telephone”; it was a satirical piece demonizing telephones because their existence and use flouted all tenets of British English linguistic etiquette. None of us in that class had a phone in our homes, and none of us had any desire to learn the alien etiquette. We were interested only in learning the language to the extent that it could help us realize our immediate and, perhaps, future goals. This was our tacit response, and resistance, to English linguistic imperialism: awareness of the pragmatic rewards of English-language acquisition and use, but negation and denial of the cultural hegemony of English. This dynamic of ideological imposition and resistance (and appropriation) forms the core of Canagarajah's book, Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching.