1. English as a global language
David Crystal (2003)

2. English as a global language
Why a global language?
Why English? The historical context
Why English? The cultural foundation
Why English? The cultural legacy
The future of global English
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3. Why a global language?
What is a global language?
What makes a global language?
Why do we need a global language?
What are the dangers of a global
language?
Could anything stop a global language?
A critical era
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4. Why English? The historical
context
 Origins
 America
 Canada
 The Caribbean
 Australia and New Zealand
 South Africa
 South Asia
 Former colonial Africa
 South-east Asia and the South Pacific
 A world view
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5. Why English? The cultural
foundation
Political development
Access to knowledge
Taken for granted
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6. Why English? The cultural legacy
International relations
The media
International travel
International safety
Education
Communication
The right place at the right time
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7. The future of global English
 The rejection of English
 Contrasting attitudes: the US situation
 New Englishes
 The linguistic character of new Englishes
 The future of English as a world language
 An English family of languages?
 A unique event?
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8. Why a global language?
English is a global language:
You hear it on TV, spoken by
politicians from all over the world.
You see English signs and
advertisements.
Hotel receptionists and waiters in a
foreign city understand you when you
speak English.
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9. What is a global language?
 A language achieve a genuinely global status
when it develops a special role (with many
facets) that is recognized in every country.
 Such a role will be most evident where a
large number of people speak the language
as a mother tongue (the USA, Canada,
Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, several Caribbean countries,
etc.
 See pp. 62 - 65
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10. What makes a global language?
 The speakers: nothing to do with the number
of speakers but who those speakers are.
 Power: e.g. Latin during the Roman Empire
(when the Roman military power declines,
Latin remain as the international language
due to a different sort of power: the
ecclesiastical power of Roman Catholicism.
 Political and military, economic,
technological, and cultural power.
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11. Why do we need a global
language?
 People using different languages need a ‘lingua
franca’ to communicate: e.g. a pidgin, a simplified
language adopted by several ethnic groups along the
West African coast to do trade.
 Mandarin Chinese (an indigenous lang.) emerged as
a ‘lingua franca’ among the Chinese because it is the
language of the most powerful ethnic group.
 International academic and business communities
need a ‘lingua franca’ to communicate: e.g. to
converse over the Internet between academic
physicists in Germany, Italy, and India, or to discuss
a multinational deal involving the Japanese, German,
and the Saudi Arabian businessmen.
 People become more mobile both physically and
electronically. 11

12. What are the dangers of a global
language?
 A global language will cultivate an elite monolingual
linguistic class.
 Those who have such a language as a mother
tongue will be more able to think and work quickly in
the language and to manipulate to their advantage.
 A global language will hasten the disappearance of
minority languages; the danger that some people will
celebrate one language’s success at the expense of
others.
 Linguistic power and linguistic complacency (pp. 16
-17)
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13. Could anything stop a global
language?
 The answer may be yes but the technology to
build a ‘machine translation’ would take a
generation or two to realize.
 Some firms are offering a basic translation
service between certain language pairs on
the Internet; real-time automatic translation is
progressing but, by the time, the position of
English as a global language will very likely
have become impregnable (strong).
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14. A critical era
 Within little more than a generation, we have moved
from a situation where a world language was a
theoretical possibility to one where it is an evident
reality.
 Languages of identity need to be maintained but
access to the emerging global language--language of
opportunity and empowerment--need to be
guaranteed.
 Governments should allocate resources for language
planning, whether to promote English or to develop
the use of other languages in their community (or, of
course, both).
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15. A world view
The present status of English is primarily the
result of two factors:
 The expansion of British colonial power,
which peaked towards the end of the 19th
century;
 And the emergence of the United States as
the leading economic power of the 20th
century (70% of all English-mother tongue
speakers in the world).
 Braj Kachru came with three concentric
circles: the inner circle, the outer circle, and
the expanding circle.
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16. Expanding circle
Outer/expanded
circle
Inner circle:
e.g. USA, UK
320 - 380 million
e.g. India, Singapore
300 - 500 million
e.g. China, Russia
500 - 1000 million
The three ‘circles’ of English (Kachru, 1988: 5)
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17. Why English? The historical context
Geographical-historical:
 English came to England in the 5th century and
began to spread around the British Isles.
 It entered parts of Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria, and
southern Scotland, traditionally the strongholds of the
Celtic language.
 After the Norman invasion of 1066, many nobles from
England fled north to Scotland, where they were
made welcome, and eventually the language (in a
distinctive Scots variety) spread throughout the
Scottish lowlands. From the 12th century, Anglo-
Norman knights were sent across the Irish Sea, and
Ireland gradually fell under English rule.
