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Globalizing the Research Imagination through Building South-North Dialogues: A Southern Perspective on the Politics of Cultural Globalization in English Language Use

Koo Yew Lie, National University of Malaysia


According to Professor Coleman in his remarks on the purpose of our meeting, the challenge for academic research, as Appadurai concludes, is to make research "more consequential" (Appadurai 2000, 3) and relevant for those seeking to understand globalization and to contest some of its most nefarious effects. My view is that North-South dialogues should perhaps, include discussions on what has been unproblematically assumed to be the requirements of language and literacy in global environments in terms of taken for granted forms and ways of knowing, learning, and teaching through English. In this paper, my interest lies in in the situated ways of knowing of multilingual students vis-à-vis the cultural hegemony of Standard Academic English in global knowledge production. Given my particular interest in language studies and the role of language in cultural politics, I will situate the paper in terms of the politics of cultural globalization focusing on the role of the English language in knowledge production and evaluation in Higher Education (HE). Specifically, I am examining the role of local forms of English in relation to Standard English in the knowledge production process in educational institutions and global communities.

Globalization scholars like Stiglitz (2006, 6) highlight the importance of the international flow of ideas and knowledge, the closer economic integration of countries through the increased flow of goods, services, capital, and labour, and the cross-border movement of people. However, the impact of globalization is argued to be uneven and complex with expected benefits, costs, and consequences. Present day trends towards a more global world have involved productive forces of civil society which can ameliorate material and symbolic violence towards marginalized communities. At the same time, globalization is also viewed as a force that can result in uncivil costs and consequences.

This paper contests the dominant thinking around the use of the Inner Circle native speaker (those from Anglophone countries who speak English as their mother-tongue) as the Global Gold Standard in the construction and the representation of ideas. The paper advocates the recognition in policy and practice of the situated Englishes of the South for knowledge production. Such recognition complements English as Lingua Franca (ELF) arguments (Canagarajah 2006; Seidlhofer 2007). Situated Englishes of the South are socio-historically and culturally formed in the realities of the multilingual speakers of the South (Koo 2008a). A walking recognition of this is yet to be seen in the practices of the North and the South. For example, the widely recognized International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test for speakers of other languages continues to privilege the academic norms of the native speakers of the North as entry benchmarks for undergraduates from the South to universities of the North and South. This policy and practice perpetuate the continued symbolic violence to speakers of the South as producers of knowledge in and through their situated Englishes. In this discussion, I will use the narratives of Malaysian English speakers as a point of entry into the discussion, providing illustrations from the ground of realities of communication on the stage where the global-local intersects and ruptures.

Situated where I am in the South but educated for some years in the North, I have become increasingly committed to the work of my role as mediator of cultural meanings (especially as one who is multilingual) at the complex and contested site of knowledge production. I see this role increasingly as making visible the invisible, under-represented and often less valued knowledge of the multilingual, in terms of the representation of vernacular knowledge through the use of English as Lingua Franca in HE.

Cultural Politics of Meaning-Making: Negotiating Complex Cultural Diversity and Difference in the South

One view of culture is that it is concerned with the production, exchange, distribution, and reproduction of meaning consciousness (O'Sullivan et al.1994). As a multilingual applied linguist situated in the South I am especially concerned with the determination and determining aspects of the production of meaning consciousness and the values and recognition attached to these meanings. In this regard, unthinking reproduction of knowledge reproduces social power inequalities and denies the Southern subaltern access to networks of knowledge production and access to social capital which are referenced to Northern academic standards without considering the histories and contexts of Southern students. To what extent, and in what forms and ways, are multicultural identities marked or made invisible, externally imposed, assumed, or negotiated in the context of global diversity and difference? How are multilingual people positioned by the hegemony of standard English Language in global academic spaces characterized by internationalization discourses (Knight 2003; 2008) and the pursuit of ranking by universities (Marginson 2008), the dominance of Standard English in the empire of English Language Teaching, and the continued marginalization and death of less powerful oral languages and with them important minority vernacular knowledge in learning and teaching.

I am particularly concerned by the human consequences of homogenized identities imposed directly or indirectly on students situated in the South and caused by the extreme asocial neo-liberal global market model underpinned by values privileging "isolated, satisfaction-seeking, strategizing individuals" (Othman and Kessler 2001, 132). They argue,

to make the most and get the best out of globalization, or just to avoid the worst, we will have to find ways and identify the strategic points to inject our own preferred human content into globalization processes: to contest and socialize the asocial neoliberal capitalistic vision which underpins today's dominant forms of globalization; and to place a human imprint upon and thereby inflect in humanly sensitive ways the powerful forces which all too often embody a debasing preference for the administration of things over the vital integrity of human life (Othman and Kessler 2001, 134).

The Role of Language in Knowledge Production in Multilingual Communities

Knowledge has come to be identified as the most vital resource of contemporary societies, and many nations and communities have worked to improve their capacity for knowledge creation and application. In this regard, language is one of the central communication channels for knowledge production, communicating social reality, and indexing participants' socio-cultural beliefs, values, and norms in diverse cultural contexts. The use of particular linguistic codes is intensely meaningful as they reveal particular institutional, social roles, relationships, institutions, practices, and ideologies.

In this paper, I look at cultural globalization in terms of the norms and values underpinning knowledge production by focusing on the role of language. I view language as one of the central modes of meaning-making of the agents and actors in HE. I look at the situated language codes of multilingual learners and teachers in relation to normative Standard Academic English. There is a need to "see through" and work with the politics of recognition. I see the need to examine the diverse cultures meeting at the intersection of English language use in terms of the contestations of multiple values and with it the politics of recognition for particular forms of being, of learning, and ways of knowing. Embedded in any valuation of knowledge are often tacit and assumed singular and/or multiple norms of knowledge production and interpretation which are privileged. For example, academic literacy is intimately connected to the communicative genres and routines of social groups and institutions. Language and literacy practices are built on the epistemological assumptions of the areas and disciplines especially benchmarked to Northern standards and requirements. According to Bartholomae (1986) as cited in Hyland (2007, 9):

Every time a student sits down to write for us, he has to invent the university for the occasion — invent the university, that is or a branch of it, like history, anthropology or economics or English. He has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding and arguing that define the discourse of our community.

The critical question for multilingual contexts is how might an inclusive English-ization be promoted which supports learners who are multilingual in terms of Global Standards of Academic English which are negotiated between Northern and Southern values and norms? How do educational providers, and cultural intermediaries like policy-makers and gatekeepers engage with cultural and linguistic diversity to contest what may be seen to be the homogenizing effects of neo-liberal globalization through privileging a homogenizing academic English?

The Cultural Politics of English as a Global Language and Its Impact on Local Languages and Southern Ways of Knowing in Internationlization of Higher Education

The impact of globalization is seen to be uneven and complex with expected ruptures and disjunctures (Appadurai 1996). In my view, because of these ruptures and disjunctures, new varieties of English will inevitably be created as people from various cultural and linguistic trajectories and experiences come into close contact, either face to face or digitally. The question given this complex scenario of engagement across diverse cultures is, What would be the dominant value system in HE as far as English is concerned? Would it continue to reproduce the old models of fixed standard language use or accept the inevitable emergent new varieties of language use, as expressions of new ways of creating knowledge as expressed in English as a Lingua Franca?

Sumit Mandal (2000) in reconsidering the reality of cultural globalization of the English language in Malaysia argues that "[t]he language's expansion is a salient indication of the impact of globalization in the country, and brings with it disruptions in cultural identities that shed light on a principal question in the literature on globalization" (2000, 102). He sees English language use as a site for "renewed explorations of Malaysia's history, society and cultural identity" (2000, 102). He suggests that the emergence of distinctive variants in English provides both opportunities and challenges to cultural identity and social values, with "more than just adverse consequences." He argues that "[t]he disruptions created by ascendancy of English in Malaysia may serve as sites of contestation that empower those in the peripheries of cultural globalization" (2000, 103). The question one would raise would be the costs and consequences of contestation for the subaltern? Would they reproduce further inequities or marginalization?

Morshidi Sirat (2006), a Malaysian scholar who is interested in globalization issues especially in the context of Higher Education views internationalization in HE as an important aspect of globalization. He defines such internationalization as "a perspective, activity or program, which introduces or integrates an international or intercultural/global outlook into the major functions of a university." This relates to the broader question around the cultural aspects of globalization. Specifically, it raises the question of how internationalization deals with the intersection of the international and the local. It poses questions on whether internationalization increases homogenization with accommodation towards Northern benchmarks or provides opportunities for heterogenization with cultural diversity as a norm.

Similarly, Knight (2008) asks questions as to whether internationalization in HE leads to heterogenization of curricula, the teaching/learning process, research, extracurricular activities, and academic mobility. She suggests that the complexities involved in working in the field of internationalization require additional sets of knowledge, attitudes, skills, and understandings about the international/intercultural/global dimension of HE. How are these competencies developed and recognized for those academics, administrators, and policy-makers working for the internationalization of HE (Knight 2008, 18)? Most poignantly, she asks (Knight 2008, 19) "Is there a subtle but discernible shift away from the social and cultural rationales towards the economic and commercial aspects of globalization?"

Due to the ascendancy of marketplace globalization, English in HE has become a high stakes cultural commodity, and is likely to bring, for some, greater chances of success in education, employability, social mobility, and migration opportunity. At the same time, globalization has been viewed as endangering minority languages and cultures. English is valued as high stakes cultural capital by actors and agents involved in neo-liberal economies and in global HE with the push for internationalization and the pursuit of world ranking (Marginson 2006).

In order to gain access to powerful communities of practice which in turn provide socio-economic and cultural mobility, a person needs to acquire or possess cultural capital (Grenfell 2004). This is defined by Grenfell in terms of the signifiers of social class. Social capital is defined here in terms of habitus (behaviour, practices, accents, attitudes) associated with artifacts such as books or paper qualifications which are closely related to prestigious institutions (e.g., university, workplace, and professional bodies). This paper examines the concerns around the valuing of English and its varieties in terms of cultural capital as related to questions of access and equity in institutional and organizational networks involving communities, nationally and internationally.

The English as ELF Argument

With globalization, English has become the global language for academic interaction of learners and academics in contact situations. Enhancing access and equity in HE would have to consider greater political, social, and educational tolerance for nativized varieties of English such as those represented in the generic term English as Lingua Franca (Seidlhofer 2007; Canagarajah 2006). First, this perspective would prevent the marginalization of the speech communities they represent within a broader understanding of the contexts within which these varieties have emerged. Secondly, it allows for knowledge making in international education to happen through English as a lingua franca for academic learning without labeling users of "non-native" varieties of English as problematic users. This is an important point as a constant striving after uncontextualized, exo-normative "native" varieties of English can cut out the voices and communication of non-mother tongue speakers of English. However, the acceptance of ELF in academic communication between the North and the South and in the South and North means that the ways of being and the local/indigenous/vernacular interaction patterns of multilingual communicators embedded and constructed in English discursively, in spoken, written, or multimedia texts, affirm the Southern context and histories.

Linguistic engagements in multilingual/cultural contexts are always subject to unequal relations of power. English has become the standard code for academic interaction of learners and academics in international discourses. As academics and stakeholders in internationalization, how do we deal with the issue of English as the new lingua franca of the international academic community? First, there is the issue of how knowledge is created in and through English as a lingua franca. Secondly, how do we imagine English as a lingua franca in terms of standards and acceptable variations such as is presently coded in World Englishes (Kachru 1990)? In light of these variations, do we accept only normative standards and codes as set up by Anglo-centric bodies such as IELTS or Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)? How about the multiple norms of interactions represented in ELF as heterogenous cultural forms of situated global Englishes, an inevitable variety given the histories of contact between the North and South?

ELF and Multilingual Students as a Matter of Enhancing Access and Equity in Higher Education

The arguments for ELF attempt to represent the various conflicts and contradictions faced by multilingual students in HE as they confront the hegemonic "standards" of English considered acceptable. Canagarajah (1999, 119) takes the position of English as Lingua Franca arguing for a policy and pedagogic orientation towards the reality of English as a heterogeneous language with a "plural grammatical system and norms, accommodating the expression of diverse local values and identities." He argues for developing paradigms based on heterogeneity in applied linguistics to accommodate diversity in successful communication employing English as a global contact language. He further argues that multilingual speakers in fact, adopt situated strategies to negotiate intelligibility with multiple norms and diverse systems (Canagarajah 1999, 119). He says, "[a]s a result, scholars are now moving to alternate models of global English that chart the relationship between communities in more fluid and egalitarian terms. Scholars like Canagarajah adopt the position that English is a heterogeneous language with multiple norms and diverse systems. While all national varieties will be local, speakers will develop new norms for international communication. Canagarajah (2006, 119) cites Crystal (2004) who proposes the notion of English as "a family of languages" (Crystal 2004, 49), predicting that "it may not be many years before an international standard will be the starting point, with British, American, and other varieties all seen as optional localizations" (Crystal 2004, 40) contributing to standards that would be "common to all communities." "The pidgin-like varieties of English," he adds, "that we find in much of the ELF research discussed above need to be taken seriously. English as lingua franca research challenges the dominant disciplinary constructs based on homogeneity — i.e., homogeneous grammatical system, homogeneous speech community, and homogeneous competence. What we find is a heterogeneous global English speech community, with a heterogeneous English, and different modes of competence. Despite this heterogeneity, the speakers across national borders achieve effective communication. What helps them are sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and discourse strategies of negotiation" (Canagarajah 1999, 119). For example, code-switching of a multilingual person expresses plural participant positions and meaning-making. Code-switching for multilinguals is often frequent, intra-sentential, and unmarked in intra-group peer interactions, an expression of plural identities for individuals who live simultaneously in multiple social and linguistic worlds. It is particularly significant in terms of its functions and values within multilingual societies and the tensions faced by code-switchers.

