English as a Southern language

Drawing on the epistemologies of the Global South and the sociolinguistic reality of English in postcolonial Bangladesh, this article conceptualises English as a Southern language. This conception recognises the imperative of English for postcolonial societies in an English-dominant world while also emphasising the necessity of breaking away from its hegemony as represented by so-called native speaker or Standard English norms. It is argued that since English works as the principal epistemic tool for knowledge construction and theorising in most disciplines, decolonising knowledge and epistemology in favour of Southern perspectives may not be achieved without decolonising the language in the first place. While English as a Southern language builds on the paradigms of world Englishes, English as a lingua franca, and translanguaging, the proposed conception also seeks a notable departure from them. Calls for the co-existence of epistemologies of the North and South need to recognise English along the same lines.