ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE - David Crystal (riassunto completo), Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE - David Crystal (riassunto completo) e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal CHAPTER 1 – Why a global language? The statement “English is the global language” might sound ridiculous, obvious and foregone. Thanks to newspaper from all over the world this statement and the concept of the English language that turned to be global seem to have been completely simplified and taken for granted. But this statement is not telling us the obvious, the language continues to make news daily in many countries. So, what does it mean to say that s language is a global language? If is there one predictable consequence of a language becoming a global language is that nobody owns it anymore, or rather, everyone who has learned it now owns it. This topic is very controversial, there are those who appreciate the fact that their mother tongue has become an integral part of the culture and habits of others, while others despise the use that others make of this language. There are very mixed feelings involved. But how does a language come to achieve global status? - What is a global language? A language becomes global when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. A role like this will be most evident in countries where many people speak the language as a mother tongue (es. English: USA, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Britan…). However, mother tongue use by itself cannot give a language a global status: to achieve this status the language must be used by other countries. There are 2 ways in which this can be done: 1) The language is made the official language of that country, and is used for laws, media, and in the education system. Such language is often described as a second language because it is seen as a complement to a person’s mother tongue (es. English has a special status in counties such as Ghana, Nigeria, India, Singapore…). 2) the language becomes a priority in a country’s foreign-language system. Basically, is the language which children are most likely to be taught in school (es. English is now the language that’s most widely taught as a foreign country, it is taught in over 100 countries). It is also important to note that there are many ways in which a language can achieve the status of ‘official’: it might be the sole official language of a country, or it might share this status with other languages. Similarly, there are several reasons for choosing a foreign language as a preferred language, this includes political, cultural, commercial reasons and many others. Even the very presence of the language can change from country to country, it can be used a lot or not very used. The government itself can be the cause of this, it can help and invest in the development and the spread of the language or not. Distinction between ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘foreign’ language status are useful, but we must be careful to not give them simplistic interpretation. All these points make us understand the complexity of the situation in which the English language is today. English has already reached the stage of global language: it is used by a large amount of people; it has also surpassed Chinese in the number of speakers of the language (1.5 billion of English speakers vs. 1.1 billion of Chinese speakers). - What makes a global language? Why a language achieves the status of “global language” does not have to deal with the number of people that speak that language, it has to deal more with the power of its users. Without a strong power-base no language can make progress as an international medium of communication. When the speakers/users succeed on the international stage, the language succeed as well, if they fail the language fails as well. It is common to hear people convinced that the global diffusion of a language pag. 1 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal derives from its aesthetic qualities, its structure, its literary history or its religious standings, but such arguments are misconceived. A language does not become a global language because of its structural properties, the size of its vocabulary, its literature or its culture or religion. These can be factors that can motivate people to start learning a certain language, but they cannot ensure a language’s world spread. A language becomes an international language for one main reason: the power of its speaker (es. we have many languages that throughout history have established themselves as international languages thanks to the power of those who speak them: Latin, Spanish, Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, French, Greek…). But international success and dominance is not always provided by military power: it might take a militarily powerful nation to establish a language, but it takes an economically powerful one to maintain and expand it. In the 19th century things start changing, economic developments begin to operate on a global scale supported by new technologies and new communication methods (telegraph, radio, telephone). The advent of the mass media, the development of this new international market and the introduction of new technologies have helped the development and global diffusion of the English language. - Why do we need a global language? Translation has played a central role in human interaction for thousands of years. The more a community is linguistically mixed, the less it can rely on individuals to ensure communication between different groups. The problem has traditionally been solved by finding a language to act as a lingua franca. Sometimes, when communities start to trade with each other, they adopt a simplified language called ‘pidgin’ which combines elements from their different languages (many pidgins still exist nowadays, generally in territories that were colonized by European nations). Sometimes an indigenous language becomes a lingua franca, the other groups then learn this language by varying success and thus become to some degree bilingual. Geographically speaking, a lingua franca extends over territories that tend to be small. However, in modern times we have seen how many languages have begun to be considered as lingua franca in many territories of the world. Starting from the first half of the 1900s, the idea and the need to use a single lingua franca for the whole world began to arise, especially with the birth of international organizations such as the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF and many others. As these examples