Муниципальное бюджетное общеобразовательное учреждение
«Привольненская СОШ»
Проектно исследовательская работа
по теме:
«Английский язык - как глобальный в современном
мире»
Выполнила: ученица 11 класса Нурситова
Г.
Научный руководитель: учитель английского языка
Накшинова Б.М.
Привольный ,2014
Content
Introduction 2
Chapter 1 4
Chapter 2 8
Chapter 3 11
Conclusion 18
Bibliography 20
Annex 21
The
actuality of the problem. The world wide process of globalisation influence the
process of changing and interaction of the languages. It is defined by
different factors. The English language is considered to be an international
language, it is the standard for diplomacy. Its popularity is not argued.
Nowadays the English language is the most widely spoken language in the
world. It is learned as a second language all around the world and used as an
official language of the European Union and many Commonwealth countries, as
well as in many world organisations.
We can not say, that this
question wasn't described, learned or discussed in the works of different
scientists and investigators. Among them are David Crystal, Thomas Pyles, David
Graddol and John Algeo.
The aim of our
investigation is to study the English language as a component uniting
countries, organisations, societies throughout the world in a whole linguistic
unity and its role in the process of globalisation and interaction with help of
such methods as syntheses, analyses and deduction.
The tasks of our work are
the following:
ñ to analyse the geographical spread of the
English language
ñ to define formal and legitimic sides of
the spread of the English language within the certain state
ñ to find out the historical background of
the spread of the English language throughout the world
ñ to show up the definition of the globality
of the language
ñ to forecast the future of the English
language in the brinks of the investigation
The subject of our
investigation is the English language as one of the methods of the impact of
the globalisation on the people.
The object is existing and
potential relations of the English language in the world linguistic unity.
The originality of the
investigation is defined by the particular features of the approach to the
investigation and its methods.
The methodology of the
investigation includes such scientific methods as analyses and deduction.
The structure of the work
is the following:
ñ introduction
ñ 3 chapters
ñ conclusion
ñ bibliography
ñ annex
Significance of the modern
English
Modern English is the
dominant language or even international language of communications, science,
information technology, business, seafaring, aviation, entertainment, radio and
diplomacy.
Its spread beyond the
British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late 19th
century its reach was truly global. As a sequence long of British colonisation
it became the dominant language in the United States, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. It was also influenced by the growing impact of the USA.
English replaced German as
the dominant language of science Nobel Prize laureates during the second half
of the 20th century. English equalled French as the dominant language of
diplomacy during the last half of the 19th century, nowadays it almost
surpasses it.
A working knowledge of
English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and
professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion
people speak English to at least a basic level.
One impact of the growth of
English is the reduction of native linguistic diversity in many parts of the
world. Its influence continues to play an important role in language attrition.
Conversely, the natural internal variety of English along with creoles and
pidgins have the potential to produce new distinct languages from English over
time.
The English language became
global in all sense of this word. We may say that we can see its influence
nearly in all even specific spheres of our life. Still we know that it has not
happened at once. It has been a rather long process, which of course has a
certain background, even some. To prove the aim of our investigation and to
fulfill the tasks announced we decided to investigate the reasons why the
English language became global. And we study the geographical, historical and
socio-cultural backgrounds of this process in the following three chapters.
Chapter 1
Geographical background
Nearly 375 million people
all over the world speak English as their first language. According to some
data nowadays English is the third largest language by number of native
speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. And if we combine native and
non-native speakers it can be the most commonly spoken language in the world,
though possibly second when compared with the Chinese languages (it depends on
classification).
The estimates of second
language speakers depends on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured.
It may vary from 470million to over a billion people.
The countries with the
highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: the United
States, the United Kingdom (61 million), Canada (18.2million),Australia (15.5
million), Nigeria (4 million), Ireland (3.8 million), South Africa (3.7
million), and New Zealand (3.6 million) 2006 Census.
Countries where English is a major
language.
