1. Why a global language?

A language achieves a global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in

every country. A language has to be taken up by other countries in the world in two ways:!

•It can be the second language complementary of the first one: it’s made the oﬃcial

language of the country used as a medium to communicate in such domains as

government, courts, media and educational system. English today has this status in

over 70 countries.!

•It can be a foreign language: a language which is a priority in a country’s foreign

language teaching, even though it has no oﬃcial status. English now is the language

most widely taught as a foreign language.!

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. Some people think that English has been chosen because of its easy

gramma, or because it is ‘democratic’ (easily welcomes words from other language).

However, a language does not become a global language because of its structure

properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary, but because of the power of its

people, especially politic and military power. It happened with Greek, Latin, Arabic: it’s

necessary a military power to establish a language and an economic power to maintain

and expand it. At the beginning of the 19th century, Britain had become the world’s

leading industrial country and by the end of the century the economy of the USA was the

most productive and fastest growing in the world.!

Why do we need global language? In the 20th century for the fist time has born the

necessity of a lingua franca for the whole world, in particular since when the United

Nations and other international bodies came into being. The pressure to adopt a single

lingua franca, to facilitate communication in such contexts, is considerable. A small

number of languages have been designated oﬃcial languages for an organization’s

activity; for example, at the United Nations oﬃcial languages are English, French,

Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Now because of the high translation costs, they want to

reduce the numbers of languages included. The need for a global language is particularly

appreciated in the international academic and business communities. People have

become more mobile physically and electronically, and so they need more than ever a

global language to comunicate with people in other countries.!

What are the dangers of a global language? The dangers of a global language.!

•Linguistic power: those who speak a global language as a mother tongue are in a

position of power compared with those who have to learn it as an learn it as an oﬃcial

or foreign language. For example, scientists who do not have English as a mother

tongue will take longer to assimilate reports in English compared to their mother tongue

colleagues, and will as a consequence have less time to carry out their own creative

work. It is possible that people who write their research in languages other than English

will have their work ignored by the international community. However, if a global

language is taught early enough, from the time that children begin their full time

education, and if it is maintained continuously, the problem of disadvantage diminishes:

in this case children will be bilingual and they will speak as good as mother tongue

speaker.!

•Linguistic complacency: a global language may eliminate the motivation for adults to

learn other languages. There seems already to be a lack of motivation to learn other

languages, caused partly bu lack of money and opportunity, but also by lack of interest,

especially for British and American people, who have no need to learn other languages. !

•Linguistic death: the emergence of a global language may speed up the disappearance

of minority language and cause language death. The death of languages has always

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1. Why a global language? A language achieves a global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. A language has to be taken up by other countries in the world in two ways:

It can be the second language complementary of the first one: it’s made the official language of the country used as a medium to communicate in such domains as government, courts, media and educational system. English today has this status in over 70 countries.
It can be a foreign language: a language which is a priority in a country’s foreign language teaching, even though it has no official status. English now is the language most widely taught as a foreign language. 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. Some people think that English has been chosen because of its easy gramma, or because it is ‘democratic’ (easily welcomes words from other language). However, a language does not become a global language because of its structure properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary, but because of the power of its people, especially politic and military power. It happened with Greek, Latin, Arabic: it’s necessary a military power to establish a language and an economic power to maintain and expand it. At the beginning of the 19th century, Britain had become the world’s leading industrial country and by the end of the century the economy of the USA was the most productive and fastest growing in the world. Why do we need global language? In the 20th century for the fist time has born the necessity of a lingua franca for the whole world, in particular since when the United Nations and other international bodies came into being. The pressure to adopt a single lingua franca, to facilitate communication in such contexts, is considerable. A small number of languages have been designated official languages for an organization’s activity; for example, at the United Nations official languages are English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Now because of the high translation costs, they want to reduce the numbers of languages included. The need for a global language is particularly appreciated in the international academic and business communities. People have become more mobile physically and electronically, and so they need more than ever a global language to comunicate with people in other countries. What are the dangers of a global language? The dangers of a global language. - Linguistic power: those who speak a global language as a mother tongue are in a position of power compared with those who have to learn it as an learn it as an official or foreign language. For example, scientists who do not have English as a mother tongue will take longer to assimilate reports in English compared to their mother tongue colleagues, and will as a consequence have less time to carry out their own creative work. It is possible that people who write their research in languages other than English will have their work ignored by the international community. However, if a global language is taught early enough, from the time that children begin their full time education, and if it is maintained continuously, the problem of disadvantage diminishes: in this case children will be bilingual and they will speak as good as mother tongue speaker. - Linguistic complacency: a global language may eliminate the motivation for adults to learn other languages. There seems already to be a lack of motivation to learn other languages, caused partly bu lack of money and opportunity, but also by lack of interest, especially for British and American people, who have no need to learn other languages. - Linguistic death: the emergence of a global language may speed up the disappearance of minority language and cause language death. The death of languages has always

