English as a Global Language

1
English as a Global Language

• David A. Jolliffe
• Professor of English
• Brown Chair in English Literacy
• February 20, 2007

2
Source for todays lecture

• Crystal, David. English as a Global Language.
  2nd edition. Cambridge, UK Cambridge UP, 2003.

3
Is English already global?

• Think about your travel experiences. Where have
  you seen English that you didnt expect to find
  it? What was noteworthy about the form and
  structure of the English? Did you encounter
  written English or spoken English or both? How
  would you describe the linguistic abilities of
  the person/people you were encountering?

4
How many people are currently speaking English
worldwide?

• The Worlds Ten Most Spoken Languages
• Mandarin 1,051 million
• English 510 million
• Hindi 490 million
• Spanish 425 million
• Arabic 255 million
• Russian 254 million
• Portuguese 218 million
• Bengali 215 million
• Malay, Indonesian 175 million
• French 130 million

5
Who is currently speaking or learning English?

• Non-native English speakers now outnumber native
  ones 3 to 1.
• Primary schools in major Chinese cities now begin
  offering English classes in the third grade.
• In Prague, the English language school offers
  classes for two- and three-year-olds.
• Workers preparing for the Beijing Olympics in
  2008 are learning English.
• At both the Peugeot and Toyota plants in the
  Czech Republic, English is the working language.

6
The present and the future

• Three types of speakers are currently speaking or
  learning English first-language,
  second-language, and foreign-language.
• About a quarter of the worlds population is
  fluent or competent in Englishabout 1.5 billion
  people by early in this millennium.

7
A realistic problem?

• As English becomes a global language, a sense
  might develop that nobody owns it anymore. Is
  that a problem?

8
What is a global language?

• A language that is given special statuspriority
  in business, education, government, and so
  onover native, mother-tongue languages
• Special status can be conferred in two ways the
  government can make it the official language,
  or it can receive priority in schooling. Both
  are true in Belize.

9
How does a language become global?

• Simply put the power of its peoplemilitary,
  political, economic
• English was at the right place at the right time
  By the beginning of the 19th century, Britain
  had become the worlds leading industrial and
  trading company. By the end of the 19th century,
  the population of the U.S. was larger than that
  of any western European country, and its economy
  was the most productive and fastest growing in
  the world.

10
The upshot?

• As people from all over the world came to Britain
  to learn about industrialization and to America
  to learn about economy and corporate growth,
  English was simply taken for granted.

11
Why do we need a global language?

• The more a community is linguistically mixed,
  the less it can rely on individuals to ensure
  communication between different groups. In
  communities where only two or three languages are
  in contact, bilingualism (or trilingualism) is a
  possible solution, for most young children can
  acquire more than one language with
  unselfconscious ease. But in communities where
  there are many languages in contact . . . such a
  natural solution does not readily apply. (11)

12
In what contexts is a global language useful?

• International organizations The United Nations,
  for example, has five official
  languagesEnglish, French, Spanish, Russian, and
  Chinesebut the bulk of its business is conducted
  in English.
• Academic and business communities Most
  international academic conferences are conducted
  in English, as are most international business
  meetings.

13
Are there any possible drawbacks to having a
global language?

• Linguistic power Are those who speak the global
  language as a mother tongue automatically have
  more power than those who learn it as a second or
  foreign language?
• Linguistic complacency Will a global language
  eliminate motivation to learn other languages?

14
A warning about complacency

• It is all too easy to make your way in the world
  with English as your mother tongue . . . . We
  become lazy about learning other languages. . . .
  We all have to make a greater effort. English
  may be the world language, but it is not the
  worlds only language and if we are to be good
  global neighbours we shall have to be less
  condescending to the languages of the worldmore
  assiduous in cultivating acquaintance with them.
  Sir Sidrath Ramphal, former secretary general of
  the British Commonwealth (19)

15
What about linguistic death?

• Will the emergence of a global language lead to
  the disappearance of minority languages? (There
  are about 6,000 or so living languages in the
  world right now.)
• A unfounded fear for now English as a global
  language seems to have the opposite
  effectstimulating a stronger support for local
  languages than might have otherwise been the case.

16
An important truth about the nature of language
in general

• A global language meets a populations need for
  mutual intelligibility.
• A local language meets a populations need for
  expressions of identity.

17
Two interesting statistics to conclude

• In the 2001 census, the Belizean population had
  grown to 256,000. Of that number, 190,000 were
  listed as minimally competent in English, and
  56,000 spoke or read English as a second
  language.
• The world population in 2001 2,236,730,800. Of
  that number, 329,140,800 were minimally competent
  in English, and 430,614, 500 spoke or read
  English as a second language.