English is the primary language in :
ñ Anguilla;
ñ Antigua and Barbuda;
ñ Australia;
ñ the Bahamas;
ñ Barbados;
ñ Belize;
ñ Bermuda;
ñ the British Indian Ocean Territory;
ñ the British Virgin Islands;
ñ Canada;
ñ the Cayman Islands;
ñ Dominica;
ñ the Falkland Islands;
ñ Gibraltar;
ñ Grenada;
ñ Guam;
ñ Guernsey;
ñ Guyana;
ñ Ireland;
ñ the Isle of Man;
ñ Jamaica;
ñ Jersey;
ñ Montserrat;
ñ Nauru;
ñ New Zealand;
ñ Pitcairn Islands;
ñ Saint Helena;
ñ Ascension and Tristan da Cunha;
ñ Saint Kitts and Nevis;
ñ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines;
ñ Singapore;
ñ South Georgia and the South Sandwich
Islands;
ñ Trinidad and Tobago;
ñ the Turks and Caicos Islands;
ñ the United Kingdom;
ñ United States.
ñ
In some countries where English is not the
most spoken language, it is an official language. These countries include:
ñ Botswana
ñ Cameroon;
ñ the Federated States of Micronesia;
ñ Fiji;
ñ Gambia;
ñ Ghana;
ñ India;
ñ Kenya;
ñ Kiribati;
ñ Lesotho;
ñ Liberia;
ñ Madagascar;
ñ Malta;
ñ the Marshall Islands;
ñ Mauritius;
ñ Namibia;
ñ Nigeria;
ñ Pakistan;
ñ Palau;
ñ Papua New Guinea;
ñ the Philippines (Philippine English);
ñ Rwanda;
ñ Saint Lucia;
ñ Samoa;
ñ Seychelles;
ñ Sierra Leone;
ñ Sri Lanka;
ñ Sudan;
ñ South Sudan;
ñ Swaziland;
ñ Tanzania;
ñ Uganda;
ñ Zambia;
ñ Zimbabwe.
Also there are countries where in a part
of the territory English became a co-official language, e.g. Colombia's San
Andreas y Providencia and Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. This was a result of the
influence of British colonisation in the area.
It is also one of the 11 official
languages that are given equal status in South Africa (South African English).
English is also the official language in current dependent territories of
Australia (Norfolk Island;Christmas Island and Cocos Island) and of the United
States (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the
Solomon Islands), and the former British colony of Hong Kong.
English is not an official language in the
United States. Although the United States federal government has no official
languages, English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state
governments. Although falling short of official status, English is also an
important language in several former colonies and protectorates of the United
Kingdom, such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cyprus, Malaysia and the United
Arab Emirates.
Chapter
2
Historical background
English is a West Germanic
language. It arouse in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. Historically, the
English language originated from the mixture of different languages and
dialects, which was termed Old English. They were brought to the eastern coast
of Great Britain by Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) settlers in the 5th century. The
name of the Angles was derived from the word English, and possibly from
their ancestral region of Angeln. A significant number of English words are
based on the Latin roots, because Latin was considered to be the lingua franca
of the Christian Church and European intellectual life in that period of time.
The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language due to Viking
invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries.
The Norman conquest of
England in the 11th century gave rise to large number of borrowings from
Norman-French. Vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give the
superficial appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages. The
Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one
of the remarkable historical events, that approved the emergence of Modern
English from Middle English.
The English language is
often associated with migration because it came into being in the 5th century
with patterns of people movement and resettlement. But as a world language its
history began later, in the 17th century, in the foundation of the American
colonies. French, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish were established as colonial
languages. In Latin America Portuguese and Spanish are still important. But in
the 19th century the British empire maintained its position in the world and
also the signficance of English, having created a ‘language on which the sun
never sets’.
In Europe of the middle
ages, power was distributed between Church, sovereign and local barons. Still
each nation state required therefore an internal lingua franca which could act
as a vehicle of governance and serve as an emblem of national identity. The
English language was defined to serve the purposes of a national language.
The process of
decolonisation, which took place in the 20th century demanded to establish new
national languages which could provide an integrated identity for multi-ethnic
states. Some countries such as Singapore adopted a multi-language formula which
reflected the ethnic languages of the new state. For example, in India, Hindi
is the sole national language and English technically an ‘associate’.
In the 18th and 19th
centuries there was an attempt to fix and ‘ascertain’ the English language.
Still it was not successful: the language continued to adapt itself to new
circumstances and people. And it was not just Britain which desired a national
language from English. There is an increasing number of national standards,
including those related to the ‘New Englishes’ which have appeared in former
colonial countries such as Singapore. Each standard is supported (or soon may
be) by national dictionaries, grammars and style requirements.
