The Future Of Global English

1. The Rejection of English

1.1. The situation where the people of a country feel so antagonistic or ambivalent about English that they reject the option to give English a privileged status, either as an official language or as a foreign language. People have a natural wish to use their own mother-tongue, to see it survive and grow, and they do not take kindly when the language of another culture is imposed on them. Despite the acknowledged values which the language of that culture can bring, the fact remains that English has an unhappy colonial resonance in the minds of many, and a history where local languages could easily be treated with contempt. The need for intelligibility and the need for identity often pull people – and countries – in opposing directions, Conflict is the common consequence when either position is promoted insensitively. Any decision to reject English has important consequences for the identity of a nation, and it can cause emotional ripples.

2. Contrasting Attitude: the US Situation

2.1. The future status of English must be bound up to some extent with the future of that country, the country contains nearly four times as many mother-tongue speakers of English as any other nation. in chapter 1, there is the closest of links between language and power. This summary of the main clauses of the Emerson bill is based on the bill as presented to the House on 4 January 1995(on page 130-131). The bill allowed the use of languages other than English in such cases as public health and safety services, the teaching of foreign languages, policies necessary for international relations and trade, and actions that protect the rights of people involved in judicial proceedings. -The political argument: for Pro-official supporters (the language has been the basis of social stability in the USA, and any threat to this stabilizing influence would lead to the growth of ‘countries within a country’). -The political argument: against Anti-official supporters (They argue that most immigrants are assimilating nicely – certainly by the second generation – and that the natural course of events will eventually produce a new social balance, without any need for legislation). - The socio-economic argument: for Pro-official supporters(anti-official supporters claim that the withdrawal of resources and the fresh focus on English is bound to harm the provision of services in these languages, even in areas which are supposed to be protected, such as health care and law enforcement). -Educational issues (Anti-official supporters stress the potential for success of bilingual education programmes, arguing that the best predictor of achievement in English for immigrant children by age eighteen is the amount of time spent in bilingual classrooms). It recommended that the US government should pursue policies( on page 139-140). However, the Serrano bill made no further progress in 1996, with political attention eventually focusing exclusively on the Emerson proposal (page 130). By the end of 1996, the future direction of the ‘official English’ debate was still unsettled.

3. New Englishes

3.1. It is plain that no one can now claim sole ownership. This is probably the best way of defining a genuinely global language, in fact: that its usage is not restricted by countries or (as in the case of some artificial languages) by governing bodies. An inevitable consequence of these developments is that the language will become open to the winds of linguistic change in totally unpredictable ways. they must be able to recognize the spellings as non-standard, and be able to identify dialect grammar and vocabulary. International varieties thus express national identities, and are a way of reducing the conflict between intelligibility and identity. With new institutions came new ways of talking and writing; indigenous words became privileged. A locally distinctive mode of expression emerged, and in some cases began to be recorded, in the form of regional dictionary projects.

4. The linguistic character of New Englishes

4.1. This chapter focuses on grammatical and lexical issues, but does make some reference to broader patterns of interaction and to the role of nonsegmental phonology in the communication of structural meaning.

5. An English Family or Language

5.1. The future of world English is likely to be one of increasing multidialectism. The intelligibility criterion has traditionally provided little support for an English ‘language family’. But we have learned from sociolinguistics in recent decades that this criterion is by no means an adequate explanation for the language nomenclature of the world, as it leaves out of consideration linguistic attitudes, and in particular the criterion of identity. However, to promote an autonomous language policy, two criteria need to be satisfied. The first is to have a community with a single mind about the matter, and the second is to have a community which has enough political–economic ‘clout’ to make its decision be respected by outsiders with whom it is in regular contac. In a future where there were many national Englishes, little would change. People would still have their dialects for use within their own country, but when the need came to communicate with people from other countries they would slip into WSSE. Many grammatical issues in contemporary British usage show the influence of US forms, US spellings are increasingly widespread (especially in computer contexts). in such locations as Singapore, we see two spoken varieties co-existing(standard british and singlish), is also found in the Philippines, where Standard American English coexists alongside Taglish.

6. Grammar

6.1. Focus in comparing the traditional standards of British and American English has been almost entirely associated with vocabulary and phonology. Two points are relevant. First, grammars – especially those motivated by teaching consideration. Second, because new varieties are chiefly associated with speech, rather than writing, they have also attracted less attention. Grammatical features are also likely to be increasingly implicated in the ‘mixed languages’ which arise from code-switching. It is not always clear whether a new feature arises as a result of transference from a contrasting feature in a local contact language or is a general property of.

7. Vocabulary

7.1. It does not take long before new words enter a language, once the language arrives in a fresh location. Borrowings from indigenous languages are especially noticeable. On the other hand, the amount of borrowing from an indigenous language is extremely sensitive to sociopolitical pressures. The amount of borrowing is also influenced by the number of cultures which co-exist, and the status which their languages have achieved. The influence of local languages is also apparent in the form of loan-translations, or where two languages are involved in a blend.

8. Code Switching

8.1. Code-switching, the process in which people rely simultaneously on two or more languages to communicate with each other. The increase in code-switching is evidently one of the most noticeable features of the situations in which New Englishes are emerging. Any loan-word could be viewed as a minimalist example of code-switching, but the notion is more persuasive when it is found in stretches of utterance which can be given a syntactic definition. Mixed varieties involving English are now found everywhere, with colourful nicknames attached. What is important to note is that general attitudes towards these phenomena are slowly changing,(though still receiving much establishment opposition). Worldwide communication centres on Standard English, which however radiates out into many kinds of English and many other languages.

9. Other Domains

9.1. Grammar and vocabulary are not the only domains within which linguistic distinctiveness manifests itself among the New Englishes of the world. As yet there is nothing even approximating to a systematic description of the pragmatics of world English. The general lack of attention to The future of global English domain is regrettable, as there is plainly a major factor in evidence here which has a potentially significant structural impact, especially in the way in which it affects the comprehension of spoken English. second language learners will become competent in both kinds of speech, continuing to use syllable-based speech for local communication, as a sign of national identity, and switching to stress-based speech for international communication, as a means of ensuring intelligibility

10. The Future Of English as a world language

10.1. Language is an immensely democratising institution. To have learned a language is immediately to have rights in it. They come to be adopted, often at first with some effort, then more naturally, by first-language speakers of English in the localit. The local words begin to be used at the prestigious levels of society. The next step is the move from national to international levels, older varieties of English also encountered: the view that there can only be one kind of English, the standard kind, and that all others should be eliminated. UK National Curriculum, is to maintain the importance of Standard English while at the same time maintaining the value of local accents and dialects Language has many functions, and that the reason for the existence of Standard English (to promote mutual intelligibility) is different from the reason for the existence of local dialects (to promote local identity). The contact-language words of the future will of course include more alternative rather than supplementary expressions.

11. A Unique Event?

11.1. There has never been a language so widely spread or spoken by so many people as English. The emergence of English with a genuine global presence therefore has a significance which goes well beyond this particular language. The English language has already grown to be independent of any form of social control. If there were to be a major social change in Britain which affected the use of English there, would this have any real effect on the world trend? It is unlikely. 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. It may be that English, in some shape or form, will find itself in the service of the world community for ever.