DAVID CRYSTAL
“ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE”
PREFACE TO THE 2ND EDITION
The 1990s were a revolutionary decade with a proliferation of new linguistic varieties coming from the implementation of internet and the
public recognition of the global position of English.
David Crystal in the first edition of the book says that “English has already grown to be independent of any form of social control”, these
is nothing likely to stop its spread as a global “LINGUA FRANCA”. Other authors have different opinions. The role of these books has
been to underline some of the parameters of enquiry. There were few general hypoteses to motivate research, some are issues relating
to language use: political, economic, demographic and social factors have been identified as potential influences on world language
presence. Others are issues affecting language structure: how regional and social factors influence the growth of language varieties.
David Crystal has published this 2nd edition of “English as a golbal language” because things have changed from the first edition, there
is much more literature available to refer and more point of view to take into account.
Chapter 1 : WHY A GLOBAL LANGUAGE?
The topic of English as a global language has been treated these years in many magazines, newspapers and television programms and
series. If English is your mother tongue you may have mixed feeling about the way English is spreading around the world. You can be
proud of the success of your language, but also concerned because people who speak English around the world change it, they don't
speak the same English you do. They use it in the way they want. Often in English press we can find expressions like “look what
Americans have done to English”, and Americans say the same about variations in English which are emerging all over the world.
But even if English isn't your mother tongue you can have mixed feelings about it. If you want to learn it, you can be proud of your
achievement when you make progress, but you know that a mother tongue speaker has an unfair advantage over you. Or you can be
envious if you live in a country in which the survival of your language is threatened by the success of English. This is why language is
always in the news, as much it's global, as much it's newsworthy.
What is a global language?
A language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country – mother tongue use
cannot by itself give a language global status, but a language has to be taken up by other countries around the world in 2 ways:
1. It can be made the official language of the country used as a medium of communication in such domains as government, law
courts, media and educational system = semi official status/second language complementary to the first one. English today
has some kind of special status in over 70 countries.
2. A language can be made a priority in a country's foreign language teaching, aven thogh it hasn't official status. English now is
the language most widely taught as a foreign language, often displacing another language.
So there are different ways in which a language can be official.
Reasons for choosing a particular language as a foreign language can be: historical tradition, political expediency, desire for
commercial, cultural or technological contact. When chosen the presence of this language can be different depending on the extent to
which a government or a foreign aid agency give financial support to a language-teaching policy.
The distinction between “second” and “foreign” language isn't just a difference in fluency or ability, a second language has some kind of
official status.
In the early 2000s about a quarter of the world's population was already fluent or competent in English, and this figure is steadly
growing= 1,5 billion people.
What makes a global language?
The fact that a language is a global language has little to do with the number of people who speak it, the important is who these
speakers are. There is a close link between language dominance and economic, technological and cultural power. If the users of a
language succeed on the international stage, their language succeeds. Some people think that English has been chosen because of its
easy grammar, but this property isn't enough to ensure a language's world spread. A language has traditionally become an international
language for the power of its people, expecially politic and military power. It happened with Greek, Latin, Arabic... the history of a global
language can be traced trough the successful expeditions of its soldier/sailor speakers. It's mecessary a military power to enstablish a
language and a economic power to mantain and expand it. Expecially in the 19th and 20th centuries, when economic developments
began to operate on a global scale. And at the beginning of the 19th century Britain had become the world's leading industrial and
trading country and by the end of the century the population of the USA was the largest in Western Europe and its economy was the
most productive and fastest growing in the world.
Why do we need a global language?
In human interactions translations has played a central role for thousands of years. In communities in which just 2 or 3 languages are in
contact, bilinguism or trilinguism can be a solution. But traditionally the problem has always been solved by finding a common language.
Sometimes it's a PIDGIN, that's a simplified language used between communities when they begin to trade and it has different
combined elements of their languages.
