Globalization of English: Media's Role in Spreading and Shaping, Apuntes de Comunicación

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Gizarte eta Komunikazio Zientzien Fakultatea Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y de la Comunicación

LANGUAGE USAGES IN MEDIA

IKASTURTEA 2019- Jone Maguregi Rodriguez

1.1 HANDOUT

ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal

- What is a global language? A global language is a language which is taken up by other countries around the world giving it a place in a community with one or more mother-tongue languages. This can be done in two ways, being used as a medium of communication as an official second language or being taught as a foreign-language. - What makes a language global? A global language does not depend on the number of speakers, but on the power of them and in their economy. To achieve such a status a language has to be taken up by other countries around the world. They must decide to give it a special place within their communities, even though they may have few (or not) mother-tongue speakers – Crystal There are two ways to make a language global: - A language can be made the official language of a country to be used as a medium of communication in such domains as government, the law courts, the media and the education system: English in Ghana, Nigeria, India... - A language can be made a priority in a country’s foreign language teaching, even though this language has no official status. Why a language becomes a global language has little to do with the number of people who speak it. It is much more to do with who those speakers are. – Crystal There is the closest of links between language dominance and economic, technological and cultural power – Crystal A language does not become a global language because of its intrinsic structural properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary, or because it has been a vehicle of a great literature in the past, or because it was once associated with a great culture or religion – Crystal A language has traditionally become an international language for one chief reason: the power of its people, especially their political and military power – Crystal

THE GLOBALIZATION OF LANGUAGE: HOW THE MEDIA CONTRIBUTE

TO THE SPREAD OF ENGLISH AND THE EMERGENCE OF MEDIALECT –

Stig Hjarvard

- What is a “lingua franca”? It’s a language that we all share, the one that is used to communicate between people with different languages. When we use English as a lingua franca we introduce our personal features (vocabulary, expressions). It is nobody’s language. - What are the factors that have made English a global language? A time ago the military power was the most important factor of a global language. Nowadays, political power, economic power and cultural power are the most important factors. All those factors are related to the economic power. - What are Global English/es? Global Englishes are English languages talked all over the world. The features of the global languages are the different accents and the little differences in grammar and vocabulary. Each English has an own identity and a different status or prestigious. Marketing many times use different varieties of English, more exotic English to attract the audience due to the simplicity of global English. (F.e. McDonalds uses I’m loving it instead of I love it) FIRST HYPOTHESIS : “the media both are vehicles of Anglo-Saxon culture and contribute to the Anglicization of global culture. The media are more than a neutral channel through which Anglo- American culture spreads; by virtute of their institutional structure and a strong dominance of English speaking actors in the software industry in a broader sense (computers, TV, music) they actively contribute to cementing the paramountcy of English over other languages” – Hjarvard English has become the lingua franca of the global network. French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Russian, etc. more or less have the status of regional languages, national languages that can be used beyond their national frontiers. Linguistic homogenization The process of nation building is not only a consequence of global imperial domination: the creation of nation-states has involved the adoption of a single national language. Education and cultural expressions in other dialects and languages within the national frontiers have ceased. Use of subordinate languages and dialects has been forbidden or subject to political sanctions. Preisler has probed deepest into the relationship between English and Danish in conjunction with his study of mediated subcultures. He tends toward the view that the media themselves are not responsible for the influence. According to Preisler, the prime factors are to be found in overall changes in Danish culture. Danish society in undergoing a general Anglo-Americanization and it is here we find the causes of linguistic influences. The media mirror culture rather than create it. ARGUMENTS: English has influenced the Danish language, as it has many other languages, throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The influence is noticeable in pronunciation, declensions and conjugations, as well in word order, but the most obvious influence is the number of new words having their roots in Anglo American culture - Pseudo-English words (bigshopper) 2%

Second, the increasing mediatization of communication affords considerable leeway for linguistic innovation and creativity. Medialects: features

