Journal of Sociolinguistics 23/1, 2019: 97–113

BOOK REVIEWS

IAN MACKENZIE. Language Contact and the Future of English. New York/London:
Routledge. 2018. 187 pp. Hb (9781138557222) £110.00.

Reviewed by JERRY WON LEE

Sociolinguists have investigated the globalization of English from a wide range of
perspectives. Scholars of World Englishes, for one, have produced an abundance of
publications documenting discrete features of national varieties of English, whether
Philippine English or Singaporean English, while also exploring various issues and
topics related to the dispersal of English worldwide. Meanwhile, scholars aligned
with the English as a lingua franca (ELF) tradition have, in addition to documenting
what English looks like in contact situations between, for instance, a Korean
speaker of English as a foreign language and a Turkish speaker of English as a
foreign language, drawn attention to the fact that the majority of scenarios in
which English is used around the world, ranging from everyday conversations to
academic discourse, are in fact ELF interactions. Within the scholarship on the
globalization of English, there has been no shortage of controversies. For instance,
even into the early 1990s, there were questions posed about whether a non-native
English could be considered a legitimate English (e.g. Quirk 1990). Later on, as the
legitimacy of the ‘non-native speaker’ became an established point for scholars,
there would be inquiry into what might constitute legitimacy in a non-native
English (e.g. Bamgbose 1998; Schneider 2007). Today, a new series of questions
has arisen, among them: Is the World Englishes framework feasible in the context of
intensified migrations and cultural flows (see Pennycook 2007)? Is ELF a mere
scholarly invention (see O’Regan 2014)? Is language even the most significant
aspect of communication in English today (see Canagarajah 2018)? Or, as Ian
MacKenzie asks, in his 2018 book, Language Contact and the Future of English, what
is going to happen with English given the worldwide sociolinguistic reality in which
language contact and translation are the norm?
MacKenzie’s book is of interest, then, because it raises the question of whether any
of the above issues or debates will even matter in the years to come. Of course,
MacKenzie eventually does suggest that there is not much evidence to believe that
there are any immediate threats to the status of English as a global lingua franca. This
being said, while there would be little debate that, today, English is among the world’s

Address correspondence to: Jerry Won Lee, Departments of English and

Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, CA U.S.A.
jwl@uci.edu
Twitter: @jerrywonlee
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most ‘dominant’ languages, MacKenzie simultaneously notes that nobody, experts

included, really knows what the future holds for English. Regardless of whether we
agree or disagree with his speculations, his insights certainly warrant serious
consideration for sociolinguists interested in the fate of English into the future.
I believe the core of the book’s argument begins with the chapter titled
‘Purposeful Language Change’, which argues that language change is not merely a
process that occurs unconsciously over time but one that can indeed be enacted
through deliberate efforts by individuals. MacKenzie outlines four potential reasons
driving deliberate language change: enhancing expressivity, obeying prescriptivists,
avoiding misunderstandings, or optimizing grammar. Afterwards, the author looks
specifically at potentially purposeful language change in ELF contexts, arguing that:

[a]lthough most innovation and accommodation in ELF is online, pragmatic,

local, and contingent, and certainly not carried out with the teleological aim of
improving the language, intentional usages employed by many individuals can
be diffused and adopted by wider speech communities. (p. 62)

The following chapter is ‘Will English as a Lingua Franca Impact on Native English?’.
Though I initially thought this was a typo, I remembered the title of the previous
chapter (Purposeful Language Change) and that the author noted in the Introduction
that a common feature of ELF is the ‘very variable use of prepositions’ (p. 9). In spite of
the ‘purposeful language change’ that is ostensibly enacted through the title’s
speculative scenario, MacKenzie simultaneously argues that it is ultimately unlikely
for ELF to ‘impact on Native English’. In this regard, MacKenzie offers a somewhat
unique perspective on the now exhausted debate on the question of the non-/native
speaker of English: even though native speakers of English are increasingly
outnumbered by non-native speakers, as is well known, MacKenzie argues that
ELF features are nonetheless not likely to shape native usage because of factors such
as density (e.g. ELF variations are ‘fairly random’), the media (e.g. infrequency of
representation of L2 Englishes), or prestige, among others. MacKenzie notes that
there is no corpus-based evidence to suggest that ELF features have impacted native
Englishes, and further argues that ELF features do not ‘offer particular expressive
gains to native speakers of English’ (p. 81). Therefore, there is not much reason for
ELF features to attain uptake outside of ELF contexts, though MacKenzie does concede
that, ‘But of course, as always, time alone will tell’ (p. 84).
In ‘ELF and the Alternatives’, MacKenzie refutes the salience of various factors that
could potentially threaten the status of English as a global lingua franca, including
translation, receptive multilingualism, code-switching, and Mandarin Chinese.
MacKenzie argues that (1) while translation technologies are improving, they will
not be able to replicate or replace the affordances of face-to-face communication, (2)
receptive multilingualism cannot be relied on in lieu of proficiency in English and is at
best a potential supplement to it, and (3) code-switching too is unlikely to take the
place of proficiency in English because it is generally only used in low-stakes contexts.
In regards to the possibility of Mandarin Chinese potentially supplanting English,
MacKenzie dismisses this possibility on several grounds, including the challenges of
reading, writing, and speaking in Mandarin (it is a tonal language that involves

