Prof John O’Regan

Bio:

John O’Regan is Professor of Critical Applied Linguistics and Vice-Dean (International) at UCL Institute of Education, University College London. He is also Deputy Director of the International Centre for Intercultural Studies (ICIS) and the Programme Director of the MA Intercultural Communication. In his research John specialises in English as a global language, intercultural communication and critical discourse analysis, and has wide interests in political economy, critical social theory and international history. John was Co-Chair of the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) (2004-8) and a member of the IALIC Board (2000-16). He also edited the association journal Language and Intercultural Communication from 2008-15. John has published more than 75 research papers, as well as four books: Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World (O’Regan, Wilkinson & Robinson, 2014), Intercultural Dialogue: Questions of Research, Theory and Practice (Holmes, Dooly & O’Regan, 2016), Education and the Discourse of Global Neoliberalism (Gray, O’Regan & Wallace, 2021), and Global English and Political Economy (O’Regan, 2021).

 

Brief:

In a recent book (O’Regan 2021), I have referred to the emergence over the last 30 years of perspectives on superdiversity, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), translanguaging, world Englishes and translingualism etc. under the collective heading of superdiverse translingualism due to the shared emphasis they each place on the hybridity, diversity, multiplicity, pluricentricity and translingual fluidity of modern-day language practices involving English. A vast array of documentary evidence has been accumulated that shows how worldwide users of English both inside and outside of the traditional centres of English language use regularly innovate and transgress against so-called “native-speaker norms,” so demonstrating that any claim to the sole ownership of English by those styling themselves as native speakers departs from the empirical lingua-cultural reality of actual global English language use. In the midst of the immense linguistic fluidity and translingualism which this research reveals, the global ELT profession as well as the knowledge domains of EMI and English-medium research publication have found themselves heavily criticized for their seeming continued fidelity to inner circle models. In this talk, I locate these discussions within the framework of a critical realist understanding of English in the world in order to determine why it is that the linguistic diversity which exists is endlessly disfavoured.