Linguistic Justice in World Englishes: A View From Cultural Appropriation

This article highlights the need to better clarify what we understand by linguistic justice. Failure to do so poses the danger that the concept not only remains something we may clamour for but is also one that we are unable or unwilling to recognize should we ever encounter it. In this contribution, I do this by examining claims about cultural appropriation in the context of the spread of English. Cultural appropriation is a valuable lens with which to begin a critical interrogation of linguistic justice because a charge of such appropriation relies on assumptions about relationships of inequality, about the boundaries that separate cultures, and about the nature of borrowing and innovation—all issues that oftentimes accompany a discussion about English worldwide.