好文推荐 | Special issue on world Englishes and ESP

Abstract: This special issue brings together leading scholars in the field of English for specific purposes (ESP) for an innovative and insightful discussion of the interface between ESP, as a leading subject area in applied and educational linguistics, and world Englishes (WE), as a sub-discipline of linguistics and sociolinguistics. The contributions to this special issue explore, in various ways, the synergies between these two approaches for linguistic research and pedagogy.

相关推荐

本文作者之一为国际研修班主讲专家，欢迎参班老师提前阅读！

⬆ 点击上方图片了解研修详情

1. Introduction

Approaches to research and pedagogy in the field of English for specific purposes (ESP) developed from the 1970s onwards in response to the growing spread of English, and the resulting need to delivery English language teaching worldwide. One important sub-field of ESP has been that of English for academic purposes (EAP), which focuses on the teaching of academic literacy to diverse groups of language learners/users worldwide. ESP and EAP share many pedagogical and empirical interests, though ‘specific purpose’ typically entails privileging communication, comprehensibility and meaning over the more ‘academic’ expectation to develop a ‘native-like’ linguistic competence in a particular language variety. Notwithstanding the potential similarities and differences between ESP and EAP, an understanding of what is ‘acceptable’ English in both domains of study is shaped by local and global variables and influences. This desire to understand how English can be understood from both these perspectives is a key focus of another important strand of ESP research: genre analysis. Scholars working in genre analysis, like ESP and EAP researchers, frequently confront the task of understanding the communicative and cultural differences within and across regions and spaces simultaneously impacted by local and global forces. Genre analysis explores the relationship of key text types across diverse areas of language use, whether in academia, business, government, law, and numerous other domains.

English for specific purposes today is a diverse and expansive field of study, and one that is open to examination from a world Englishes (WE) perspective. In this context, it is interesting to compare how ESP is operationalised across a range of communicative and geographical locations. Thus, in some senses, the global spread of English now necessitates an audit of the ‘E’ in the ESP acronym. In order to explore such key questions, this special issue sets out to create a forum for experts in the field from Africa, Asia, Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere to consider, through a global lens, issues related to ESP and its applications throughout diverse international settings. In this special issue, we are honored to bring together seven leading scholars in the field of English for Specific Purposes, in order to explore the interface and possible synergies between ESP and world Englishes.

2. This special issue

The first article in this special issue from Bolton and Jenks provides an overview of the relationship between the world Englishes (WE) approach to English worldwide and current scholarship on English for specific purposes (ESP). This is done largely through a review of the literature with particular reference to research on ESP in Asia and Europe, for the years 2011–2021. After conducting an analysis of ESP articles published in the English for Specific Purposes journal, the article concludes with a discussion of the potential for synergy between the fields of world Englishes and ESP. The second article from Helen Basturkmen identifies topical themes in ESP research in the Asian Pacific region, again through scrutiny of the ‘flagship’ journal in the field, English for Specific Purposes, in the years 2018–2020. Institutions in the Asian Pacific region included Australia, China, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. The findings of this analysis indicated that four themes were particularly salient, which were: (i) teacher/learner identity; (ii) teaching/learning applications; (iii) reports from under-researched contexts; and (iv) investigations of social/cultural differences in target situation language use.

The third study from Judy Noguchi focuses largely on ESP in Japan. Here, Noguchi argues that ESP can make a major contribution to the teaching of English by focusing on the teaching of genres rather than simply the teaching of language. Her article then goes on to discuss how ESP concepts have been utilised in the Japanese education system, noting that recent decades have witnessed a movement away from EGP (English for general purposes) to ESP or EAP. One example of this has been the introduction of ‘English for science’ courses for high school students participating in higher level science programs, while, at the same time, English for Academic Purposes is now being taught at numerous Japanese universities. The fourth article from Catherine Nickerson discusses English for Specific Business Purposes (ESBP) in the United Arab Emirates. The article provides an overview of the use of English in the business sector in the UAE, as well as a description of commonly-occurring business genres. In addition to English in such spoken genres as meetings and negotiations, English is dominant in many forms of business discourse, including corporate websites and billboard advertising. Even though the UAE has largely been seen as an Expanding Circle region, Nickerson finally suggests that the sociolinguistic dynamics of the UAE are not unlike some Outer Circle societies, such as Hong Kong, China, where English plays an important role as a business lingua franca. The fifth article from Arlene Archer provides an interesting discussion of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in South Africa, where multimodal pedagogies have an important potential for engaging students in a highly multilingual culturally diverse society. South Africa’s commitment to multilingualism is impressive, given that there are 11 official languages (Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu). Archer describes the work of the writing center in her university and the ways in which multimodal and multilingual resources are deployed to achieve the best results for learning.

The sixth article from Ken Hyland and Feng (Kevin) Jiang moves away from pedagogical and policy issues to focus on the linguistics of academic writing, in particular the use of high frequency fixed-word collocations, known as ‘lexical bundles’, such as a result of, at the same time, in the case of, on the other hand, on the basis of, and so on. Primarily using the 760,000-word SciELF corpus (supplemented by the academic section of the BNC Corpus), they were able to analyze the patterning of lexical bundles in the academic writing of authors from diverse L1 backgrounds, including Finnish, Czech, French, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. The seventh paper from John Flowerdew provides a detailed and insightful discussion of English for research publication purposes (ERPP), a sub field of English for academic purposes (EAP). It first discusses the notion of a ‘standardised’ model for journal publications, explaining the reasons for the hegemony of this model with reference to the policies of academic journals and multinational publishing houses. The article then goes on to discuss the case for a varietal model, noting that one engineering journal was less concerned with standardised grammar than the content of submissions, and that in a leading social science journal there were many instances of ‘non-canonical’ rhetorical structures from international contributors.

The eighth and final article in the special issue from Vijay Bhatia completes this collection with a macro view of world Englishes and ESP, drawing on critical genre theory and arguing for a paradigm shift towards world Englishes for specific purposes. The article notes that ESP today faces a number of challenges, including the gap between academic EAP and the professions, digital communication, disciplinary overlaps, innovative discourses, issues of authenticity, and the global spread of English. Here, Bhatia notes that WE perspectives offers ‘a realistic and achievable objective’ they allow for variations in English language use and pedagogy. Drawing on critical genre theory, he argues for approaches to ESP that utilise ‘relevant and original samples of language use, which in all probability will be instances of world Englishes, and rarely instances of native use of English.

3. Conclusion

In one of the earliest articles on ESP and world Englishes, Braj Kachru (1988) argued that a paradigm shift in ESP required the adoption of a pluralistic approach, and one that could fully engage with the ‘linguistic, sociocultural, psy chological and educational issues’ attendant upon the spread of English throughout the academic and professional world (Kachru, 1988, cited in Webster, 2015, p. 220). The challenges signposted by this argument continue to the present, and one is therefore hopeful that this special issue on ‘World Englishes and English for specific purposes will make a useful contribution to research in this field, as well as to pedagogical and professional practice.

由于篇幅所限，注释和参考文献已省略。

作者简介

Professor Christopher Jenks

Professor of Language and Intercultural Communication at the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University (UU).

Christopher Jenks is a discourse analyst and intercultural communication researcher. He has worked in six distinct geopolitical regions: US, UK, the Republic of Korea, China, Denmark, and now the Netherlands.

原文链接

感谢作者Christopher Jenks授权发布此文章

链接：https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12603

相关阅读