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September 10, 2017 | Autor: Ruan Cheng | Categoria: Discourse Analysis, Teaching English as a Second Language, Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics
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English as a Global Language: My Two Satangs' Worth* Joseph A. Foley Assumption University, Thailand jfoley@au. edu Abstract m The argument put forward here is that we are witnessing the emergence of a concept of English as a lingua franca, which creates a set of attitudes about correctness and in particular 'grammatical correctness'. The traditional 'nativespeaker' as final arbiter can only apply to English as a national language. It is the non-native speaker who is becoming the model for English as a global language. Keywords u English as a global language, lingua franca, native-speaker, non-native speaker, standard.

Maintaining 'Standards' English used as a global language is often equated with Standard British/ American English with the assumption that native-speakers of English are the model to be used. Indeed, one of the most difficult issues regarding the spread of English is that even though English is changing and being used in different and new contexts, there is a strong tendency to cling to the traditional native-speaker as the final arbiter or authority about appropriate usage. The 'Native-Speaker' Syndrome One of the most overt manifestations that authority in a language comes from being a native-speaker can be seen from the news worthiness that this has recently created in Thailand.

RELC

Vol 38(1) 7-17 I DOI: 10,1177/0033688206076155 © 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) http://RELC,sagepub,com

Regional Language Centre Journal 38,1

Focus/Expatriate Teachers in Thailand What do a disgraced former US state senator, an octogenarian Nazi sympathizer and an Arizona highway patrol officer have in common? They are all teaching English in Thailand, of course,,, As English is the new lingua franca of a global world, there is a burgeoning demand for native-speakers to teach English in educational institutions at all levels across Thailand {The Bangkok Post: 28.08.06), It is not only in Thailand where this is happening but also in China, Japan, Korea and several other countries in Asia. No experience necessary? Teach English in Japan in 2006. This was part of an advertisement that appeared recently in a British newspaper. The company placing the 'advertisement' described itself as one of the 'Big Three language schools'. ...takes pride in the quality of our teaching and teachers. Yet it does not require its teachers to be trained.. .a prospective teacher simply needs to be ,.,a people-oriented, professional-minded university graduate. Another 'ad' had the following: ,,,enthusiastic, energetic graduates who must like children. No teaching or TEFL experience is required. Similar 'ads' appear in Korean newspapers.. .the following was placed by a Korean government agency: Type one teachers require: a certificate in TESOL or three years full-time teaching experience with a graduate degree in TESOL or experience and interest in Korean culture and language. Type two teachers: only have to be native-speakers of English with a bachelor's degree in any field. The question is, why does this demand for untrained native-speakers of English persist? From the moral point of view, educational institutions should be under an obligation to ensure that students are not exposed to untrained teachers. Requirements like 'must like children' is disquieting rather than reassuring.

English as a Global Language

There is an implication that these 'native-speakers' know how to speak and write 'correctly' because they are monolingual...this is seen as an advantage.. .so that teachers can only use English in the classroom. However, being monolingual could, in fact, be a major disadvantage. Teachers who are able to speak the language of their students are a linguistic resource that should be considered as an asset. It is also arguable that the lack of personal experience of being bilingual might tend towards monoculturalism and the consequent prejudices towards the 'native-speakers' own 'Anglo' cultures. No doubt, one of the main reasons why untrained native-speakers of English are preferred to trained non-native speakers is the belief that the 'native-speakers' will use 'Standard English' and thus provide appropriate linguistic models for their students. To some extent, this is based on what we might call 'native-speaker intuition'. However, recent studies based on large corpora of both spoken and written English seem to indicate that our intuitions are not totally reliable (Hewings and Hewings 2005). Most 'native-speakers' would recognize that the following examples are problematic and could be misleading in terms of their communicative content. In a Tokyo Hotel: Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not a person to do such thing is please not to read notis. In a Belgrade hotel elevator: To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing fioor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.

In a Budapest zoo: Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.