- English influence. English has become the meta-language that enables the conduct of communication: technical terms that describe specific choices of operating: systems, web addresses, browser types, etc.; verbs and nouns that denote actions and; situations that are part of the communication; popular expressions/slang for the activity (to text, to chat, to mail...). - This is the tendency to mix the conventions of written and oral forms of expressions - Unlike dialects, medialects have no geographical province; in contrast to the case of sociolects, the users’ social position, etc. is indifferent. - Individuals may use many different medialect, depending on the number of media they use. THIRD HYPOTHESIS : “the linguistic effects of the media play a part in processes of social and cultural distinction in Danish society and that it is therefore not adequate to view these influences in national terms, as a question of Danish vs. other languages.” “Greater use of English in the media not only represents a foreign influence, but acts to reinforce or change social and cultural distinctions and power relationships within Danish society” Pierre Bourdieu’s terms “Linguistic ability constitutes symbolic capital that bat be converted to cultural capital (repute, social status) or economic capital (better-paid work) Thus, greater use of English in the media not only represents a foreign influence, but acts to reinforce or change social and cultural distinctions and power relationships within Danish society, as well.” ARGUMENTS: The Danish language has not always been the universal language in Denmark: German, French and Latin languages of high status in different fields: German was the language of craftsmen, military, state administration and court in XVII and XVIII centuries. French was conferred prestige at court and arts, diplomacy throughout Western Europe in XVIII century. Latin was the language of church and academia up to XVIII century. At the end of XIX century standard Danish was established. Study of attitudes among the Danes toward English finds – Preisler - Overwhelmingly positive evaluations of the language in both its British and North American variants. - Danes consider English important as a world language, as a vehicle for their contacts with the rest of the world, and an agent that broadens their cultural horizons. Younger, better educates Danes are more accepting of use of English in everyday life, whereas the elder generation with less formal education and less contact with working life tend to be more sceptical. The better is one’s command of English; the more positive is one’s attitude. Preisler points out that “functional illiteracy” in English is beginning to be perceived as a handicap in some quarters as English becomes increasingly prevalent. Danes who do not know English more frequently encounter practical difficulties in daily life, including their use of mass media, and consequently find their non-knowledge a disability.

CONCLUSIONS:

- The global society is a mediated society where communication via electronic networks constitutes a new reality – Castells - The ability to take part in these networks has more than symbolic importance; increasingly it has implications for individuals’ economic standing job opportunities and success on the marketplace, cultural identity and sense of belonging in society. - The media are the places where people now meet, trade, provide services, converse and present themselves to one another. - English and the medialects may thus be seen as the dialects of globalization. - Geographical place is losing its importance, being supplanted by electronic, virtual localities – and, as this occurs, local varieties of language are supplanted by global varieties of language like English and the medialect. 25.09.

1.2 HANDOUT

YOUNG PEOPLE’S TRANSLOCAL NEW MEDIA USES: A

MULTIPERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE CHOICE AND

HETEROGLOSSIA – Sirpa Leppanen et al.

Young people’s engagements with the new media (in the case of the Finish society of the reading) are increasingly translocal; this means that their communication goes further than the local one, they have relationships with people all over the world. National identity and language may have less significance for this young people than the shared interests, values and ways of life. There is a change in the way that this people are creating identity connection, they consider translocal identities more important than national ones. Finish young people’s media language usages

• 80% of them use it almost daily
• Their media practice are increasingly multilingual, with English holding a key position
• Almost half (42%) of them real English websites daily
• 2/3 of them write an email or a web text in English at least sometimes
• They are active, confident and skilled users of digital and new media This paper examines how appropriations of global cultural products and practices are achieved in new media environments. In particular, it pays attention to language choice and linguistic and stylistic heteroglossia the resources provided by different languages as well as by a range and mixtures of registers, genres and styles. Heteroglossia is language diversity. It includes the coexistence, combination, alteration of expressive resources into one language and through different languages. Heteroglossia introduces the idea of our identity under the language we use. In the way we use language or languages, there is an ideological view or an image that we are giving. Depending on the image I want to show, I choose a language or the forma on a same language.

1. Finnish adolescents’ own perceptions and understandings of their new media practices. How the young people themselves perceive the role of English in their live.
2. Describes in detail a young Finnish speaking woman’s versatile computer-mediated communication activities and analyses the heteroglossic aspects of her we writing. She uses 3 languages: Finish, English and Japanese. Her online activities in fan fictions are photo websites, wiki, fan fiction forums and live journals.
3. Describes Finnish adolescents’ linguistic engagements with the global new media discourse of electronic games. It describes the sequential structures of talk and the locally available bilingual resources to construct actions through which they manage and experience the game.
4. Investigates bilingual language use by online community members in a Finnish discussion forum, in particular, the local appropriations of English extreme sports jargon. Conclusions:

