English in Brian Chikwava’s Harare North

The blueprint of the ideal Global English

Abstract

Different conclusions have been made on Chikwava’s Harare North depending on the focus and methodology of the reviewer. My research focused on the language of the novel, adopted a sociolinguistic framework, and used artificial intelligence for data analysis. The research reports that the author mixes Standard Englishes with Native Non-Standard Englishes and non-native Englishes with Pidgin Englishes. He Africanizes English and code mixes it with Zimbabwean languages and major African lingua francas. There are also plenty of Africanized names, colloquial English and slang. This English, I call Globlish, permits the user to exhaust his/her repertoire without care for standards. In my view, the style romanticises an ideal global English that values every speaker’s culture, background, affiliation and linguistic experience. The use of such a language in non-fiction hypothesises the future transformation of English to cater for the multiplicity in the use of English in the globalised world