It may also be partly a luxury of the dominance of English, which
can afford some 'dilution' of its imaginary historical purity,
which more globally marginal languages (dare I say French? certainly
German) don't seem to feel they can afford. I can well understand
language-cultures resisting the steamroller of English, and its
infiltration of their vocabularies. English has little need to
take such a defensive stance, being the aggressor language.
Of course all of modern European culture has a hidden investment
in the idea of separate and distinct languages, cultures, nations.
As it did formerly in its notion of separate and distinct human
races, and as it still does in the parallel notions for class,
gender, sexual orientations, etc. Let us learn to speak rather
of the Englishes of the world, and Englishes of every US city,
as we can hear here the Englishes of our xmca friends.
JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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