World Englishes

speakers of English globally

over 2 billion

English is a global language

• political power through the empire

• military power in other countries

• scientific power

• economic power

• technological power

Diaspora

a dispersal or spreading from a central point

Three circle model

Kacrhu - 1992

inner circle as a first language in a country that is norm providing

outer circle as a second language - norm developing

expanding circle - english used as a lingua franca

evaluation: implies weakness or dilution of correctness and doesn’t address diversity of English within the circles.

Wheel Model

McArthur - 1987

moves outward from a central concept of there being a world standard English which splinters into 8 main regions. Within each there is a main standard variety of English and many non-standard varieties of this.

evaluation: does imply an equality between different varieties, but the notion of a world standard English is theoretical at best.

World Map of English

Strevens - 1980

illustrates the dominance of English over a map, separates American and British English and reveals the separation between the two across the world.

evaluation: suggests a hierarchy with British and American English at the top, and doesn’t reflect sub-varieties within each country.

Singlish

derives from 146 years of British colonial rule. Singaporean gov encourage RP, discouraging the colloquial form: Singlish. Believe it will impact trade and living standards due to not being able to communicate clearly globally.

Speak Good English Campaign

Singaporean gov claims SInglish to be substandard. Launched in 1999 to improve the standards of English and encouraging pride in speaking RP English

Language death

the economist - every fortnight one of the world languages dies.

English as a language killer

Tasmania - last speaker of Tasmanian died in 1876 under British colonial rule

metaphorical - english is politically, economically and culturally powerful and when imposed on a less powerful society, causes other languages to lose prestige and die out.

France

The French Academy protect the French language by recommending avoidance of loanwords from modern English in favour of French neologisms. Younger generations dislike.

Germany

proposed language purification law calls for fines if anyone is caught speaking Denglisch. 53% of Germans are against the use of English words according to an opinion poll in focus magazine.

influences on english

technology, AI, PCM, globalisation of business, wider travel and social media, war and conflict impacting trade routes, growth of other superpowers.

English as a lingua franca

Jenkins - 2006

mutually intelligible language, not replacing a language and not linked to the standard of education. likely to include standard English and more localised forms.

characteristics of lingua franca

Seidhofer - 2011

verb forms emitted, which and who relative pronouns are interchangeable, definitive articles omitted, pluralisation or usually uncountable nouns.

future of English - prescriptivist

Saraceni - we’ve lost control of the language and it is now multiple languages. we should let go of standard British as the correct variety. uses simile that we have as much control of English as Italians do over pizza.

future of English - descriptivist

Crystal - power always drives language e.g. british empire industrial revolution. In short term future there won’t be a change but in the long term we cannot know as language reflects society. e.g. spanish is becoming very widely used, is the fastest growing language.