GLOBAL ENGLISHES 3 (Đa dạng Tiếng Anh)

GLOBAL ENGLISHES
PHAN, THE HUNG
Ph.D. in Linguistics


Why a global language?
‘English is the global language.’
• English is a global language, they would say.
You hear it on television spoken by politicians
from all over the world. Wherever you travel,
you see English signs and advertisements.
Whenever you enter a hotel or restaurant in a
foreign city, they will understand English, and
there will be an English menu


(cont.)
• 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.
• To get on in these societies, it is essential to master
the official language as early in life as possible. Such a
language is often described as a ‘second language’,
because it is seen as a complement to a person’s
mother tongue, or ‘first language’


(cont.)
• English continues to make news daily in many countries.

• For what does it mean, exactly? Is it saying that everyone
in the world speaks English?
• Is it saying, then, that every country in the world
recognizes English as an official language?
• So what does it mean to say that a language is a global
language? Why is English the language which is usually
cited in this connection? How did the situation arise? And
could it change? Or is it the case that, once a language
becomes a global language, it is there for ever?
• ➔‘Look what the Americans have done to English’ is a not
uncommon comment found in the letter-columns of the
British press. But similar comments can be heard in the USA
when people encounter the sometimes striking variations in
English which are emerging all over the world


What is a global language?
• To achieve such a status, a language has to be
taken up by other countries around the world.
They must decide to give it a special place
within their communities, even though they
may have few (or no) mother-tongue speakers


(cont.)
• The role of an official language is today best
illustrated by English, which now has some kind of
special status in over seventy countries, such as
Ghana, Nigeria, India, Singapore and Vanuatu.
• This is far more than the status achieved by any other

language – though French, German, Spanish, Russian,
and Arabic are among those which have also
developed a considerable official use. New political
decisions on the matter continue to be made: for
example, Rwanda gave English official status in 1996.
• Secondly, a language can be made a priority in a
country’s foreign-language teaching, even though
this language has no official status


(cont.)
• 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
• In most of these countries, English is emerging as
the chief foreign language to be encountered in
schools, often displacing another language in the
process.
• In1996, for example, English replaced French as
the chief foreign language in schools in Algeria (a
former French colony).


(cont.)

• Great variation in the reasons for choosing a particular
language as a favored foreign language: historical tradition,
political expediency, and the desire for commercial, cultural
or technological contact.
• When chosen, the ‘presence’ of the language can vary

greatly, depending (a government or foreign-aid agency) on
adequate financial support to a language-teaching policy.
• ➔Resources devoted to helping people have access to the
language through the media, libraries, schools, and
institutes of higher education➔ increase in the number
and quality of teachers able to teach the language.
• ➔Books, tapes, computers, telecommunication systems
and all kinds of teaching materials will be increasingly
available.


(cont.)
➔Distinctions such as those between ‘first’,
‘second’ and ‘foreign’ language status are useful,
but not 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
➔ native speakers vs. non-native speakers (dialects
and accent)


Introduction to Global Englishes
• Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 to Queen Elizabeth II in
the early part of the twenty-first century
➔ the number of speakers of English : 5 to 7 million
to possibly as many as 2 billion.
• English spoken in the mid-sixteenth century only by a
relatively small group of mother tongue speakers
born and bred within the shores of the British Isles

➔ now spoken in almost every country of the world.
• Currently, approximately 75 territories where English
spoken either as a first language (L1), or as an official
(i.e. institutionalized) second language (L2) in fields
such as government, law, and education. (Crystal
2003a, 2012a)


(cont.)
• About a quarter of the world’s population is
already fluent or competent in English, and this
figure is steadily growing – in the early 2000s that
means around 1.5 billion people.
• No other language can match this growth.
• Even Chinese, found in eight different spoken
languages, but unified by a common writing
system, is known to ‘only’ some 1.1 billion.


What makes a global language?
• Why a language becomes a global language has
little to do with the number of people who speak
it
• ➔Latin became an international language
throughout the Roman Empire, but this was not
because the Romans were more numerous than
the peoples they subjugated
• ➔There is the closest of links between language
dominance and economic, technological, and
cultural power, too, and this relationship will

become increasingly clear as the history of English
is told


(cont.)
• 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?
• ➔ 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 eighth century.
• Why did Spanish, Portuguese, and French find their way
into the Americas, Africa and the Far East?


(cont.)
• And English?
• By the beginning of the 19th century, Britain had become
the world’s leading industrial and trading country.
• By the end of the century, the population of the USA (then
approaching 100 million) 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, during the nineteenth century, so that it was a
language ‘on which the sun never sets’.
• During the twentieth century, this world presence was
maintained and promoted almost single-handedly through
the economic supremacy of the new American superpower.
Economics replaced politics as the chief driving force. And
the language behind the US dollar was English.


(cont.)
• Proficiency levels range from reasonable to bilingual
competence ➔ speakers of English as a Foreign Language
(EFL) to distinguish them from L2 speakers for whom
English serves country-internal functions, that is, speakers
of English as a Second Language (ESL).
• English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) or, less often, English as an
International Language (EIL).
• The new term, ELF, reflects the growing trend for English
users from, for example, mainland Europe, China, and
Brazil, to use English more frequently as a contact language
among themselves rather than with native English speakers
(the EFL situation).
• ➔over one billion EFL/ELF users, and also, as Crystal
(2012b: 155) points out, that “approximately one in three
of the world’s population are now capable of
communicating to a useful level in English”.