No central authority has
ever existed which can regulate the language. language The English language
has always been hybrid and flexible. First from Celtic and Latin, later from
Scandinavian and Norman French, then from the many other languages spoken in
the British colonies, the English language has borrowed freely. One of the few
certainties associated with the future of English is that it will continue to
evolve, reflecting and constructing the changing roles and identities of its
speakers. Yet we are now at a significant point of evolution: at the end of the
20th century, the close relationship that has previously existed between
language, territory and cultural identity is being challenged by globalising
forces. The impact of such trends will shape the contexts in which English is
learned and used in the 21st century.
By the end of the 19th
century, Britain had established the preconditions for English as a global
language. Communities of English speakers were settled around the world and,
along with them, patterns of trade and communication. Yet the world position of
English might have declined with the empire, like the languages of other
European colonial powers, such as Portugal and the Netherlands. But the
dramatic rise of the US in the 20th century as a world superpower changed the
situation. There were, indeed, two other European linguistic contenders which
could have established themselves as the global lingua franca – French and
German.
The US was destined to be
powerful industrialised country because of its own natural and human
resources. The US is today the world’s third most populous country with around
260 million inhabitants. Not surprising therefore that it now accounts for the
greater proportion of the total number of native English speakers.
After the war, several
international agencies were established to help manage global reconstruction
and future governance. The key one has proved to be the United Nations and its
subsidiary organisations. Crystal (1997) estimates that 85% of international
organisations now use English as one of their working languages, 49% use French
and fewer than 10% use Arabic, Spanish or German. Crystal (1997) estimates 99%
of European organisations use English as a working language, as opposed to 63%
French and 40% German. French is still the only real rival to English as a
working language of world institutions, although the world position of French
has reeled since World War II. Nowadays it is the only alternative which can be
used in many international forums as a political gesture of resistance to the
hegemony of English. As a delegate from Ireland once addressed the League of
Nations many years ago, explaining his use of French, ‘I can’t speak my own
language, and I’ll be damned if I’ll speak English’
The position of English in
the world today is defined due to the outcome of Britain’s colonial expansion
and the more recent activity of the USA. Any substantial shift in the role of
the US in the world can influence the use and attractiveness of the English
language amongst those who are not native speakers.
Chapter 3
Socio-cultural background
The press
The English language has been an important
medium of the press
for nearly 400 years. The Weekley Newes
began to appear (irregularly) from 1622; the
London Gazette in 1666; and Lloyd’s News
in 1696, providing
general news as well as information about
shipping. The development of the American press began later. It included the
Boston
News-Letter (1704), The New-York Gazette
(1725), and the New
York City Daily Advertiser (1785). The
beginning of the eighteenth century in Britain was marked by the rise and fall
of The Tatler (1709)
and The Spectator (1711), while the end
brought the arrival of
The Times (1788) and The Observer (1791).
The nineteenth century was the period of
greatest progress,
because the new printing technology and
new
methods of mass production and
transportation were introduced. The
development of a truly independent press,
chiefly fostered in the
USA, where there were some 400 daily
newspapers by 1850, and
nearly 2,000 by the turn of the century,
also took place. Massive circulations were achieved by such papers as the New
York Herald (1833) and New York Tribune
(1841). By the end of the century, popular journalism, in the form of The
Daily Mail (1896),
brought Britain into line with America.
The mid nineteenth century was marked by
the invention of the telegraph (they
were long known as ‘wire services’). Paul
Julius Reuter started an
office in Aachen, but then moved to
London, where he opened an agency. By 1870 Reuters
had acquired more territorial news
monopolies than any of its
Continental competitors. In 1856 the New
York Associated Press become dominant. It
meant that the majority of the information being transmitted along
the telegraph wires of the world was in
English.
Newspapers are not only the 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.
None the less, according to the data
compiled by the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 2002 about 57 per cent of the
world’s newspapers are published in those countries, where the English language
has special status.
Scientific publishing
English is now the
international language of science and technology. It has not always been so.
The renaissance of British science in the 17th century put English language
science publications on the first pace in the scientific community. But after
World War I German became the dominant international language of science. Later
the growing role of the USA ensured that English became the global language of
experiment and discovery. Journals in many countries shifted from publishing in
their national language to publishing in English. This language shift is
common elsewhere. A study in the early 1980s showed nearly two-thirds of
publications of French scientists were in English. As might be expected, some
disciplines have been more affected by the English language than others.