• Young people use of their available new media spaces to engage in cultural activities in ways that are meaningful for them. Many of those activities are translocal.
• “Translocality manifests, in particular, in lingual choice, and in linguistic and stylistic heteroglossia, the coexistence, mixing and alteration of different languages, registers genres and styles”.
• Young people’s new media activities have both an interlingua and intralingua dimension: o Interlingua dimension: combination of resources from more than one language (their selection on English as their language communication) o Intralingua dimension: their selection and mixing of features associated with different registers, genres and styles of one language in their discourse. 1 st^ case: new media has an important social function at the local level of the young people’s personal lives, in enhancing their contacts and interactions with their friends. It is an opportunity for identifying themselves as “international” or “cosmopolitan” 2 nd^ case: young people’s new media practices may go much further than communication with friends. They can become sites for translocal social, cultural and aesthetic activities. The young woman’s writing was heteroglossic in nature: different languages, styles, textual resources and genre conventions she uses to connect her texts to various locales. 3 rd^ case: the playing is an instance of global game culture. The two players of the example align themselves through their expert talk, actions and interactions while playing, and their competence with dealing with the global game language, English. 4 th^ case: translocal space for in at least two ways: In one hand, patterns of language mixing involving English terminology. In the other hand, by using English it places itself in the context of international extreme sports, thus, negotiating participant identities as involving a translocal aspect as well. 07.10. Small languages in the new context of media Basque in talk media: from the gifting to the performance era Small languages can offer distinction and exclusivity. These languages can become flexible resources for reflexive, even transgressive identity work. Because of the txakoli , Basque language turned its rustic face into a sophisticated and luxury face. Those are some features that give new values to minority

languages. This is an answer to the globalisation. Those minority languages can give you access to the markets providing exclusive commodities (economical value). The gifting era This generally involves the management and deployment of minority language resources for the achievement of presence of visibility. Language policy:

• Linguistic purism and homogeneity guiding principle for much minority-language media engagement.
• Purity is informed by the modernist project of constructing a coherent homogeneous nation linked to the concept of territoriality.
• The speech community is perceived as demarcated, monolingual, internally unified and language is conceived as an objective, isolated system with material properties which can be fixed, kept pure, maintained. The service era The second era we identify tends to involve a move away from the provision or gifting of media space to the provision of a service for the minority language speakers, often intertwined with growing political activism and language revitalization. Simply being present in media was not enough, and to be a “living language”, minority media have to be “by the people, for the people”. Language policy:
• The linguistic purism of the gifting era continues, but at the same time there is a change. The performance era Technological changes and global media flows, which have inevitably led to greater choice and user autonomy, have brought about what we term a performance era. In comparison to the service and gifting eras, the performance era explicitly makes use of the multilingual repertories of the community and the largest audience. In the performance era, the state and community are still key actors in minority-language media both a national and community levels, but they are supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, by a multiplicity of other actors. New circumstances Speakers no longer need to wait to be provided with media products by a powerful actor such as a national or community media station; instead, they can create their own. This blend of producer and consumer, have created a “prosumer”, who is involved in both production and use of media products. The whole producer-consumer relationship has changed in there media shifts and in the simultaneous coexistence of various types of media and media products. 09.10. The gifting era of Basque media Basque in audio-visual media in started 1982 with the Basque State Broadcaster, Euskal Irrati-Telebista (EITB). In 70s were also created the states in Spain, the autonomous departments. Basque Country, Cataluña and Galicia created their own media to answer a social demand; one of the most famous

2 nd^ PROJECT: LANGUAGE VARIATION IN MEDIA We take 3 things into account: dialectic variables, functional variables and the varieties into formality and informality. When we talk about dialects , we can see that variation according to the user’s geographic, social and generational variety. Geographical variants : it is a universal characteristic of human language that speakers of the “same” language who live in different parts of a continuous territory do not speak in the same way. Social variants : in any one place not all people speak alike, even if they were all born there. Differences of speech are correlated with one or more social factors which apply to the speaker concerned. These factors include age, sex race, class backround, education, occupation and income. The functional variants are related to the content of use. Here we can find different features depending on the register (formal or informal), the medium (oral/writing), the general or specialized words or the genre. Even if I speak bizkaiera, whenever I write I tend to write a more specialized formal Basque. Depending on the intention I will choose different resources of my own variety. PARAMETERS IN LANGUAGE VARIATION USAGE Those parameters are affecting the way we use language. Audience or addressee : depending on who my audience is I will use into the same language, different resources or features. It’s not used the same language in a program for adults or for children. Channel or medium : depending on the channel I am using to send my message I will use into the same language, different resources or features. In particular there are huge differences in oral or written mediums. Content : depending on the topic of a message I will use into the same language, different resources or features. When we are watching news programs, we can see that difference when they talk about politics or about sport, and it’s only the content which is changing, all the other parameters are the same. Genre : depending on the genre, the type of text, (advertisement, comedy, news…) I will use into the same language, different resources or features. With the topic of politic, we can read a tweet, a meme, an article… and in all those genres we can find differences in the use of language. The genre imposes you some language conditions (amount of words, f.e.) Purpose : depending on which your purpose is (inform, make jokes, argue…) you will use into the same language, different resources or features. For example, we can see that with the same topic we can see differences on the News or on the program of El Intermedio, because, the purpose of one of them is to inform and the other one is making a parody. According to David Crystal, vernacular forms (local variations) are more and more used in media, their use is increasing. Purpose Audience/ addressee Channel/ medium Content Genre

