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Riassunto English as a Global Language Chapter 1: Why a global language? “English is the global language”: the headline is not stating the obvious. If there is one predictable consequence of a language becoming a global language, it is that nobody owns it any more. Or rather, everyone who has learned it now owns it and has the right to use it in the way they want. Language is always in the news, and the nearer a language moves to becoming a global language, the more newsworthy it is. So, how does a language come to achieve global status? 1.1 What is a global language? A language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. To achieve such a status, a language has to be taken up by other countries around the world There are two main ways in which this can be done:
- Firstly , 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 educational system. Such a language is often described as a “second language”, because it is seen as a complement to a person’s mother tongue (“first language”). English has some kind of special status in over seventy countries, such as Ghana, Nigeria, India.
- Secondly , a language can be made a priority in a country’s foreign‐language teaching, even though this language has no official status. English is now the language most widely taught as a foreign language‐ in over 100 countries, such as Germany, Spain, Egypt‐ and in most of these countries it is emerging as the chief foreign language encountered in schools, often displacing another language in the process [inserisci nota: In 1996, for example, English replaced French as the chief foreign language in schools in Algeria (a former French colony)]. Because of the three‐ponged development‐ of first‐language, second language, and foreign language speakers‐ it is inevitable that a global language will eventually come to be used by more people than any other language. English has already reached this stage. 1.2 What makes a global language? 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 (see Latin and the Roman Empire). It is often suggested that there must be something about the structure of English, in order to explain why it is now widely used (for example: less grammar, no distinction between genres...). However, such arguments, are misconceived. This is not to deny that a language may have certain properties which made it internationally appealing, for instance English has over the centuries borrowed thousands of new words[From a lexical point of view, English is in fact more a Romance than a Germanic Language]. A language has traditionally become an international language for one chief reason : the power of its people ‐especially their political and military power. And its international dominance is not solely the result of military might. In fact, it became a particularly critical factor in the 19 th^ and 20 th^ centuries, with economic developments beginning to operate in a global scale, supported by the new communication technologies. By the beginning of the 19 th^ century Britain had become the world leading industrial and trading country. Afterwards, British imperialism sent English around the globe During the 20 th^ century,
this world presence was maintained and promoted almost single‐handedly through the economic supremacy of the new American superpower. Economics replaced politics as the chief driving force. And the language behind the US dollar was English. Any language at the center of such explosion of international activity would suddenly have found itself with a global status. 1.3 Why do we need a global language? The problem has traditionally been solved by finding a language to act as a lingua franca, or common language. Sometimes, when communities begin to trade with each other, they communicate by adopting a simplified language, known as a pidgin, which combines elements of theirdifferent languages. The prospect that a lingua franca might be needed for the whole world is something which has emerged strongly only in the 20 th^ century, since the 1950s in particular , when UN and other international bodies came into being. Thepressure to adopt a single lingua franca, to facilitate communication in such contexts, is considerable. Usually a small number of languages have been designated official languages for an organization’s activities, for example, at the UN official languages are English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Moreover, there is now a widespread view that it makes sense to try to reduce the numbers of languages involved in world bodies, if only to cut down on the vast amount of interpretation/translation work required [Half the budget of an international organization can easily get swallowed up in translation costs]. Butit is never easy, as obviously no country likes the thought of its language being given a reduced international standing. In 20 th^ century, the availability of technology of modern communication and technology of any transportation, more than anything else, provided the circumstances needed for a global language to grow. What has been so impressive about the developments which have taken placesince the 1950s is that they have affected every country in the world. There has never been a time when so many nations were needing to talk to each other so much. 1.4 What are the dangers of a global language? Linguistic power : those who speak a global language as a mother tongue automatically will be in a position of power compared with those who have to learn it as an official or foreign language. It is possible that people who write up their research in languages other than English will have their work ignored by the international community. However, if proper attention is paid to the question of language learning, the problem of disadvantages dramatically diminishes. In fact, if a global language is taught early enough, from the time that children begin their full‐time education, the kind of linguistic competence which emerges in due course is a real and powerful bilingualismone of the key principles is “the earlier the better”. And when that task is taken seriously, with reference to the acquisition of a global language, the elitism argument evaporates. Linguistic complacency : there seems already to be a genuine, widespread lack of motivation to learn other languages fuelled partly by lack of money and opportunities, but also by lack of interest , and this might be fostered by the increasing presence of English as a global language. These days, there are clear signs of growing awareness, withinEnglish –speaking communities, of the need to break away from the traditional monolingual bias. But we are still a long way from a world where the economic and other arguments have universally persuaded the English‐speaking countries to renounce their linguistic insularity. Linguistic death : when a language dies, so much is lost since language is the repository of
