Article published In: Trans(portable): English in the world
Edited by Julie Deconinck and Eva Ulrike Pirker
[English Text Construction 18:2] 2025
► pp. 111–135

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English moves

Hegemony, hybridity, and the (trans)portability of English in literature, translation, and beyond the page

ORCiD logo with link | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Published online: 7 July 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.26007.pir
Abstract
As the world’s “hyper-central” language, English operates within asymmetrical structures of power while enabling processes of hybridization, adaptation, and contestation. Rather than a bounded, homogeneous system, English is a (trans)portable resource that circulates across linguistic, cultural, literary and medial contexts. Assembling insights from sociolinguistics, literary and cultural studies as well as translation research, this opening contribution to the special issue “(Trans)portability: English in the World” explores tensions between monolingual ideologies and multilingual practices, global dominance and local negotiation, English as both a vehicle of hegemony and a malleable resource shaped by its users. Across literary, translational, educational and broader cultural contexts, English emerges as a structuring force and as site of resistance. While the special issue offers a variety of case studies exploring English in motion across modern contexts, this introduction engages with English as a set of dynamic processes that invite identification, create structures of exclusion and provoke resistance.
Article outline
  • 1.The day English went missing: Approaching a set of (trans)portable concepts
  • 2.The materialization of an immaterial entity: Spreads of English across the globe
  • 3.English inter alia: A practice among others
  • 4.A varied and travelling field: The (trans)portability of ‘English’ across this issue
  • 5.The show must go on, the show must be altered
  • Notes
  • References
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