In the conclusion to his book Multilingual Subjects, Daniel DeWispelare comments on the implications his thesis might have for the subject of English as it is conceptualized in academia today, as well as on the concept of English itself in the era of globalization. In doing so he takes to task the trend in populist tracts on global English that, in his words, “paint the global reach of anglophony [his preferred term for the diverse totality of English-speaking communities] in sublime terms,” and often fail to engage with, or ignore entirely, the historico-political forces which drove the spread of English across the globe—particularly those related to cultural imposition and coercion (225). He sees in this, and in the way such works stress the economic and efficiency benefits of “global English,” a similar neoliberal ideology that has infected higher education and is having particularly deleterious effects on humanities subjects. The argument he makes here, which operates as a coda for the aims of the book as a whole, is both convincing and welcome. Yet the way in which the book acts as analytic evidence for this argument raises interesting questions about the current state of the discipline of English Studies, and how it might best be (re)conceptualized to meaningfully address the many implications of the politics of both English and multilingualism today.
Multilingual Subjects explores the eighteenth-century development of discourses of English, and specifically how a standard language ideology took root in everyday cultural and literary texts based on a process of foregrounding a monolingual standard while marginalizing or stigmatizing other varieties along with the idea of multilingualism more generally. In documenting the historico-cultural processes that shaped this ideology, DeWispelare also highlights the important role that nonstandard English and multilingual practices played in eighteenth-century literary culture despite this ideological marginalization. He does this by reviewing an eclectic selection of texts and focusing on a wide range of speakers whose language practices diverged from standard norms.
A frequent approach in the analysis is to identify vignettes with metalinguistic discussion of language issues and from these weave together conclusions about emergent or prevailing ideologies concerning linguistic orthodoxy. One element somewhat lacking in this method, however, is a rigorous system for analyzing the ways in which language is conceptualized in the chosen textual extracts, and specifically the precise ways in which the discourses cited create the complex social and cultural associations which together make up the ideology of English. For example, in a discussion of the fugitive adverts that were a common genre of the period he cites the case of a sixteen-year-old apprentice who had deserted his post and was described in the bulletin seeking his arrest as someone who “speaks thick and mumbling, and has something of the Yorkshire accent” (44). Of this textual fragment DeWispelare writes that this “linguistic judgement directly follows the public declaration of the man's deserter status. The “mumbling fugitive's linguistic deficiencies dovetail with his failures as a sailor, and vice versa” (44). From a textual point of view there is nothing explicitly evaluative in the description of his accent, nor even to any great degree in the account of his style of speech. Does this qualify as a “linguistic judgement” on the part of advert therefore? The juxtaposition of linguistic features with various forms of criminal or anti-social behavior can certainly both indicate and reinforce a particular linguistic ideology, should it be found to reoccur regularly enough to constitute a pattern within the genre, but the oblique way in which it is expressed here—mere juxtaposition rather than explicit evaluation—is itself a notable element of the discourse. Over-interpreting such examples therefore runs the risk of threatening the overall thesis; while glossing over the subtleties of the discourse misses the fact that there is something of interest in the way linguistic difference is stigmatized by association rather than directly.
This is a small example of DeWispelare's analytic method, but it is symptomatic of his broader approach, which at times appears to allow the conclusions that he is drawing to outpace the detail of the chosen evidence. This is, perhaps, a consequence of the methodological differences between sociolinguistically inflected literary studies and literary studies-inflected sociolinguistics. The study of the multiplicity of English today, as well as the historical and cultural processes that have produced its current diverse and contested identities, has been rigorously pursued in the (sub)discipline of World Englishes. Then there is the related, although separate, avenue of inquiry around the politics of language that critiques the notion of discrete, named languages entirely and documents how English today is a construct founded to a great extent on the instruments of colonialism. In addition, theorizing around the topic of language ideologies has also been used to great advantage in studying the cultural politics of English. DeWispelare makes passing reference to some of this work in a footnote, but he otherwise avoids engaging with it. Yet there are a great many parallels between this work and the aims pursued in Multilingual Subjects, the only real distinction being, perhaps, the different disciplinary starting points they have.
All of which brings me back to the initial point I made with respect to DeWispelare's conclusion. There are compelling arguments for English studies to be conceptualized (and practiced) as an integrated combination of its three constituent parts: literary studies, language studies, and creative writing (see Ann Hewings et al., eds., Futures for English Studies: Teaching Language, Literature and Creative Writing in Higher Education, 2016]). The advantage of such a reconceptualization would mean that projects such as DeWispelare's would be able to draw with far greater ease from the parallel but complementary studies of the multiplex identity and cultural history of English that is pursued in language studies. It would also expose literary studies to alternative methodologies for the analysis of texts (and vice versa), opening up different perspectives. DeWispelare writes towards the end of his book that “Perhaps instead of a global future for English Studies we should desire a future in which teleologies of English become progressively more parochial and provincialized, when ‘English’ itself becomes parochial and provincialized” (232). The conclusion from reading this book is that, paradoxically, it is an inclusive view of English studies that not only embraces the rich diversity of the language and its political identities, but in doing so aims to bridge the parochialism of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, which would best help attain this.