suggest, the growth in international contacts has been largely the result of two separate developments: the first one is the development of technologies in the communication field, the second one is the development of technologies in the transportation field. The availability of these two facilities, helped and provided the circumstances needed for a global language to grow. People, in short, become more mobile, both physically and electronically. Everything is much more connected today than yesterday, both locally and globally, advanced technologies make communication simpler and more effective and that is why people now usually talk about the ‘global village’. Under these circumstances, a global language is needed now more than ever. - What are the dangers of a global language? There are many benefits regarding the use and diffusion of a global language, but we must also consider the presence of some dangers or possible risks. Perhaps the use of a global language can lead to the development of an elite monolingual linguistic class, or the ones that use this language might be manipulative and use their own advantage to submit the ones that do not own the language, or the presence of a global language might transform people into becoming lazy about pag. 2 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal CHAPTER 2 – Why English? The historical context Why English is the global language and not some other? There are two answers to the question: one is geographical-historical, the other is socio-cultural. The historical account traces the movement of English around the world, beginning with the pioneering voyages to the Americas, Asia and the Antipodes and then, in the nineteenth century with the colonial developments in Africa and the south pacific. English is now represented in every continent so now can then be given the global language label. The socio-cultural explanation looks at the way people all around the world have come to depend on English for political, economic, cultural and commercial reasons. Several domains have come to be totally dependent on it. - Origins At first the language arrived in England from northern Europe in the 5th century and it began to spread around the British Isles (part of Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria and southern Scotland). After the Norman invasion of 1066 some nobles fled further north where they were eventually welcomed, and the language was also welcomed. From the twelfth century, Anglo-Norman knights were sent across the Irish Sea, and Ireland gradually fell under English rule. But these were movements on a very local scale. The first big step as a global language did not take place for another 300 years, towards the end of sixteenth century. At the time the number of mother-tongue English speakers is thought to have been between 5 to 7 million. Between 1603 and 1952 it increased almost fiftyfold to some 250 million (the majority living outside the British Islands). Most of these people were, and still are, Americans, and is in 16th century North America that we first find a fresh dimension being added to the history of the language. - America The first expedition of 1584 to the New World was a failure. The first permanent English settlement dates from 1607 and the colonists called this settlement Jamestown (after James I) and the area Virginia (after the ‘Virgin Queen’, Elizabeth). Further, settlements quickly followed along the coasts, and on the nearby islands such as Bermuda. Then, in November 1620, the first group of Puritans, arrived on the Mayflower in the company of 67 other settlers, they landed at Cape Cod Bay, and established a settlement at what now is Plymouth, Massachusetts. What the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ (as they were called later) had in common was their search for a land where they could found a new religious kingdom. This was a successful settlement, and by 1640 about 25’000 immigrants had come to the area. The two settlements (the one in the south and the one in the north) had different linguistic backgrounds. The settlers who settled in the southernmost part came from the ‘West Country’ and they also brought with them the characteristics of their English (es. The ‘r’ strongly pronounced after the vowels), the echoes of this accent are still present in the speech of some communities living in some of the isolated valleys. By contrast, many of the Plymouth colonists came from communities in the east of England (Essex, Kent, London and others), these accents were different (notably, lacking the ‘r’ after vowels) and they proved to be dominant in this area. Subsequently the populations began to grow and migrate bringing dialectal distinctions with them: the New England people moved west into the region of the Grate Lakes; the southerners moved along the Gulf Coast and into Texas; and the Midlanders spread throughout the whole of the vast, mid-west area, across the Mississippi and into California. At the time there were many different dialects and even today you can perceive some differences in the speech between the three main pag. 5 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal areas, but during the 17th century more and more immigrants arrived in these areas bringing many linguistic varieties, as a result of this the strong linguistic differences began to narrow due to proximity to each other. Another important fact that changed these areas linguistically was the arrival in the 18th century of a great wave of immigration of Irish and Scots Irish, they were seen as frontier people and their accent was described as ‘broad’. In 1790 the population was around 4 million, a century later the population numbered over 50 million spread throughout the continent and the accent that emerged can now be heard all over the so-called Sunbelt (from Virginia to southern California), but England was not the only country that influenced the directions that the English language was to take in America, and later the USA. Many other languages such as Spanish, French, Dutch and German influenced these areas (thanks to immigrants and occupations). In addition, there were increasing numbers of Africans entering the south as a result of the slave trade, this factor also influenced the language. Another factor that helped the population increase and the language change was the 18th century migration wave which saw Germans, Italians and Irish as protagonists. In 1900, the population was just over 75 million and this total had doubles by 1950. In the 2000 census the number of speakers of English as a native language was found to have increased to 215 million and the number