Media deregulation is a process in which a government removes controls and rules about how newspapers, TV channels, etc. are owned and controlled: Shifting values of localness in heteroglossic mediascapes. The proliferation of vernacular speech in the media reflects wider processes of social and institutional change:

1. The deregulation of media system over the last decades has led to a diversification of target audiences: it is a phenomenon that happened in the 90s in Europe in which a government removes controls and rules about how newspapers, television channels… are owned and controlled. Before of that all the media was controlled by the state. In 90s there was a creation of all the private channels.
2. The digital revolution has increased grassroots access to media production and blurred the boundary between producers and audiences, creating new chances for vernacular voices to be heard publicly. The affect changes in institutional practices of media planning and production:
3. Media diversification to a proliferation of local media and narrow programs. Media started segmenting audiences and separating different type of audiences for different type of programs. So it changed from one general audience to a segmentation of audiences which made a segmentation of the language.
4. Formats of audience engagement and participation have become widely popular. When you introduce WhatsApp, the street language moves to the television. Those affect the micro level of linguistic and textual processes in media:
5. Tendency to conversationalization: the use of informal speech and conversational features in public discourse.
6. An increase in the currency of non-standard speech. In any case, traditional ideologies of non-standardness are still widely reproduced as a signifier of low status. When regional television channels reserve use of the regional dialect exclusively for local culture shows, they reinforce the link of dialect to local rural tradition. 21.10. Which media genres and formats favour the proliferation of local speech? Androutsopoulos 2010 1. Advertising : authentication of the products. The importance of the authenticity in advertisement. 2. Linguistic landscape : signs, company logos, tourist memorabilia. Vernacular dialects: dialects of one place, many times related to the geographical acts. Is a specific way of talking in some areas. Sometimes it is related, also, with the social groups. The features of vernacular can be features of local languages, a mixture of different languages… depending on the speakers. 23.10. 3. Films and fiction; comedy, drama, novel, music, television and series : more and more in fiction they use the strategy of creating a character by using language features in order to separate and differ the characters. 4. Audience participation formats; talks, games, quiz, reality shows : those formats contribute to the visibility and diversity of common people’s voices who speak local varieties. 5. Virtual spaces; chats twitter, instagram, Facebook : 28.10.

contain people whose speech spans a wider range of styles than the old middle class. The value associations of “standard” and “non-standard” speech are weaker and less significant in late modern age. According to Coupland, people at the top of social scale will have become more sociolinguistically “omnivorous” as they consume a range of language varieties. In consequence there are greater demands on more speakers to self-present as “socially attractive” more than “competent”. Scottish and Welsh people attribute significantly more prestige and social attractiveness to their home varieties, while attributing less prestige and social attractiveness to varieties labelled “standard English” and “the Queen’s English” than many other groups do. Younger informants regularly attributed more positive values to conventionally low-prestige varieties than older informants did, and this might indicate generational shift over time. RP- Standard English “queen English” British radio has also contributed to a sociolinguistic stratification effect, in the hierarchy of “serious” to “popular” broadcasting roles. They contribute to a sociolinguistic stratification effect:

