Cognitive Contributions to Plurilithic Views of English and Other Languages

Monolithic views of languages predominate in linguistics, applied linguistics, and everyday discourse. The World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca, and Critical Applied Linguistics frameworks have gone some way to counter the myth, highlighting the iniquities it gives rise to for global users and learners of English. Here, I propose that developing an understanding of ‘plurilithic’ Englishes informed by cognitively oriented linguistics (including generativism), can complement and consolidate valuable but often divisive socially oriented efforts to ‘disinvent ’ named languages. I acknowledge problems associated with mainstream generativism, but argue that a complete repudiation of mentalistic notions of language is unhelpful. I suggest that a modified ‘polylingually con-stituted ’ version of the Chomskyan I-language concept may be useful, capturing the bottom-up nature of individual language resources and drawing a clear contrast with folk ontologies of English as a named monolithic system (N-language). The emerging epistemological integration suggests that learning and use are determined by individuals ’ local experiences as non-conformist mental appropriators of external social practices, rather than by top-down notions of proficiency in monolithic national, foreign, international, or supra-national varieties.