continues to rise, at the same time minority groups began to be concerned about the preservation of their cultural and linguistic heritage. The seeds of a conflict between the need for intelligibility and the need for identity were beginning to grow. - Canada Meanwhile, the English language also reached the north. The first English-language contact with Canada was as early as 1497, but English migration along the Atlantic coast did not develop until a century later for commercial and industrial reasons. There was a conflict going on with the French, whose presence dated from the 1520s, but eventually this came to an end when the French claims were gradually surrendered during the 18th century following their defeat in Queen Anne’s War (1702-13) and the French and Indian war (1754-63). French settlers were also deported and replaced by settlers from New England. The next major development followed the US Declaration of Independence in 1776. Loyalist supporter of Britain found themselves unable to stay in the new United States and most of them left for Canada. They were soon followed by many thousands who were attracted to the cheapness of the land and within fifty years, the population of the province of the Upper Canada had reached in 100’000. Over 31 million were estimated in 2001. Canadian English has a great deal in common with the rest of the English spoken in North America and those who live outside Canada often find it difficult to hear the difference: many British people identify a Canadian accent as American; many Americans identify it as British. Also the presence of French as a co-official language makes things interesting for this country. - The Caribbean The English language was also spreading in the south. A particular type of language was emerging in the West Indies and southern mainland, spoken by the incoming black population. This was a consequence of the importation of African slaves to work on the sugar pantations, a practice started by the Spanish as early as 1517. By the time of the American revolution (1776) their numbers had increased to half a million, and there was 4 million by thetime slavery was abolished at the end of US civil war in (1865). pag. 6 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal 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 rebellion. The result was the growth of several pidgin forms of communication, especially between slaves and sailors, many whom spoke English. Once arrived in the Caribbean, this pidgin English continued growing and was used as a means of communication between the black population and the new landowners and among blacks themselves. Then this pidgin gradually began to be used as a mother tongue, producing the first black creole speech in the region. Creole forms of French, Spanish and Portuguese were also developing in and around the Caribbean. - Australia and New Zealand By the eighteenth century, English also arrived in the southern hemisphere, here the numbers of speakers have never been large, but the varieties of English which have emerged are just as distinctive. Australia was first visited in the year 1770 and within twenty years Britain had established its first penal colony at Sidney. About 130’000 prisoners were transported during the fifty years after the arrival in 1788. They did not achieve substantial numbers until the mid-century: in 1850 the population was about 400’000 and by 1900 nearly 4 million, in 2002 it was nearly 19 million. The prisoners who arrived on the coasts of Australia came mainly from England and Ireland, for this reason still today in Australian speech you can hear some elements of the speech of these areas. On the other hand, the variety contains many expressions which have originated in Australia. In New Zealand the story of English started later and moved slowly. The Europeans started settling there in 1790s and the Christian missionary work began among the Māori from about 1840. There was then a rapid increase in European immigration (from around 2000 in 1840 to 25000 by1850, and then three-quarters of a million in 1900). Also, the total population in 2002 was over 3.8 million. We have 3 main factors why NZ social history has impacted the language: a strong sense of the historical relationship with Britain (people speak with an accent that displays clear British influence); a growing sense of national identity; a fresh concern to take account the rights and the needs of the Māori people (this increased the use of Māori words in NZ English). - South Africa British involvement initially arrives in 1795 and British control officially arrives in 1820 through colonialist practices. English becomes the official language in 1822, it becomes the language used in schools, for writing laws and used in public life. Other colonial interventions arrived between 1840-1850. In the last years of the 19th century many immigrants arrived from the English areas and for this reason there was initially a certain amount of regional dialect variation, but later on a more homogeneous accent emerged (an accent that shares many similarities with the accents of Australia). But at the same time, English was being used as a second language by the Afrikaans speakers, in addition English came to be used, along with Afrikaans and often other languages, by those whith an ethnically mixed background. English was and still is used by a minority of the South African population, Afrikaans was the first language of most whites and blacks. English was used by the remaining whites (of British backgrounds) and by the increasing number of the black population. However, due to apartheid the Afrikaans language started to be interpreted as the language of persecution and exploitation and English started to be used as a language of protest. The current linguistic situation in this region is very complex, English remains important in international communication and more and more parts of Afrikaans are becoming bilingual. result of this is the great variety of accents. Today there are pag. 7 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal *Here subsequently the author introduces a table containing an alphabetical list of 75 countries (included in the inner circle and in the outer circle) where English, and its varieties (pidgins, creoles or standard), is learned and used as a first or second language and has a relevant administrative importance. * In the table, the data described take into consideration countries that speak a language as a first or second language, but these data must be interpreted with caution. The total number of people who speak English as a first language, according to the data