English in Post-Revolutionary Iran

From Indigenization to Internationalization

By (author) Maryam Borjian

Publication date:

20 February 2013

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781847699091

This book unravels the story of English, the language of 'the enemies', in post-revolutionary Iran. Drawing on diverse qualitative and quantitative fieldwork data, it examines the nation's English at the two levels of policy and practice to determine the politics, causes, and agents of the two diverging trends of indigenization/localization and internationalization/Anglo-Americanization within Iran's English education. Situating English in the nation's broader social, political, economic, and historical contexts, the volume explores the intersection of the nation's English education with variables such as power, economy, policy, ideology, and information technology over the past three decades. The multidisciplinary insights of the book will be of value to scholars of global English, education policies and reforms and language policy as well as those who are specifically concerned with education in Iran.

Foreword (by Ofelia Garcia)

Preface

Introduction

PART 1: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

1. The Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending

2. History of English in Iran (1836-1979)

PART 2: ENGLISH IN POST REVOLUTIONARY IRAN (1979-PRESENT)

3. The Revolutionary Period (1979-1988)

4. The Period of Reconstruction and Privatization (1989-1997)

5. The Period of Global Outlook (1997-2005)

6. Returning to the Revolutionary Roots (2005-present)

7. Reflections: Forces From Above, Forces From Below

English in Post-Revolutionary Iran is a very thoughtful, provocative and intelligent book on the inevitable tension between the globalization and the domestication of the English language in post-revolutionary Iran, and how the two forces, in fact, constitute two sides of the same hegemonic coin. Bold and compelling in argument and richly eloquent in style, it succeeds in raising profound questions about Iran in the 21st century: a discursive trope, a predicament whose social and political order continues to unfold in bewildering ways. Borjian helps us understand some of the complex interrelations between language and political-economy, and the transformative dialectics underlying the story of English in Iran since 1979.