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English is everywhere today … but is it really
English as we used to think of it? And how does
this new outlook affect the way we are
supposed to teach it?
How many people speak English
today? Who are these people, where
do they live and why do they happen
to speak English?
What does this mean to the English
language itself and to our
understanding of contemporary
sociolinguistic dynamics?
• 1982, Bailey and Görlach,
English as a World Language: 300 million.
• 1983, E. Gunnemark and D. Kenrick, What
Language Do They Speak?: 1,400,000 English
speakers.
• 1985, David Crystal, “How Many Millions? The
Statistics of English Today”, English Today:
between 700 million and 2 billion, “I am
happy to settle for a billion, myself…”
• 2003, David Crystal, English as a Global
Language: around 1.5 billion people.
2008, David Crystal, “Two Thousand
Million? Updates on the Statistics of
English”, English Today:
“And these days, having read the more
sophisticated assessments by David Graddol
and others, I am prepared to revise upwards
again in the direction of 2 billion (5).”
1997, David Graddol, The Future of English?
“In many parts of the world, as English is taken into the
fabric of social life, it acquires a momentum and vitality
of its own, developing in ways which reflect local
cultures and languages, while diverging increasingly
from the kind of English spoken in Britain or North
America. […] within a decade or so the number of
people who speak English as a second language will
exceed the number of native speakers. The
implications of this are likely to be far reaching: the
centre of authority regarding the language will shift
from native speakers as they become minority
stakeholders in the global resource (2-3).”
1982, Kachru, Braj, The Other Tongue.
• features and functions of an international language,
not ENGLISH, but a “new language”;
• the relationships between this language and
traditionally major varieties of English, on the one
hand, and newly recognized varieties, on the other;
• identity and localism in a globalizing context;
• studies of regional and national varieties within a
regenerated framework of sociolinguistics and contactlinguistics, Kachru’s claims finally prompted a review of
English Language Teaching (ELT) in the light of
completely different pedagogical approaches and
anxieties (Jennifer Jenkins, Barbara Seidlhofer and
Elizabeth Erling).
Epochal relocation of
norm-setting dynamic
• Graddol modified Kachru’s scheme (see
previous slide) in a way meant to point out
that the so-called “norm-setting dynamic” was
going through dramatic relocations and was
therefore likely to shift towards countries – or,
as Gerhard Leitner put it, “epicentres”
(“English as a Pluricentric Language”) – where
English was either a second, alternative or just
a foreign, additional language.
1997, Graddol, English Next
• “People have wondered for some years whether English
had so much got its feet under the global office desk that
even the rise of China – and Mandarin – could ever shift it
from its dominant position of dominance. The answer is
that there is already a challenger, one which has quietly
appeared on the scene whilst many native speakers of
English were looking the other way, celebrating the rising
hegemony of their language. The new language which is
rapidly ousting the language of Shakespeare as the world’s
lingua franca is English itself – English in its new global
form. As this book demonstrates, this is not English as we
have known it, and have taught it in the past as a foreign
language. It is a new phenomenon, and if it represents any
kind of triumph it is probably not a cause of celebration by
native speakers (11).”
Modiano, Marko. “International
English in the Global Village.” English
Today15.2 (1999): 22-28.
• Leitner: the history of English is “marked by
intensive, although not often peaceful,
relations in Europe, European explorations,
colonization, exploitation, and ethno-cultural
contact” (“Developmental Stages” 17).
• Kachru, World Englishes: “The trunk of the
English language tree [..] continues to evoke
reactions of suspicions, of conspiracies and of
mistrust. There continues to be a lingering
Trojan-horse association with the language
and its managers.”
Erling, “The Many Names of English”,
• “Finally, these proposals for new names of English have
been made in response to claims that English is an
‘imperialistic language’ (Phillipson 1992) or a ‘killer’ of
local tongues and cultures (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000).
This fear of English has become so pervasive that a
critical approach to ELT is now indispensable (Holland
2002: 21). Thus English language professionals are now
concerned with finding ways to protect local values,
cultures and languages in the face of a global language.
