What specific language issues does your journal have?
Since we are the Journal of Asian Englishes (AEs), descended from the World Englishes paradigm of Braj B. Kachru, we are flexible about usage, and view Educated xyz English as our norm (e.g. “Educated Singapore English, Educated Philippine English”) rather than requiring writers to conform to American or British English norms. We are open to lexical, grammatical, stylistic and pragmatic creativity and possible positive influences from the writer's first language. We also view that English has a capacity to increase, as the amount explored by Native Speakers (NSs) is rather small. This concept is written about in the work of AEs founding editor, Nobuyuki Honna, such as in his book, English as a Multicultural Language. This is not, however, saying that “anything goes” as some people misinterpret World Englishes. There are of course grammatical and lexical conventions which must be followed, and academic terminology must be used in following with each academic subfield in our area, but we are more flexible in our view of language norms.
What challenges does working with non-native English-speaking authors create for your editorial team?
Since we do get the majority of our papers from Non-Native Speaking (NNS) authors, there are at times issues of authors not having sufficient command of the appropriate academic register for the field, or of not having adequate command of certain “core” grammatical forms (although the concept of “core” language is in itself fraught with potential pitfalls!), and in this case, we must make a decision whether to send an article back to the author, or to work with the author ourselves to improve the language, if it is felt that the content level and quality of the research are high. But in the case where we send an article back to an author for language reasons, we would not say “Please have your article edited by a native speaker”, but would rather say, “Please have your article edited by an educated speaker of English who is also knowledgeable in this field of research.” This idea of the Native Checker needs to be looked at critically.
What one change would make it easier for non-native English speakers to read, and write for, your journal?
One change? That is difficult. Perhaps letting them know that the quality of the language is not our main priority would help. Or in terms of to read the journal, we could consider to ask authors to reduce the amount of unnecessary “jargon” in their paper if it was not absolutely necessary. It is also important for us to ask our own staff editors to not “overcorrect” submissions when they do their own editing, and to have an eye open to possibly unconventional usages, which are nevertheless, not ungrammatical. As ‘English as a Lingua Franca’ scholar and all-around genius Henry Widdowson so aptly said, instead of calling divergences “errors” or “mistakes” or even “deviations”, something like “non-conformities” or “creative usages” would be more appropriate in today's global world where NNSs outnumber NSs of English by something like 3 or 4 to 1.
How is World English changing in the research context now that most researchers are NNSs?
Well, first of all, the question has deleted the plural “es” which is so important to the field of World Englishes. As Larry Smith often said, “There is no international English”: meaning that there is no one variety of English which we could call World English or Global English, etc. Braj Kachru also stressed that he used a lower case “w” when he wrote the term World Englishes, since the plural “Englishes” was more important to the concept that the word “world”. With that said, I would say in response to your question that there is a greater focus on the level of the content, the quality of the structure of the research and the command of the key concepts in the particular field, than on what we might call “native like usage”. There is more flexibility in looking at the way articles and prepositions are used, there is openness to a new creative form of “idiomatizing”. As one can see at conferences, scholars from Singapore or the Philippines, Nigeria or Germany may have a better command of academic English and be more articulate than scholars from the US or other inner circle contexts. But for written language, there still is a need for several sets of eyes to look at something, and give advice, but those extra pairs of eyes need not be NSs, but people who are expert in that field.
Do you think English will continue to be the lingua franca of research?
Well, some people say that with China's growing economic and geopolitical influence, Chinese will become an increasingly important language in the future, but this may talk many years, and the domain of academic research may take even longer. I think for the foreseeable future, in order to gain recognition for your ideas and research, you must publish in an English-language journal, even if you are also publishing locally in your own first language. In addition, by publishing in internationally recognized journals that are in English, you become part of the wider debate in your field, so not doing so would be to miss out on valuable input from fellow scholars around the world. This is why going to international conferences in your field, where most if not all papers are given in English, is also such a crucial step in the development of scholars, and also a shortcut to seeing who are the leading people in your field.
What has given you greatest satisfaction in your time editing AEs?
When I was first asked to write several conference reviews by founding editor Nobuyuki Honna, and then was subsequently asked by him to join the editorial staff, I felt great satisfaction that my work was recognized by him. He and managing editor Yuko Takeshita later asked me to be Reviews Editor, and that was also a challenging and rewarding role.
Becoming editor in chief was a daunting task, but I was excited by the fact that Lyndsey Dixon of T&F, upon visiting Professor Honna's office in Tokyo about three years ago, said to him “What are those green journals on your shelf?”, and after perusing them she said to him, “I think T&F would be interested in publishing this!” For me it has been very satisfying to see AEs grow over the years, and that the high quality we had maintained with our prior publisher, ALC, has been preserved (and I think augmented) and that we are now reaching a wider audience thanks to the reach and reputation of T&F and your great team. A young Korean scholar who had just completed her Ph.D. at a well-known Australian university said to me several issues back, “Wow, the latest issues of Asian Englishes are great!” and perhaps that was the most satisfying thing to hear. We could not do this without our own great editorial team, and the constant support of great people at T&F, and we look forward to working with you in the future to steadily improve and become a more and more valued journal for the field in Asia and beyond.
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James D'Angelo
James D'Angelo, Chukyo University.