English in Post-Revolutionary Iran

Maryam Borjian is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures, and the Coordinator of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Language Programs at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her major research interest lies in the politics, economics and sociology of language in society and education in the contexts of colonialization, modernization, and globalization.

English in Post-Revolutionary Iran is a very thoughtful, provocative and intelligent book on the inevitable tension between the globalization and the domestication of the English language in post-revolutionary Iran, and how the two forces, in fact, constitute two sides of the same hegemonic coin. Bold and compelling in argument and richly eloquent in style, it succeeds in raising profound questions about Iran in the 21st century: a discursive trope, a predicament whose social and political order continues to unfold in bewildering ways. Borjian helps us understand some of the complex interrelations between language and political-economy, and the transformative dialectics underlying the story of English in Iran since 1979.

• Foreword (by Ofelia Garcia)PrefaceIntroductionPART 1: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES1. The Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending2. History of English in Iran (1836-1979)PART 2: ENGLISH IN POST REVOLUTIONARY IRAN (1979-PRESENT)3. The Revolutionary Period (1979-1988)4. The Period of Reconstruction and Privatization (1989-1997)5. The Period of Global Outlook (1997-2005)6. Returning to the Revolutionary Roots (2005-present)7. Reflections: Forces From Above, Forces From Below