Intelligibility Analysis and Cultural Linguistics

The global spread of English has resulted in an increasing number of cultures becoming associated with English (Smith, 1992). In the course of the development of new varieties of English, speakers associate their use of English with their own cultural schema. Therefore, world Englishes need to be examined from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics in order to gain a better understanding of how English is used by different communities of speakers around the world. This study investigates this concern, focusing on the English literature from different varieties of English. The study aims to get some insights into how intelligible it is to English speakers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and what factors are involved in the intelligibility of these English literatures from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics. The result shows that achieving a full understanding of the literary texts depends more on the readers familiarity with the cultural context and cultural schema within which the texts are embedded. The educational and theoretical implications of the findings are then discussed.