shown in the table, amounts to 329 million worldwide, but the main variable concerns whether pidgins or creoles should be included in the total. If this were the case, we would have to add at least another 80 million more speakers to the total and thus the total would amount to about 400 million. As regards the total of those who speak it as a second language, it amounts to 430 globally, but even in this case, however, we are not provided with a complete picture because the data of many countries is unknown. Lastly, this table does not take into consideration the number of those who speak or learn it as a foreign language (the expanding circle), also in this case the estimates can vary enormously because it all depends on how the government of a given country invests in the language. However, it is estimated that globally the number of speakers of English as a foreign language amounts to one billion (from beginners to advanced learners are taken into consideration). Two comments must be immediately made: 1) if one quarter of the world’s population speaks English, then three quarters do not. 2) there is evidently a major shift taking place in the centre of gravity of the language. No other language has spread around the globe so extensively, but what is impressive is not so much the grand total but the speed with which expansion has taken place since 1950s. CHAPTER 3 – Why English? The cultural foundation Over the course of time there have been many thinkers and theorists who have supported and speculated about the growth and spread of the English language globally. John Wallis in 1775 already saw potential in the language and even two centuries earlier another thinker, Richard Mulcaster, was one of the strongest supporters of the English language feeling that he had to defend it against those who believed that English should not usurp the long-established place of Latin. But he could still see that there was a problem: English couldn’t compete with Latin on an international level (English was widespread only in the islands), but within two years the first expedition to America had set sail, and the situation was about to change brutally. David Hume, in 1767, saw in America the key to the future success of English and other thinkers’ speculations such as Jhon Adams’ (in 1780) and Jakob Grimm’s (in 1851) became true (Grimm's ideas especially were listened to and were very successful, so much so that they grew together with British imperialist ideas). And indeed, by the end of the century, English had become ‘the language on which the sun never sets’. Then, as today, some enthusiasts were moved to speculate about the world’s linguistic future in ways which can be best described as fantasy: the nineteenth-century writers were making assumptions which were soon to prove false (predicting the linguistic future is always a dangerous activity). But the general thrust of their arguments was certainly borne out, in many of their writings it was stated that English would have become the language of the future. pag. 10 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal All these observations reinforce the historical account given in the CHAPTER 2, illustrating the short period of time it took for English to travel around the world. But they do not give us the whole story. After all, when a new language arrives in a country it has to prove its value and worth. So, what was the worth of the English language, as it grew in global stature during the 19th century? In which ways did people value it? The answer to these questions will gave us a sense of the language’s social usefulness. Now a socio-historical account is needed to help us explain it and only a cultural account can give us a sense of what is likely to happen in the future. In relation to so many of the major socio-cultural developments of the past 200 years, it can be proved that English what repeatedly found itself in the right place at the right time. - Political developments Many theorists who lived before the twentieth century would have easily answered the question "why a global English" by referring to the power and expansion of the British empire and English for this reason was regarded as a vital means of continued territorial conquest by the English. Furthermore, the language has always played a fundamental role, the role of guarantor and the role of the symbol of political unity. Many states, especially the newly independent ones in Africa, have continued to use English as a tool to communicate with each other at the national level. - Access to knowledge From the beginning of the 19th century, Britain became a huge industrial power, its population from 1700 to 1800 doubled. The linguistic consequences of this achievement were extraordinary: a large number of terms from the industrial field were added to the English vocabulary, but more important the fact that these innovations were pouring out of an English-speaking country meant that those from abroad that wanted to learn about them would need to learn English. Initially Britain, and then America which the end of the century became an economic world power, became magnets that attracted inventors, scientists and theorists who became specialists in their fields. When the American research is added to British, it is possible to suggest that about half of the influential scientific and technological output in the period between 1750 and 1900 would have been written in English. Moreover, thanks to the invention of printing, people of all classes had access to information of all kinds. Access to knowledge was also helped by the introduction of new transportation systems (steamships, railways…) and new communication systems (telegraph, radio, telephone…). In this way more and more people and nations had the possibility to communicate with each other. In particular, the distribution of daily newspapers on a large scale would not have been possible without a railway system and, later, a road network. In this period the banking system, the manufacturing system, and the finance system also grew significantly. The resulting ‘economic imperialism’, as it was later called, brought a fresh dimension to the balance of linguistic power. - Taken for granted. The history of English in this period is the history of a booming language and it is difficult to define its causes and effects in detail: many historical events that have followed have led to the 'assuming' that the language to be used would have been English. There was a sort of unspoken rule which provided for the use of the English language (for example when the radio was invented, there was no doubt: English would have