existed, and today many indigenous languages are being lost, it is not speeding up. In more recent times, the emergence of English as a global language has had the effect of stimulating a stronger support to local languages. Arguments about need for national for national or cultural identity are often seen as opposed to those about the need for mutual intelligibility, but they can happily co-exist. Could anything stop a global language? A global language can be stopped. If the status depends on political and economic power, a revolution of the balance of global power can bring to a different choice. There is a more plausible scenario: the automatic translation could eliminate the need of a global language. This way people can communicate in their own languages with a computer translating.

2. Why English? The historical context There are two answers to this question:

geographical-historical explanation, which shows how English reached a position of prominence tracing its movements around the world;
socio-cultural explanation, which looks at how people all over the world have come to depend on English for their economic and social well-being. Origin. English arrived in England from northern Europe in the 5th century, it began to spread around the British Isles and in the 12th century in Ireland, which felt under the British rule. Between the reign of Elizabeth I and the reign of Elizabeth II, english.speakers increased almost fiftyfold. Most of them were Americans. America. The first permanent English settlement in the New Wold dates from 1607: the colonists called their settlement Mayflower and the area Virginia. In 1620 the first group of Puritans established at what is now Massachusetts. Pilgrim Fathers were looking for a landa in which found a new religious kingdom, free from persecution. During the 17th century, new immigrants arrived and brought an increasing variety of linguistic backgrounds into the country. In the 18th century there was a wave of immigration from Ireland. Also Spanish, French, German, Dutch and African, as a result of the trade slave, influenced the language in America. In the 19th century, immigrants started to arrive from Europe as a result of revolution and poverty: irish, Germans, Italians and Jews. Within one or two generations the came to speak English through a natural process of assimilation. Some commentators have suggested that that the English language was a major factor in maintaining American unity during this period of cultural diversification, while some minority groups began to be concerned about the preservation of their cultural and linguistic heritage. Canada. The first English-language contact with Canada was in 1497. English were in conflict with French, whose presence dated dated from 1520s, with the exploration of Jacques Cartier. The conflict came to an end only after the French defeat in Queen Anne’s War. After the US Declaration of Independence in 1776, American loyalist supporters of Britain left for Canada. This is why Canadian English has a lot in common with the English spoken in North America, but there is a sociolinguistic situation that we don’t find in other English-speaking counties , in fact French is a co-official language. The Caribbean. A distinctive kind of speech emerged in the islands of the West Indies and the southern part part of the mainland, spoken by incoming black population, who used to work as slaves in sugar plantation. This practice was started in 1517 by Spanish: they exchanged slaves for commodities as sugar rum and molasses. The first 20 slaves from America arrived in 1619 on a Dutch ship, they were 4 million at the end of US civil war in 1865. Slave-traders used to bring people speaking different languages, because in this way it was more difficult for them to plot rebellion. The result was he growth of pidgin, a simplified language used in these communities with different combined elements of every language. The pidgin began to be used as a mother tongue, producing the first black creole speech in the region. There were creole forms of English, French, Spanish