While subsequent research (e.g. Brutt-Griffler 2002;
Mufwene 2002) has painted a much more complex
picture of the spread of English than the one presented
by Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, a shift in English
pedagogy is nevertheless crucial.”
• Adapting a very famous quote from
ethnographer of communication, Dell H.
Hymes, “language is in large part what users
have made of it” (26), to the demands of the
contemporary sociolinguistic profile, one may
argue that English by now is in large part what
all users, including non-native speakers of
English and native speakers of so-called nonAnglo Englishes, have made of it. And this
confirms what Dumarsais wrote in the early
Eighteenth century: usage is the “tyrant of
language” (qtd. in Rastier 144).
ELF - English as Lingua Franca
• The groundbreaking proposals is to teach ELF
rather than English English. In this ELF
theorists assume that the distinctive features
of the ELF variety should be the focus of
English teaching to L2 speakers, given that
these speakers are reported to communicate
and interact in a contemporary context that is
turning increasingly cross-cultural and, in one
word, global.
• ELF theorists call for methods of English
teaching that do not focus on “any particular
national linguistic standard” (41). Jennifer
Jenkins (“The Phonology of English”) and
Barbara Seidlhofer (“Closing a Conceptual
Gap”), in fact, almost concomitantly (2000 and
2001, respectively) proposed that teaching
approaches should aim at transmitting the
linguistic skills necessary to ensure
communicative effectiveness among world
citizens, rather than engaging in a dogmatic
reproduction of phonological, lexical and
discursive L1 English standards and norms.
• In particular, J. Jenkins emphasized that
phonological accommodation should be
encouraged and even prioritised, particularly
in communicative contexts where identity is a
crucial factor, pointing out that a blind
compliance with the Received Pronunciation –
or English English accent – would not provide
an appropriate resource of cross-cultural or
international communication. This is supposed
to be often the case with trans-national
business communication.
Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics
• Standard English is frequently taken to be the English
language, which inevitably leads to the view that other
varieties of English are some kind of deviation from the norm,
the deviation being due to laziness, ignorance or lack of
intelligence […] the fact is, however, that Standard English is
only one variety among many, although a peculiarly important
one. Linguistically speaking it cannot be considered better
than other varieties. The scientific study of language has
convinced scholars that all languages, and correspondingly all
dialects, are equally ‘good’ as linguistic systems [...] It follows
that value judgements concerning the correctness and purity
of linguistic varieties are rather social than linguistics (8).
Kingsley Amis, The King’s English. A
Guide to Modern Usage
• “Berks are careless, coarse, crass, gross and of
what anybody would agree is a lower social class
than one’s own. They speak in a slipshod way
with dropped Hs, intruded glottal stops and many
mistakes in grammar. Left to them the English
language would die of impurity, like late Latin.
Wankers are prissy, fussy, priggish, prim and of
what they would probably misrepresent as a
higher social class than one’s own. They speak in
an over-precise way with much pedantic
insistence on letters not generally sounded,
especially Hs. Left to them the language would
die of purity, like medieval Latin.”
2012, George Sandulescu,
UnEnglish English in Finnegan’s Wake
• “great intrinsic qualities never shared with any
other language […] First, English is the most open
language in the world, on account of its lack of
inflexions, and general adaptability of the whole
Word Building system. Second, English is the
most productive language in the world […]
English is spontaneously infiltrating all other
languages […] English is the most tolerant
language in the world […] no English-language
country ever set up a Language Academy of the
French, or Swedish, or Romanian type.”
2003, David Crystal, English as a Global
Language
• Over the years many popular and misleading
beliefs have grown up about why a language
should become internationally successful, it is
quite common to hear people claim that a
language is a paragon, on account of its perceived
aesthetic qualities, clarity of expression, literary
power, or religious standing. Hebrew, Greek,
Latin, Arabic and French are among those which
at various times have been lauded in such terms,
and English is no exception.
