Making World English: Literature, Late Empire, and English Language Teaching, 1919–39

Description

Uncovering the role of literature, late imperialism, and the rise of new models of internationalism as integral to the invention of Global English, this book focuses on three key figures from the “Vocabulary Control Movement” - C.K. Ogden, Harold Palmer, and Michael West - who competed for market share for their respective language teaching systems - Basic English, the Palmer Method, and the New Method - through battles over word lists and teaching methods in the 1920s and 30s. Drawing on archives from the Carnegie Corporation and considering language teaching in eight global sites, this book analyzes how a series of conferences in New York and London resolved their conflicts and produced a consolidated, international standard form of English. As a postcolonial approach to the development of the field of English Language Teaching, it reveals how these language debates were proxy battles over an idealized global subject: an urban, secular, consumer moving seamlessly between the tribal and global, speaking both mother tongues and an international lingua franca, Global English. Featuring analysis of the primary texts of each of the three key figures in this book as well as close readings of their readers, which featured adaptations of well-known literary texts from writers like Poe, Dickens, Wordsworth, Milton and Wells, it recovers a neglected history of English as it was redefined as an international language through anti-colonial resistance in the peripheries and transatlantic power struggles in the metropole during the interwar period. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Part I Managing English 1 Pioneers and Heretics Introduction An Anglophone Empire? Harold Palmer: The Palmer Method and English in Japan Michael West: The New Method and English in India C. K. Ogden: Basic English and Artificial Languages Conclusion Notes 2 Word Lists, Vocabulary Control, and Colonialism Colonial Linguistics and Vocabulary Control Lemaire, Behaviorism, and Palmer’s Principles of Language Study Michael West: Bilingualism and Indirect Rule Ogden and Richards: Meaning of Meaning and Primitivism Word Lists: From Theory to Experiment Conclusion Notes 3 Readers, Literary Simplification, and the Global Subject Introduction Auxiliary Reading: West’s New Method Readers Basic Commodities: Carl and Anna and the Basic Way Reading Books Simple Improvements: Palmer’s Poe Test Notes Part II Making English 4 Ogden Agonistes: Basic’s Critics and the Problem of World English Introduction Faucett and the International Turn Aiken’s Englishes “Think Englishly”: West’s “English as a World Language” West and Swenson’s Critical Examination Ogden’s Counter-Offensive Conclusion Notes 5 The Carnegie Conference and Its Discontents The Title The Corporation The Conference The Record The Report Conclusion Notes 6 After Carnegie: Masking English Ogden’s Mask West’s Mask Notes Bibliography Index