Lesson 43Dangers of English as a Global Language

Topics

English as a killer language Creation of an elite monolingual class Linguistic power Linguistic complacence Linguistic death Bilingualism as the language savior

English as a killer language

Although initially the spread of English has been considered as an economic opportunity, it has been seen as a destructive language too, regarding the linguistic and cultural diversity. Pattanayak (1996) says that this spread of English accentuates the rift between the urban and the rural, the developed and the developing and the mass and the elite. And because it prevents many languages sharing communication, it promotes alienation, anomie, and blind spots in cultural perception.

So, may authors say that the spread of English is responsible for the death of other languages; however, do you really think that English is a killer language? It is obvious that in countries which has been colonized by the English and they now speak English, our language has acted as a killer. Remember the colonization of Australia, for instance, in which native language of indigenous almost disappeared, or the language of the American natives, which is the same case. But the spread of English has not been like this in other countries. English language is in many countries as a co-official language or as a language of trade. Even in East Africa, if you remember, it serves as a thrust of the Swahili, expanded its functional and geographical range.

So, it does not seem that English has to be seen as a killer language. It is not the direct cause of the language deaths in all the situations. Instead, the direct fact in killing languages seems to be the globalization of the economy, which takes the English language as a medium of communication. In other words, English would not be seen as a killer language, by the “medium to murder”.

Creation of an elite monolingual class

Monolingual ideology has always influenced curriculum policies, teaching practices, assessment and materials development despite the normative reality that the majority of the 21st century citizens use more than one language to affirm who they are and access knowledge (Garcia and Li Wei, 2014). These biased practices have invariably positioned multilingual learners as perpetual failures who tend to be associated with high failure rate, drop out rates, push out rates and ‘poor’ skills in many parts of the world. Besides these policy proscriptions, multilingual speakers

always resist monolingual conventions and express themselves using all their discursive resources in non-formal contexts. It is their way of being. In order to harness cultural biodiversity and to maximize educational success for these speakers, we can amplify their resistance by re-imagining a world read and understood from a multilingual-centred perspective. To gravitate towards a multilingual-centred world, it is fitting to begin with the question that has not been cogently answered: how did the pre-colonial multilingual world give way to monolingual definition and prescriptions that dominate education policies world wide? Educational linguists conclusively attribute monolingual bias to the idea of nation state that took shape during the European Enlightenment period. Accordingly, Europe created sovereign states with strict borders to bound and protect people of similar ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. It follows that this boundary creation process was a response to the medieval period where Europe experienced turbulent seasons of foreign invasion and takeover. Italy, for example, became the last bastion of foreign lordship. To guard one’s ipseity, it became imperative to recreate a world where the self is separated from the other (ipseity vs otherness). As a result, the European middle class had a vision of territorized national languages through an isomorph of monolingualisms.  Over time, peace and stability led to the birth of civilization and rapid progress in Europe’s modern history. This milestone for development has erroneously led to the belief that civilization, stability and human development are only possible through the use of one language in each nation state. When taken to the extreme, national purism became a measure of control and exclusion of other languages and their speakers in many regions where the ideology of oneness had taken root. We note that the birth of monolingualism coincided with the desire to control what was seen as the chaotic Medieval Europe and to prevent its recurrence in the modern world. In other words, a nation state with multiple languages was perceived as risky for nation building and social cohesion and prone to social disintegration and civil wars.

