The Local Life of a Global Language: English in China

Abstract

In this paper I aim to interrogate this privileging of ‘standard’ English in China. While accuracy and adherence to globally sanctioned forms of the language are the expressed ideals of students and teachers, nonetheless I will argue that these mask sophisticated processes of linguistic domestication in which an ostensibly foreign language is imbued with local semiotic value. Attention to the discourse pragmatics of Chinese English language teachers reveals how English itself is shaped by the communicative priorities of its Chinese learners, even as they imagine themselves to be speaking like idealized native speakers.