The wider acceptance of variations of ELF should be advocated both for policy and practice to provide greater access and equity in HE due to the inevitable pluralism of English. The great variety of sociolinguistic contexts and divergences where ELF is used displays hidden multi-societal and multicultural identities from its "acculturation in new sociolinguistic ecologies" (Kachru 1965, Strevens 1992 as cited in Bhatt 2001, 528). The crucial point to be highlighted here is that whatever is "hidden" needs to be made visible so that the social and educational inequities that are likely to occur through such language use is confronted and negotiated in education and in society. Pluriliteracy is an attempt to work through such "invisibility."

The Cultural Realities of Knowledge Production: Multilingual Students at the Intersections of Language(s) and Diverse Ways of Knowing — Pluriliteracy as an Analytic Concept

I conceptualize pluriliteracy as the negotiation of the cultural and linguistic complexities, including transitions between texts and contexts, that arise at the intersections of media, economy, information, and technology from the impact of globalization. Pluriliteracy views knowledge as discursive, situationally pluralistic, and embedded in the politics of social, economic, and political power. Power is embedded through such institutions and machinery as bureaucracy, education, political party, and market-place economics. Pluralistic pedagogy involves critical dialogues constructed around pedagogic tasks built on critical knowledge, and awareness of the value of vernacular knowledge(s). This critical pluralist pedagogy is framed in terms of the structural positioning and discursive interactions of meaning-makers with the socio-political, economic, and cultural structures in the global landscape and dominant national discourses on development.

As a postmodern-situated researcher in the 21st century, the challenge for me has been to build pluriliteracy as an emic concept, from the webs of words, images, noise-sounds, feelings, and meanings that come from the complex cultural ecology of meaning-makers. Vernacular knowledge is multi-coloured, multi-spiritual, multi-ethnic, multi-oriented, multi-discursive, multi-designed or of fractured designs, consists of fractured modalities intersecting with global knowledge, and is made through the multiple codes, styles, and varieties of meaning-makers situated in various subjectivities and ways of being. Cultural production of meaning is inseparable from linguistic production in contexts of civilizational history, post-colonial nation-state, and empire.

Since globalization reconfigures geographical and cultural space through information and communication technologies a multilingual meaning-maker has to be pluriliterate. She/he has to inhabit simultaneous, multiple cultural spaces. Educationists are challenged now with the task of producing learners who are multiliterate and multi-modal (Cope and Kalantzis 1997; 2000). Global cultural flows of people, money, ideas, technology, and media challenge and destabilize the imagining of culturally bounded communities. Multilingual students are not simply stepping into pre-established fixed identities and challenging the constructs through which national and ethnic communities are collectively imagined. Within a pluriliteracy perspective, learners are not easily classified as being in one essentialized ethnic group which may be portrayed in some nation-state constructions of ethnicity. Instead, pluriliteracy sees the meaning-makers as inhabiting diversity in several intersecting geographic, social, and imaginary spaces. Pluralistic pedagogy involving reflexive dialogues, narratives constructed around pedagogic tasks built on critical knowledge, and conscientization of vernacular knowledge(s). This reflexive pluralist pedagogy is framed in terms of the positioning and discursive interactions of students with socio-political, economic, and cultural structures globally and nationally.

I hope through such a conceptualization of pluriliteracy to provide partial glimpses of the challenges, tensions, and contradictions faced by multilinguals in negotiating diversity in various environments including HE. The difficulty for multilinguals is compounded by the fact that knowledge production in the intersections of various languages and cultures involves the need to mark linguistic and cultural transitions between their cultural worlds and that of the language benchmarks uncritically and normatively established in terms of Northern experiences and realities (due to its history and privileged access to resources and symbolic capital). I hope, through pluriliteracy, as a descriptive perspective, to advocate an ELF position that seeks to unpack the hegemony of monolithic academic value systems which privilege homogenous ways of knowing in and through homogenous standards of academic English, still promulgated widely through IELTS and TOEFL examinations used to identify multilingual students in terms of their entry levels into Northern and Southern universities, and also by academic publications in the North.

Cultural Globalization and the Challenge to Cultural and Linguistic Autonomy in terms of a Broadened Perspective on Literacy as Socio-cultural and Ideological Practice

The most pressing questions concerning globalization in Malaysia involve the negative aspects of cultural globalization in terms of homogenizing cultures through unproblematized "benchmarks" which are excessively oriented towards economic and measurable gains from internationalization of HE. Contestation for equity and access in HE can be done through building advocacy and research on understanding of the forms and functions of Global English, and by designing sustainable policies and practices in teaching and learning which are reflexive and transformative. Such endeavours would benefit from North-South collaborative research.