The Power of Language

As always, when “power” is spoken of, the first association is that of the power of man over man, of power as suppression of the free will by “commands” and “obedience”. Power can easily appear in this connection as the root of all evil in human societies and as the opposite of freedom as such.Yet the problem of power is in truth more complex. And especially in the case of the “power of language”, the problem is multi-layered. The “power of language” not only means language in the service of power; language can also undermine power. And above all, as language, it possesses itself power of a very special kind. The relation of language and power is ambivalent.We have spoken in the first place of the “power of language” as the “language of power”. What is here meant in general is that all power must finally use language, be conveyed through it and manifested in it, to command, that is, to speak, where others must only hear and obey. In a more narrow sense, this understanding of the “power of language” is a matter of the instrumentalisation of language for the purpose of exercising power. The command of language itself becomes a means of power: as political rhetoric and demagogy, as ideology and bedazzlement, as seduction through words, as “persuasion”. This power of language extends from large political contexts, from the manner of speaking and thus also of thinking that dictatorships and totalitarian orders force upon dominated people, to the small scenes of

everyday life, to the arts of seduction of advertising, the sales tricks of telephone marketing, or the menacing undertones at the workplace or in the family.pThis first interpretation of the “power of language” already shows two things. On the one hand, that language and speaking must be distinguished in the exercise of power. The possibilities of language from the way in which language is actually used in spoken words. On the other hand, the interpretation also gives a presentiment that the power which is exercised through language always already bears within itself the germ of its counter-power. For the language of political demagogues and tyrants can be seen through as language. And by means of language itself. So that language conveys the power of violence or domination and at the same time undermines it.For everyone can take possession of the power of language and in this way see through and unmask the power exercised through language.Seen clearly, the “power of language” is thus not the fraternisation of language with command and obedience; this uses language for goals other than those which are inherent in it. The genuine, inner power of language is rather to undermine this other kind of power. Since ursurpatious and violent rule as well as legitimate rule must ultimately rely on the power of language in order to be exercised, to command and to assert itself, precisely language is the vulnerable spot of the commanding power. For the concealed intentions of a command can be seen through. The command can be obeyed, but it can also be refused; above all, it can be understood and so interpreted or re-interpreted quite as those might like who are supposed to obey it, but who for their part possess the infinitely divisible and epidemically disseminating power of language.This mechanism can be generalised beyond the political sphere. Without a doubt, the power of language consists in the fact that it can be used for rhetorical persuasion. But its own authentic power consists at least equally in the fact that every “putting into language” already harbours within itself the kernel of doubt. Every attempt to persuade others with and through language is always also an effort to make oneself understood. And regardless of how rhetorically skilled the speaker may be, in the end he inevitably places his words, as language, under discussion.Whoever speaks, depends on language. And even the most skillful speaker cannot monopolies the power of language. For ultimately the “power of language” lies not with the speaker, but with language itself. The power of language belongs to language itself. And so this power belongs to everyone who possesses language. Whoever has a command of language has part in its power!Language is not merely a instrument in the hands of power, but also always a counter-power which cannot be restricted and repressed. Power can rest on many factors; for instance, on the possession of weapons or money. These are in short supply; some possess them and others do not. This scarcity establishes the power of man over man. And it shows the ubiquitous social connection of power and inequality.This connection, however, does not obtain for the power of language. As with knowledge generally, so with language and the power that proceeds from it: it is illimitably divisible and multiple. Whoever shares knowledge loses nothing of his own share or possession. Everyone can gain knowledge without taking it away from anyone else. Similarly, everyone can attain the power of language without disputing anyone else’s right to it.

Linguistic Death

In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-

language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide,[1] the death of a language from natural or political causes, and rarely glottophagy,[2] the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major language.Language death is a process in which the level of a speech community's linguistic competence in their language variety decreases, eventually resulting in no native or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death can affect any language form, including dialects. Language death should not be confused with language attrition (also called language loss), which describes the loss of proficiency in a first language of an individual.[3]

In the modern period (c. 1500 CE–present; following the rise of colonialism), language death has typically resulted from the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favour of a foreign lingua franca, largely those of European countries.[4][5][6]

As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050.

Reference Compile from http://historialenguainglesa.blogspot.com/2013/01/english-as-killer-language.htmlhttps://humel.org.za/2017/07/25/the-origins-of-monolingualism-in-colonial-history-decolonization/http://www.goethe.de/lhr/prj/mac/msp/en1253450.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deathCrystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge p 16-18, 22-24