Politics of Translingualism

Jerry Won Lee is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, where he is also faculty affiliate in the Department of Asian American Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures.

• 1. Translingualism, Difference, and "Englishes as Cultural Fact"2. Proficiency, Legitimacy, Elasticity3. Theorizing Inscrutability 4. Wayward Englishes 5. The Inscrutability of Standardized English6. The Inscrutability of Englishes in the "Real World"7. Translingualism and the Politics of Pedagogy8. After Englishes

"Before translingualism goes through the familiar academic reduction into a monolithic, disciplined, representationalist construct, Jerry Lee troubles it with its own inscrutability, diversity, and subversiveness to preserve it as a strategic practice. This book will be sure to have a lasting impact on the study of translingualism and the globalization of English." - Suresh Canagarajah, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics and English at Penn State University and author of Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations (Routledge, 2013)"Language has always been at the center of any and every system of domination and resistance. The European physical empires of yesterday survive as metaphysical empires of language and cultures of today. Lee’s book is a timely intervention in the necessary debate about the uses and abuses of contemporary empires of language." - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine and author of Decolonising the Mind (Heinemann, 1986)."A thought provoking and cutting edge study, taking the current wave of transgressive sociolinguistic tradition to a whole new level. A plethora of in-depth theoretical and documentary examples on the mystifying elements of translingualism, artfully yet powerfully executed by Jerry Lee." - Sender Dovchin, Associate Professor at the University of Aizu, Japan and co-author of Popular Culture, Voice and Linguistic Diversity; Young Adults Online and Offline (2017) and author of Language, Media and Globalization in the Periphery (forthcoming with Routledge).