In terms of North-South dialogues, there is the need for longitudinal and qualitative research into the policies and practices of language and cultural literacy so that diverse and different cultural forms and genres are valued. Collaborative North-South research on critical pedagogy (Freire 1970). This is an intercultural and relational perspective allowing for situated understanding of the history, contexts of plural identity formation, and the use of meaningful literacy practices. Research into multi-language and intercultural mediations between the diverse languages of communication in terms of different language varieties and genres is required to help multilingual students gain access to networks of work and the production of knowledge characteristic of global environments which, arguably, provide entry for productive diversity (Cope and Kalantzis 2000) and sustain bio-linguistic diversity (Singh and Scanlon 2003).

Understanding Forms and Functions of Global Englishes for Sustainable Policy and Practices in Research, Teaching, and Learning — Towards Prospective North-South Research: Sustainable Literacy in Multilingual Contexts

What are the most pressing questions relating to sustainable globalization and language as human capital? A contribution to North-South dialogues would consider how vernacular languages are inevitably imprinted onto English as a global language, a "common" functional language for speakers of other languages. Global English constitutes a language, a form through which "global" communication is expedited and in which knowledge is created. Working with this assumption, North-South collaborative research might map out the language and multi-modal strategies of expert communicators in ELF. It might examine how multilingual experts and professionals communicate in global environments to imprint their knowledge onto English Language conjointly.

Research into Pluriliteracy in Teaching and Learning: Sustaining Multilingual Identities and Creation of Hybrid Text

This section presents two case studies of multilingual students in HE from Malaysia as a point of entry into the issues surrounding meaning-making in ELF.

Case Study 1

Su is a Malaysian meaning-maker who is situated at the intersections of multilingualism, empire English Language Teaching, and global discourses of internationalization in HE.

Su is trilingual in Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, and English. She comes from a working-class family in a small town in the south of Peninsular Malaysia. Her proficiencies in three languages provide potential cultural resources to design her meanings. This is from her narrative around her various multilingual identities and her meaning-making in English:

I used to be fascinated by crop cycles and "Ba Gua," although I was not really expert in these two areas. ... I like the concept of combination of Western and Eastern elements. I guess one thing I can learn from being hybridized is that I can always bring in and combine and assimilate different cultural elements to come out with something new. I guess this is the way I learn to celebrate my hybridity. (Only in blogs not in formal texts)
I don't know how, never getting there, wanting to speak like the lawyers in "The Practice" [popular US TV program].
My mind is not solely operated in English/Mandarin/Cantonese/Hakka. In fact, my mind is disorganized most of the times. There are images and pictures of the future, pictures of "possibilities."
An outsider in facing the reality of globalization, subjugated internally by the hybrid language that I speak (I am neither here or there) and the diverse cultural knowledge surrounded me (I have everything but yet I have none).

The narratives above illustrate the challenges, conflicts, and contradictions as she articulates the pressure from globalizing discourses on norms of the academy and the knowledge economy. Su voices her confusion in the midst of coping with the global flow of information, and nation-state discourse which she views as marginalizing her in terms of her non-bumiputera (non-native) status vis-à-vis the indigenous ethnic group.

Multilingual students such as Su (who is the key subject here), situated in diverse ethnolinguistic contexts, inevitably imprint onto the English language code the histories and experience of their learning and use of various other language codes and the cultural scripts embedded in those codes and varieties. The constant negotiation of difference through learning and using English in multilingual contexts results in a particular hybrid linguistic system which is viewed as having "fissures." Multilingual learners like Su constantly question themselves as to the commodity value of their hybrid communication. They feel ambivalent, perceiving that they stand apart from a group and are not fully a part of the community of native-speakers. They find difficulty in accepting this hybrid as a proper "standard" when they compare it to what they see to be highly regulated "standard" academic English (found in academic journals and reference books from publishers like Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press). Their multilingual lecturers and assessors in the Global South may operate an open, fluid academic English variety which recognizes the situated formation of an English academic variety forged in multilingual contexts, one which embeds plural and intersecting codes, varieties, and cultures of knowing and learning. These assessors themselves may have learned a hybrid Malaysian English in multilingual literacy contexts. For high achievers like Su who value social and professional mobility, and aspire to be part of international networks — for example by being part of the transnational academic community or by working for global companies like Dell — think that local gatekeepers' assessments may not reflect the "true" ceiling of student English communicative proficiency in relation to global standards. In other words, they regard their literacy practices in Malaysian English with ambivalence, as not guaranteeing global investment returns (Norton Pierce 1995) in terms of world recognition, although it may be a standard acceptable nationally. Although Su has obtained a first class degree in English language studies at the National University of Malaysia, she is ambivalent about her prospects in global workplaces. Su positions herself and the Malaysian English that she has acquired in this subaltern way.

