CHAPTER FOUR ENGLISH LITERATURE OR LITERATURE IN ENGLISH: APPROPRIATING THE LANGUAGE OF THE COLONIZER

Abstract

CHAPTER FOUR ENGLISH LITERATURE OR LITERATURE IN ENGLISH: APPROPRIATING THE LANGUAGE OF THE COLONIZER المؤلفون IKRAM A ELSHERIF تاريخ النشر 2014/10/16 مجلة Adventuring in the Englishes: Language and Literature in a Postcolonial Globalized World الصفحات 40 الناشر Cambridge Scholars Publishing الوصف In the early seventies, just before I entered my early teens, I received my first independently issued Egyptian passport. Before that time, I was appended to my mother’s passport as a minor. Proudly turning the pages of the passport, a document representing for me at the time a formal acknowledgement of my independence, I wanted to study every word in it. However, I was greatly surprised and somewhat annoyed that the textual part of the passport was written in Arabic and French. I was annoyed because my knowledge of French at the time was next to nil; and was surprised because I knew for a fact that almost all the Egyptian people I knew used English as their second language and that English was more widely used in Egypt than French. Contenting myself with the fact that at least I had the passport, I became resigned but was not really happy until a few years later I was able to read every word written in it. What stayed with me over the years, however, was my surprise and inability to understand why French and not English was used. The question was not momentous enough to be always on the surface of my conscious thoughts, but I came to realize that it was lurking in the back of my mind when in the early eighties I stumbled on and eagerly read an article in an Egyptian newspaper discussing the issue. The writer (the name of whom I cannot recall, just as I cannot vouch for the absolute validity of his argument) claimed that the revolutionary forces in Egypt, which had overthrown King Farouk and terminated British control over the country in the 1952 Revolution, sought to abolish everything related to British control and imperialism, not least …