Slides from the Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers course

1. English in the World
Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers,
Lecture 9, WS2016-2017
Dr. Achilleas Kostoulas
KARL-FRANZENS-UNIVERSITÄT GRAZ
UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ

2. Outline of the lecture
 The global spread of English
 The Linguistic Imperialism debate
 What lies ahead?

3. THE GLOBAL SPREAD
OF ENGLISH

4. Geographical spread of
English

5. Number of people who speak
English
 official or special status in at least
seventy five countries with a total
population of over two billion
 spoken as a first language by around
375 million and as a second language
by around 375 million speakers in the
world
 around 750 million people are
believed to speak English as a foreign
language http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-faq-the-english-language.htm

6. Becoming a global language
(1)
“English has repeatedly found itself in
the right place at the right time”
- David Crystal
What do you think?
• What does this mean?
• Do you agree?

7. Becoming a global language
(2)
“the dominance of English is
asserted and maintained by
[…] structural and cultural
inequalities between English
and other languages”
(Phillipson 1992: 47)
What do you think?
• What might these ‘structural and
cultural inequalities’ be?
• How do they contribute to the
dominance of English?

8. THE LINGUISTIC
IMPERIALISM DEBATE
1. The linguistic imperialism thesis
2. ‘Dangerous liaisons’
3. Some possible reservations

9. The Linguistic Imperialism
thesis
“the dominance of English is
asserted and maintained by
[…] structural and cultural
inequalities between English
and other languages”
(Phillipson 1992: 47)

10. Four ‘dangerous liaisons’
 Economic: adding jobs and wealth to
the economy of English-speaking
countries
 Scholastic: disseminating Western
knowledge at the expense of local
knowledge.
 Linguistic: local language(s)
rendered irrelevant for teaching
English
 Cultural: teaching of western cultures(Kumaravadivelu 2003)

11. Some reservations
 While rhetorically and theoretically powerful,
Linguistic Imperialism has not always
withstood empirical scrutiny.
 The linguistic imperialism thesis can be
simplistic, e.g. when it assumes that the
world is divided in a uniform English-speaking
West and an equally uniform ‘periphery’.
 The linguistic imperialism thesis is too
deterministic: Individuals have agency, and
they may choose to resist undesirable effects.
 While English is often used to convey
‘Western’ values, it is also a language of
resistance.

12. DIVERSIFICATION OF
ENGLISH

13. “The UK and the US are two
countries separated by a
common language.” - George
Bernard Shaw

14. Map of International English
Strevens, P. (1980). Teaching English as an International Language. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

15. Circle of World English
McArthur, T. (1998)
The English Languages.
Cambridge: CUP (p. 97)

16. The Three Circles model
Adapted from http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/history_today.html
‘norm-providing
varieties’
‘norm-developing
varieties’
‘norm-dependent
varieties’
Kachru, Braj B. (1985)
"Standards, codification
and sociolinguistic realism:
the English language
in the outer circle." In
R. Quirk & H. Widdowson.
(Eds.) English in the World:
Teaching and Learning
the Language & Literatures.
Cambridge University Press.

17. Limitations of Kachru’s model
 Kachru’s model is geographical; it
assumes that all varieties in a country
are equal
 Migration flows have blurred the lines
between the circles
 The model is hierarchical; the ‘outer
circle’ varieties are assumed to be
‘more legitimate’ than those in the
expanding circle
 Is ‘expanding’ still relevant as a

18. Proficiency-based model
Graddol, D. (2006).
English Next.
London: British Council.

19. Reflect and discuss
Compare the four models that were
presented:
 How are they different?
 What is each model particularly
suitable for showing?

20. THE FUTURE OF
ENGLISH
1. Globish
2. World Englishes
3. English as a Lingua Franca
4. A diglossic situation

21. Globish
Highly simplified and unidiomatic form of
English developed by Jean-Paul
Nerriere (late 1980s)
21
http://www.globish.com/

22. Globish and the L2 user
 Receptive skills – diversity could be
important
 Productive skills – use depends on
communicative needs of users
22

23. World Englishes
 Development of new norms,
independent of ‘British’ or ‘American’
English.
Example of Ghanaian English
-Have you eat?
-No I go eat after small small.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/10/ghana-calls-end-queens-english)

24. English as a Lingua Franca
 ELF Corpora e.g., Vienna-Oxford
International Corpus of English
(VOICE)
 Using ELF corpora to develop
descriptions and codifications of ELF
 Using these descriptions and
codifications to develop curricula and
teaching/learning materials
24

25. VOICE project
 Project duration: 2005-2013
 Project director: Barbara Seidlhofer
 Available at:
http://www.univie.ac.at/voice
25

26. http://www.univie.ac.at/voice/help/different_styles
Example of corpus output

27. Some findings of ELF research
 Using the same form for all present tense verbs, as in "you
look very sad" and "he look very sad".
 Not putting a definite or indefinite article in front of nouns, as in
"our countries have signed agreement about this".
 Treating "who" and "which" as interchangeable relative
pronouns, as in "the picture who..." or "a person which".
 Using just the verb stem in constructions such as "I look
forward to see you tomorrow".
 Using "isn't it?" as a universal tag question (instead of "haven't
they?" and "shouldn't he?"), as in "They've finished their dinner
now, isn't it?".
27
(The Guardian, 19.4.2001)

28. How realistic is ELF as a
model?
 Insufficient codification of ELF
 One or many ELFs?
 National variety plus exposure to other
varieties more practicable
28

29. A possible scenario
English might become diglossic:
 Standard English could become a
high variety used in ‘prestige’
contexts (e.g. academic
communication, formal writing)
 Regional dialects could become
locally relevant low varieties, used in
more ‘relaxed’ contexts.
What do you think?
What are the implications of this scenario
for language teaching?