Physics is the most globalised and anglophone, followed a close second by other
pure sciences.
It is not just in
scientific publishing, but in book publication as a whole that English rules supreme.
English is the most popular language of publication. Unesco figures for book
production show Britain outstripping any other country in the world for the
number of titles published each year. In 1996, a remarkable 101,504 titles were
published in Britain.
Although there are countries which publish more per head of the population and
many countries which print more copies, none publishes as many titles. The
statistics show the huge amount of intellectual property being produced in the
English language in an era where intellectual property is becoming increasingly
valuable.
Advertising
By the end of the nineteenth century a
fusion several factors led to a large increase in the use of
advertisements in publications. Mass
production caused the flow of goods
, consumer purchasing power was
growing, new printing techniques provided
new possibilities. In the USA, publishers realized that income
from advertising would allow them to
increase the income.
In 1893
McClure’s Magazine, Cosmopolitan and
Munsey’s Magazine all
adopted this tactic. Nowadays two-thirds
of a modern
newspaper, especially in the USA, are
devoted to advertising.
English became the language of
advertising very early when the weekly
newspapers began to carry items about
books, medicines, tea, and
other domestic products. During the
nineteenth century the advertising slogan became a feature of the medium, as
did the famous
‘trade name’. Many products which are now
household names received
a special boost in that decade, such as Ford,
Coca Cola, Kodak
and Kellogg.
Posters, billboards, electric displays,
shop signs and other techniques became
part of the everyday life.
International markets grew, the
advertisements began spread all over the world, and their prominence
in every town and city is now one of the
most noticeable global manifestations of English language use. The English
advertisements are not always more
numerous, in countries where
English has no special status, but they
are usually the most noticeable.
In all of this, it is the English of
American products which rules.
Other languages
began to feel the effects: in Italian,
for example, a single verb
sums up the era: cocacolonizzare, based
on coca cola and colonize.
Macdonaldization is a more recent example.
The impact was less marked in Europe,
where TV advertising
was more strictly controlled, but once
commercial channels developed, there was a rapid period of catching up, in
which American
experience and influence were pervasive.
The advertising agencies
came into their own. By 1972, only three
of the world’s top thirty
agencies were not US-owned (two in Japan
and one in Britain).
The official language of international
advertising bodies, such as
the European Association of Advertising
Agencies, is invariably
English.
Broadcasting
It took many years of experimental
physical researches before it was possible to send the first
radio signals through the air, without
any wires
. English was the first language to be
transmitted by radio. On Christmas Eve
1906 US physicist Reginald A. Fessenden
broadcast music, poetry, and a short talk
to Atlantic shipping from
Brant Rock, Massachusetts, USA.
The first commercial radio station
was KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its
first
programme was broadcasted in November
1920 – an account of the Harding–Cox
presidential election results. By 1922,
in the USA, over 500 broadcasting stations had been licensed; and by 1995, the
total was
around 5,000 (each for AM and for FM
commercial stations).
Advertising became the chief means of
support, as it later did for television.
The British Broadcasting Company was
established in 1922. It was a monopoly: no other
broadcasting company was allowed until
the creation of the Independent Television Authority in 1954. In contrast with
the USA,
BBC was supported not by advertising but
by the autnorities. The first director-general of the BBC, John
Reith, developed a concept of
public-service broadcasting – to
inform, educate, and entertain – which
proved to be highly influential abroad.
During the early 1920s, English-language
broadcasting began
in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The
Indian Broadcasting
Company had stations in Bombay and
Calcutta by 1927. Most
European countries commenced radio
services during the same
period. As services were developing, the
need for international agreements became necessary.
Several organizations now exist, the
largest being the International Telecommunications Union, created as early as
1865 to
handle the problems of telegraphy.
There are also several important regional
organizations, such as
the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association
and the European
Broadcasting Union, as well as cultural
and educational organizations, such as the London-based International Broadcast
Institute.
In these cases, we find a growing reliance
on English as a lingua
franca, corresponding to that found in
the world of international
politics. The Asia–Pacific Broadcasting
Union, for example, uses
only English as an official language.
A similar dramatic expansion later
affected public television.
The world’s first high-definition service,
provided by the BBC,
began in London in 1936. In the USA, the
National Broadcasting Company was able to provide a regular service in 1939.