Gambia: the country is an independent member of Commonwealth from 1965 and became a republic in 1970. The creole is used as a lingua franca.
Nigeria: achieved independence in 1960 and it’s one of the most multilingual countries in Africa, and about half of population use pidgin or creole English as a second language.
Cameroon: a German protectorate in 1884, and was divided between France and Britain 1919; the two areas merged as a single country in 1972 and both languages remained official. Liberia: is the Africa’s oldest republic founded through the politic of the American colonization society, which wanted to establish a homeland for former slaves. Most of its population use pidgin as a second language. The Imperial British East African company was founded in 1888, and soon a system of colonia protectorates became established. Several modern states, each with has a history of association with Britain, gave English official status when they gained independence, and it’s also used as a medium of international communication in many other regions.english is an official language in: Botswana, Kenia, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In Tanzania was a joint official language with Swahili until 1967, but it’s still an important medium of communication. South-east Asia and South Pacific. Territories in and to the west of the South Pacific display an interesting mixture of American and British English. The Philippines became independent in 1946, but the influence of American English remains strong. English became the language of power in the British territories of South-East Asia. The introduction of a British educational system, with teachers coming from Britain, exposed learners to a standard British English very early. It rapidly became the language of professional advancement and literature. - Singapore: bilingual educational system was introduced, with English used as a unifying medium, important in education and media, diffused among the general population. A new local variety, known as Singlish, has evolved. - Malaysia: after independence, Bahasa Malaysia was adopted as the national language and the role of English became more restricted, but it’s still taught as a foreign language. - Hong Kong: Chinese is the mother tongue. English and Chinese have joint official status, often with a great deal of language mixing. - Papua New Guinea: became independent in 1975. About half of the people speak an English-Based pidgin as a second language. A world view. The present-day status is the result of two factors: - the expansion of British colonia power; - the emergence of USA as the leading economic power of the 20th century. The US linguist Braj Kachru suggested to think of the spread of English as 3 concentric circles, representing different ways in which English is currently used. - The inner circle refers^ to the traditional bases of English, where it is the primary language (USA, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada). - The outer or extended circle^ involves the spread of English in no-native settings, where it’s a second language and has become part of the country’s institution. - The expanding or extending circle^ involves nations that recognize the importance of English as an international language, and in which English is taught as a foreign language. 5. The future of global English The first impression is that English is alive and well, but we have to be cautious, because for example in the Middle Ages nobody would have supposed the death of latin. In the future of English as a global language there are some indications which seem to go

against the trend. A significant change in the balance of power could change the situation. The rejection of English. There are people in several countries who feel so antagonist or ambivalent about English that they reject the option to give English a privileged status, ad an official or foreign language. It is inevitable that in the post-colonia era, there should be a strong reaction against the idea of continuing to use the language of the former colonia power. The people have a natural wish to use their own mother tongue, since language is the most immediate and universal symbol of identity. English has an unhappy colonial resonance in the minds of many. Many writers in the countries of the outer circle face a dilemma: if they write in English they can reach a worldwide audience, but in this way they sacrifice their cultural identity. There are also economic arguments which might persuade a country to reduce its investment in the English language, for example if they see their economic future as operating more on a regional than on a global level, so they can decide to invest in a local lingua franca. The need for identity and the need for intelligibility often pull people in opposing directions. Any decision to reject English has important consequences for the identity of a nation, and it can also cause. Contrasting attitudes: the US situation. Given that the USA has come to be the dominant element in so many domains, the future status of English must be bound up with the future of this country. It exercises a great influence on the way English is developing around the world. Often English speaker of other areas express worries in their national press about the power of ‘Americanism’. If anything wee to disestablish the military or economic power of the USA, there would be inevitable consequences for the global status of the language. Some analysts consider the English language to have been an important factor in maintaining mutual intelligibility and American unity in the face of the immigration explosion. What has emerged is a conflict between the demands of intelligibility and the demands of identity from the contemporary movement among the immigrant populations. The position for and against ‘official English’ have been argued with varying amounts of moderation and extremism, and several views are possible on each side. A bill has been proposed: it allowed the use of languages other than English in such cases as public health and safety services, the teaching of foreign languages, policies necessary for International relations, and actions that protect the rights of people involved in justiciar proceedings. It also stated that it was not its propose to discriminate any individual or to discourage the use of languages other than English in any nonofficial capacity.

