BCDSS Language Policy

World Englishes (WE) are localized or indigenized autonomous varieties of English that are spoken and written throughout the world. English was spread primarily through processes of colonialization: in the Middle Ages from England to Wales, Scotland and Ireland; from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries from Britain to the Caribbean, North America, the Indian subcontinent and East Asia (Hong Kong and Singapore), the Pacific (Australia and New Zealand), and many parts of Africa. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, American English was spread to territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

Just as the English spoken in North America gradually developed into a variety that was distinct from British English, with its own specific grammatical and spelling variations, so did the English spoken in India or Jamaica, Australia, the Philippines or Kenya develop over time into specific localized variations with their own grammatical and lexicographical variations.

They are just as correct than the Old Variety Englishes (i.e. British and American); or, as linguists put it, there is no intrinsic value in the features that are thought of as standard. The only reason we think of Old Variety Englishes as the norm, and of World Englishes as deviations, is a remnant of Eurocentric, colonial-era thinking which is shored up by the fact that the vast majority of academic publishers and journals – and all of the most influential and prestigious ones – are based in the Global North, and therefore in a position to continue to dictate what is seen as standard, and what is not.

In a word: no! It is promoting openness and clarity. The whole idea is to open up to additional varieties or English, rather than to impose a binary standard, as most publications have been doing. Idiomatic features of American and British English have always been accepted and remain acceptable. Linguistic or grammatical features that are characteristic of other Englishes are also acceptable provided they are readily understandable.

Rather than imposing, we are essentially ensuring the accessibility of the work we publish (for authors and readers alike), which would mean that a wider range of research can have a greater impact and benefit a broader public.

We first developed this policy at the BCDSS in 2022, after extensive discussions in a workshop on 15 July 2022 that was open to all BCDSS members. Those who attended the workshop agreed that the privileging of Global North Englishes continued to reinscribe colonial power structures, and so was something that runs counter to the Cluster’s own mission to explore asymmetrical dependency, as the vast majority of our authors are international scholars, who write in different varieties of English. It was therefore agreed to formulate in writing a sort of mission statement on language.

A number of BCDSS scholars who had attended the workshop volunteered to further discuss and draw up a text, which then became known as the Language Policy. They were Professors Marion Gymnich and Pia Wiegmink, post-doctoral researchers Jutta Wimmler and Sunčica Klaas, and Janico Albrecht and Imogen Herrad from the Publications Department. It was subsequently circulated to all participants of the workshop for feedback. We originally planned to apply this policy only to the Cluster’s flagship book series Dependency and Slavery Studies, which is published with de Gruyter. The policy was approved by Gruyter in 2022. In 2023, we extended the policy to all BCDSS publications, including the DEPENDENT magazine. This move was approved by the BCDSS Steering Committee.