Within a year there were over twenty TV
stations operating in
the USA. By 1995 the total number of
stations had grown to over 1500. Ten
million TV receivers were
in use by 1951; by 1990 the figure was
approaching 200 million.
There was a proportional growth in Britain,
which had issued over
300,000 TV licences by 1950. Other
countries were much slower
to enter the television age, and none has
ever achieved the levels
of outreach found in the USA, where a
2002 survey reported
almost one receiver per person,10 and where
each person spent
almost 1,000 hours watching TV during the
year.
We can only speculate about how these
media developments
must have influenced the growth of world
English. A casual pass
through the wavelengths of a radio
receiver shows that no one
language rules the airwaves, and there are
no statistics on the
proportion of time devoted to
English-language programmes the
world over, or on how much time is spent
listening to such programmes. Only a few indirect indications exist: for
example, in
1994 about 45 per cent of the world’s
radio receivers were in
those countries where the English
language has a special status;
but what such figures say in real terms
about exposure to English
is anyone’s guess.
A more specific indication is broadcasting
aimed specifically
at audiences in other countries. Such
programmes were introduced in the 1920s, but Britain did not develop its
services until
the next decade. The international
standing of BBC programmes,
especially its news broadcasts, achieved
a high point during the
Second World War, when they helped to
raise morale in German-occupied territories. The World Service of the BBC,
launched
(as the Empire Service) in 1932, though
much cut back in
recent years, in 2001 was still
broadcasting over 1,000 hours
per week to a worldwide audience of 153
million and reaching
120 capital cities, with a listening
audience in English estimated
at 42 million. BBC English
Radio produces over 100 hours
of bilingual and all-English programmes
weekly. London Radio
Services, a publicly funded radio
syndicator, offers a daily international news service to over 10,000 radio
stations worldwide,
chiefly in English.
Although later to develop, the USA rapidly
overtook Britain,
becoming the leading provider of English-language
services
abroad. The Voice of America, the
external broadcasting service
of the US Information Agency, was not
founded until 1942, but
it came into its own during the Cold War
years. By the 1980s, it
was broadcasting from the USA worldwide
in English and forty five other languages. The International Broadcast Station
offers a shortwave
service to Latin America in English and
certain other languages.
Radio New York World Wide provides an
English-language service to Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. And channels with
a
religious orientation also often
broadcast widely in English: for
example, World International Broadcasters
transmits to Europe,
the Middle East, and North Africa.
Most other countries showed sharp
increases in external broadcasting during the post-War years, and several
launched English-
language radio programmes, such as the
Soviet Union, Italy,
Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands,
Germany and Sweden. No
comparative data are available about how
many people listen to
each of the languages provided by these
services. However, if we
list the languages in which these
countries broadcast, it is noticeable that only one of these languages has a
place on each of the
lists: English.
Cinema
The new technologies which followed the
discovery of electrical
power fundamentally altered the nature of
home and public entertainment, and provided fresh directions for the
development
of the English language. Britain and
France provided an initial impetus to the
artistic and commercial
development of the cinema from 1895. But
the World War I stopped the growth of the European film industry, and the
dominance passed to America, When in the
late 1920s sound was added to the
technology, the very English language came to
dominate the movie world. It is difficult
to find accurate data, but
several publications of the period
provide it. For example, in
1933 appeared the first edition of The
picture goer’s who’s who and
encyclopaedia of the screen today.13 Of
the 44 studios listed, 32
were American or British (the others were
German and French).
Of the 2,466 artistes listed, only 85 (3
per cent) were making
movies in languages other than English.
Of the 340 directors,
318 (94 per cent) were involved only in
English-language works.
Despite the growth of the film industry
in other countries
in later decades, English-language movies
still dominate the
medium, with Hollywood coming to rely
increasingly on a small
number of annual productions aimed at
huge audiences – such as
Star Wars, Titanic and The Lord of the
Rings. It is unusual to find a
blockbuster movie produced in a language
other than English. In
2002, according to the listings in the
BFI film and television hand-
book, over 80 per cent of all feature
films given a theatrical release
were in English.14 The Oscar
system has always been English-language oriented (though the category of best
foreign film was
recognized in 1947), but there is a
strong English-language presence in most other film festivals too. Half of the
Best Film awards
ever given at the Cannes Film Festival,
for example, have been to
English-language productions. By the mid-1990s, according to film
critic David Robinson in
an Encyclopaedia Britannica review,15 the
USA controlled about
85 per cent of the world film market,
with Hollywood films dominating the box offices in most countries.
