The English language is omnipresent; it holds an unprecedented position as a global lingua franca. Its number of native speakers is about 400 million—a number matched by second-language speakers. English has become the most commonly taught foreign tongue worldwide and is spoken in more nations than any other language. The ascendancy of English has been met with controversy as minority languages decline coincidental to its proliferation. I am considering what implications can be drawn from the factors resulting in, and resultant from, its establishment as a world language.
The profusion of English we see today began with the United Kingdom’s historical take on foreign policy. Technological advancements made by Britain—namely, the invention of the steam engine—led to its creation as the first industrialized nation. This development centralized manufacturing and rapidly urbanized the locations of such centers. The growing economy both facilitated and drove geopolitical expansion. The British extended their presence across eighty percent of the globe through colonial enterprise. Some colonies were used to source raw materials for manufacturing and also ended up creating markets for goods produced. From early on in its export, the language was imbued with value rooted in trade.
America also advanced the use of English through an expansionist modality. By 1940, conscription and capital allowed the US to amass a large military for use overseas in the Second World War. Its late entry into the conflict and remoteness from action aided in a postwar windfall for America, and at its conclusion, the war had exacted a proportionately low economic and human toll from the US1. Having salubrity on both of these fronts and a network of military bases in place positioned the US for expansion—a strategy carried out through a global basing system. Its enduring military presence has spanned across generational and geographical planes, compounding political and cultural influence that has maintained the relevance of English and built upon its prevalence as well.
Legal designation of the language is indicative of global influence. English is well-represented from a jurisdictional standpoint having been adopted in an official capacity by nations in all major regions of the world (see fig. 1). This connotes having legal status commissioning English as the language of governmental affairs. It also has official status serving international governing and organizational bodies, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. Globally collaborative institutions have adopted English in this capacity as well: It is the official language of international business and diplomacy, air traffic communications, higher education and it predominates in broadcast media and within the scientific sphere.
The materiality of the language continues to be rooted in (and supported by) the nature of its usage. Mastery of the medium governing technological, scientific, political, and commercial activity guarantees economic opportunity. Moreover, seventy-plus percent of the world’s information is stored in English, and more than eighty-five percent of technological and scientific knowledge is published in English (Van Weijin 1). The world’s stockpile of information is being held in a single medium of exchange; this confers significant value to that medium, and by extension, status to those people who can command it.
| Anguilla | Ireland, Northern | Singapore |
| Antigua and Barbuda | Ireland, Republic of | Solomon Islands |
| Australia | Jamaica | South Africa |
| Bahamas | Kenya | Swaziland |
| Barbados | Lesotho | Tanzania |
| Belize | Liberia | Tonga |
| Bermuda | Malawi | Trinidad and Tobago |
| Botswana | Malta | Turks and Caicos Islands |
| British Virgin Islands | Mauritius | Uganda |
| Cameroon | Montserrat | United Kingdom |
| Canada (except Quebec) | Namibia | Vanuatu |
| Cayman Islands | New Zealand | Wales |
| Dominica | Nigeria | Zambia |
| England | Papua New Guinea | Zimbabwe |
| Fiji | St. Kitts and Nevis | |
| Gambia | St. Lucia | |
| Ghana | St. Vincent and the Grenadines | |
| Gibraltar | Scotland | |
| Grenada | Seychelles | |
| Guyana |
Fig. 1. Nations with English as primary Official Language and Official Language of Higher Education. North Carolina State University, NC. 2015.
https://projects.ncsu.edu/grad/handbook/docs/official_language_english.htm.
English is accepted as the language of global discourse (Majidi 33-36). The number of people who can communicate in English at some capacity exceeds 1 billion (St George International). And the fastest growing sector of this number represents those who are currently learning it as a foreign language (Chen 6). English has rapidly become the first preferred foreign language in the European Union, with most northern Europeans “becoming bilingual with English at an increasingly earlier age through schooling” and English monolingualism is now present (Language, Culture, and Identity 3-4). The most dramatic increase in the number of those learning it as a foreign tongue has been over the course of the last two decades, coinciding with the demand and development of internet technologies. As an international communications platform, the internet’s exportation of English to the world is unparalleled.
When the user base expands, a language thrives, as decline in use endangers a language’s viability. English increase is coupled with a decrease in native, or minority2, language use. This lateral displacement is referred to as language shift, a form of language domination resulting from the relative cultural dominance associated with the power of the native speakers of the dominant tongue. An effect of this is exemplified in the observations of American linguist, Michael Krauss:
It would seem that English-language dominance in the ‘English-speaking world’ has achieved and continues to achieve the highest documented rate of destruction, approaching now 90% [of indigenous language death in postcolonial Australia]. In comparison, Russian domination has reached 90% only among the small peoples of the North; in the Russian Republic itself, 45 of 65 indigenous languages, or 70%, are moribund, while for the entire USSR the total is more like 50% (5).
