The Internationalization of English

1. The Internationalization of English Jenkins (2003, pp. 33-38)

2. Changes in the second half of the 20th century • English became an international language. • Change in global communication • Scholarship about English became international. • Change in language education • The ownership of an internet in English became international. • Change in media communication

3. Overview of this article • The reasons why English remains the world’s major international language • The need to ensure mutual intelligibility across international varieties of English

4. Critical view about English as an international language • Phillipson (1992) • Linguistic imperialism • Potential to jeopardize the learning of other languages • Potential to jeopardize the existence of smaller languages

5. Why is English the international language? Crystal (1997) • Historical • Internal political • External political • Practical • Intellectual • Entertainment

6. Historical reasons • Colonies of Britain & US (in the Outer Circle territories) used English for their main institutions such as the following: • Parliament • Government agencies • Civil service • Law courts • Religious bodies • Schools • Higher education

7. Internal political reasons • English may provide a neutral means of domestic communication between different ethnic groups as in India. • A distinctive local variety may serve as a symbol of national unification.

8. External economic reasons • The USA’s dominant economic position has considerable pressure on multinational business organizations, especially tourist and advertizing industries to work with English.

9. Practical reasons • In reality, English is the international language in the following contexts: - Air traffic control - Maritime, policing and emergency services - Academic conferences - Tourism

10. Intellectual reasons • Most of the scientific, technological, and academic information in the world is expressed in English. • Over 80 per cent of all the information stored in electronic retrieval systems is in English.

11. Entertainment reasons • English is the main language in the following contexts: - Pop music - Pop culture - Satellite broadcasting - Home computers and video games

12. The conflict between mutual intelligibility and group identity • The evident problem is intelligibility in the spoken language. • It is spoken language that is closely bound up with feelings of personal and group identity. • There is strong justification for not conforming to the accent of native speakers from the point of view of EIL.

13. Activity 1: Intelligibility vs Identity 1 • Have you ever given thought to retaining your L1 identigy in English? • Is it important to you to retain your L1 identity in English? • Are you more concerned to be intelligible to native speakers of English or to non-native speakers of English, or do you not distinguish between the two groups of listener?

14. Activity 1: Intelligibility vs Identity 2 • Do you believe it is appropriate to retain your L1 accent in your English or that you should attempt to sound ‘native-like’? • Do you believe it is possible to retain your L1 accent in English and still be intelligible to native-speakers?/non-native speakers?

15. Activity 2: Intelligibility vs Identity • What do you think about the following quote? • Most people quite simply do not learn English to speak to native-speakers. On the other hand, people learn Spanish, …, because they are interested in Hispanic culture for some reason … and will therefore want a spoken and written model which will further this aim. There is a world of difference between English, and in fact, all other living languages at present. (Prodromou, 1997, p. 19)