- Politica argument for. Pro-official supports view English as a linguistic glue which guarantee political unity. According to others, the language ahas been the basis of social stability in the USA, and any thread to its stabilizing influence would lead to the growth of a country within a country, which would discourage contacts between groups. - Political argument against. Anti-official supporters state say that an official English bill is unnecessary, because there is no risk of disunity and there is no more need to male English official now than there was at the time of revolution, when Both and German were spoken by a very large number of people. English is not in danger, while other languages actually are: first-generation immigrant parents find harder to persuade their children to learn their language of origin than to learn English. Plus the use of a common language does not guarantee ethic harmony: a community can be torn apart on racial, religious, political, to other grounds. - The socio-economic argument for. Pro-official supporters state that an expensive multilingual support policy is undesirable because there are over 300 languages to be taken into account and no country can afford a language policy which tired to give official protections so many languages, and it’s impossible to do a selection. The only

uniqueness will generate a lot of words related to the lifestyle of many indigenous people. So, when a community adopts a new language, and starts to use it in relation to all areas of life, there is inevitably going to be a great deal of lexical creation. The linguistic character of New Englishes. It’s possible to identify several types of change which are taking places.

- Grammar : two points are relevant:

- Grammars have traditionally focused on standard English, and essentially on written

English, but grammatical distinctiveness is most likely to be found in non standard varieties. New Englishes are likely to display a similar direction of development.

- Beh varieties have attracted less attention have attracted less attention because

they are chiefly associated with speech rather than writing. Even in the major European references grammars, which have always acknowledged the importance of the spoken language, there has been a concentration on writing. Traditionally the use of English has been in the hands of people for whom literacy is a significant part of their professional identity. But as English becomes increasingly global, we must expect far more attention to be paid to speech. Written English will not be less important, but there is evidence of new spoken varieties growing up which are only partly related to the written tradition, or even totally independent of it. It is unlikely that any regional trends will be predictive of the grammatical changes which will take place in global spoken English. Special attento is paid to areas of interaction between lexicon and grammar, with particular reference to standard British English and American English. When we examine lexical colocations we differences between British and American English, but these differences are small with the ones which are beginning to be identified in the New Englishes. The absence of statistical data means that the varietal status of features identified as nonstandard is always open to question. The process of change is rapid and pervasive, and origins are usually obscure. A sincronia comparison of a distinctive English construction with the responding construction in the contact language is usually illuminating. In multilingual countries, where English has been influenced by a melting-pot of other languages, it’s unlikely that a particular constellation of influences is replicated elsewhere.

- Vocabulary : it doesn’t take long before new words enter a language, once it arrives in a fresh location. Borrowings from indigenous languages are especially noticeable, but the long term role of these borrowings in relation to the distinctive identity of a new English is unclear. In case if American English. In the case of American English, a few of the American loan-words recorded in the 17th and 18th century became a permanent part of the standard language. On the other hand the amount of these borrowings is extremely sensitive to sociopolitical pressures, as is evident now in New Zealand, where loans from maori are increasing. The amount of borrowing is also influenced by the number of cultures which co-exist and the status their languages have achieved. In a highly multilingual country, such as South Africa, where issues of identity are critical, we might expect a much greater use of loan-words. The influence of local languages takes also the form of loan-translations, where two languages are involved in a blend.there are also many examples of words or phrases adopted by a new English and given a new meaning or use, without any structural change. Lists of lexical examples of this kind suffer Fromm same problems: because the investigator has focused on an individual country, it is often unclear wether a particular word is restricted to that country or is also used in other countries. It’s also unclear how much of the lexicon proposed as regionally distinctive is in fact personally idiosyncratic (caratteristico) usage, or a piece of lexical play, or no longer in use. Even in countries where the number of localized words is small, they effect on the

local English can be great for two reasons: 1) new words are likely to be used within the local community, because they are related to distinctive notions there; 2) these words tend not to occur in isolation.