Consider this within the context of distribution: “Ninety-four percent of the world’s population speaks six percent of its languages, while six percent speaks ninety-four percent of its languages” (“The Global Extinction” 33-34). The apparent vulnerability here is in the magnitude of this disparity. Language domination works to “transform and undermine a minority community’s ability to maintain its language, culture and identity” (Language, Culture, and Identity 3).
English language ascendancy and the domination of Western culture are processes in tandem. A point of consideration among cultural scientists and mass media during the course of globalization is concern over the role that English plays within a world-culture context (Krauss, Independent, Majidi, Language; “The Global Extinction”). The assessment of this role is contested among social scientists (Majidi 1). English adoption is interpreted as a vehicle for opportunity (Majidi 33-38). For example, exclusion from much internet activity, informational stores, and communications is overcome by learning English, a skill which affords economic opportunity as well. But among linguists, its role prompts concern. Assimilation has negatively impacted minority communities (Krauss, Majidi, Language; “The Global Extinction”). The work of preeminent linguists Michael Krauss and Suzanne Romaine each documents an increase in the death of native languages (Krauss 1-7, “The Global Extinction”). Dr. Romaine’s research has special focus on problems in linguistic diversity and societal multilingualism, and includes fieldwork in Hawaii. [Neither is the UK immune to this loss; its own extant languages are endangered: Cornish has no first language speakers and the last first-language speaker of Manx passed away in 1974 (Independent)]. Language death translates into the permanent loss of cultural vision, and ecological and ethnological stores of information (Majidi 1). In North America, for example, native language obsolescence is accountable to a progressional shift to English:
Of the American Indian languages still spoken, many have only a bare handful of speakers. In America north of Mexico, more than 50 percent of the surviving languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers each. In communities as small as these, most people are bilingual, and the younger people, educated in English, often have little more than a superficial command of the native idiom (“American Indian Languages”).
Anecdotally, American author, Sherman Alexie, speaks of his experience growing up on a reservation. Excerpts from the transcript of his interview with NPR’s Terry Gross illustrates how marginalization manifested in his community:
I include Alexie’s statements for a number of reasons: His assimilation is first-hand. His experience is relevant today because it’s recent and local: He was born in 1966 and was raised in Washington state. It illustrates that extant cultures continue to be marginalized and experience pressure to assimilate in America as they do abroad. And also because he is a lauded author (American Book Award 1996, National Book Award 2007, PEN/Faulkner 2010) and English monolingual whose; his work includes themes of identity in cultures which have little left to substantiate cultural identity.
“Language creates identity for its speakers and identifies social group membership” (Gumperz 6). And when “[i]ndigenous languages and cultures are dismissed as primitive and backward-looking, an argument which is then used to justify their replacement by western languages and cultures as prerequisites to modernization and progress” (“The Global Extinction” 37) that identity is devalued.
Trask notes that “people [abandon] their language in favour of some other language seen as more prestigious or more useful” (qtd. in Eckert et al., 2004). English is regarded as the language of social adjustment: one’s ability to use it imparts higher social status while the absence of ability is a mark of unsophistication. Language deemed inadequate to function in a changing world devalues culture and collective identity. The increase in social status obtained with English reinstates a sense of worth and status comes from the marketability inherent in knowing the language which in turn helps to restore value.
There are a number of factors cogent to the ascendancy of English: The British inventions of both the steam engine and the internet, and America’s rise to superpower status, facilitated export of the English language. Its role in commerce, government, the sciences, and information systems is exclusionary. It acts as a universal interface for communication between people and their institutions yet remains expressive of the western interpretation. English is the language of power as it mediates authority, of knowledge as it mediates systems of information, and of prestige as its represents financial prosperity and social modernity. Each of these values is constitutional to western-world philosophies such as the American Dream.
This is critical to the issue, in my view. “The speakers’ outlook and value system which is part of social value and system [sic] is the main determinant of language choice and influences people’s choice of which language to speak and which one to abandon” (Majidi 36). Assimilation is a transfer of value systems because globalization precludes systems that are independent of western ideology. If a feature of western ideology is the systematic commodification of resources, it works to commodify individuals by supplanting traditional cultural roles with functionality defined by earning potential. Situations (such as land removal and community displacement) detrimental to indigenous societies are coupled with the opportunity for relief that assimilation holds, removing the option to choose. The abandonment of traditional systems for the global system is evident as resource acquisition becomes the goal of individuals rather than the means of a community.
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