Popular music
The cinema was one of two new
entertainment technologies
which emerged at the end of the
nineteenth century: the other
was the recording industry. Most of the
subsequent technical developments took place
in the USA. Gramophone records soon came
to replace cylinders. The first US patent for magnetic tape was as early as
1927.
Columbia Records introduced the
long-playing (LP) disk in 1948.
All the major recording companies in
popular music had English-
language origins. Radio sets around the
world hourly testify to the dominance
of English in the popular music scene
today. Many people make
their first contact with English in this
way. It is a dominance which
is a specifically twentieth-century
phenomenon, but the role of
English in this genre starts much
earlier. During the early twentieth century, European
light opera (typified by Strauss and
Offenbach) developed an
English-language dimension. Several major
composers were immigrants to the USA, such as the Czech-born Rudolf Friml (who
arrived in 1906) and Hungarian-born
Sigmund Romberg (who
arrived in 1909), or they were the
children of immigrants (such
as George Gershwin). The 1920s proved to
be a remarkable
decade for the operetta, as a result,
with such famous examples
as Romberg’s The Student Prince (1924)
and Friml’s Rose Marie.
The same decade also saw the rapid growth
of the musical, a distinctively US product, and the rise to fame of such
composers as
Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, and
later Cole Porter and
Richard Rodgers.
The rapidly growing broadcasting
companies were greedy for
fresh material, and thousands of new
works each year found an
international audience in ways that could
not have been conceived
of a decade before. Jazz, too, influenced
so much by the folk blues of black plantation workers, had its linguistic
dimension. Blues singers such
as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were part
of the US music-hall
scene from the early years of the
twentieth century. Other genres
emerged – hillbilly songs, country music,
gospel songs, and a wide
range of folk singing. The vocal element
in the dance music of such
swing bands as Glenn Miller’s swept the
world in the 1930s and
1940s. And, in due course, the words and
beat of rhythm and
blues grew into rock and roll.
When modern popular music arrived, it was
almost entirely
an English scene. The pop groups of two
chief English-speaking
nations were soon to dominate the recording
world: Bill Haley
and the Comets and Elvis Presley in the
USA; the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones in the UK. Mass
audiences for pop singers
became a routine feature of the world
scene from the 1960s. No
other single source has spread the English
language around the
youth of the world so rapidly and so
pervasively.
In the 2000s, the English-language
character of the international pop music world is extraordinary. Although every
country
has its popular singers, singing in their
own language, only a few
manage to break through into the
international arena, and in
order to do so it seems they need to be
singing in English. The
1990 edition of The Penguin encyclopedia
of popular music was
an instructive guide to the 1990s decade:
of the 557 pop groups
it included, 549 (99 per cent) worked
entirely or predominantly
in English; of the 1,219 solo vocalists,
1,156 (95 per cent) sang
in English. The mother tongue of the
singers was apparently irrelevant. The entire international career of ABBA, the
Swedish
group with over twenty hit records in the
1970s, was in English.
Most contributions to the annual
Eurovision Song Contest are in
English –17 titles out of 24 in 2002.
Education
Since the 1960s, English has become the
normal medium of
instruction in higher education for many
countries – and is increasingly used in several where the language has no
official status. Some advanced courses in The Netherlands, for example, are
widely taught in English. If most
students are going to encounter
English routinely in their monographs and
periodicals, it is suggested – an argument which is particularly cogent in
relation to
the sciences – then it makes sense to
teach advanced courses in
that language, to better prepare them for
that encounter. But
these days there is also a strong lingua
franca argument: the pressure to use English has grown as universities and
colleges have
increasingly welcomed foreign students,
and lecturers have found
themselves faced with mixed-language
audiences.
The English language teaching (ELT)
business has become
one of the major growth industries around
the world in the past
half-century. An illustration of the
scale of the development in
modern times can be seen from the work of
The British Council,
which in 2002 had a network of offices in
109 countries promoting cultural, educational and technical cooperation. In
1995–6,
for example, over 400,000 candidates
worldwide sat English language examinations administered by the Council, over
half of
these being examinations in English as a
foreign language. At any
one time during that year, there were
120,000 students learning
English and other skills through the
medium of English in Council teaching centres. A particular growth area is
central and
eastern Europe, and the countries of the
former Soviet Union,
where it is thought that over 10 per cent
of the population –
some 50 million in all – are now learning
English.