However, in the second narrative below, she is experimenting creatively with her bilingual facility in Mandarin and English to create a hybrid text. However, this she says is for fun and cannot be serious for creating symbolic capital which is valued by the academy and the marketplace of employment. Viewed from a pluriliteracy perspective, I would see this act as a bilingual translation where the trilingual meaning-maker draws on her two languages (instead of her three strong literacies in Bahasa Malaysia, English ,and Mandarin) and has attempted to merge her various cultural worlds into that of the text and reshape a hybrid world, bringing it to birth, transforming it through the act of interpretation and/or act of production, of design.

A flower I would not possess, a flower blossoms in my empty dreams, sans chasing, sans resisting

When the quotation is translated into English, the main subject of the Chinese version is the person who writes this quotation, the ("I") has been lowered down to a secondary position of the whole expression. The flower becomes the focus. I personally think that the flower is more significant compared to the persona. I like to emphasize the flower, an external factor, external element that detaches from the persona.
This line best describes my view about relationship. Since I can't have it, I do not force myself to forget about it. Indeed, I have it in my dreams. It comes and goes naturally, without forces of manmade. I need not chasing for it, and I need not rejecting it either. What philosophy is that? Where does it come from? Western or Eastern? I think when I talk about spiritual beliefs and perceptions, I look for its essence instead of bothering whether it is a Western or Eastern thing. Spiritual is universal for me.

Case Study 2

Loong is from a working-class family in a small town in Malaysia. His parents are factory workers. Loong is academically trilingual in Malay language, English, and Mandarin and has oral literacy in a number of Chinese dialects. English for him is unproblematized as the most important. It is a "language of power" for him. He believes that by communicating in "proper standard English" and through sheer hard work, he will eventually find an international job outside Malaysia. Shirley Lim is his icon as she is an "internationally recognized" Malaysian. In his academic interaction in a non-formal environment, he communicates in three languages with his interlocutor who is also trilingual.

L: Wen ti shi apakah yang berlaku (the point is what is happening now) Ni dong ma (do you understand?) Code-mixing in Mandarin and Malay (FRAMING THE PROBLEM )
S: Bu yong jin (don't worry); Bu yong jin (don't worry); Ni kan (is this what we are trying to get at?) L: (reads the question) Nyatakan apakah berlaku apabila kopi dibekukan dan kemudian di letakkan dalam bekas tertutup yang mempunyai tekanan paling rendah Oh zhe yang zi ha. Ok (Oh, in this case, ok) Mandarin followed by Malay-Mandarin-English "OK" (QUESTIONING)
S: Bu yao yong tekanan de concept qu jie shi, yong…? We do not use the concept of pressure to explain the problem, what concept should we use…) tenaga?Mixed code Mandarin-Malay (CLARIFYING)

This literacy exchange involves Loong's negotiations to complete an academic task in an informal learning environment. The two interlocutors exemplify the code-switching of speakers who communicate in three epistemic languages into which they have been schooled. The particular form, pattern, and meanings of code-switching here shows his multiple/intersecting affiliations across/within speech communities. It is a good example of the situated literacy practices of trilingual meaning-makers as it illustrates the history of language and education policy in Malaysia. Mandarin, the academic literacy for the meaning-makers here a language they use for thinking (they were socialized into it when they were in primary schools), is part of the nation's accommodation to linguistic diversity. At the same time, Malay language and English, being the official language for academic life in HE, is also used in this academic but informal literacy event.

Loong is able to move from code-switching in speech to written genres and has just finished writing a good Masters thesis. From a working-class family, he is justifiably proud that he has "mastered" three linguistic codes (Mandarin, Malay language, English) which on one level helps him straddle the international, national, class, and ethnic divides. However, he feels that he is still denied access to a good job in education in Malaysia as he lacks "connections" with powerful people and cultural capital. He does not have bamboo networks with the Chinese diaspora. Within the nation, although a have-not, he says, he is not enjoying the privileges of a "have-not," a positioning which he contests by planning to go overseas and by working very hard to excel in English and his studies.

It must be noted that Loong feels he has mastered the genres of his field and that it is not adequate only to have mastery of English as a medium of communication. He strongly feels that Malaysian English should be based on International standards and not defined only in terms of local Malaysian standards. He particularly disparages the strong influence of vernacular languages in basilectal and mesolectal varieties of English as it "shows a lack of discipline." My own comment is that, in part due to his own and others positioning of himself as a "have not," he depends on linguistic and symbolic capital from Standard English to provide him access to power and social prestige.

In a multilingual pedagogic context, the use of Malaysian English and code-switching are indicators of complex negotiation of pluralist, in-between and in- and out-group identities. The signaling of particular identities are, of course, integrally related to the values attached to such identities in the larger situational and immediate pragmatic context and the recognition conferred by gatekeepers to such communities of practice. As in any literacy event, literacy participants are not only confronted with choice of language but with choice of variety of a language code (the standard or non-standard variety), which require the signaling of simultaneous and composite norms of production and reception, genres, and which register them as simultaneous members of several communities of practice. The complexity that someone like Loong, a meaning-maker from the South faces, may not be visible to cultural outsiders.

Implications for Building North-South Dialogues

There is a need to form dialogic global academic communities. Hegemonic gatekeeping roles and rules and expectations of English are still norm-referenced to first world English and those from the South who have mastered these forms of English. By way of example, a performative variety of Chinese English was rejected by editorial committee members of a journal that I edit. What are the difficult choices and risks in accepting content which are not written in "standard" English — including Southern variations to Northern English? There is the need for collaborative North-South research that will scale up the local to the global in perspective and methodology through a situated and comparative ethnographic macro and micro discourse analysis of English language literacy practices within and across sites in the North and South. In the past, questions of intelligibility have privileged the gatekeepers; questions are now raised around interpretability and the mutual and context-driven nature of communication that involves concessions from both parties.

Obstacles Faced by Globalization Studies Researchers in My Country

The challenge for academic research, Appadurai concludes, is to make research "more consequential" (2000, 3) and relevant for those seeking to understand globalization and to contest some of its most nefarious effects. North-South research collaboration is needed on the culturally minoritized or disadvantaged, those who are voiceless, the economic and cultural subalterns who occupy the third space of meaning. There is need for cross-national research to explore and compare the politics of cultural homogenization at the grassroots level and not merely in terms of policy documents, such as those related to cultural diversity in schooling and HE to transform cultural hegemony within the nation-state and within the global state.

Little or inadequate funding is a serious challenge for globalization research. At the same time, research priorities which are narrowly defined by development agendas can sometimes limit arts- and humanities-based research. Open scholarship may be made possible through cross-national research collaboration. Research methodology requiring long-term ethnographic and qualitative discourse analysis may not sit happily in dominant globalizing discourses and dominant nation-state constructions of education could be addressed by cross-national collaboration.

Until 2002, university researchers in Malaysia were given limited funding, especially those researching in the arts and those who are not in institutional positions. Due to the privileged location of the sciences, most funds go there. Qualitative research is subject to scrutiny by quantitative and positivistic gatekeepers in education and the methodology tends to be marginalized, seen as merely case-studies and narrative-based inquiries which are regarded as "low impact" and "non-generalizable." North-South research efforts could perhaps help to counterbalance the uneven funding situation.

Concluding Remarks

Our South-North dialogue is an important one thanks to the sponsors and Professor Coleman, the catalyst behind it. For research to be consequential, the cultural impact of globalization should be researched. This would enhance the redistribution of social justice, equity, and access especially for the minoritized and the subaltern, both in the South and in the North.

In this South-North dialogue, I am advocating a new way of looking at ways of knowing through multi-languages like varieties of English and diverse forms of knowledge (like narratives) to provide access and equity for multilinguals in the South. Long-term qualitative research including research into everyday and popular modes of meaning-making (together with Freirian (1970) reflexive methodology) which are not rigorously academic or mainstream may help disrupt dominant discourses and empower the marginalized.

Advocating Methodology that is Pluralist and Multilingual

In applied linguistics and language education, the central point of reference is still the North. This paper advocates the recognition in philosophy, policy, and practice of the literacy practices of the South. Subjectivity is constructed within multiple (and contradictory) relations that are situated in the intersections of the local-global. In postmodern work, the core foundations of truth are challenged, and the researcher labours with fragments of experiences which resonate with others. It uses criteria of veridicality, emotional resonance (Riessman 2007; Clandinin and Connelly 2006). Such research does not claim to adequately solve the problems of truth or subjectivity. Such research lives in the ambiguity, the interstices of things, in the tensions of confusion and possibility, and accepts the "messiness of making meanings." This is a methodology which seeks to interrogate mediated meanings within the space of theory as lived through experience-observations-ways of being/doing/seeing/valuing (Gee 1996). In this regard, indigenous ways of knowing through oral tradition, narratives, and semiotic/material culture are considered alongside ways of knowing through printed and digital media.

