You have written and discussed very controversial issues. How do you deal with criticism? How do you react to people who disagree with your ideas?

Dr. Phillipson: This is a tricky issue. Tove told me, as soon as Linguistic imperialism was published, that I would need to develop a thick skin. I felt the need to spend quite a bit of time responding to critiques of my work that I thought were invalid, in several journals. I list the references in my new book, which does not regurgitate these ‘dialogues’, though the book does contain my reviews of books by people like David Crystal, Abram de Swaan, and Janina Brutt-Griffler, scholars who basically claim that linguistic imperialism never existed (!), and that I got it all wrong – which happily a lot of people worldwide don’t agree with (the book was published in China in 2000 and in India in 2008, better late than never). One is tempted to simply ignore attacks that either misrepresent what one has written or contradict one’s conclusions on false premises. This has also happened with what Tove and I have written about linguistic human rights. On the other hand, if one does not challenge conflicting views, they have a habit of getting recycled by others as though they are uncontested. Ideally scholarly dialogue should take things forward, and lead to better empirical descriptions and to an improvement of our concepts and theoretical approaches – for which all of us, including myself, need to be open-minded.

Ana Wu: Thank you very much for your time and insightful interview!

Instruction:Clues in the context – views and ideas.

Vocabulary in context gives you clues to views and ideas expressed in the interview. Professor Robert Phillipson is the author of the contradictory concept of linguistic imperialism. He claims that the English language is a tool of the US imperialist policies aimed at imposing American ideology upon the rest of the world.

In ordinary extensive reading text, there always are a number of clues that can help you determine the views and ideas of the author as well as the meaning of ambiguous or/and unknown words or phrases.

Synonymous word combinations

Compare the two sentences:

“Tove told me, as soon as Linguistic imperialism was published, that I would need to develop a thick skin.” The word combination to develop a thick skin is understood from another sentence in the same paragraph: “One is tempted to simply ignore attacks that either misrepresent what one has written or contradict one’s conclusions on false premises.”

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Text 2-6. ENGLISH IN EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND GLOBALISATION	\|	Examples

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