been the most obvious option). There was nothing novel about taking English for granted in this way: there was no competition from other languages, no crisis of pag. 11 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal linguistic identity on the part of the colonial power, and thus no threat, nor was singles out for mention when the Constitution of the United States was being written. However, as the 20th century progressed, the situation started to change: the use of English started to be questioned. The most common situation involved speakers of a language concerned about the future of their language, threatened by the massive and the constant presence of English. In such cases, the dominant power would sometimes take measures to preserve it by giving the non- dominant language a special recognition. Among the countries of the outer circle (countries that use English as a second language), the decision to give English official status is because it is generally considered a neutral language. Moreover, one might think that in countries such as the USA or Great Britain where 95% of the population speaks English as their first language, problems do not arise, but this is not always the case. However, within 190,0 there was no debate of any kind, the language used was English, its status was not questioned, and the future of USA was very clear. CHAPTER 4 – Why English? The cultural legacy The first steps in a political consolidation of English were taken during decision-making in the aftermath of the First World War, here English language power and influence grew immensely in the areas that were directly mediated by English-speaking nations. Instead, during the next decades much more important for the growth of the English language was the cultural heritage in the former colonial areas and the advancement of new technologies, the future of the language lay in these factors. - International relations The League of Nations was the first of many modern international alliances to allocate a special place to English in its proceeding. The League was created as a part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 and was replaced in 1945 by the United Nations. It now consists of over 50 distinct organs, specialized agencies, and functional commissions. English is one of the official languages within all these structures. The language plays an official or working role in the proceedings of most other major international political gatherings, such as the Commonwealth, the Council of Europe, the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization, in Asia and the Pacific, where about 90% of international bodies carry on their proceedings entirely in English. In Europe, too, organizations, which work inly in English, are surprisingly common, especially in science. The overriding impression is that, wherever in the world an organization is based, English is the chief auxiliary language. A different kind of role for English is encountered at meetings where many nations each has the right to participate using its own language. The European Union is the most complex example, where already by 1996 the fifteen-member states were presenting a situation in which over a hundred pairs of languages required translation and interpreting services. [Several solutions to this problem have been proposed, such as the use of a ‘relay’ system. If there is no Finnish/Greek translator available, for instance, English might be used as an intermediary language. One person would translate a speech from Finnish into English; another would translate the result from English into Greek. English is the one, which seems to be most often employed in this way.] pag. 12 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal hand, see a positive side in the English language in the musical field since it has helped the development of pop culture worldwide and the diffusion of important values. - International travel The reasons why people travel are varied, for example you can travel for study, work, personal interests or tourism. Each journey has immediate linguistic consequences and over time a travelling trend can develop into a major influence. today the leading country in the field of tourism is certainly the USA ahead of Germany and the UK. Certainly, almost every tourist destination uses English as an auxiliary language as a means of communicating with tourists (just see how restaurant menus are written in both the local language and in English, shop windows have information in English and even road signs are written in this language), but that's not the case everywhere. We have to remember that one third of the world uses English, but the remaining two thirds don't, so English is not everywhere a guarantee. On the contrary, however, those who immerse themselves in the world of conventional tourism, business meetings, conferences, sporting occasions or other things almost everything is mediated by the English language (safety instructions on international flights or sailings, emergency procedures…). An English-speaking visitor to Tokyo, for instance, in 1985 would have found city travel a largely impenetrable experience without an English language map; but by 1995, English road signs had become commonplace. - International safety As the number of international travels has grown, not only for tourism but also for business, there has been a need to adopt a lingua franca for communication between countries. English has been recognized as the international language of the sea, and in recent years there has been attempts to redefine its use to make it as efficient as possible so as not to fall into any inconveniences or misunderstandings. In 1980, a project was setup to produce Essential English for International Maritime Use, often referred as ‘Seaspeak’ (for example, instead of saying ‘what did you say?’ or ‘can you repeat please?’ Seaspeak recommends the phrase ‘say again’). Progress has also been made in devising systems of unambiguous communication between organizations which are involved in handling emergencies on the ground, notably the fire service, the ambulance service and the police. Also, a great deal of the motivation for these restricted languages has come from the language of air traffic control, which presents international safety with its greatest challenge: if more than a language is being used, the risk of miscommunication, misunderstanding inevitably increases. Even within a single language, terminology and phrasing need to be standardized to avoid ambiguity, and great efforts have been made to develop such a system for English widely called ‘Airspeak’ (they include terms such as Roger, Mayday, Wilco). This terminology is widely used but it is not mandatory, in fact the introduction of a new type of international glossary has been discussed. However, under these circumstances, instead of imposing a single Airspeak for all, some authorities would like to opt on the improvement of the quality of the English used by air personnel but it’s not that easy, some pilots may find use English more than others. However, there are some famous cases where the primary cause of the accident does seem to have been linguistic. In the decade 1982–1991, pilot–controller miscommunication contributed to at least 11 per cent of fatal crashes worldwide. People have used cases of this kind to argue in support of bilingual air traffic control, or the use of a simpler auxiliary language such as Esperanto. However, it seems likely that the problem of poor accents, background noise, and other variables would present difficulties, regardless of the language in use. In the meantime, English – with all its failings – remains the recommended language of international air travel. pag. 15 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal - Education When we investigate why so many nations have made English an official language or chosen it as a foreign language in schools, one of the most important reasons is always educational. Some have seen the arrival of English in this form positively and others negatively, but the dominant view is that a person is more likely to be in touch with new currents of thought, with new research and new technologies through English than through other languages. Since 1960s, English has become the normal medium of instruction in higher education for many countries. It has been seen how more and more students encounter English in monographs and periodicals and therefore it has been seen as necessary to strengthen the use of this language within schools and universities through more specific language courses. The ELT (English language teaching) business has become one of the major growth industries around the world in the past half-century. In 1995 global consultation exercise initiated by English 2000, a British Council project, people professionally involved in ELT in some ninety countries were asked to react to a series of statements concerning the role and future of the English language (responses used a 5-point scale from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’). Many of the suggested statements have seen over 90 percent consensus regarding the importance of teaching and the power of the English language nowadays. Exercises of this kind show us how widely the importance of language globally is now accepted. - Communications The field of communication is one of the main sectors where an abundant use of the English language can be found, only on the internet, where the information remains for a certain period, is it possible to get an idea of how much everyday communications are in English. There are various calculation methods to verify this, we can go and check the number of calls made or the number of mails sent especially in countries where English has an important status (a widely quoted statistic is that three-quarters of the world’s mails is in English (and most of these come from the USA). Another important statistic concerns the fact that 80 percent of the information stored electronically is in English (information stored privately by individual firms and organizations and informations made available through the internet). English continues to be the chief lingua franca of the Internet, a position which during the 1990s began to be acknowledged in the popular media. Michael Specter in 1996 wrote an article in which the role of English was highlighted: ‘internet and World Wide Web really only work as great unifiers’ and ‘if you want to take full advantage of the internet there is only one way to do it: learn English’. On the other hand, however, he underlines the risks that can be reached: the problem is the possible birth of two social classes of citizens, the literate one (who knows English and therefore has access to online resources) and the non-literate one (those who do not know English and as a result do not have access to knowledge of online resources), but this is thought to be just a temporary problem. But the problem has to do more with the economic resources of the country or of the person and whether one actually wants to invest in education. Another important factor concerns the annual growth of those who use the internet worldwide, the number of users is growing rapidly. From a million users in 1990, estimates by the internet society suggested there were 20 million users in 1993, and over 40 million by the end of 1995. The 2002 pag. 16 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal NUA survey estimates 544 million users distributed across 201 territories. With the abundance of people who use the internet on a daily basis, the use of English has gradually changed: initially, as we have seen, the available resources were mostly in this language, now we see that linguistic minorities also make room and become protagonists as the Net gives them a louder and a cheaper voice (chatrooms and chatgroup are very common in all areas of the world). In this scenario, English does not appear like a threat anymore but as an alternative. - The right place at the right time We can state that the growth of English as a global language or a lingua franca has to do with the fact that it was a language that constantly found itself at the right place at the right time. During 16 th and 17th centuries it was the language of the leading colonial nation – Britain. During the 18 th and 19th century it was the language of the leader of the industrial revolution – also Britain. In the late 19th century and the early 20th it was the language of the leading economic power – USA. As we have seen, English influenced the media, broadcasting, pop music, cinema and many other industries. Moreover, thanks to the birth of new international alliances, the use of a lingua franca has been deemed necessary. Two events made it possible to achieve this status: giving English a special role within some countries and the electronic revolution and the introduction of the internet in the 70s (as we have seen initially the information and data made available on the internet were almost entirely in English). It is difficult to predict the future, with something so dynamic like the internet, but we know that for example the arrival of high-quality immediate translation facilities will have a major impact on the use of English. CHAPTER 5 – The future of global English The scenario developed up to now seems to leave us no choice for the future: English will consolidate more and more as a global language given its current power and dominance. But linguistic history shows us repeatedly that is wise to be cautious, when making predictions about the future of a language. In speculating about the future of English as a world language we need to pay attention to indications which seem to go against the general trend. We should ask ourselves ‘what kinds of development could impede the future growth of English?’