Through response data and by bringing the outside into the process — for example, by including participants in the interpretation-production of knowledge process — we produce knowledge and "findings" which resonate with participants, conjointly. In this methodology, the language that I use is subject to confirmation by participants and is subject to rethinking as to what counts as data, rethinking what would form the basis of my knowledge and that of my participants. Different types of data might produce different knowledge in qualitative research about education.

The English as Lingua Franca student in HE in the South faces enormous challenges around the choice, learning, and use of a number of language codes as well as varieties within these language codes. It is a complex issue arising from multilingual contexts and involving multiliteracy practices (Martin-Jones and Jones 2000) where hybridity, although celebrated by World English and multilingualism scholars as a resource, is viewed as interlanguages or sub-standard fossilized language by empire English Language Teaching frameworks which continue to dominate global consciousness and English language teaching practices including assessment practices (Pennycook 2000).

The privileging of Inner Circle English is a hegemonic cultural consciousness which is often uncritically reproduced as intrinsically natural and centrally normative. In this process other Englishes are hierarchically perceived as less important, deviations from the "standard," based upon the hegemony created by economic systems, media, knowledge systems, publications, and ideologies of powerful interests with a long history of access to resources. The prevalent perception in what may be perceived as a hierarchy of Englishes seems to be integrally tied to the global super political hegemony and economic markets of first world countries. It is also reproduced uncritically by the educational system in non-native Southern contexts where gatekeepers and policy-makers norm-reference standards and benchmarks, including those for university rankings, in terms of first world perspectives and practices. For social justice and access and equity for multilingual students from the South, there is however an urgent need to resist such unproblematized perceptions as have been dealt with by scholars like Pennycook (2000) within the cultural politics of English Language learning and teaching. Important questions of dignity and identities, together with the imminent fact of language and cultural loss, are at stake.

Despite claims that globalization might provide more opportunities for people who have English as a language of communication, it would seem that for some who are subaltern it has not provided access to dreamed for access and equity such as employment in "international jobs." The hegemony of media and benchmarking of Northern standards prevails. There are, of course, ruptures in terms of how English-ization has provided some opportunities for Su at least in terms of obtaining a degree in a Malaysian University. However, Su and people like her have not gained entry into the transnational league, for which she aspires entry into and sees to be the defining benchmark of a global graduate. Having working-class parents and lacking national and international connections, she has not yet experienced the level of mobility and success she desires. English-ization as viewed through the lens of World Englishes may increase the marginalization of those who are economically disadvantaged, those who are not linked to transnational networks of power, those transnational global elites, bureaucratic, academics, gatekeepers, publishing houses, and decision-makers (Sklair 2001). More fundamentally, English-ization as a sociological force needs to look at the variety and genres of English engaged by the transnational class in relation to networks of capitalist and knowledge production.

It would seem that for the multilingual subaltern in the Outer Circle or in the North, empire ELT ideology has imposed a seeming "reality"of English language learning and competency onto non-native speakers with the ideas of "ambilingualism, interlanguage and fossilization" (Bhatt 2001, 542). These constructs deny the ownership of English to non-native learners, confining them as "sub-standard" users of English (Bhatt 2001, 542). Bhatt calls for descriptive, pedagogic, and ideological frameworks that are "faithful to multilingualism and language variation." The studies of varieties of world Englishes from various contexts and cultural realities would therefore reflect "diverse linguistic, cultural, and ideological voices."

For inclusive policy and consequential practices, it seems important to work institutionally across the North-South divide to build and implement policies, assessments, and pedagogies that address questions of multilingualism, multiliteracy (Cope and Kalantzis 2000) and pluriliteracy (Koo 2008a; 2008b) including intercultural communication. Intercultural shifts between codes, varieties, and styles in English and vernacular languages in contexts have to be taught. This will certainly enhance the cultural value of the multilingual speaker who can shift between English varieties, styles, and other languages. Striking examples of cultural value attached to difference are found in creative industries especially in management, education, services, design, literature, and performative arts. Intercultural pedagogies which link the primary life worlds and intellectual resources of learners may be taught through consciousness-raising and entextualization (Blommaert 2005).

To contest the hegemonic effects of empire ELT and its negative consequences, HE policy and practice would have to engage in a reflexive consideration of how English-ization reorganizes global social relations and networks in systemically and socially inclusive ways. For redistributive social justice in HE and in communities, the roles of situated English and its varieties will have to be researched in relation to socio-cultural ecology. Minority communities such as students, being the less powerful, are often left to grapple with the social realities and consequences of differential values attached to their language codes and literacy practices.

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Glossary Terms