• “serious” news readers of BBC 3 and 4: Conservative RP
• “Popular” Radio 1, the youth oriented pop and rock BBC Channel: RP is only non-functional but risible. “There are reasons to suppose that the conventional class-based sociolinguistic conceptualization of “standard” and “non-standard” speech is becoming out-dated” – Coupland The superiority of RP is often a two-edged sword in social evaluative terms. Kristiansen suggests that the development of European standard languages in Late Modernity can be characterized by two alternative developments:
• Linguistic de-standardization : It is development whereby the established standard language loses its position as the one and only “best language”: is a type of value levelling that washes out status meaning formerly linked to standard and non-standard varieties. Such a development would be equal to a radical weakening and eventual abandonment of the standard ideology itself. Norway case: it is known for the strong position of dialects in everyday and even formal situations.
• Demotisation: it is a shift to more demotic the standard ideology stays intact while the valoration of ways of speaking changes refers to continuing investment in a standard or best variety of speech but where a formerly popular or more vernacular variety rises to take the place of the earlier standard. Danish evidence: low Copenhagen speech indexes an affective straightforward, self-assured, interesting persona a successful media personality. Both weaken the status of the traditional standard languages which emerged, became codified and spread throughout in the age of modernity. Nowadays the standard way of talking may be considered posh, it's not considered as a good thing anymore. What is the place of media in the process of de-standardization in Norway?

In 1990 Norwegian Broadcasting Company took the monopoly of the radio and TV, this was the intermediary for the two standard spoken languages. After this language policy has been provided by the state, a great tolerant toward dialectal pronunciation of standard languages has been practices in order to give the standard a regional stamp, alternative radio and TVs have a more informal style and regional features have been more accepted.

When passing from consciously offered to subconsciously offered attitudes, the adolescent inverse the value hierarchization of the linguistic variation that is most obviously relevant to processes of social identification in their everyday life. The informants of the project were students. They were given a list of variety names. The local varieties came out in the top position, followed by the variety of local big city and Rigsdank in third position. Modern was down in ideology. When they were asked to evaluate audio-recorded speakers, local went down to a bottom position, conservative speech had a weakening of traditional ideological support and modern was described as “dynamic” and “best language”. In conclusion, the subconscious language-ideological constitution of contemporary Danish adolescents shows a picture in harmony with the change in use. We can see a fall of the dialects as we find a bottom position for local and a rise of modern as we find conservative’s status as “best language”. Danish case as Demotisation:

• CONSERVATIVE with superiority values
• MODERN as a dynamic language It is something the adolescents don’t acquire in the school context, nor from public discourse more generally. Language-related experiences resulting from exposure to broadcast media appear the only possible explanation for the generally shared association of MODERN with dynamic values. It is hard to see how contemporary young Danes’ sense of modern speech can be understood as anything else than a media- induced “intuitive feel”.

Vernacularization of media. The visibility of vernacular speech in the media has increased in recent decades Vernacular speech is nowadays a sociolinguistic resource deployed in media contexts in ways that go well beyond its understanding as a marker of social and local belonging. Vernaculars are considered stylistic resources to attract audiences but also to construct personal and media identities. Stylistic change in Basque young media:

- Basque today relevant features Basque is co-official with Spanish in Spanish territory. It’s not official status in France territories. Standard Basque was officially created in 1968. Euskera Batua is a compositional standard (created by some Basque linguist experts taking into account different dialects) based on the written literary creation of few poets and writers. It is a written standard valid for the whole Basque Country. Euskera Batua was nobody’s spoken language; the elite did not speak Basque. Nowadays, in a few decades, Euskera Batua has become established in Basque society. Since the 80’s the standard Basque is the central axis of language revival policy, particularly in the educational system. - Vernaculars and youth identity Vernacularity of speech generally implies localness and embedding in a social milieu sometimes with the implication that the milieu in question is where a speaker was first socialised. Vernacular, as a non-standard way of speaking, is a local, everyday, ‘on the ground’ language from a superposed, high prestige standard. Young native Basque speakers: a particularly high value in local dialects which give a value of authenticity of the language among new Basque speakers. In general, all the Basque young people want to know and talk these dialects. They connect those dialects with the authentic Basque. Local dialects are for Basque people those varieties that give to them a real way to talk Basque. Values according to Basque young people: Standard Basque - Academic - Formal - Artificial Vernaculars - Dynamic - Authentic - Informal - Young - Gaztea, styling the youth Euskadi Gaztea was created in the 90’s in order to promote Basque among young people. In the 90’s the entire production was exclusively in Standard Basque. At that time that radio was not successful, the numbers were not very good. Since 2006 Gaztea have changed, they gave an international, young and commercial view to the radio. They started using youth language. Vernaculars are a sociolinguistic resource displayed in Gaztea.