. A change in power, be it political, economic, cultural or technological can influence the position of a given language and make it attractive and gradually get to the position in which English is today and replace it. This chapter looks at the possible future of English. - The rejection of English It is possible that people living in a given country refuse to use English and refuse to give it a special role or a special status. Many authors, writers, thinkers from various countries have argued against the use of English seeing it once again as a colonizing tool. These arguments are all to do with identity, and with a language as the most immediate and universal symbol of that identity, seeing one's language replaced by English is a sore point for many as they wish to see their mother- tongue grow and expand. English in this case has an unhappy colonial resonance in the minds of many, but we can also see ambivalent cases: many writers write in English so their work will have the chance to reach a worldwide audience; but to write in English may mean sacrificing their cultural identity. pag. 17 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal strong emotions. And in a climate where supporters of official English came to be routinely labelled ‘racists’, and immigrants wishing to use their own language were castigated by such names as ‘welfare dogs’, it was difficult to see the ground for compromise. - New Englishes The best way of defining a genuinely global language is that its usage is not restricted by countries or by governing bodies. The loss of ownership is of course uncomfortable to those, who feel that the language is theirs by historical right; but they have no alternative. No social movement can influence the global outcome, in the end it comes down to population growth. In India now, for example, there are almost as many speakers of English as there are in England. If current English- language learning trends continue, this differential will continue to widen. One consequence is certainly linguistic change, English becoming a global language is now open to change in unpredictable ways bringing out new varieties of English (often known as ‘new Englishes’). The most familiar example takes into considerations the differences between American English and British English, today we can count thousands of differences between the two varieties. The forces that shaped the developments of American English are many and various and they have been well summarized by US dialectologist Frederic G. Cassidy (Cassidy tells us that the revolution, the national independence, literature, democracy, popular forces, the freedom to experiment with language are elements that have contributed fundamentally to create this variety of English). As already mentioned, there are many varieties of English in today's world, the best known and spoken ones are: Australian English, NZ English, Canadian English, South African English, Caribbean English, and, within Britain, Irish, Scots, and Welsh English; but there are many other varieties that are currently emerging within the other countries. We could consider these varieties as regional dialects, only instead of at the local level they develop over a much larger territory and involve millions of people. And just like dialects, these new varieties arise because importance is given to the identity of the groups to which they belong. International varieties thus express national identities and are a way of reducing the conflict between intelligibility and identity: because a speaker from a country A is using English, there is an intelligibility bond with an English speaker of country B – and this is reinforced by the existence of a common written language. The growth of these new varieties is due to the number of nations that declared themselves independent since the 1990s. Most adaptation in a New English relates to vocabulary, in the form of new words, words- formations, word-meanings, collocations and idiomatic phrases. Speakers find themselves adapting the language to meet fresh communicative needs. The biogeographical uniqueness of a country will generate a potential number of words of all kinds, there will be new words relating to food, medicine, animals, family, work, society and many more. Literature, commerce, politics, laws will also be distinctive of that country. 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 The way the language has evolved in setting where most people are native speakers is likely to be very different from the way it will evolve in settings where most are non-native speakers. It is possible to identify several types of change which are taking place, and to gain a sense of their pag. 20 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal extent, from the case studies which have been carried out. This chapter focuses on grammatical and lexical issues. Grammar: by studying the differences between American English and British English, one realizes that the differences lie more at the phonological and lexical level than at the grammatical level. Undoubtedly there is an impression of relative ‘sameness’, with very few points of absolute differentiation. Two points are relevant: 1) grammars have traditionally focused on standard English and non-standard varieties are mentioned only in passing, however we know from international dialectology that it is where grammatical distinctiveness is most likely to be found; 2) because new varieties are chiefly associated with speech rather than writing, they have also attracted less attention, grammars focus almost only on written English and not spoken. But as English becomes increasingly global, we must expect far more attention to be paid to speech. In Biber's grammar, however, there is much reference to the comparisons between vocabulary and grammar and other elements that suggest that there are more grammatical differences between British and American English than one thinks. But whatever the grammatical differences between standard American and British English, these are likely to be small compared with the