Based on recent class discussions and this week's readings, what do you think should be the major agenda for English studies, broadly, or English language /literacy/literary studies? Why?
Walkowitz makes it fairly easy to answer the above prompt. She asks, "Is the immigrant in immigrant fictions like the English in English studies? Does it name a kind of writer? A kind of book? A kind of writing? A kind of criticism" (534). My answer is the immigrant in immigrant literature is the subject of the literature of migration. English is a language. To make a simile of the two is speculation and beyond my ability to deem a worthy conjecture. English is a language that English majors study, analyze, critique and use as an attempt to convey meaning. You may answer yes to all of the author's questions, and likewise, you may find a way to answer yes to the following: Does English name a kind of writer? A kind of book? A kind of writing? A kind of criticism? But, an immigrant is a person and English in the sense that it is used is a language. There are probably millions of analogies that may be made by way of simile to English in English studies, but that never implies that English is something other than what is taught in English studies. Unless of course, you wish to change what the subject of English studies is. Pathos may be used to persuade some which seem to be the author's method, but the logos of her argument is faulty based on the words used. I'm reminded of John Timbur's essay where he played up the emotional senses of the reader by bringing the history into the present to suggest that introducing multilingualism policy will halt the trajectory of past wrongs and mediate ambivalence. If professors wish to teach something other than English why don't they apply for funding to do that rather than attempt to steal it through deception from an existing discipline?
My answer to this week's prompt is fairly straightforward. I enrolled in English studies to study English as in the Oxford English dictionary and nothing else. If I signed up to take French, I would expect to be taught French and nothing else. Anything less seems to me to be a draft into something else and a trick played on students by those with more power and influence. There is so much that I did not have a chance to learn because of academic policy. I confess that I feel somewhat cheated, but at least I know what to look for in the library.
The outcome of teaching multilingualism in the U.S. is unknown and it is quite possible that the outcome if pursued will be as Ricento quotes Williams in Language Policy about learning English rather than becoming proficient in local languages. In other words, multilingualism will prove "to be a barrier to education, rather than a bridge. Students [may] fail to acquire language capital, so human capital [may not be] accumulated, and no economic capital [may] accrue" (Ricento Language Policy 294). I advocate that students acquire English as language capital (I'm thinking English majors here) as a local language to ensure the accumulation of human capital and economic capital. After all that we've read it should be apparent that those that have command of the English language are those that potentially have the most opportunities. As a student, this is what I am after. I want that which will give me the greatest opportunities in my business endeavors. That is why I study English.
But, from taking world Englishes and the books we have read, especially, Language Policy & Political Economy and Globalization and Literature, I learned what I'm more interested in than English, which is the political and economic operations within the world and big data. People will always learn whatever language is needed to adapt to political and economic conditions even if it is C++, python, and java. Studying English to create policy is not something that is needed in the U.S. the way that I see it. Soon artificial intelligence language interpreters/translators will provide services to allow most to speak in their native languages. The market is too vast to go unnoticed by corporations, and the tech is nearly there. I'll admit I'm biased because of seeing all the social transformations made possible by tech.
So the first agenda for English studies should be to give students the ability to use the English to the best of their knowledge. We do not teach math majors poetry and neither should we teach students of English other languages or other kinds of literature. Although, the varieties of English and the transformations of English makes an excellent elective to English studies.
English should be taught to synthesize with the waves of changes that flow from the past into the future; looking away from the past, to concentrate on the now, always remaining on the cusp that breaks into the future. We pretty much all know history or can read about it if we choose to but can we position English to expand the bleeding edge at the front of technology or frame the legal structure of technological change with English rhetoric, and in that way help form the future of the world? Can rhetoric be taught that helps students to know how to frame what it means when our identities are being reduced to a microchip; such that they may argue against it?
What good is bringing back historical, cultural language-related topics when the actual world is transforming into something new at ever-increasing rates of speed? If students are to be successful, it will not be with academia in the future. Soon the printing of fiat currencies will reach its limits and academia will see a sudden and vast decline in employment. Ponzi financial schemes such as the student loan program only work for so long.
If students learn to be fluent in their rhetorical discourse during a time when anything and everything may be simulated as real or simulated to a point where the simulation is indiscernible from the real, then the reality will be the words of the best rhetorician since all else may be taken to be in doubt. The greatest advantage to any student of English is their ability to have a fluidity of situation and the command of the English language and not some intellectual's critical theory about identity politics or what is fair, the rights of the other or some such social justice cultural Marxist nonsense. Post-colonialism is not. We are being fleeced by the wealthy elite--a corporate hegemony--today more than at any time in the past.
We are all people, and all have the same rights unless academia can, with the help of cultural theorists, convince students that they are not equal. I see such abuse of critical theories (which have been used in the past to take down nations such as South Africa. This is only to say that critical has enormous power and not that such a thing is good or bad) being taught in colleges today at a time when people should be putting themselves to good use sharing and learning skills that will allow them to live better lives than their parents. Think of it, at this time when a general sense of doubt prevails, how valuable it is for someone with the command of the English language and the skills of a rhetor to lead us out of that doubt. When Fake News and propaganda and concentrations of wealth, think tanks, government policies all work to destabilize a person out of their money people need affirmation that their lives are meaningful. An English major should be able to provide that service to people and businesses and thereby impute meaning into the social.
Teach English majors to be the best rhetoricians: those that define, frame, and explain the new reality that every next day brings.
On a final note, I found the mention of "worldwide CNN broadcasts . . . in the former slave ports of Africa" so representative of the horrific ongoing colonialism (Walkowitz 540). But, the author instead of speaking to the ongoing colonialism, plays up Phillips's postcolonial consciousness. How is it that people are so preoccupied with the past when the worst is upon them?
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