Chapter 2: Why English? The historical context Why is English the global language, and not some another? The reasons are: a) geographic‐historic; b) socio‐cultural. 2.1. Origins In a sense the language has always been on the move. As soon as it arrived in England from Northern Europe, in the 5 th^ century, it began to spread around the British isles. It entered parts of wales, Cornwall, Cambria and Southern Scotland. After the Norman invasion of 1066, many nobles from England fled north to Scotland. From the 12 th^ century, Anglo‐Norman knights were sent across the Irish Sea, and Ireland gradually fell under English rule. But the first significant step in the progress of English towards its status as a global language did not take place for another 300 years, towards the end of the 16 th^ century. 2.2. America The first expedition from England to the new world was commissioned in 1584 and was a failure. The first permanent English settlements dates from 1607 , when an expedition arrived in Chesapeake Bay (in Virginia ). Further settlements quickly followed along the coast, and also in the nearby isles, such as Bermuda. Then, in November 1620 , the first group of puritans, 35 members of the English separatist church, arrived on the Mayflower in the company of 67 other settlers. Prevented by storms from reaching Virginia, they landed at cape Cod bay and established a settlement at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. The group was extremely mixed, ranging in age and with diverse regional, social, backgrounds. The 2 settlements ‐ Virginia and New England‐ had different linguistic backgrounds : those settled in Virginia came from England’s West Country and brought with them their characteristic accent voicing of /s/ sounds and the /r/ strongly pronounced after vowels (tidewater accent). By contrast, many of the Plymouth colonists came from countries in the east of England, lacking of an /r/ after vowels. The dialect picture was never a neat one, because of widespread north‐south movements within the country, and the continuing inflow of immigrants from different parts of the world. But the main division of the north, midland, and south are still found throughout America today. During the 17 th^ century , new shiploads of immigrants brought an increasing variety of linguistic backgrounds into the country. As a result, the sharp divisions between regional dialects gradually began to blur. Then, in the 18 th^ century , there was a vast wave of immigration from Northern Ireland. A century later, after the opening up of the west, the population numbered over 50 million, spread throughout the continent. The accent which emerged can now be heard all over the so‐called Sunbelt (from Virginia to California), and is the accent most commonly associated with present‐day American speech. It was not only England which influenced the USA. The Spanish had occupied large parts of the west end the South‐West, French did the same with the northern territories, the Dutch were in New York and there were an increasing number of Africans entering the south. The 19 th^ century saw a massive increase in American immigration, especially from Ireland, Germany and Italy. In 1900 the population was just over 75 million. This total had doubled in 1950. Within one or two generations of arrival, most of these immigrant families had come to speak English, through a natural process of assimilation. Some commentators have suggested that the English language was a major factor in maintaining American unity throughout this period of remarkable cultural diversification.
2.3. Canada The first English‐language contact with Canada was as early as 1497 (John Cabot), but English migration along the Atlantic coast did not develop until a century later. There was ongoing conflict with the French, whose presence dated from the exploration of Jacques Cartier in the 1520s: this came to an end when the French claims were gradually surrendered during the 18 th. Because of its origins, Canadian English has a great deal in common with the rest of the English spoken in North America. 2.4. The Caribbean During the early years of American settlement, the English language was also spreading in the South. A highly distinctive kind of speech was emerging in the islands of the West Indies and the Southern part of the mainland, spoken by the incoming black population. This was a consequence of the importation of African slaves to work on the sugar plantations, a practice started by the Spanish as early as 1517. The policy of the slave‐traders was to bring people of different language backgrounds together in the ships, to make it difficult for groups to plot the rebellion. The result was the growth of several pidgin forms of communication, and in particular a pidgin between the slaves and the sailors, many of whom spoke English. Once arrived in the Caribbean, this pidgin English continued to act as a means of communication between the black population and the new landowners, the pidgin gradually began to be used as a mother tongue, producing the first black creole speech in the region. It is this creole English which rapidly came to be used throughout the Southern plantations. At the same time, standard BritishEnglish was becoming a prestige variety throughout the area, because of the emerging political influence of Britain. Moreover, West Indian speech did not stay within the Caribbean islands, but moved well outside, with large communities eventually found in Canada, the USA and Britain. 2.5. Australia and New Zealand Towards the end of the 18 th^ century, the continuing process of the British world exploration established the English language in the Southern hemisphere. Australia was visited by James Cook in 1770 , and within 20 years Britain has established its first penal colony at Sidney. Free settlers did not achieved substantial numbers until the mid‐ 19 th^ century. The British isles provided the main source of settlers, many of the convicts came from London and Ireland and features of Cockney accent of London and the brogue of Irish English can be traced in Australian speech patterns. In recent years the influence of American English and of a growing number of immigrant groups has been noticeable. In new Zealand the story of English started later and moved more slowly. Captain Cook chartered the islands in 1769 ‐70. Three strands of New Zealand’s social history in the present century have had special linguistic consequences:
- Firstly, in comparison with Australia, there has been a stronger sense of the historical relationship with Britain, and a greater sympathy of British values and institutions. Many people speak with an accent which displays clear British influence.
