The Changing Face of English: Implications for Language Teaching

1. English is everywhere today … but is it really English as we used to think of it? And how does this new outlook affect the way we are supposed to teach it?

2. How many people speak English today? Who are these people, where do they live and why do they happen to speak English? What does this mean to the English language itself and to our understanding of contemporary sociolinguistic dynamics?

3. 1982, Bailey and Görlach, English as a World Language: 300 million. • 1983, E. Gunnemark and D. Kenrick, What Language Do They Speak?: 1,400,000 English speakers. • 1985, David Crystal, “How Many Millions? The Statistics of English Today”, English Today: between 700 million and 2 billion, “I am happy to settle for a billion, myself…” • 2003, David Crystal, English as a Global Language: around 1.5 billion people.

4. 2008, David Crystal, “Two Thousand Million? Updates on the Statistics of English”, English Today: • “And these days, having read the more sophisticated assessments by David Graddol and others, I am prepared to revise upwards again in the direction of 2 billion (5).”

5. 1997, David Graddol, The Future of English? • “In many parts of the world, as English is taken into the fabric of social life, it acquires a momentum and vitality of its own, developing in ways which reflect local cultures and languages, while diverging increasingly from the kind of English spoken in Britain or North America. […] within a decade or so the number of people who speak English as a second language will exceed the number of native speakers. The implications of this are likely to be far reaching: the centre of authority regarding the language will shift from native speakers as they become minority stakeholders in the global resource (2-3).”

6. 1982, Kachru, Braj, The Other Tongue. • features and functions of an international language, not ENGLISH, but a “new language”; • the relationships between this language and traditionally major varieties of English, on the one hand, and newly recognized varieties, on the other; • identity and localism in a globalizing context; • studies of regional and national varieties within a regenerated framework of sociolinguistics and contact-linguistics, Kachru’s claims finally prompted a review of English Language Teaching (ELT) in the light of completely different pedagogical approaches and anxieties (Jennifer Jenkins, Barbara Seidlhofer and Elizabeth Erling).

9. Epochal relocation of norm-setting dynamic • Graddol modified Kachru’s scheme (see previous slide) in a way meant to point out that the so-called “norm-setting dynamic” was going through dramatic relocations and was therefore likely to shift towards countries – or, as Gerhard Leitner put it, “epicentres” (“English as a Pluricentric Language”) – where English was either a second, alternative or just a foreign, additional language.

10. 1997, Graddol, English Next • “People have wondered for some years whether English had so much got its feet under the global office desk that even the rise of China – and Mandarin – could ever shift it from its dominant position of dominance. The answer is that there is already a challenger, one which has quietly appeared on the scene whilst many native speakers of English were looking the other way, celebrating the rising hegemony of their language. The new language which is rapidly ousting the language of Shakespeare as the world’s lingua franca is English itself – English in its new global form. As this book demonstrates, this is not English as we have known it, and have taught it in the past as a foreign language. It is a new phenomenon, and if it represents any kind of triumph it is probably not a cause of celebration by native speakers (11).”

11. Modiano, Marko. “International English in the Global Village.” English Today15.2 (1999): 22-28.

12. Leitner: the history of English is “marked by intensive, although not often peaceful, relations in Europe, European explorations, colonization, exploitation, and ethno-cultural contact” (“Developmental Stages” 17). • Kachru, World Englishes: “The trunk of the English language tree [..] continues to evoke reactions of suspicions, of conspiracies and of mistrust. There continues to be a lingering Trojan-horse association with the language and its managers.”

13. Erling, “The Many Names of English”, • “Finally, these proposals for new names of English have been made in response to claims that English is an ‘imperialistic language’ (Phillipson 1992) or a ‘killer’ of local tongues and cultures (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). This fear of English has become so pervasive that a critical approach to ELT is now indispensable (Holland 2002: 21). Thus English language professionals are now concerned with finding ways to protect local values, cultures and languages in the face of a global language. While subsequent research (e.g. Brutt-Griffler 2002; Mufwene 2002) has painted a much more complex picture of the spread of English than the one presented by Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, a shift in English pedagogy is nevertheless crucial.”

14. Adapting a very famous quote from ethnographer of communication, Dell H. Hymes, “language is in large part what users have made of it” (26), to the demands of the contemporary sociolinguistic profile, one may argue that English by now is in large part what all users, including non-native speakers of English and native speakers of so-called non-Anglo Englishes, have made of it. And this confirms what Dumarsais wrote in the early Eighteenth century: usage is the “tyrant of language” (qtd. in Rastier 144).

15. ELF - English as Lingua Franca • The groundbreaking proposals is to teach ELF rather than English English. In this ELF theorists assume that the distinctive features of the ELF variety should be the focus of English teaching to L2 speakers, given that these speakers are reported to communicate and interact in a contemporary context that is turning increasingly cross-cultural and, in one word, global.

16. ELF theorists call for methods of English teaching that do not focus on “any particular national linguistic standard” (41). Jennifer Jenkins (“The Phonology of English”) and Barbara Seidlhofer (“Closing a Conceptual Gap”), in fact, almost concomitantly (2000 and 2001, respectively) proposed that teaching approaches should aim at transmitting the linguistic skills necessary to ensure communicative effectiveness among world citizens, rather than engaging in a dogmatic reproduction of phonological, lexical and discursive L1 English standards and norms.

17. In particular, J. Jenkins emphasized that phonological accommodation should be encouraged and even prioritised, particularly in communicative contexts where identity is a crucial factor, pointing out that a blind compliance with the Received Pronunciation – or English English accent – would not provide an appropriate resource of cross-cultural or international communication. This is supposed to be often the case with trans-national business communication.

18. Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics • Standard English is frequently taken to be the English language, which inevitably leads to the view that other varieties of English are some kind of deviation from the norm, the deviation being due to laziness, ignorance or lack of intelligence […] the fact is, however, that Standard English is only one variety among many, although a peculiarly important one. Linguistically speaking it cannot be considered better than other varieties. The scientific study of language has convinced scholars that all languages, and correspondingly all dialects, are equally ‘good’ as linguistic systems [...] It follows that value judgements concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are rather social than linguistics (8).

19. Kingsley Amis, The King’s English. A Guide to Modern Usage • “Berks are careless, coarse, crass, gross and of what anybody would agree is a lower social class than one’s own. They speak in a slipshod way with dropped Hs, intruded glottal stops and many mistakes in grammar. Left to them the English language would die of impurity, like late Latin. Wankers are prissy, fussy, priggish, prim and of what they would probably misrepresent as a higher social class than one’s own. They speak in an over-precise way with much pedantic insistence on letters not generally sounded, especially Hs. Left to them the language would die of purity, like medieval Latin.”

20. 2012, George Sandulescu, UnEnglish English in Finnegan’s Wake • “great intrinsic qualities never shared with any other language […] First, English is the most open language in the world, on account of its lack of inflexions, and general adaptability of the whole Word Building system. Second, English is the most productive language in the world […] English is spontaneously infiltrating all other languages […] English is the most tolerant language in the world […] no English-language country ever set up a Language Academy of the French, or Swedish, or Romanian type.”

21. 2003, David Crystal, English as a Global Language • Over the years many popular and misleading beliefs have grown up about why a language should become internationally successful, it is quite common to hear people claim that a language is a paragon, on account of its perceived aesthetic qualities, clarity of expression, literary power, or religious standing. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic and French are among those which at various times have been lauded in such terms, and English is no exception.

22. 2003, David Crystal, English as a Global Language • It is often suggested, for example, that there must be something inherently beautiful or logical about the structure of English, in order to explain why it is now so widely used. ‘It has less grammar than other languages,’ some have suggested. ‘English doesn’t have a lot of endings on its words nor do we have to remember the difference between masculine, feminine, and neuter gender, so it must be easier to learn’. [...] Such arguments are misconceived. Latin was once a major international language, despite its many inflectional endings and gender differences. French too, has been such a language, despite its nouns being masculine and feminine [...] Ease of learning has nothing to do with it [...]

23. 2003, David Crystal, English as a Global Language • A language has traditionally become an international language for one chief reason: the power of its people – especially their political and military power. The explanation is the same throughout history. Why did Greek become a language of international communication in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago? Not because of the intellects of Plato and Aristotle: the answer lies in the swords and spears wielded by the armies of Alexander the Great. Why did Latin become known throughout Europe? Ask the legions of the Roman Empire. Why did Arabic come to be spoken so widely across northern Africa and the Middle East? Follow the spread of Islam, carried along by the force of the Moorish armies from the eight century.

24. Weapons are not enough • However, military power alone is not enough and would probably not provide such a satisfactory explanation for the status of English in our times. David Crystal: “It may take a military powerful nation to establish a language, but it takes an economically powerful one to maintain and expand it” (2003, 10). The role of world leader for a language, and English has made no exception, is arguably accounted for by economic mechanisms.

25. Global Technologies and English as a Style • What should be emphasized is the role of technology and new media in today’s context of language and communication. Starting from the telegraph, through television and telephone, to the Internet and tablet computers, new media have increasingly made it easier for people to communicate across the globe and for ‘speech communities’ to establish and grow. So, English is definitely not the first International language, nor the first Lingua franca for international communication, but is the first truly global language.

26. It is obvious that the new media, including digital ones and the Internet in particular, have exponentially increased the amount of texts that are encoded for and decoded by an international audience on a daily basis. One should just think of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and of other social media, the output of which has reached unprecedented levels in human history.

27. Internet and Language • According to Shengyong Zhang, author of “English as a Global Language in Chinese Context”, “English accounts for 80% of language use on the internet, 10% is accounted for by the Chinese language, and the other 10% represents all other languages used on the internet” (170). This implies that in most regions of the planet, English is the Lingua Franca you are expected to use when writing and reading e-mails, looking for information, chatting with ‘would-be’ friends, exchanging music, videos and other kinds of documents. And above all, you need English when sending your curriculum vitae, or better CV, around.

28. This certainly occurs when you are sending it abroad, regardless of the country where they are going to read it, and it also occurs more and more frequently when you are sending it to companies working in your own country. In these same regions, whoever has English as a second – hopefully fluent – language is known to stand the chance of better employment opportunities, especially those available in the service sector. As observed by Pierre Bourdieu in his studies on the symbolic power of language, the ability to speak prestigious linguistic varieties always translates into personal benefits and advantages over other people. And these advantages are often of a kind which can be easily capitalized (Distinction; Language and Symbolic). Linguistic capital today is unquestionably embodied by English, and arguably by English as a Lingua Franca even more than by any other variety, including English English.

29. Bad news for English teachers!! Like and even more than any other subject English is a quickly developing one. Moreover, we have pointed out how English is growing into something more than a mere cross-cultural means of communication. English has increasingly become a ‘way to look at the world’, one which also presumes the activation of stylistic meaning (Coupland) on the part of those who use it. To speak English is in itself meaningful and develops the speaker’s identity accordingly! This is why required levels of proficiency are constantly updated and raised. The same obviously applies to teachers and their students. Life-long training is a must (sigh!)