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18. Why English? The historical context
 Three hundred years later, the progress of English
towards its status as a global language took place.
 The movement of English around the world: America
(1584, 1st settlement, 1607), Asia, and the Antipodes
(Aust. and NZ, James Cook, 1770) , and to Africa,
1820, and the South Pacific, 1600 (the British East
India Company)
 In India, Thomas Macaulay (1835) proposed the
introduction of an English educational system. In
Penang (1786), in Singapore (1819), and in Malacca
(1824).
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19. Political development
 World English is due to the growth of the British
Empire.
 The British Empire covers nearly one third of the
earth’s surface and the British subject is nearly one
fourth of the population of the world.
 Around the British Empire: the language as a
guarantor, as well as a symbol of political unity.
 English became a new unifying medium of
communication within a colony, but at the same time
it reflects the bonds between that colony and the
home country.
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20. Access to knowledge
 By the beginning of the 19th century Britain
became the world’s leading industrial and
trading nation.
 Most of the innovations of the Industrial
Revolution were of the British origin: Thomas
Newcomen, James Watt, Mathew Boulton,
etc.
 The new terminology of technological and
scientific advance had an immediate impact
on the language. Those who wished to learn
about them would need to learn the
language.
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21. Taken for granted
 Innovations make the use of the language as a
primary or sole means of expression.
 The first radio station used English and no one
questioned about it.
 There was no competition from other languages.
 If there is a language that needs protection, the
dominant power would take measures to preserve
the language.
 Some countries use English as an official language to
avoid the problem of having to choose between the
conflicting local languages.
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22. The cultural legacy
 English is one the official languages used in
the UN.
 English is used in most proceedings of most
other major international political gatherings.
 English is used in the media (the press,
advertising, broadcasting, cinema, and
popular music), in international travel and
international safety.
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23. Education
 English is the medium of a great deal of the world’s
knowledge esp. in science and technology.
A 1980 study of the use of English:
 85 % of papers in scientific periodicals were written in
English.
 In 1995, nearly 90% of the 1,500 papers listed in the
journal Linguistics Abstracts were in English.
 English has become the normal medium of
instruction in higher education for many countries.
 The ELT business has become one of the major
growth industries around the world.
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24. Communication
 Three quarters of the world’s mail is in
English.
 80% of the world’s electronically stored
information is currently in English.
 The first protocols devised to carry data on
the Net were developed for the English
alphabet, using character set (called Latin 1).
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25. The right place at the right time
 In the 17th and 18th century, English was the
language of the leading colonial nation -- Britain.
 In the 18th 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 -- the USA.
 English emerged as a first-rank language in
industries which affected all aspects of society -- the
press, advertising, broadcasting motion pictures,
sound recording, transport and communication.
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26. The future of global English
What kinds of development could
impede the future growth of English?
A significance change in the balance of
power -- political, economic,
technological or cultural.
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27. The rejection of English
 Could be a strong reaction against continuing
to use the language of the former colonial
power. E.g. Malaysia, in 1967, disestablished
English as a joint official language.
 Economic arguments which might persuade a
country to reduce its investment in the
English language.
 The need for intelligibility and the need for
identity often pull people -- and countries --
into opposing directions.
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28. Contrasting attitude: the US situation
 The USA has come to be the dominant element in so many of
the domains identified in earlier chapter so that the future status
of English must be bound up to some extent with the future of
that country.
 The power which has fueled the growth of the English language
during the 20th century has stemmed from America.
 The USA contains nearly four times as many mother-tongue
speakers of any other nation.
 It has been more involved with international developments in the
20th-century technology than any other nation.
 It is in control of the new industrial (that is electronic) revolution.
 It exercises a greater influence on the way English is developing
worldwide that does any other regional variety -- often of course,
to the discomfiture (uneasiness) of people in the UK< Australia,
NZ, Canada, and South Africa.
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29. New Englishes
 No one can now claim sole ownership of English.
 There is now way in which any kind of regional social
movement, such as the purist societies, can influence
the global outcome.
 The number of L1 speakers in the inner circle
countries is about the same with L2 speakers in the
outer circle countries.
 There are probably already more L2 speakers than
L1 speakers.
 There is an inevitable consequence that the language
will become open to the winds of linguistic change in
totally unpredictable ways.
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30.  ‘It was partly a matter of honour ‘as an independent
nation…to have a system of our own, in language as
well as government’ (Webster, in Crystal, 2003:142).