- Secondly, there has been a growing sense of national identity, and in particular an emphasis on the differences between new sea land and Australia. This motivated the use of distinctive New Zealand vocabulary.
1960s a “ three language formula ”, in which English was introduced as the chief alternative to the local state language (Hindi). English, has, as a consequence, retained its standing within Indian society and it is a strong unifying force. In Pakistan, it is an associated official language. It has no official status in the other countries of south Asia, but throughout the region it is universally used as the medium of International communication. 2.8. Former colonial Africa The English began to visit west Africa the end of the 15 th^ century, and soon after we find sporadic references to the use of the language as a lingua franca in some coastal settlements. With hundreds of local languages to contend with, a particular feature of the region was the rise of severalEnglish ‐ based pidgins and creoles , used alongside the standard varieties of colonial officials, missionaries, and traders. British varieties developed especially in 5 countries , each of which now gives English official status. SierraLeone : in the 1780s philanthropists in Britain bought land to establish a settlement for freed slaves. The settlement became a crown colony in 1808, and was then used as a base for anti‐slave‐ trading squadrons. The chief form of communication was an English‐based creole, Krio, and this rapidly spread along the West African coast. Ghana : following a successful British expedition the southern gold coast was declared a crown colony in 1874. Ghana achieved independence in 1957 and 7.8%of the population now uses English as a second language. Gambia : English trading dates from the early 17 th^ century. Krio is widely used as a lingua franca. Nigeria : after a period of early 19 th‐century British exploration of the interior, a British colony was founded at Lagos in 1861. About half of the population use pidgin or creole English as a second language. Cameroon : explored by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British; both French and English remained the official languages. Cameroon pidgin is spoken by half the population. Liberia : africa’s oldest republic was founded in 1822 through the activities of the American colonization society, which wished to establish a homeland for former slaves. It became independent in 1847. Its population mostly uses pidgin English as a second language (but there are also a number of first‐language speakers). Although English ships had visited east Africa from the end of the 16 th^ century, systematic interest began only in the 1850s , with the expeditions of such British explorers as Richard Burton. Several modern states, each with a history of association with Britain, gave English official status when they gained independence, and BritishEnglish has thus played a major role in the development of these states. English is the official language in: Botswana, Kenya (with Swahili), Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda (Swahili is widely used as a lingua franca), Zambia and Zimbabwe. In Tanzania English was a joint official language with Swahili until 1967, then lost its status as a national language, but it remains an important medium of communication. The kinds of English which developed in east Africa were very different from those in west Africa. Large numbers of British emigrants settled in the area, producing a class of expatriates and African‐born whites. A British model was introduced early into schools, reinforcing the exposure to BritishEnglish. The result was a range of mother‐tongue English varieties which have more in common with what is heard in South Africa or Australia than in Nigeria or Ghana.