The two dispersals of English
• The first dispersal: English is transported to the

‘New World’
• Large-scale migrations of mother tongue English speakers
from England, Scotland, and Ireland predominantly to North
America, Australia, and New Zealand.
➔English dialects gradually developed into the American and
Antipodean Englishes today.
➔Varieties of English spoken in modern North America and
Australasia not identical with the English of their early
colonizers in response to the changed and changing
sociolinguistic contexts. For example, their vocabulary rapidly
expanded through contact with the indigenous Indian,
Aboriginal, or Maori populations, to incorporate such as
Amerindian papoose (infant), moccasin (leather shoe), and
igloo (snow house).


(cont.)
➔In 1607, the first permanent colonists arrived and
settled in Jamestown, Virginia (named respectively
after James I and Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen), to be
followed in 1620 by a group of Puritans and others on
the Mayflower. The latter group landed further north,
settling at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts in
New England.
➔Those in Virginia came mainly from the west of
England and brought with them their characteristic
rhotic /r/ and voiced /s/ sounds. On the other hand,
those who settled in New England were mainly from
the east of England, where these features were not a
part of the local accent

(cont.)
• During the 17th century, English spread to southern
parts of America and the Caribbean as a result of the
slave trade
➔The Englishes that developed among the slaves and
between them and their captors were initially contact
pidgin languages, but with their use as mother tongues
following the birth of the next generation, they
developed into creoles.
➔in the 18th century, large-scale immigration from
Northern Ireland, initially to the coastal area around
Philadelphia, but quickly moving south and west.
➔After the Declaration of American Independence in
1776, many Loyalists (the British settlers who had
supported the British government) left for Canada.


(cont.)
• James Cook ‘discovered’ Australia in 1770, until 1852, around
160,000 convicts were transported to Australia from Britain and
Ireland, and from the 1820s large numbers of free settlers also
began to arrive.
• ➔Most settlers came from London and the south-east. Others
originated in regions as widely dispersed as, for example, southwest England, Lancashire, Scotland, and Ireland ➔a situation of
dialect mixing, further influenced by the indigenous aboriginal
languages.
• New Zealand was first settled by European traders in the 1790s,
though there was no official colony until after the British-Maori

Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Immigrants arrived in three stages:
in the 1840s and 1850s from Britain, in the 1860s from Australia
and Ireland, and from 1870 to 1885 from the UK, when their
number included a considerable proportion of Scots.
• As in Australia, there was a mixture of dialects, this time subject
to a strong Maori influence especially in terms of vocabulary.


(cont.)
• South Africa colonized by the Dutch from the
1650s, then the British in 1795, in large numbers
until 1820 from southern England, Ireland and
Scotland. Further settlement occurred in the
1850s from the Midlands, Yorkshire, and
Lancashire.
• From 1822, when English was declared the
official language, it was also learnt as a second
language by blacks and Afrikaans speakers (many
of whom were mixed race) and, from the 1860s,
by Indian immigrants to the territory.


The second dispersal: English is
transported to Asia and Africa
• English in Colonial Africa has two distinct patterns
• English in West Africa is linked to the slave trade and
the development of pidgin and creole languages.
• From the late fifteenth century onwards, British
traders travelled at different times. However, there was
no major British settlement in the area and, instead,

English was employed as a lingua franca both among
the indigenous population (there being hundreds of
local languages), and between these people and the
British traders.
• English has subsequently gained official status in the
above five countries, and some of the pidgins and
creoles which developed from English contact.


(cont.)
• East Africa’s relationship with English followed a different
path. The countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi,
Zambia, and Zimbabwe were extensively settled by British
colonists from the 1850s on.
• ➔with English playing an important role in their major
institutions such as government, education, and the law.
• From the early 1960s, the six countries one after another
achieved independence. English remains the official
language in Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and (along with
Chewa) Malawi and has large numbers of second language
speakers in these places, although Swahili is more likely
than English to be used as a lingua franca in Uganda, as it is
in Kenya and Tanzania


(cont.)
• English was introduced to the sub-continent of South Asia
(India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan)
during the 2nd half of the 18th century when the newly
formed East India Company established settlements in

Madras, Calcutta, and later Bombay”.
• The company’s influence increased during the 18th century
and culminated in a period of British sovereignty (known as
‘the Raj’) in India lasting from 1765 to 1947. A key
development was the Macaulay Minute of 1835, which
proposed the introduction in India of an English educational
system.
• From that time, English became the language of the Indian
education system. Even today, when Hindi is the official
language of India, English is an ‘associate official language’
used alongside Hindi as a neutral lingua franca, and has
undergone a process of Indianisation


(cont.)
• British influence in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the South Pacific
began in the late 18th century as a result of the seafaring
expeditions of James Cook and others.
• The main territories involved were Singapore, Malaysia, Hong
Kong, and the Philippines. Papua New Guinea was also, for a short
time, a British protectorate (1884 to 1920), and provides one of
the world’s best examples of an English-based pidgin, Tok Pisin.
• the British East India Company played an important role in the
founding of Singapore as part of the British colonial empire in
1819.
• Other major British centers were founded around the same time
in Malaysia (e.g. Penang and Malacca), and Hong Kong was added
in 1842.
• After the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century,
the US was granted sovereignty over the Philippines, which,

although gaining independence in 1946, has retained a strong
American-English influence.


(cont.)
• In recent years, the use of English has increased in
Singapore and a local variety has begun to emerge.
• The use of English has declined in Malaysia as a result of the
adoption of the local language Malaysian Bahasa as the
national language and medium of education when Malaysia
gained independence in 1957. While still obligatory as a
subject of study at school, English was regarded as useful
only for international communication ➔ a change of policy,
with English medium education being reintroduced from
2003. However, since 2013 the Malaysian government has
again reverted to Malaysian Bahasa as the medium of
instruction (Gill 2012).
• Nowadays English is also learnt in other countries in
neighboring areas, most notably China, Taiwan, Japan, and
Korea, the latter three having even considered the
possibility of making English their official second language