1. English as a global language

2. “English is the Global Language”  Is this statement obvious?  How many news articles deal with this topic? (click here to find out) How many news articles deal with this topic? (click here to find out)  The headline isn’t stating the obvious. For what does it mean exactly? What is a global language?  How do you feel about the fact that “English rules”?

3. What is a global language?  Mother-tongue use cannot give a language global status.  Other countries have to take it up.  How does a country take up a language? Official language Foreign-language teaching Financial issues

4. What is a native speaker?  International mobility  First-language  Second-language  Foreign-language  P.98-99 Graddol, D. English Next

5. How can a language be official?  Constitution  Some countries don’t mention it (Britain)  In some countries this causes controversy (USA)

6. Why English?  Nicer?  Easier?  Easy grammar?  More cosmopolitan? (vs. French)  More democratic? One chief reason: THE POWER OF ITS PEOPLE (people – not language!)

7. International language dominance  Military power  Economic and political power  19th-20th centuries > economic developments begin to operate on a global scale  New communication technologies  International marketing and advertising  Mass entertainment industry

8. Why do we need a global language?  Translation cannot work when communities are linguistically mixed  Need for a common language  Sometimes communities adopt a simplified language > pidgin  People are more mobile > this is the first example in human history

9. Trade language  Pidgin a drastically simplified form of communication between two or more languages e.g. Beach-la-Mar in the South Seas  Creole a more complex language developed from a Pidgin e.g. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea

10. What are the dangers?  Other languages will disappear World of unity and peace …? A single language does not guarantee social harmony or mutual understanding The American Civil War The Spanish Civil War The Vietnam war Former Yugoslavia Contemporary Northern Ireland

11. Linguistic Power  Would native speakers be in a position of power?  Research  Business world  Bilingualism is the solution (it won’t be a problem for future generations)

12. Would people become lazy?  Within English speaking communities there are signs of growing awareness of the need to break away from the traditional monolingual bias.  Growing respect for other cultures

13. Endangered languages  When a language dies, much is lost. Once lost, it can never be recaptured, especially for languages that have never been written down.  Vigorous movements of support of linguistic minorities, commonly associated with nationalism > important truth: THE NEED FOR IDENTITY

14. Language protection  France (e.g. ordinateur vs. computer)  What about reactions in Italy?  Solutions are more likely to come from the domain of economic policy

15. Could anything stop a global language?  A revolution  An alternative method of communication that would eliminate the need for a global language  We live in a critical era

16. Homework  Read p. 1-27  Ask 3 people you know (try to choose different ages, educational backgrounds etc.) what they think about English as a global language and report interesting views on the blog.