The focus of the thematic issue of BELL 2005 is the cross-fertilisation between different regions within the English-speaking community.
One way of looking at the cultural hybridity characterizing English language and literatures at this moment is by focusing on centrifugal and centripetal tendencies, i.e. on issues of authority in linguistics, and on the 'empire writes back' theme in literature.
However, this polarity ignores another possibility, which one might describe as cross-fertilisation around the periphery, perhaps bypassing the centre entirely. There is no reason why diversity should be conceptualised merely as distance from the centre.
This has both theoretical and practical consequences, not only for linguistics and literature, but also for ELT. If Britannia no longer rules the waves, the question is to what extent ELT can respond to the currents and waves of Englishes, and whether it can / should maintain the rules (of English grammar, etc).
From a linguistic point of view the approach need not necessarily be confined to the sociolinguistic; it could encompass pragmatics, functional grammar, discourse & genre analysis...
From a literary perspective it may be interesting to investigate how various cultural identities and current hybridising tendencies invigorate the various genres in English literature.
The aim is to chart these tendencies and assess their importance from the perspectives of ELT, linguistics, and literature. Apart from this thematic focus any other topic in ELT, linguistics and literature can be addressed in the conference papers.
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