 Many distinctive forms also identify the Englishes of
the other countries in the inner circle: Australian
English, NZ English, Can. English, SA English,
Caribbean English, and within Britain, Irish, Scots,
and Welsh English.
 There is an English variety called South Asian
English (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka)
 There is a type of English of former British colonies in
West Africa, in East Africa, in the Caribbean, and in
parts of south-east Asia, such as Singapore.
 These new Englishes are somewhat dialects on an
international scale applying to whole countries or
regions.
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31.  Dialects emerge because they give identity to the
groups which own them.
 The drive for identity was particularly dominant in the
second half of the 20th century when many countries
became independent and joined the UN.
 English can become an alternative if there are so
many competing languages to become the national
language, e.g. in Nigeria (500 languages).
 With new institutions, came new ways of talking and
writing; indigenous words became privileged.
 A locally distinctive mode of expressions emerged,
and in some cases began to be recorded, in the form
of regional dictionary projects.
 Most adaptation (word-formations, word-meanings,
collocations and idiomatic phrases) in a New English
relates to vocabulary (lexical creation).
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32. The linguistic character of New
Englishes
Several of the ‘New Englishes’ of the
past have been well studied--notably
AmE and AusE--but the way the
language has evolved in settings 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.
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33. The linguistic character of New
Englishes
Grammar
Vocabulary
Code switching
Other domains (Pragmatic and
discoursal domain)
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34. The future of English as a world
language
 Language is an immensely democratizing institution. To have
learned a language is immediately to have rights in it. You may
add to it, modify it, play with it, cre ate in it, ignore bits of it, as
you will.
 E.g. Some Maori words and (the occasional Maori grammatical
feature, such as the dropping of the definite article before the
people name Maori itself) have been used in NZ English.
 The local words begin to be used at the prestigious levels of
society -- by politicians, religious leaders, socialites, pop
musicians, and others.
 Using local words is no longer seen as slovenly (careless) or
ignorant, within a country; it is respectable; it may even be
‘cool’.
 The next step is to move from national to international levels.
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35. An English family of
languages
 English is likely to be multidialectism or could
become multilingualism?
 Is it going to fragment into mutually
unintelligible varieties?
 The need for identity VS the need to be
intelligible?
 What if a community wishes its way of
speaking to be considered a ‘language’? Do
they have the political power to support?
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36. To have a variety:
 1st, to have a community with a single mind about
the matter;
 2nd, to have a community which has enough political-
economic ‘clout’ (informal influence/power) to make
its decision respected by outsiders with whom it is in
regular contact (e.g. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea,
Gullah--the Gullah are a distinctive group of Black Americans
from South Carolina and Georgia in the southeastern United
States).
 Ebonics--a blend of Ebony + phonics -- proposed for
the variety of English spoken by African Americans
(Black Vernacular English or African-American
Vernacular English was denounced by people from
across the political and ethnic spectrum despite its
noble intentions behind the the proposal (pp.179-180)
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37. A unique event?
 There has never been a language so widely
spread or spoken by so many people as
English.
 The balance between intelligibility and identity
is especially fragile, and can easily be
affected by social change, such as swing in
immigrant policy, new political alliances, or a
change in a country’s population trends.
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38. A unique event?
 Because there are no precedents for languages
achieving this level of use, we do not know what
happens to them in such circumstances.
 What happens to a language when it is spoken by
many times more people as a second language or
foreign language than as a mother tongue?
 If English does one day go the same way as Latin
and French, and have less of a global role, the next
languages to rise (the potential of Spanish, Chinese,
Arabic and Hindi/Urdu) is highlighted by Graddol
(1998: 59, cited in Crystal, 2003: 10).
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39. A unique event?
Speculation to be made:
 It may well be the case that the English language has
already grown to be independent of any form of
social control.
 There may be a critical number or critical spread of
speakers beyond which it proves impossible for any
single group or alliance to stop its growth, or even
influences its future.
 As we have seen, even the current chief player, the
USA, will have decreasing influence as the years go
by, because of the way world population is growing.
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40. A unique event?
 In 500 years’ time, will it be the case that everyone
will automatically be introduced to English as soon as
they are born or conceived?
 If this is part of a rich multilingual experience for our
future newborn, this can only be a good thing.
 If it is by then the only language left to be learned, it
will have been the greatest intellectual disaster that
the planet has ever known.
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41. A unique event?
If there is a critical mass, does this
mean that the emergence of a global
language is a unique event, in
evolutionary terms? It may be that
English, in some shape or form, will find
itself in the service of the world
community for ever.
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42. Thank you.
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