Language And Culture In The Growth Of Imperialism

Political science interpretations of international relations tend to focus on abstract terms of economic interest, domination, rights and justice. Trapped within this limited horizon, the discipline fails to explain why nations of similar economic structure would have variant ideas for their foreign policies, and why nations with different economic structures and ideologies could develop a similar global posture during certain periods of their histories. This innovative study examines imperialism from a cultural and linguistic perspective, portraying the rise and fall of ancient Greek, Roman, medieval Islamic, modern British, Russian and American empires as a part of the natural life of world civilizations. As these imperial cultures matured through centuries of literary accumulation and interaction with other cultures, they finally found their confidence on the world stage and transitioned from an aggressive policy towards others to a more tolerant one.

A landmark work from the author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield Park to Heart of Darkness and Aida. Yet most cultural critics continue to see these phenomena as separate. Edward Said looks at these works alongside those of such writers as W. B. Yeats, Chinua Achebe, and Salman Rushdie to show how subject peoples produced their own vigorous cultures of opposition and resistance. Vast in scope and stunning in its erudition, Culture and Imperialism reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Lüneburg (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: History of English and English historical linguistics, language: English, abstract: English is the language of commerce and tourism, of international politics, of science, the official language of international and multinational companies and industries, the language of air traffic control, of international news agencies, of mass entertainment, of computers and of the Internet. It is assumed that about a quarter of the world`s population is already fluent or competent in English (that means around 1,5 billion people) and that there is a total of 75 territories where English has a special place in society. These regions can be divided according to the status they give English: Either they have English as a native language, as a second or official language or as a foreign language. This classification is visualized by the so-called Three-circle-model: The inner circle compromises those countries where English is the primary language of communication and is learnt as a native language by the majority of the population. It includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The outer or extended circle represents the countries where English plays an important role in a non-native setting. In many cases these are former British colonies where the English language is part of the countries leading institutions and of various other domains. This circle includes India, Malawi, Singapore and 50 other territories. The expanding circle involves those countries in which English is learnt as a lingua franca by many people. These countries neither have a history of colonization nor have they given English any administrative status. Such countries are Germany, Japan, Israel and a growing number of other states. Fennel (2004) divides the global spreading of English that ha

The debate about the Empire dealt in idealism and morality, and both sides employed the language of feeling, and frequently argued their case in dramatic terms. This book opposes two sides of the Empire, first, as it was presented to the public in Britain, and second, as it was experienced or imagined by its subjects abroad. British imperialism was nurtured by such upper middle-class institutions as the public schools, the wardrooms and officers' messes, and the conservative press. The attitudes of 1916 can best be recovered through a reconstruction of a poetics of popular imperialism. The case-study of Rhodesia demonstrates the almost instant application of myth and sign to a contemporary imperial crisis. Rudyard Kipling was acknowledged throughout the English-speaking world not only as a wonderful teller of stories but as the 'singer of Greater Britain', or, as 'the Laureate of Empire'. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Empire gained a beachhead in the classroom, particularly in the coupling of geography and history. The Island Story underlined that stories of heroic soldiers and 'fights for the flag' were easier for teachers to present to children than lessons in morality, or abstractions about liberty and responsible government. The Education Act of 1870 had created a need for standard readers in schools; readers designed to teach boys and girls to be useful citizens. The Indian Mutiny was the supreme test of the imperial conscience, a measure of the morality of the 'master-nation'.

English and the Discourses of Colonialism opens with the British departure from Hong Kong marking the end of British colonialism. Yet Alastair Pennycook argues that this dramatic exit masks the crucial issue that the traces left by colonialism run deep. This challenging and provocative book looks particularly at English, English language teaching, and colonialism. It reveals how the practice of colonialism permeated the cultures and discourses of both the colonial and colonized nations, the effects of which are still evident today. Pennycook explores the extent to which English is, as commonly assumed, a language of neutrality and global communication, and to what extent it is, by contrast, a language laden with meanings and still weighed down with colonial discourses that have come to adhere to it. Travel writing, newspaper articles and popular books on English, are all referred to, as well as personal experiences and interviews with learners of English in India, Malaysia, China and Australia. Pennycook concludes by appealing to postcolonial writing, to create a politics of opposition and dislodge the discourses of colonialism from English.

This book offers a diverse range of essays on the state of current research, knowledge, and global political action and debate on cultural imperialism.

This book presents new scholarship on the subject of imperial expansion through colonization and globalization from a variety of postcolonial perspectives. The chapters in this volume, grouped in three sections, scrutinize imperial expansion within the context of national identities and imageries-deconstructing the modernist and utopian idea of a nation as a site of homogeneity, and reviewing the importance of the concept in the different phases of colonization. Hence the first section, entitled Neo-Imperial Traces or Premonitions in Modernism. The postclassical phase of colonialism is examined through the representation of the colonized and the once-colonized. Applying postcolonial theories and often moving beyond them, scholars scrutinize such textual and filmic representations as exemplified in Asia. These make up section 2, Interference of the Imperial Tradition in Asia, which allows for the rearticulations of cultural heritage in the region within the different and ever-renewed schemes of imperial expansion Section 3, Reformulations of the Imperial Project, seeks to explore the questions surrounding inclusion in, and exclusion from, the realm of power as the founding principle of empire, suggesting that they are discursive and deliberate. Postcolonial societies inherit the trauma of colonialism that subjected people to a cultural displacement that is exacerbated by renewed efforts of imperial Influence through globalization. Book jacket.

Over the last 50 years, language policy has developed into a major discipline, drawing on research and practice in many nations and at many levels. This is the first Handbook to deal with language policy as a whole and is a complete 'state-of-the-field' survey, covering language practices, beliefs about language varieties, and methods and agencies for language management. It provides a historical background which traces the development of classical language planning, describes activities associated with indigenous and endangered languages, and contains chapters on imperialism, colonialism, effects of migration and globalization, and educational policy. It also evaluates language management agencies, analyzes language activism and looks at language cultivation (including reform of writing systems, orthography and modernized terminology). The definitive guide to the subject, it will be welcomed by students, researchers and language professionals in linguistics, education and politics.