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If the rhetoric of linguistic imperialism (hereafter LI) has been fashionablefor some time, we are now seeing another rhetoric become more fash-ionable and pitted against it. What I will call the linguistic hybriditymovement (LH) celebrates the fluidity in languages, identities, and cul-tures, thus pluralizing these constructs. In their extreme versions, while LIis absolutist in defining these constructs monolithically as constituted byone ideology or the other, LH is relativistic in seeing them as alwaysshifting in meaning and shape. While LI is deterministic in perceiving theseconstructs as always pliable in the hands of dominant forces, LH is anti-nomian, in seeing them as perpetually unstable, and resisting control.While LI is activist in struggling against hegemonic discourses to re-construct a more democratic order, LH leads to apathy (as languages areseen as deconstructing themselves, transcending domination) or evenplayfulness (as the provision of new meanings to these constructs istreated as subverting the status quo). Leaping from one rhetoric to anotherwithout engaging rigorously with any, or clobbering one rhetoric with theother, are easy and eventually unproductive exercises. These are, after all,times when academic discourses, spawned freely in opposition to eachother, swing wildly between extremes like a pendulum. As a teacher, fo-cused on the concerns of my students, I negotiate with these divergentrhetorics to consider how they may develop a richer awareness of lan-guage and social life, enabling me to act more rewardingly in the class-room.
Suresh Canagarajah (1999) studied this question.