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Decentered English is a term and theory articulated by teacher and poet Darius Degher of Malmö University in Sweden. It was first used in 2008 in the online description of the literary journal Shipwrights, of which Degher is the founder and editor. There the publication is described as "the magazine of decentered English: a review of new writing from beyond the Anglosphere." More recently, the term has also been used to describe the orientation of the English Studies program at Malmö University.
The theory of a decentered English posits a metaphor useful in describing the postmodern, global state of the English language as it expands outward from its former center, the Anglosphere of North America and the United Kingdom. The theory suggests that since the combined number of global second- and foreign-language English speakers now triples that of native English speakers (1.2 billion to 375 million respectively, according to the British Council), a shift of linguistic power is underway and that this shift is having, and will have, consequences on issues related to English as the global language. These issues are numerous and potentially unforeseeable but include those of linguistic influence, correctness, accent leveling, ownership, and agency.
References
- Graddol, David. 2006. English Next. British Council. http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-english-next.pdf