2.9. South‐east Asia and the South Pacific The territories of the south pacific display an interesting misture of American and BritishEnglish. American influence The Philippines became independent in 1946, but the influence of American English remains strong. This country has by far the largest population of the English‐speaking states in the region. British influence began through a voyage of English sailors at the end of the 18 th^ century, notably the journeys of Captain Cook in the 1770s. Centers were established in several locations, notably Penang and Singapore. English had come to be established throughout the region as a medium of law and administration, and was being increasingly used in other contexts. English inevitably and rapidly became the language of power in the British territories of South‐east Asia. The introduction of a British educationalsystem exposed learners to a standard BritishEnglish model very early on. English‐medium schools began in Penang in 1816 , with senior reaching staff routinely brought in from Britain. Although at the outset these schools were attended by only a tiny percentage of the population, numbers increased during the 19th century. English rapidly became the language of professional advancement and the chief literary language. Despite the common colonial history of the region, a single variety of “South‐east Asian English” has not emerged. The political histories of Singapore and Malaysia, especially since the independence, have been too divergent for this to happen; and the sociolinguistic situation in Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea are unique. Singapore : English remained the language of government and the legal system, and retained its importance in education and the media. Its use has also been steadily increasing among the general population. There is also evidence of quite widespread use in family settings, and a new local variety, known as Singlish, has evolved. Malaysia : following independence(1957), Bahasa Malaysia was adopted as the national language, and the role of English accordingly became more restricted. English was introduced as an obligatory subject being seen as of value for international rather than intra‐national purposes. HongKong : English has always had a limited use in the territory, associated with government or military administration. Chinese (Cantonese) is the mother‐tongue of over 98 per cent of the population. English and Chinese have joint official status. Papua New Guinea : about half the people speak TokPisin, an English‐based pidgin, as a second language. 2.10. A world view The present‐day world status of English is primarily the result of 2 factors: a) the expansion of British colonial power, which peaked towards the end of the 19th century; b) the emergence of the United States as the leading economic power of the 20th century. It is this later factor which continues to explain the world position of the English language today. The USA has nearly 70% of all English mother‐tongue speakers. Such dominance, with its political/economic underpinnings, currently gives America a controlling interest in the way the language is likely to develop. How then may we summarize this complex situation? We can think of the spread of English around the world as three concentric circles, representing different ways in which the language has been acquired and is currently used.
into the hinterland of a country – away from the tourist spots, airports, hotels and restaurants – to encounter this reality. Second, there is evidently a major shift taking place in the centre of gravity of the language. From a time (in the 1960s) when the majority of speakers were thought to be first‐language speakers, we now have a situation where there are more people speaking it as a second language , and many more speaking it as a foreign language. However, no other language has spread around the globe to extensively, but what is impressive is not so much the grand total but the speed with which expansion has taken place since the 1950s. What happened in this 50 years? °°°° Chapter 3: Why English? The cultural foundation What was worth of the English language, as it grew in global stature during the 19 th^ century? A geo‐ historical survey can help us see what happened in the past; but a socio‐historical account is needed to help us explain it. 3.1. Political development Most of the pre‐ 20 th^ century commentators would have had no difficulty giving a single, political answer to the question “Why world English?”: The growth of the BritishEmpire. In the 18 th^ century was self‐evident that the civilizing influence of Britain was a desirable goal, and that the English language was an essential means to achieve this end. This is the vision which is repeatedly encountered as we trace the path of English around the British Empire : the language as a guarantor, as well as a symbol, of political unity. It is a vision, moreover, which continued to prove compelling a century later, when the evidence of that Empire was rapidly vanishing from the atlas.[ Many of the newly independent multilingual countries, especially in Africa, chose English as their official language to enable speakers of their indigenous communities to continue communicating with each other at a national level.] 3.2. Access to knowledge By the beginning of the 19 th^ century, Britain had become the world’s leading industrial and trading nation. Most of the innovations of the industrial revolution were of British origin. The linguistic consequences of this achievement were far‐reaching The new terminology of technological and scientific advance had an immediate impact on the language. But, more important is the fact that these meant that those from abroad who wished to learn about them need to learn English. Missions of inquiry arrived in Britain from several continental countries, foreign workers were seconded to British factories, and many Britons came to earn a good living abroad, teaching the new methods of industrial production. It was not long before similar developments were taking place in America which, by the end of the century, had overtaken Britain as the world’s fastest growing economy. When the American research is added to the British, it is possible to suggest that about half of the influential scientific and technological output in the period between 1750 to 1900 would have been written in English. Moreover, some of the technology was itself critical in helping the dissemination of ideas. In patricular, steam technology revolutionized printing, enabling the introduction of the high‐speed rotary press and generating an unprecedented mass of publication in English; telegraph and telephone. New