Conclusion
Because English is so
widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "world language",
the lingua franca of the modern era, and while it is not an official
language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a
foreign language. Some linguists believe that it is no longer the exclusive
cultural property of "native English speakers", but is rather a
language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it continues to
grow. It is, by international treaty, the official language for aerial and
maritime communications. English is an official language of the United Nations
and many other international organisations, including the International Olympic
Committee.
Now we arrive at some certain conclusions.
1. The spread of English
There have been two main historical
mechanisms for the spread of English. First was the colonial expansion of
Britain which resulted in settlements of English speakers in many parts of the
world. This has provided a diasporic base for the language which is probably a
key factor in the adoption of a language as a lingua franca. In the 20th
century, the role of the US has been more important than that of Britain and
has helped ensure that the language is not only at the forefront of scientific
and technical knowledge, but also leads consumer culture.
2. English and other languages
The majority of speakers of English
already speak more than one language. An important community for the future
development of English in the world is the ‘outer circle’ of those who speak
it as a second language. English often plays a special role in their lives and
the fate of English in the world is likely to be closely connected to how this
role develops in future. English, for example, is becoming used by many EFL and
L2 speakers for a wider range of communicative functions. This process, by
which English ‘colonises’ the lower layers of the language hierarchy in many
countries, means that English may take over some of the functions currently
served by other languages in the construction of social identity and the
creation and maintenance of social relationships.
3. A single, European, linguistic area
Western Europe is beginning to form a
single multilingual area, rather like India, where languages are hierarchically
related in status. As in India, there may be many who are monolingual in a
regional language, but those who speak one of the ‘big’ languages will have
better access to material success. Other world regions may develop in a similar
way. This book focuses particularly on emergent trends in Asia, but significant
developments are likely to occur also in the Americas, in Russia and in
sub-Saharan Africa.
4. Internationalisation of education
Globalisation is also affecting education
– particularly higher
education – and corporate training.
Patterns of provision are
becoming so complex that it is difficult
to identify purely
national interests. English will provide
a means for second-
language countries to internationalise
their education systems
and thus become major competitors to
native-speaking
countries in English-medium education. A
second significant
trend is towards distance education. This
may benefit the
institutions of Western countries who will
be able to supply
high-value training and accreditation
services in-country at
lower cost than traditional residential
courses. However, an
explosion in distance education is already
visible in developing
countries, driven by the need to educate
more people, more
cheaply, with fewer qualified teachers.
5. English in media
English is the language
most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union, by 89% of
schoolchildren, ahead of French at 32%, while the perception of the usefulness
of foreign languages amongst Europeans is 68% in favour of English ahead of 25%
for French. Among some non-English-speaking EU countries, a large percentage of
the adult population claims to be able to converse in English– in particular:
85% in Sweden, 83% in Denmark, 79% in the Netherlands, 66% in Luxembourg and
over 50% in Finland, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium, and Germany.
Books, magazines, and
newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world,
and English is the most commonly used language in the sciences with Science
Citation Index reporting as early as 1997 that 95% of its articles were written
in English, even though only half of them came from authors in English-speaking
countries.
Bibliography
1.
Ayto, John. Twentieth-Century
Words. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
2.
Burchfield, R. W., ed.
The New Fowler's Modern English Usage. New York: Oxford University Press,
1996. Widely respected guide to "correct" usage.
3.
Crystal, D. (1995)
Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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4.
Crystal, D. (1997)
English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Hayakawa, S. I. Language
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Classic work on semantics.
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Jessie Scanlon. Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age.
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publication about computer technology.
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Mencken, H. L. The
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8.
McCrum, Robert,
William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story of English. New York:
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Oxford American
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1979.
Annex
The major English speaking
countries
Country
|
Total
|
First language
|
Percent of population
|
USA
|
251 388 301
|
215 423 557
|
96%
|
India
|
125 344 736
|
226 449
|
12%
|
Nigeria
|
79 000 000
|
4 000 000
|
53%
|
United Kingdom
|
59 600 000
|
58 100 000
|
98%
|
Philippines
|
48 800 000
|
3 427 000
|
58%
|
Canada
|
25 246 220
|
17 694 830
|
85%
|
Australia
|
18 172 989
|
15 581 329
|
92%
|
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