- Code-switching.^ Code-Switching is the process in which people are rely simultaneously on two or more languages to comunicate with each other. The increase in code-switching is one of the most noticeable figures in new Englishes. We can see the example of a bilingual leaflet (volantino), in English and Tagalog (Philippines), but in the Tagalog section a great deal of English is mixed in. It is unclear whether this kind of mixing is idiosyncratic to a particular institution, genre or region; but it illustrates the extent to which it’s possible to go and still retain ad identity which is at least partly English. Whether one should call it a variety of English or something else is not yet clear. Mixed varieties involving English are now found everywhere, with nickname attached: Franglais, Spanglish etc. These nicknames have been applied to a languages which have been anglicized and to English which has made use of other languages. Different degrees of language mixing are apparent: at one extreme, a sentence might be indistinguishable from the standard English, on the other a sentence can use so many words from a contact language that it beck’s unintelligible to those outside a particular community. In between, there are varying degrees of hybridization. - Other domains.^ Grammatical and vocabulary are not the only domains within which linguistic distinctiveness manifests itself among the new Englishes of the world: pragmatical and discoursal domains also need to be take into account, but studies in these areas are few, anecdotal and programatic. For example, in the Zambian and Ghanian studies, terms such as father, brother, mother and so on are shown to have different ranges of application, reflecting the internal structure of the family.there is more to be said with reference to phonology: few give details of the non-segmental characteristics of new Englishes, especially the general intonation and rhythm, and the way in which these factors interact with vowels and consonants. For 500 years English has been a stress-based language, but the contact with new Englishes is changing the situation, in fact the vast majority of them are syllable-based. Problems of comprehension rise when speakers of both languages interact: words can be misinterpreted, grammatical patterns can be misheard, lexical items can be unrecognized. Stress-based speakers have difficulties to understand syllable-based speakers, while it’s unclear whether syllable-based speakers have difficulties to understand stress-based speakers or to understand each others. The majority of English speakers in the world are speaking syllable-based varieties of English, however in most of the second-language countries, the stress-based models are still the prestigious ones. In the language learning the typical situation is that students, whose mother tongue is syllable.based, are taught by teachers whose English is syllable- based, with very little opportunity to hear mother tongue stress-based speakers. Whether in long term stress-based speech will replace syllable-based speech is impossible to say, but there is a third possibility: that the second language learners will become competent in both kinds of speech, using syllable-based speech for local communications, as a sign of national identity, and switching to stress-based speech to ensure intelligibility. The future of English as a world language. Language is an immensely democratizing institution. To have learned a language allows to have rights in it (adding to it, modify it, play with it as you will). Fashion counts in language as anywhere else. It’s possible, as the example of rapping suggests, for a linguistic fashion to be started of second (or foreign) language learners. When numbers grow and they gain prestige, eases previously criticized as ‘foreign’ can become part of the standard educated speech of a locality and even appear in writing. Several of these linguistic features are achieved a great public

a national dialect, it supplements it, and people who can use both are in a more powerful position than people who can use only one. They have a dialect in which they can continue to express their national identity, and they have a dialect which can guarantee international intelligibility. There is nothing unusual about a community using more than one variety for different purposes. The situation is called diglossia. It would seem that English is moving from being a global language to being a diglossic language. If world standard spoken English emerges as a neutral global variety, British and American English will still exist, but as varieties expressing national identity, in UK and USA. For global purposes, world standard spoken English will suffice.

English as a Global Language, David Crystal, cap. 1,2,5, Sintesi del corso di Lingua Inglese

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Scarica English as a Global Language, David Crystal, cap. 1,2,5 e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity!

- Grammars have traditionally focused on standard English, and essentially on written

- Beh varieties have attracted less attention have attracted less attention because