Scarica riassunto del primo capitolo di English as a Global Language e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! WHAT IS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE? A language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. Such a role will be most evident in countries where large numbers of the people speak the language as a mother tongue. However, this happens only in a few countries, so mother-tongue use by itself cannot give a language global status. To achieve such a status, a language must be taken up by other countries around the world. They must decide to give it a special place within their communities. 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’ or ‘first language’. The role of an official language is today best illustrated by English, which now has special status in over seventy countries. 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 China, Russia, Germany, Spain, Egypt and Brazil. There are several ways in which a language can be official. It may be the sole official language of a country, or it may share this status with other languages. And it may have a ‘semi-official’ status. There are a lot of reasons for choosing a particular language as a favoured foreign language: they include historical tradition, political expediency, and the desire for commercial, cultural or technological contact. In a well-supported environment, resources will be devoted to helping people have access to the language and learn it, through the media, libraries, schools, and institutes of higher education. Distinctions such as those between ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘foreign’ language status are useful, but we must be careful not to give them a simplistic interpretation. In particular, it is important to avoid interpreting the distinction between ‘second’ and ‘foreign’ language use as a difference in fluency or ability. Because of the three-pronged 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. WHAT MAKES A GLOBAL LANGUAGE? Latin became an international language throughout the Roman Empire, but this was not because the Romans were more numerous than the peoples they subjugated. They were simply more powerful. And later, when Roman military power declined, Latin remained for a millennium as the international language of education, thanks to the ecclesiastical power of Roman Catholicism. Without a strong power-base, no language can make progress as an international medium of communication. A language does not become a global language because of its intrinsic structural properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary, or because it had a great literature in the past, or because it was once associated with a great culture or religion. Such factors cannot even guarantee survival as a living 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. Greek became a language of international communication in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago because of the armies of Alexander the Great. Latin became known throughout Europe thanks to the legions of the Roman Empire. Arabic came to be spoken so widely across northern Africa and the Middle East because of the spread of Islam. Spanish, Portuguese, and French found their way into the Americas, Africa and the Far East thanks to the colonial policies of the Renaissance kings and queens. International language dominance is not only the result of military might, because it’s the economic power that maintains and expands it. It became a critical factor in the 19th and 20th centuries, when economic development began to operate on a global scale. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain had become the world’s leading industrial and trading country. By the end of the century, the population of the USA was larger than that of any of the countries of western Europe, and its economy was the most productive and the fastest growing in the world. British political imperialism had sent English around the globe, so that it was a language ‘on which the sun never sets’. WHY DO WE NEED A GLOBAL LANGUAGE? Translation has played a central role in human interaction for thousands of years. In communities where only two or three languages are in contact, bilingualism is a possible solution. But in communities where there are many languages in contact, such a natural solution does not readily apply. The problem has been solved by finding a language to act as a lingua franca. Sometimes, when communities begin to trade with each other, they communicate by adopting a simplified language, known as a pidgin, which combines elements of their different languages. Sometimes an indigenous language emerges as a lingua franca, usually the language of the most powerful ethnic group in the area. But most often, a language is accepted from outside the community, such as English or French, because of the political, economic, or religious influence of a foreign power. Latin was a lingua franca throughout the whole of the Roman Empire. The prospect that a lingua franca might be needed for the whole world has emerged strongly only in the twentieth century, and since the 1950s in