World Englishes as an ideological movement in applied linguistics

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Subhan Zein

2026 World Englishes Vol. 45 Issue 2 Article Cited by 0 SDG 17SDG 4SDG 16 Quartile

Abstract

Early world Englishes publications did not explicitly use an ideological frame of reference, even though much of their argument was essentially ideological. Neither did those walking in the footsteps of world Englishes pioneers; some opted for a discursive approach instead, while others used the framework of language attitudes. Indeed, world Englishes, albeit becoming a joint interdisciplinary academic endeavour in which various fields have made significant contributions, has not fully accommodated the language ideology framework yet. Continuing the ideological tradition for studying world Englishes, which Bhatt (2017) pioneered, this article provides a systematic analysis of world Englishes as a language ideological movement within applied linguistics. This article takes an ontological approach to provide a definition of language ideology. It uses the working definition as a starting point to focus on world Englishes being a movement against language ideologies about exclusive ownership of English, as well as its structure, use and spread. © 2026 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Affiliations

Sunway University, Sunway City/Bandar Sunway, Malaysia; Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI), Bandung, Indonesia

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