2003, David Crystal, English as a Global
Language
• It is often suggested, for example, that there must be
something inherently beautiful or logical about the
structure of English, in order to explain why it is now so
widely used. ‘It has less grammar than other
languages,’ some have suggested. ‘English doesn’t have
a lot of endings on its words nor do we have to
remember the difference between masculine,
feminine, and neuter gender, so it must be easier to
learn’. [...] Such arguments are misconceived. Latin was
once a major international language, despite its many
inflectional endings and gender differences. French
too, has been such a language, despite its nouns being
masculine and feminine [...] Ease of learning has
nothing to do with it [...]
2003, David Crystal, English as a Global
Language
• A language has traditionally become an international
language for one chief reason: the power of its people –
especially their political and military power. The
explanation is the same throughout history. Why did Greek
become a language of international communication in the
Middle East over 2,000 years ago? Not because of the
intellects of Plato and Aristotle: the answer lies in the
swords and spears wielded by the armies of Alexander the
Great. Why did Latin become known throughout Europe?
Ask the legions of the Roman Empire. Why did Arabic come
to be spoken so widely across northern Africa and the
Middle East? Follow the spread of Islam, carried along by
the force of the Moorish armies from the eight century.
Weapons are not enough
• However, military power alone is not enough and
would probably not provide such a satisfactory
explanation for the status of English in our times.
David Crystal: “It may take a military powerful
nation to establish a language, but it takes an
economically powerful one to maintain and
expand it” (2003, 10). The role of world leader for
a language, and English has made no exception, is
arguably accounted for by economic
mechanisms.
Global Technologies
and English as a Style
• What should be emphasized is the role of technology
and new media in today’s context of language and
communication. Starting from the telegraph, through
television and telephone, to the Internet and tablet
computers, new media have increasingly made it
easier for people to communicate across the globe
and for ‘speech communities’ to establish and grow.
So, English is definitely not the first International
language, nor the first Lingua franca for international
communication, but is the first truly global language.
• It is obvious that the new media, including
digital ones and the Internet in particular,
have exponentially increased the amount of
texts that are encoded for and decoded by an
international audience on a daily basis. One
should just think of YouTube, Facebook,
Twitter and of other social media, the output
of which has reached unprecedented levels in
human history.
Internet and Language
• According to Shengyong Zhang, author of “English as a Global
Language in Chinese Context”, “English accounts for 80% of
language use on the internet, 10% is accounted for by the
Chinese language, and the other 10% represents all other
languages used on the internet” (170). This implies that in
most regions of the planet, English is the Lingua Franca you
are expected to use when writing and reading e-mails, looking
for information, chatting with ‘would-be’ friends, exchanging
music, videos and other kinds of documents. And above all,
you need English when sending your curriculum vitae, or
better CV, around.
• This certainly occurs when you are sending it abroad,
regardless of the country where they are going to read it, and
it also occurs more and more frequently when you are
sending it to companies working in your own country. In these
same regions, whoever has English as a second – hopefully
fluent – language is known to stand the chance of better
employment opportunities, especially those available in the
service sector. As observed by Pierre Bourdieu in his studies
on the symbolic power of language, the ability to speak
prestigious linguistic varieties always translates into personal
benefits and advantages over other people. And these
advantages are often of a kind which can be easily capitalized
(Distinction; Language and Symbolic). Linguistic capital today
is unquestionably embodied by English, and arguably by
English as a Lingua Franca even more than by any other
variety, including English English.
Bad news for English teachers!!
Like and even more than any other subject English is a
quickly developing one. Moreover, we have pointed out
how English is growing into something more than a
mere cross-cultural means of communication. English
has increasingly become a ‘way to look at the world’,
one which also presumes the activation of stylistic
meaning (Coupland) on the part of those who use it. To
speak English is in itself meaningful and develops the
speaker’s identity accordingly! This is why required
levels of proficiency are constantly updated and raised.
The same obviously applies to teachers and their
students. Life-long training is a must (sigh!)