Asia is now home to some 800 million multilingual speakers of English, more than the total number of native English speakers, and how they use English is continuously evolving and changing to reflect their cultural backgrounds and everyday experiences. Can English, therefore, be considered an Asian language? Drawing upon the Asian Corpus of English, this book will be the first comprehensive account of the roles, uses and features of English in Asia, encompassing several different varieties of Asian English. Chapters cover the distinctive linguistic features of English in different settings, such as in law, religion and popular culture, as well as the use of local rhetorical, pragmatic and cultural styles and its use as a lingua franca among Asian multilinguals. It will also examine the role of English in education - from primary through to higher education - and consider the implications of this for other languages of Asia.

'Kirkpatrick is teacher, researcher, and storyteller in Is English an Asian Language? The book is a must-read to scholars of English language studies not only of and in Asia, but also the rest of the world.'

Isabel Pefianco Martin - Professor at the Department of English, Ateneo de Manila University

‘In this extraordinary book, Andy Kirkpatrick draws on a lifetime of scholarship and experience of English in Asia. He demonstrates that, in terms of its history, demographics, linguistic form and culturally embedded functions, English is an Asian language. Students of world Englishes, English as a lingua franca, and multilingualism will find data and theoretically grounded interpretation presented in an accessible style, making sense of one of the most profound cultural developments of our times.’

Daniel R. Davis - Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan–Dearborn, and Co-editor, World Englishes

‘… comprehensive, amply documented … Recommended.’

C. Machado Source: Choice