FORUM English and a World of Diversities: Confrontation, Appropriation, Awareness

in global social and political contexts. While I am in agreement with Karmani’s call for language educators to be more sharply aware of certain beliefs about the role of English in the world, I argue that the challenges debated by the authors are not exclusively about English against Islam but more broadly about language. I also argue that English as a language in itself can hardly be viewed as inherently defected, but rather, centrally at stake are the configurations of English language education. Revisiting the role of human agency and subjectivity as a proposed force for counterbalancing linguistic manipulation, I argue that a pedagogy of linguistic possibility which allows for language learning experiences of honesty and awareness, may help the world of diverse communities avoid confrontations as well as stay away from false promises of hybridity. O, tongue! You are the eternal treasure O, tongue! You are the endless dread Mowlana (Rumi), Mathnawi Ma’nawi, Daftar One, Line 1702. I found the discussions in earlier Forum articles by Sohail Karmani (2005) and Ahmed Kabel (2007) very important and deeply challenging.1 The need for a dialogue on the role of language in general and English in particular in global social and political contexts has already been raised (e.g. Kachru 1986; Phillipson 1992; Pennycook 1994, 1998, 2006), although it remains under-represented in major scenes of applied linguistics. I share Karmani’s concern over the marginalization of such cultural, social, and political considerations of language and their ‘alarming absence from the mainstream literature of applied linguistics ’ (2005: 262). Therefore, the very emergence of these discussions offers a promising prospect for bursting the bounds of atomistic, decontextu-alized, and fragmented views of language and for placing applied language studies firmly in their social contexts. In my own contribution to this dialogue, I seek to expand on the concerns addressed by Karmani and Kabel, especially the position of language and languages, including English, in the world today. at Serials Record on