methods of mass production demanded new means of mass transportation. In particular, as far as the language was concerned, the distribution of daily newspapers on a large scale would not have been possible without a railway system and, later, a road network capable of carrying increasingly heavy vehicles. Another major step was the arrival of new sources of energy. [1880 the Standard Oil Company, under John D. Rockefeller and his associates, was controlling the refining of over 90 per cent of all oil produced in the USA.] John Pierpont Morgan had a banking house that, by the turn of the century, had become one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions, helping to finance the supply and credit need of the Allies in the First World War. In particular, the less wealthy countries of Europe, as well as the new colonies further afield, urgently needed to attract foreign investment. Firms such as Rothschilds and Morgans grew in response to these needs, and London and New York became the investment capitals of the world. “Access to knowledge” now became “access to knowledge about how to get financial banking”. 3.3. Taken for granted The story of English throughout this period is one of rapid expansion and diversification. It is not possible to identify cause and effect, we can only point to the emergence , by the end of the 19th century, of a climate of largely unspoken opinion which had made English the natural choice for progress. This climate chapter 4. “ Unspoken ” is the right word to explain the situation since there is hardly any conscious justification for the role of English. When the first radio stations were coming on air, no one seems to have spent any time debating whether or not they should broadcast in English. There was nothing novel about taking English for granted in this way, has English never been formally declared the official language of Britain. But there was no competition from other languages and as the 20 th^ century progressed, situations arose where repeatedly the status of English (and other ex‐ colonial languages) was called into question. The typical scenario was one where speakers of a language felt their language needed protection because its existence was being heatened by a more dominant language. This has happened occasionally, especially in recent decades, among the countries of the inner circle: for example, Welsh in Wales, Irish Gaelic in Ireland. Here the issue is one of identity. Among the countries of the outer circle, where English is used as a second language, the decision to give English official status has usually been made in order to avoid the problem of having to choose between competing local languages. English is perceived to be a ‘neutral’ language (examples: Ghana and Nigeria). In 1900 English had become the dominant language of global politics and economy, and all the signs were that it would remain so. To maintain the standing of the language, all that was needed was a period of consolidation and expansion, and this, as the next chapter amply demonstrates, was soon forthcoming. °°° Chapter 4: why English? The cultural legacy Far more important for the English language, than political expansion, in the post‐war world , was the way in which the cultural legacies of the colonial era and the technological revolution were being felt on an international scale. English was now emerging as a medium of communication in growth areas. 4.1. International relations
The English advertisements are not always more numerous in countries where English has no special status, but they are usually the most noticeable. Towards the end of the 19 th^ century , a combination of social and economic factors led to a dramatic increase in the use of advertisements in publications. In the USA, publishers realized that income from advertising would allow them to lower the selling price of their magazines, and thus hugely increased circulation. In 1893 McClure’s Magazine , Cosmopolitan and Munsey’s Magazine all adopted this tactic and today, two‐thirds of a modern newspaper, especially in the USA, may be devoted to advertising. During the 1950s , the proportion of gross national income devoted to advertising was much higher in the USA than anywhere else, and this rapidly increased as advertisers began to see the potential of television. The impact was less marked in Europe, where TV advertising was more strictly controlled, but once commercial channels developed, there was a rapid period of catching up. By 1972, only three of the world’s top thirty agencies were not US‐owned (two in Japan and one in Britain). The official language of international advertising bodies, such as the European Association of Advertising Agencies, is invariably English. Broadcasting : English was the first language to be transmitted by radio , in 1906. Within the 25 years of Marconi’s first transmission, public broadcasting became a reality by 1922, in the USA, over 500 broadcasting stations had been licensed. In Britain, experimental broadcasts were being made as early as 1919, and the British Broadcasting Company was established in 1922. It was a monopoly: no other broadcasting company was allowed until the creation of the Independent Television Authority in 1954. During the early 1920s, English‐language broadcasting began in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Most European countries commenced radio services during the same period. [As services proliferated, the need for international agreements became urgent. As services proliferated, the need for international agreements (for example, over the use of wavelengths) became urgent. Several organizations now exist, the largest being the International Telecommunications Union, created as early as 1865 to handle the problems of telegraphy.] There are also several important organizations that use English as a lingua franca, although they are regional, such as European Broadcasting Union as well as cultural and educational organizations. A similar dramatic expansion later affected public television. The world’s first high‐definition service, provided by the BBC, began in London in 1936. In the USA, in 1939. Other countries were much slower to enter the television age, and none has ever achieved the levels of outreach found in the USA. We can only speculate about how these media developments must have influenced the growth of world English, since there are no statistics on the proportion of time devoted to English‐language programmes the world over, or on how much time is spent listening to such programmes. A more specific indication is broadcasting aimed specifically at audiences in other countries. Such programmes were introduced in the 1920s, but Britain did not develop its services until the next decade. The international standing of BBC programmes, especially its news broadcasts, achieved a high point during the Second World War, when they helped to raise morale in German occupied territories. Although later to develop, the USA rapidly overtook Britain, becoming the leading provider of English language services abroad. The Voice of America, the external broadcasting service of the US Information Agency, was founded only in 1942, but by 1980s it was broadcasting from the USA worldwide in English and 55 other languages. Most other countries showed sharp increases in external broadcasting during the post‐War years, and several launched English language radio programmes, such as the Soviet Union, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Germany and Sweden.
Cinema : the years preceding and during the First World War stunted the growth of a European film industry dominance soon passed to America. When sound was added to the technology in the late 1920s , it was the English language which suddenly came to dominate the movie world and English‐ language movies still dominate the medium. It is unusual to find a blockbuster movie produced in a language other than English, despite the growth of the film industry in other countries in later decades. The Oscar system has always been English language oriented, but there is a strong English‐language presence in most other film festivals too: half of the Best Film awards ever given at the Cannes Film Festival, for example, have been to English‐language productions. A notable development was to see this dominance manifest itself even in countries where there has been a strong national tradition of film‐making, such as Japan, France, Italy and Germany. Popular music : The cinema was one of two new entertainment technologieswhich emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, the other was the recording industry. All the major recording companies in popular music had English language origins. The oldest active record label is the US firm Columbia (from 1898); others are HMV (originally British). During the 19th century the British music hall was a major influence on popular trends. By the turn of the century, Tin Pan Alley was a reality, and was soon known worldwide as the chief source of US popular music. A similar trend can be seen in relation to the more ‘upmarket’ genres. During the early twentieth century, European light opera developed an English‐language dimension. Several major composers were immigrants to the USA, or they were the children of immigrants. The same decade also saw the rapid growth of the musical, a distinctively US product, and the rise to fame of such composers as Jerome Kern and George Gershwin. The rapidly growing broadcasting companies were greedy for fresh material, and thousands of new works each year found an international audience in ways that could not have been conceived of a decade before. The availability of mass‐produced gramophone records allowed the works of these composers to travel the world in physical form. Soon the words of the hit songs were being learned by heart and reproduced withvarying accents in cabarets and music halls and homes in all over Europe. Jazz was part of the US music‐hall scene from the early years of the twentieth century. Other genres emerged country music, gospel songs, and a wide range of folk singing. In the 1940s the rythm of blues grew into rock and roll. When modern popular music arrived, it was almost entirely an English scene: Elvis Presley in the USA; the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the UK. Mass audiences for pop singers became a routine feature of the world scene from the 1960s. No other single source has spread the English language around the youth of the world so rapidly and so pervasively. In the 2000s , the English‐language character of the international pop music world is extraordinary. Although every country has its popular singers, singing in their own language, only a few manage to break through into the international arena, and in order to do so it seems they need to be singing in English. popular music in the English language has had a profound and positive impact on the nature of modern popular culture in general. As the lyrics of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, John Lennon, Joan Baez and others spread around the world, during the 1960s and 1970s, English for the youngergeneration in many countries became a symbol of freedom, rebellion and modernism. 4.3. International travel Move away from the regular tourist routes, however, and English soon becomes conspicuous by its absence. By contrast, the domains of transportation and accommodation are mediated through the use of English as an auxiliary language. In some cities, the trend towards English has been especially noticeable.
In a 1995global consultation exercise initiated by a British Council project, people professionally involved in ELT (English language teaching)in some ninety countries were asked to react to a series of statementsconcerning the role and future of the English language: ‐ “The global market for English language teachingand learning will increase over the next 25years”. Over 93 per centagreed or strongly agreed. ‐ “English will retain its role as the dominant language in worldmedia and communications” 94 per cent agreed or stronglyagreed. ‐ “English is essential for progress as it will provide the main meansof access to high‐tech communication and information over thenext twenty‐five years”95per cent agreed or strongly agreed. ‐ “English will remain the world’s language for international communication for the next 25 years” 95%. Exercises of this kind have no clear predictive value, but they doprovide a useful glimpse of the way specialists are thinking in theworld market‐place. 4.6. Communications If a language is a truly international medium, it is going to bemost apparent in those services which deal directly with the taskof communication – the postal and telephone systems. Information about the use of English in thesedomains is not easy to come by. However, there are various indirect method of calculation, for example, we can draw up a list of those countries where English has a special status, and look at the pieces of mail sent: ‐ 63 per cent of the world’s mail in 2001 was being handled by English‐status countries. ‐ The amount of mail sent through just the USpostal system that year (some 197 thousand million pieces) waslarger than the total for all the non‐English‐speaking countries puttogether. ‐ A widely quoted statistic is that three‐quarters of the world’smail is in English. It is certainly possible to arrive at this figure if wemake guesses about the number of people in different countrieswho are involved in organizations which use English as an official language, or which rely on English for correspondence.When scientists from any country write each other, for example, the language they use is almost always going to be English. ‐ Another widely quoted statistic is that about 80% of the information world’s electronically stored is currently in English. Figures of this kind relate to two kinds of data: information stored privately by individual firms and organizations, such as commercial businesses, libraries and security forces; and information made available through the Internet, whether for sending and receiving electronic mail, participating in discussion groups, or providing and accessing databases and data pages. However, statistics of this kind have to be cautiously interpreted. It is important for the theme of this book to see how Englishcame to have such a dominant position on the Internet. ARPANET was conceived as a decentralized national network,its aim being to link important American academic and governmentinstitutions in a way which would survive local damage inthe event of a major war. Its language was, accordingly, English;and when people in other countries began to form links with this network, it proved essential for them to use English. The dominanceof this language was then reinforced when the service wasopened up in the 1980s to private and commercial organizations,most of which were already communicating chiefly in English.
There was also a technical reason underpinning the positionof the language at this time. The first protocols devised to carrydata on the Net were developed for the English alphabet, using acharacter set (called Latin 1) which had no diacritical marks andwhich was transmitted in a 7 ‐bit ASCII code. More sophisticated protocols were devised with multilingualism in mind, but major problems have hindered their internationalimplementation. Most browsers are still unable to handle multilingual data presentation and at present a truly multilingual World Wide Web remains a long‐term goal. In the meantime, English continues to be the chief lingua francaof the Internet – a position which during the 1990s began to beacknowledged in the popular media. For example, in April 1996 The New York Times carried an article by Michael Specter headed‘World,Wide,Web: 3 EnglishWords’.Carrying out a series of random searches in this way, forboth English‐language and other‐language keywords, during the1990s one did consistently end up with a figure of about 80 percent. However, the proportion is becoming much less, as morepeople from more countries come on‐line. People from Latin America and Africa are yet online. It seems likely that Internet usage will in due course reflect the world’s linguistic demographics, with English users hovering around 30 per cent.On the other hand, the head start English has had means that there is more high‐quality content on the Web in English than in other languages, so that even if the proportion of English‐language sitesfalls soon, the number of hits on those sites may remain disproportionately high for some time. A particularly interesting effect of the Internet has been its role in relation to minority and endangered languages. These languages are finding that the Net gives them a louder and cheaper voice, and Websites and chatgroups (‘virtual speech communities’) are now common in, for example Galician and Basque. On the Net, all languages are as equal as their users wishto make them, and English emerges as an alternative rather thana threat. 4.7. The right place at the right time After this wide‐ranging review of the way English has come to be used in the modern world, we are to conclude that it is a language which has repeatedly found itself in the right place at the right time. °°°° Chapter V: The Future of Global English What kinds of development could impede the future growth of English? Several possibilities can be envisaged: a) A significant change in the balance of power – whether political, economic, technological or cultural– could affect the standing of other languages so that they become increasingly attractive, and begin to take overfunctions currently assumed by English. b) Pressures arising out of the need to express community identity might disrupt the ability of English to function as a global language. Here, the chief scenario envisaged is one where the language fragments into mutually unintelligible varieties, in much the way that vulgar Latin did a millennium ago. This chapter deals with the issues raised bythese possibilities. 5.1. The rejection of English
