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ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE \ CHAPTER 1
‘English is the global language’ -> why a global language?
You hear it on television spoken by politicians from all over the world. Wherever you travel, you see English sings and advertisements. Wherever you enter a hotel or restaurant in a foreign city, they will understand English, and there will be a English menu.
The language continues to make news daily in many countries. If English is not your mother tongue you may be motived to learn it, because you know it will put you in touch with more people than any other language.
‘What is a global language?’
A language achieves a global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. It should be most evident in countries where large number of people speak the language as a mother tongue, in the case of English, the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, etc.
BUT to achieve a status, a language must be taken up by other countries around the world. Mother tongue use by itself cannot give a language global status.
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 education system. (it is important to master the language as early in life as possible)
The role of an official language is today best illustrated by English. Now English has special status in over seventy countries.
SECONDLY A language can be made a priority in a country’s foreign-language teaching, even if it has no official status. (Children will most likely learn this language when they arrive in school).
English is now taught as a foreign language in over 100 countries, such as China, Russia, Germany, Spain… (Europe?!)
In 1996 French was displaced with English as chief foreign language taught in school.
The statistic suggests that about a quarter of the world’s population is already fluent in English, and this figure is steadily growing, in the early 2000’s that means around 1.5 billion people. No other language can match this growth. Even Chinese is known to only 1.1 billion.
‘What makes a global language?’
Why a language becomes a global language has to do with the number of people who speak it.
A language has traditionally become an international language for one chief reason: the power of its people, especially their political and military power.
The history of a global language can be traced through the successful expeditions of its soldier/ sailor speakers. The growth of competitive industry and business brought an explosion of international marketing and advertising.
English was ‘in the right place at the right time’ by the beginning of 19 th^ century, Britain had become the world’s leading industrial and trading country. Both population and economy in the USA increased.
‘Why do we need a global language?’
Translation has played a central role in human interaction for thousands of years. (used by monarchs and ambassadors)
LINGUA FRANCA ‘COMMON LANGUAGE’ in communities where there are many languages in contact lingua franca is a solution when they need to trade with each other. They also use a ‘PIDGIN’ A grammatically simplified form of a language, some elements of which are taken from local languages, used for communication between people not sharing a common language.
The prospect that a lingua franca might be needed for the whole world emerged only in the 20th century, 1950s in particular. Lingua franca is most evidence in international academic and business communities.
Advent of technology of modern communication provided (gave) the circumstances needed for a global language to grow. People have become more mobile, both physically (flying around the globe) and electronically.
It is easy for me to send a message from my house in the small town of Holyhead, to a friend in Washington as it is to get the same message to someone living just a few streets away from me. That is why people so often talk of the “global village”.
There is no nation now which some level of accessibility does not have using telephone, radio, television, air transport…. Facilities such as fax, electronic mail and the Internet...
“What are the dangers of a global language?”
Possible risks
- Perhaps a global language will cultivate an elite monolingual linguistic class, more complacent (soddisfatto) and dismissive (sprezzante) in their attitude towards other languages.
- Perhaps those who have it as a mother-tongue will be more able to think and work quickly in it, and to manipulate it to their own advantage at the expense of those who do not have it.
- Perhaps the presence of a global language will make people lazy about learning other languages
- Perhaps a global language will make minority languages disappear or make any other language unnecessary. “a person needs only one language to talk with someone else”.
The use of a single language by a community is no guarantee of social harmony.
…once it achieves a global status? short answer: yes If language dominance is a matter of political and especially economic influence, then a revolution in the balance of global power could have consequences for the choice of global language.
- An alternative method of communication could emerge which would eliminate the need for a global language. The chief candidate here is automatic translation. There is a distinct possibility that, within a generation or two, it will be routine for people to communicate with each other directly, using their first language, with a computer between them.
Conclusions : it is possible that a global language will emerge only once.
- Despite the remarkable growth in the use of English, at least two-thirds (2\3) of the world population do not yet use it.
WHY ENGLISH? THE CULTURAL LEGACY \ CHAPTER 4
Far more important for the English language, in the post-war world, was the way in which the cultural legacies of the colonial era and the technological revolution were begin felt on an international scale. English was now emerging as medium of communication in growth areas which would gradually shape the character of 20 th^ century domestic and professional life.
- “INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS”:
The League of Nations was the first modern international alliances to allocate a special place to English in its proceedings; English was one of the two official languages ( + French) and all documents were printed in both. The League was created as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 and it was replaced in 1945 with UN (United Nations = ONU ).
The UN now consists of over fifty distinct organs, programmes, and specialized agencies etc…
English is one of the official languages within all of these structures.
- In asia 90% (per cent) of international bodies carry on their proceedings entirely in English.
- Many scientific organizations are also English-only.
- 13% make no official use of English at all : most of these are French organizations.
- Several international sporting organizations work only in English also during the match.
- In Europe organizations which work only in English are surprisingly common, especially in science. A different kind of role for English is encountered at meetings ( for example The European Union) where a large number of nations each has the right to participate using its own language.
It’s impossibile to find expert translators and interpreting for all language pairs; but several solutions to this problem have been proposed. If there is no Finnish/Greek translator available, English might be used as INTERLINGUA. (intermediary language)
Finnish English Greek
“THE MEDIA”
These days, any consideration of politics leads to a consideration of the role of the media.
In the novel “Primary colors” written by an anonymous author the media are at the centre of everyone’s life – the press, radio, advertising, and especially television.
- The press : The English language has been an important medium of the press for almost 400 years. The 19th century was the period of greatest progress, thanks to the introduction of new painting technology and new methods of transportation.
Newspapers are not solely international media: they play an important role in the identity of a local community. Most papers are for home circulation, and are published in a home language. It is therefore impossible to gain an impression of the power of English from the bare statistics of newspaper production and circulation.
- Advertising : Towards the end of the 19th^ century, a combination of social and economic factors led to a dramatic increase in the use of advertisements in publications, especially in the more industrialized countries. In the USA, publishers realized that income from advertising would allow them to lower the selling price of their magazines and increasing circulation. ( for example ‘cosmopolitan’) Many products which are now household names received a special boost in that decade, such as Ford, Coca cola, Kodak and Kellogg.
- Broadcasting : It took many decades of experimental research in physics, in Britain and America, before it was possible to send the first radio telecommunication signals through the air, without wires. Guglielmo Marconi (1895, telegraph code). English was the first language to be transmitted by radio. Within 20 years of Marconi’s first transmission, public broadcasting became a reality. Advertising revenue eventually became the chief means of support.
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 one other broadcasting company was allowed until the creation of the Independent Television Authority in 1954. In contrast with the USA, BBC revenue came not from advertising, but from royalties on broadcasting equipment and a public licence system (eventually the only revenue).
If we list the languages in which these countries all over the world broadcast, it is noticeable that only one of the languages has a place on each of the list : English!
- Cinema : The technology of this industry has many roots in Europe and America during 19 th century, with Britain and France providing an initial impetus to the artistic and commercial development of the cinema from 1895.
