Spread of English Reasons and effects

Different roles of English: ● English as an international language (EIL): Crystal (1997): when a language 'develops a special role recognised in every country’ a) when many people speak it as a mother tongue / native language b) given an official status, usually for economic progress (law, government, media, education) c) given priority as a foreign language: taught in schools as 2nd language, need to learn even in adulthood (English as a foreign language (EFL) speakers) ● English as a lingua franca (ELF): used as a means of communication amongst each other, not only for speaking to native English speakers - Language shift Bilingualism and multilingualism, regarded as aberrations by English mother tongue speakers in the UK and US (at least in the past), are the norm for the rest of the world. Instead, speakers of dominant languages (especially English) have been long reluctant to acquire other languages, expecting others to make the effort to learn their mother tongue; they also often view code-switching as linguistic incompetence. - (Sweeny and Zhu Hua, 2010) Monolingual L1 English speakers are among the least skilled users of English as an international lingua franca, compared to bilingual or L2 speakers who are more able to exercise accommodation skills (adjusting their language to facilitate communication), yet they are the most biased against other varieties of the English language different from their standard. Other reasons why English has spread: - Linguistic hegemony: when dominant groups create a consensus by convincing others to accept their language norms and usage as the norm. Hegemony is ensured when they can convince those who fail to meet those standards to view their failure as being the result of the inadequacy of their own language. English Only movement (American English, or as the members like to call it Official English): started from a substantial influx of southern Europeans into America, who were usually non-native speakers, when multilingualism was tolerated. With the context that immigrants were racially inferior to the northern Europeans who initially colonised the country, the US government began reversing the policy that allowed immigrants to use their native languages as the language of instruction in education. By the early 1920s, ¾ of the US states insisted on English-only education – a policy that was often enforced inhumanely. Native Indian children were kidnapped from their reservations and forced into boarding schools to learn English. While tolerance for multilingualism increased and a new Bilingual Education Act was established, the following increases in immigrants from developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, caused strong xenophobia that led to establishment of the English-Only movement.

- In California, measures were more extreme where in 1998 the English Language Education for Children in Public Schools Initiative was established. Children for whom English is not their L1 were put into immersion programmes for a year before being transferred to mainstream education. The underlying aim of the program was to subtract a language from the children repertoire (their native language) and replace it with English by forcing them into an English-only environment without any special language assistance; despite evidence that bilingual education was far more effective than immersion education, the policy was defended fiercely - Linguistics imperialism: the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages; starting from when Britain colonised many parts of the world and became the language of power and prestige (also known as the “imperial tongue”) - Britain enforced the use of English in their colonies, in institutions and as a language of instruction in schools, which made it a compulsory language to learn In Kenya because of colonisation, English was known as the colonial language, and all indigenous or local African languages became known as vernaculars, demoting the status of the local languages and enforcing the prestige of the dominant language English. - Globalisation: increased interconnectivity has allowed for increase in the flows of people across countries, and increase in the spread of English media - Britain in the past was considered a global superpower in terms of economic, military, political and cultural power; Both of which have an overwhelming English-speaking majority (Adamo, 2005) argued that “the ‘imposition’ of English language on the world, Africa, and in particular Nigeria (through the media, information technology, and other means of propaganda, and under the guise of globalisation) is a form of linguistics terrorism” - (Wee, 2003) ‘The role of English as a global language is always discussed hand in hand with its economic capital and status as a language of science, commerce and technology , clearly indicating that the need to use English is motivated and associated with a global perspective – English is clearly seen as an instrument and means of global participation in financial and economic markets .’ - Linguistic capital: varieties in the market are assigned different market values, mostly based on the connotation of the linguistic variety

- English has a high linguistic value in most micro-markets because of its potential to earn high profit from its acquisition compared to other languages - English is now the language of trade and a global lingua franca, not using it risks ostracisation from the benefits of the global economy - For future career development, focus on the English language is emphasised which implies that other languages are not worth learning because they do not give the same benefits

Models to describe the spread of English: ● Three concentric circles of English (Kachru, 1992) - Attempt to divide Englishes by the contexts of their development (how the language was acquired, and how it's currently used) a) Inner circle: traditional bases of English, used as a native language (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) - The first diaspora to other ENL countries b) Outer circle: earlier phases in the spread of English (colonised), become institutionalised and is a second language - The second diaspora to the ESL countries, colonisation of