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thousands of characters). While many of the above points are convincing enough, it
should be noted, of course, that the dismissal of Chinese reflects a Western perspective
on the debate insofar as speakers of Chinese or even other tonal languages would
perhaps argue that it is in fact English that is too difficult.
MacKenzie begins the next chapter, ‘Academic English, Epistemicide, and
Linguistic Relativity’, by acknowledging some reasons for the dominance of
English in published scholarship. He then outlines strategies for academics
themselves to rectify the problem, for instance, by including more non-native
speakers of English on editorial boards of academic journals or encouraging
presentations in languages other than English at academic conferences. Afterwards,
he addresses the question of whether writing in English represents a form of
epistemicide (the killing of knowledge). Drawing on relevance theory, which posits
that ‘what is optimally relevant (and meaningful and readily interpretable) depends
on the mutual cognitive environment of the communication partners (p. 112),
MacKenzie suggests that all users of English in academic contexts can work toward
establishing a balanced approach that accommodates the discursive and linguistic
styles of users worldwide, for instance, by avoiding deliberate attempts at
abstraction and ambiguity that are common in academic discourse. Developing
this line of inquiry by incorporating various theories of translation, MacKenzie
reminds us that there is an array of approaches available when translating text and,
as a result, the practice of translating into English for the purposes of legibility does
not in and of itself represent a form of epistemicide.
Before a brief Conclusion chapter, in ‘Bilingualism, Translation and
Anglicization’, MacKenzie considers the status of English from the perspective of
language contact and literary translation. We are reminded that ‘language contact
and convergence by way of grammatical replication and lexical borrowing have
been going on for millennia all over the world and are not going to stop’ (p. 137).
Significantly, as MacKenzie notes, convergence is not necessarily a reciprocal
process insofar as English has thus far tended to influence other languages more so
than the other way around (a similar point is made in Chapter 4 that native English
has a disproportionate influence on ELF). In the realm of literary translation,
MacKenzie shows through numerous case studies that the ‘otherness’ of a text is
frequently lost in the process of translation into English, at times by authors’
deliberate efforts to neutralize their text (minimizing, for instance, allusions to local
culture) in order to facilitate translation (p. 146). He concludes by noting that ‘it
appears that English is currently influencing other languages rather more than
speakers of other languages are influencing English’ (p. 146).
Language Contact and the Future of English, as MacKenzie himself concedes in the
opening pages of the book, is of course not able to conclusively resolve any debates
about the future of English. But it nonetheless offers some sensible and convincing
predictions and, with them, the prediction that debates in sociolinguistics on the
globalization of English are still, for now, warranted. One of the most impressive
features of this book is the sheer breadth of scholarship that is engaged, extended, or
otherwise critiqued, ranging from ELF to intercultural rhetoric, from SLA theory to
translation theory. I also appreciated how MacKenzie writes in a style that is at

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times witty, perhaps even humorous, but never at the expense of scholarly rigor,
which enlivens the reading experience. This being said, I should confess that I did
have minor reservations with the manner in which, at times, speculations are made
on the basis of the current state of affairs surrounding English. These are themselves
presented as fatalistic inevitabilities, for instance, in the determination that
translation technologies are inherently limited because people universally prefer
face-to-face interaction (is this an empirical conclusion?) or in the determination
that alternate discourse styles, such as code-switching, are simply not appropriate in
academic discourse. With this logic in particular, it needs to be stated that any
deterministic approach to the criteria of academic appropriateness forecloses
opportunities to consider how the very notion of appropriateness is a construct that
systematically, if not deliberately, disenfranchises linguistic and racial minorities
(Flores and Rosa 2015). Fortunately, the arbitrariness of conventions in academic
English is not the focal point of MacKenzie’s work, and I wish to reiterate my
enthusiasm for the book and the vast amount of knowledge it presents.

REFERENCES
Bamgbose, Ayo. 1998. Torn between the norms: Innovations in World Englishes. World
Englishes 17: 1–14.
Canagarajah, Suresh. 2018. English as a spatial resource and the claimed competence of
Chinese STEM professionals. World Englishes 37: 34–50.
Flores, Nelson and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies
and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85: 149–171.
O’Regan, John P. 2014. English as a lingua franca: An immanent critique. Applied Linguistics
35: 533–552.
Pennycook, Alastair. 2007. Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge.
Quirk, Randolph. 1990. Language varieties and standard language. English Today 21: 3–10.
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press.

MARY BUCHOLTZ, DOLORES IN
ES CASILLAS, AND JIN SOOK LEE (eds.). Feeling It:
Language, Race, and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning. New York: Routledge.
2018. vii + 277 pp. Pb (9781138296800) $39.95.

Reviewed by ARIANA MANGUAL FIGUEROA

This review begins where the book ends – with remarks on the significance of
Feeling It: Language, Race and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning in the present political

Address correspondence to: Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Rutgers, the State

University of New Jersey
amf@gse.rutgers.edu
Twitter: @RutgersGSE
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd