Chapter 11: Taking Back Control

We Face a Dilemma

English connects the world today. It’s the language people often share across borders. Knowing English helps us talk to people everywhere. It lets us read about science and technology. It helps nations discuss important issues.

In fields like tech and medicine, new ideas spread quickly, mostly in English. It’s hard to keep up without it. This gap between English and other languages is growing.

So, the goal isn’t to stop using English. The goal is to use it carefully, with awareness. We need to control this powerful tool, not let it control us. We face a challenge: How can we use English for its good points without letting its bad points hurt us?

• We must stop English from pushing aside our own languages and identities.
• We must refuse to see the world, history, or other people only through the eyes of English-speaking countries. Their views and goals often don’t help us, and sometimes they harm us.

What You Can Do: Navigate Mindfully

Change starts with you. It starts with paying attention and choosing how you act.

Be Prepared for Conflict: Changing old language habits isn’t easy. Questioning the stories everyone seems to accept can feel uncomfortable. People might push back. They might not understand. Some might even get angry. This can come from native English speakers, but also from people in your own community who have accepted these outside views. But this conflict is sometimes necessary. It happens when you stand up for your own viewpoint and take back control of your language. Sticking to your choices, because you understand why you made them, is part of this work.

• Be Highly Aware: Notice the English you read, hear, and use. Always ask: What ideas hide behind these words? Whose biases are showing? What story is being told? Ask: Who benefits from this way of speaking? Whose viewpoint is getting all the attention? Whose is being left out? Does this way of describing things fit my reality? Is it helpful here?
• Reject Loaded Words: Don’t just repeat words used in English-speaking countries without thinking. Be careful if the words put people down, hide the truth, make unfairness seem okay, or twist reality. Unless you must use them for a specific reason (like dealing with certain official systems), challenge these loaded words. Question them when you talk and write. This might cause disagreement. People who are used to the old ways – whether they are native English speakers or not – might resist. Knowing this conflict might happen helps you handle these important talks.
  • For instance, call places like Scotland or Wales nations or states, not just parts of the UK. Avoid terms tied only to the UK’s view (like using ‘Royal Air Force’ unless you need the official name; maybe say ‘British Air Force’ instead).
  • Question soft words like ‘territory’ for places like Puerto Rico or Guam. If people there lack full rights, maybe ‘colony’ is a more honest word. Use the word that fits the reality.
• Be Confident in Your English: If people in your community or country speak English a certain way and understand each other clearly, that way is valid. Own it. It’s your dialect. Don’t let people who speak British or American English make you feel bad about how you speak. No single country owns English. It’s a global language, and it changes everywhere.
• Value Clear Words; Resist Fancy Talk: Remember: If something is truly important, you can usually say it simply. Notice when people use difficult jargon or tangled sentences. Sometimes it’s needed for precision. But often, it’s used to sound important, keep others out, or show power. You see this a lot in universities or law. It’s often just a performance to keep some people on top. You might need to use this fancy talk sometimes to get by in these systems. But always understand why it’s being used. Most importantly, don’t let complicated language scare you. Don’t feel stupid when someone makes things confusing on purpose. What you understand and say clearly is just as valid as someone else’s point hidden in fancy words. Don’t let language snobs shake your confidence or muddy your thinking. Plain language is strong.
• Use Tools to Help You See: Look for tools that help you read the English-language internet with more awareness. Or help create them. Think about browser add-ons (like the ‘AngloLint’ idea mentioned) that point out biased or loaded words you find online. These tools can act like special glasses, helping you see past the standard story.
• Keep Thinking About It: Use the questions at the end of this chapter often. Think about them as you notice how English influences your life and the world around you.

Tactical Engagement: Surviving the Extraction

If the Anglophone system often functions as an extractive or “parasitic” force—taking your labor, culture, and ideas while erasing your name from the results—then your goal is to move from seeking acceptance to strategic operation. You do not seek to be a “part” of their family; you seek to be a high-value, independent operator.

• The Mercenary Mindset (Counter-Exploitation): Stop seeking “validation” or “belonging” from Anglophone institutions. The desire to be “liked” or “accepted” is the primary vulnerability they exploit.
  • View every interaction as a transaction.
  • Do not give away your cultural “uniqueness” or extra labor for “exposure” or “diversity” points.
  • If they want your perspective, ensure it is exchanged for tangible power or resources (money, titles, legal credits). They respect leverage more than they respect loyalty.
• The Iron Ledger (Counter-Erasure): A hallmark of the Anglophone Lens is rewriting history to take credit for collective work. You must be your own historian.
  • Maintain your own “shadow logs” of every idea, decision, and contribution you make.
  • Never rely on an institution’s “official” memory.
  • When the “whitewashing” begins (as discussed in Chapter 6), you survive because you have the receipts. You become too dangerous to erase.
• Code-Switching as Encryption (The Trojan Horse): Master their “Corporate English” and social protocols better than they do, but use it as a mask.
  • Learn to speak their language of “polite fiction” and “process” to move through their systems without friction.
  • But never internalize it. Keep your true thoughts, culture, and long-term plans “encrypted” within your own community and language.
  • By looking like an insider while thinking like a sovereign agent, you gain the foothold you need without letting the system drain your identity.
• Build Parallel Power: Never enter a negotiation where they are your only option.
  • A parasite cannot control a host that doesn’t need it. Build your skills, networks, and value in parallel spaces (your own community, different linguistic markets).
  • The strongest “foothold” is having the ability to walk away.

Working Together: Taking Back Language and Stories

Thinking for yourself is important. But changing the whole system needs people working together.

• Claim Your English Dictionary: Communities outside the main English-speaking countries need to officially claim their own ways of using English.
  • Create and update dictionaries for your country or region. Include local words, grammar, sounds, and sayings. This shows your dialect is valid.
  • Ask governments and organizations to support this work with money and attention. It’s crucial for culture.
  • Add notes to old dictionary words that came from colonial times or English-speaking countries. Explain where words like ‘coolie’ or ‘third world’ came from and the problems they carry.
• Tell Your Own Story: It’s your job as a citizen to research, write, teach, and share your own history and views. Push back strongly against the stories told mainly by English-speaking countries.
  • Bring back the truths that English accounts often ignore or play down. Talk about the full scale of terrible events like the killing of Native Americans, not just those often highlighted in the West. Call things by their right names, like the internment camps for Japanese Americans. Celebrate your country’s fight for freedom using your own terms, not the colonizer’s.
  • Look at how some countries frame history from their view, like Russia calling World War II the ‘Great Patriotic War’.
  • Insist that your people’s suffering or successes are real and important. They don’t need approval from English-speaking countries to matter.
• Build Your Own Spaces: Support news sources, websites, research centers, and arts groups that aren’t based in English-speaking countries. Depend less on platforms that naturally lean towards English-speaking views. Think about backing or building websites where people can work together on dictionaries that reflect how they use English.
• Hold Big Platforms Responsible: Sometimes we must use the big tech platforms (like Google, Facebook, Wikipedia). When we do, we should band together. Push these companies to fix the bias towards English-speaking views in their search results, rules, and the words they allow.

A Call to Developers

If you build software or work in tech: Realize that the internet and most software are built on English foundations. They often carry hidden cultural assumptions from English-speaking places. Think about using your skills for projects that help different languages thrive and help people think more critically. Help build free tools like browser add-ons (‘AngloLint’) or community dictionary sites. These tools help people use the digital world with more awareness. Help free the digital world from colonial influence.

Questions to Keep Asking Yourself

I can’t give you perfect answers for every place. The influence of English shows up differently around the world. My goal is to make you more aware. Only you can see how big this issue is where you live. Only you can figure out the best ways to respond by watching closely. Use these questions as guides for your thinking over the long run. Focus on one question for weeks or months. Answers will come as you live your life:

1. How do English-speaking views shape how history (local, national, world) is taught and understood around me? Which stories get the spotlight? Which are ignored?
2. When I get world news in English, whose viewpoint comes first? How are conflicts, cultures, or political groups described? Can I spot the biases or goals of English-speaking countries?
3. Are there English words used often in my community that subtly keep old colonial ideas alive, put down our culture, or help outsiders?
4. How do English-speaking ideas about race, class, or progress affect how people interact, talk politics, and see themselves in my society? Do these ideas fit here? Do they help or harm?
5. When I look for solutions online (for tech, social, or personal problems), how often do the answers assume things that only make sense in English-speaking countries? What happens when we try to use these solutions here where they don’t quite fit?
6. When do I, or people I know, change how we speak English (our words, accent, style) to sound more like Americans or Britons, even when talking to other non-native speakers? Why do we do this?
7. Besides just noticing, what’s one small, real thing I can do regularly to use English more purposefully, focusing on my own view and resisting harmful outside stories?

Noticing these powerful but often hidden forces is the first crucial step to taking back control. It helps you stop harming yourself and your community without realizing it, just by carelessly using a language filled with someone else’s history and biases.