Why, in a country where over 95per cent of the population speak English, should there be a movement to make English official? People do not start making a case for a language to be made official until they feel they need to, the typical scenario is one where a language has come tobe threatened by the emergence of a more dominant language. It may take a long time for people who speak the threatened languageto respond: in the case of Welsh, the reversal of several hundred years of English domination has begun to show real results only recently, starting with theWelsh Language Act of 1967. Inevitably, in such cases, there is a secondary reaction,with English‐users finding themselves on the defensive, and insisting that the status of English be guaranteed. But in a country where the language is already so dominant, and its position for so long taken for granted, why should the question of its official status arise at all? the points can be used in aggregate to spell out the case for opposition. A wide range of arguments is used by each side in support of its case. The Political argument For = pro‐official supporters: They look fearfully at the language‐inspired separatist movement in nearby Quebec, which came close to successin 1995, and draw attention to the emergence of incendiary separatistattitudes such as are expressed by the Chicano Movement ofAztlan. The fact that there is a linguistic dimension to the conflicts which destroyed former Yugoslavia is also sometimes cited as an example of the dangers lurking beneath the surface of a multilingual community. From this point of view, English is viewed as a social adhesive‐ as a linguistic glue‐, and any threat to this stabilizing influence would lead to the growth of “countries within a country” = linguistic ghettos. Attention is drawn to the size of the possible rift,especially in relation to the use of Spanish, more than African‐Americans. Against = Anti‐official supporters They maintain that an official English bill is unnecessary because there is no risk of disunity. They argue that most of immigrants are assimilating nicely and that the natural course of events will eventually produce a new social balance, withoutany need for legislation.It is felt that English could not possibly be in danger, in any case,when over 95per cent of the population speak it ‘well’ or ‘verywell’, it is the other languages which are actually in danger. Even if Englishwere made official, the argument continues, the use of a commonlanguage does not guarantee ethnic harmony. The socio‐economic argument For An expensive multilingual support policy is undesirable for many reasons:They point out that no country could afford a language policy which tried to give official protection to so many languages (over 300 languages), and we cannot choose only some of them.No principled selection is possible, and that the country is in anall‐or‐none situation. If ‘all’: any foreign‐language groups with atiny number of speakers would be able to claim official support –but the country would soon go bankrupt, if it adopted such apolicy. The only alternative, this line of argument concludes, isto support ‘none’ – other than the language of the vast majority,English. Pro‐official supporters argue that educational programmes in the immigrant’s mothertongue are no real help, because they eliminate the incentive forimmigrants to learn English, and this keeps them in low‐paid jobs.Official status, it is asserted, would help to safeguard English asthe language of opportunity. There would also be enormous savingsin efficiency, both at national and local levels, it is suggested,if everyone had the competence and confidence to rely on Englishas their medium of communication in official contexts.
Against Anti‐official supporters doubt whether government time and money would really be saved, given the cost and complexity of introducing the new law. In particular, they question whether the legislation could possiblybe enforced, and point to the difficulties of giving a precise definition to the notion of ‘official’, in relation to language, and of making a clear and consistent distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ discourse. The new law would prove inadequate to cope with the realities of a highly complex and dynamic social situation. It would cause more complications than that it would solve, and would probably be more expensive to implement and maintain. The ‘all‐or‐nothing’ view of language support is also hotly contested,using the following line of reasoning. There may indeedbe no principled way of drawing a line between one group of languagesand another, but it does not follow from this that nothingshould be done to help those who speak the more widely usedlanguages. The fields of health and safety, provide a good example of areas where much more could be done than is available at present. In Germany, for example, pharmaceutical companies have to provide instruction labels in five languages. It is not feasible to help everyonewho has difficulty with English, but it is not acceptable to conclude from this that the government should therefore help none of them. It is also thought likely that interest in foreign‐language learning will further diminish, and this is felt to be an unfortunate development at a time when the climate in international business competitiveness and political diplomacy is one where foreign‐language ability is increasingly seen as advantageous. Educational issues Against : ‐ Anti‐official supportersstress the value of bilingualism as part of a child’s learning experience,observing that immigrant children are more likely to dowell in learning a second language if their own language is valued by the society in which they find themselves. ‐ The ‘official English’ bill, it ispointed out, does virtually nothing to enable fluency in Englishto be universally achieved – other than simply stating that it mustbe. ‐ The Official English position is one of discrimination, minority languages are being restricted in their view. For ‐ They are concerned that many students in bilingual education programmes are being taught by teachers whose own level of English is of a low quality, thus inculcating an inadequate command of the language. ‐ From a position where immigrants were expected to learnEnglish, they note cases of non‐immigrants in schools now havingto learn the immigrant language, and the same would happen with a job. They fear asociety in which people will be appointed first for linguistic reasons,and only secondly for their other abilities and experience.