kinds of differences that we can find in the New Englishes. Many differences have been found in case studies of particular varieties, but it is important to note the limitations of these studies: the examples collected can only be illustrative of possible trends in the formation of new regional grammar identities. The absence of statistical data means that the varietal status of features identifies as non-standard is always open to question, in fact there are so many possibilities (ex. A variant can be common as a localized standard form, it may be considered formal or informal, it can be used only in some context, it may be idiosyncratic…). Given that, it has taken forty years to reach the stage of comparative register-specific analysis. *Here are illustrated some tables that show a range of features which have already been noted, the only purpose of these tables is to illustrate the grammatical features that are considered to be distinctive in studies of New Englishes* It is not always clear whether a new feature arises as a result of transference from a contrasting feature in a local contact language or is a general property of English foreign-language learning, though individual studies sometimes suggest one or the other (the origins are usually obscure). But this kind of comparison od distinctive English construction with the corresponding construction in the contact languages of a region is usually illuminating, and well worth doing, as it is precisely this interaction that is likely to be the most formative influence on the identity of a new English. Vocabulary: It does not take long before new words enter a language, once the language arrives in a fresh location Borrowings from indigenous languages are especially noticeable. However, the long-term role of borrowings, in relation to the distinctive identity of a ‘New English’, is unclear. In the case of American English, relatively few of the Amerindian loan words which are recorded in the 17th and 18th centuries became a permanent part of the standard language. On the other hand, the amount of borrowing from an indigenous language is extremely sensitive to sociopolitical pressures, as is evident in contemporary New Zealand, where loans from Māori are increasing. The amount of borrowing is also influenced by the number of cultures which co-exist, and the status which their languages have achieved. In a multilingual country, such as South Africa, Malaysia or Nigeria, where issues of identity are critical, we might expect a much greater use of loan words. There is already evidence of this in the range of words collected in the Dictionary of South African English, for example. All the standard process of lexical creation are encountered when analysing pag. 21 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE – David Crystal the linguistic distinctiveness of New English’s Hybrid compounds using Urdu and English elements, in either order, are also notable: khans deposit (‘special deposit’), double roti (‘bread’). Distinctive prefixation is found, as in anti-mullah and reconfirm, and there is a wide range of distinctive suffixation, using both English and Urdu bases endeavourance, begumocracy. Various processes of abbreviation are in evidence: d/o (‘daughter of’). Finally, we can illustrate the many examples in which a word or phrase from a well-established variety is adopted by a New English and given a new meaning or use, without undergoing any structural change. In Jamaican English, for example, we find ‘beverage’ (= lemonade). In parts of South Africa, ‘lounge’ means a type of restaurant and place of entertainment. In Ghana we find ‘heavy’ in the sense of ‘gorgeous’ and ‘brutal’ in the sense of ‘very nice’. Lexical examples of this kind all suffer from similar problems. Because the investigator has focused on an individual country, it is often unclear, whether a particular word is restricted to that country or whether it is also used in nearby countries. This is a special problem in South Asia and West Africa, where the linguistic identity of several adjacent countries is in question, but it is a problem, which can be, encountered anywhere. Collocations are likely to prove one of the most distinctive domains of varietal differentiation. Even in countries where the number of localized words is relatively small, their effect on the character of the local English can be great, for two reasons. The new words are likely to be frequently used within the local community, precisely because they relate to distinctive notions there. And these words tend not to occur in isolation: if a conversation is about, say, local politics, then the names of several political parties, slogans and other allusions are likely to come into the same discourse, making it increasingly impenetrable. Code-switching: A particular type of language called code-switching has also begun to emerge, which sees two people having a dialogue simultaneously in two different languages to communicate with each other. This kind of language is often described and defined using a compound name, for example ‘Spanglish’, ‘Konglish’ or ‘Denglish’, mixed varieties involving English are now found everywhere. The attitude towards these languages has changed over time, they were initially not well regarded and were considered as the language spoken by non-literates or by those who have never learned a language very well, now we realized how complex and fascinating they can be. They can be seen as very messy because certainly the grammar, the phonology and the lexicon of different languages are involved, but it is interesting to see how many facets and how many degrees of language mixing can come out. *Here is shown an example of a dialogue between two people who speak Malenglish, a mixture of English and Malay* Other domains: Pragmatic and discoursal domain also need to be considered. However, studies in these areas are few, anecdotal and programmatic. An example is the one of Ghana, where the expression 'sorry' is used to express sympathy when something bad happens to someone else, even when the speaker is not at fault. There is also more to be said about phonology, few studies take into consideration non-segmental characteristics of New Englishes, especially for the general character of the intonation and rhythm. The distinction between syllable-timing (found for example in French, Italian, Spanish and others) and stress-timing (found in Russian, English, Arabic, Thai, German and others) is really important because it affects the comprehension of the language. For example, if a Nigerian person speaks English with a person who speaks English as a first language, pag. 22