My condo in Bangkok: Dear Guest The Electricity Company has noticed us. The Company will shut-off an electricity on Thursday,

In this latter case, I know what they meant and I can vouch for its authenticity. It was that the electricity company had notified the condo

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that the electricity would be 'shut-off due to the need to change the power transformer. But what about 'native-speaker' intuition in the following example? I suppose, I dunno, when my sister and I were children we had a small, erm, little, sort of, patch, you know, kind of, a little bit tucked away at the back of somewhere and we used to grow tomatoes and odd vegetables and things.

This was quoted as an example by one of the authors of the newly-published Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter and McCarthy 2006) in reply to a review published in The Daily Telegraph (UK) on 22.03.06. The author of the review had complained about several grammatical features identified as standard features of spoken English. In particular the reviewer has signaled out words such as 'dunno', 'you know' and the use of 'like'. The actual quote given above comes from a radio interview with Prince Charles, not exactly known for his poor command of English. The Ownership of English Almost every 'native-speaker' seems to feel justified in having an opinion about what is 'acceptable' or not in relation to grammar. Wee (2002) identified two major schools of thought on who actually 'owns' English. On the one hand there are the 'purists', who argue that ownership of English lies with those considered as 'traditional' native-speakers (Kachru's Inner Circle 1985). The other school consists of the 'pragmatists' who would claim that English is no longer solely owned by the traditional nativespeaker but by all those who use English in its different varieties. In other words what Kachru and Nelson 2006 described as pluralistic centres for reference for norms and standards. As Michael McCarthy pointed out in the Observer newspaper (UK) on 02.04.06, there are people who might still object to: • • • • • •

the split infinitives: So if you'd like to perhaps continue... prepositions ending a sentence: What was she referring to? speech habits such as dunno, gonna. double negatives: I haven't done nothing. using a singular verb when logic demands a plural: There's five boys in the class. Insisting that may should be used instead of can in: Can I help you?

11 English as a Global Language

Most, if not all, of the examples given above are used in both spoken and to a lesser extent in written language. The case of there's followed by a plural is an example of grammar changing, as is can instead of may or the greater frequency of will instead of shall (Leech 2003). •

Double negatives can be heard and read all the time, such as the following: 'I don't know of anyone who hasn't been to Rome who doesn't long to go back there'.



Never ending a sentence with a preposition is far more complex than such advice suggests. A: We're going on holiday next week B: Oh, whereto? Which building was the smoke coming out of?



Foreign imports People get upset when they hear in a programme like 'Friends': 'How fabulous is that!' 'I am so not going to do that!'



Grammar changes (Hewings and Hewings 2005): we no longer go around saying: 'Thou hast a goodly looking wench to provide for you'.



Or even more dramatically when measured over a 1000 years of change 'Wrothe wynde of the welkyn wrastelez with the sunne. The leuez lancen from the lynde and lygten on the grounde'. [The furious wind from the sky wrestles with the sun, the leaves fly from the trees and fall on the ground]. The form of English that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in. Anything Goes?

Does this mean that a grammar such as A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language., Quirk e/ a/. (1985) is no longer an adequate description of the English language? Some people might well argue that it needs updating but the main focus in recent grammars of English has been on the spoken as well as the written forms and fiinctions of the language. Apart from the Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter and McCarthy 2006)

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Regional Language Centre Journal 38,1

already mentioned, there is also Collins COBUILD English Grammar (Sinclair 1990) and Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Bibere/o/, 1999). Few would argue that students should know what a noun is or that there is a difference between could of and could have. This simply shows a lack of basic knowledge about how language works and the relationship between speech and writing. However, such lack of basics is not just restricted to students. The following example is quoted by McCarthy 2006. A well-known airline plays the following message before take-off: Use of laptop computers and battery-operated equipment can be used once air-bome and the fasten seatbelts sign has been switched off The repetition of'use' in the subject position and 'used' as the verb is wrong. It is sloppy communication rather than a violation of some sacred rule of grammar! Grammar matters deeply when it's a question of good communication. Grammar creates meaning by the choices we make in different contexts and different situations (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). In other words, it is not a question of following rules; it is a question of understanding what grammar means and how it works in different contexts. How It Works in Different Contexts In speech and writing, the way in which we use the grammar of the language will be different as in the following: •

Speech: 'Yue Weng, you know, he didn't get a degree, and then he wouldn't do anything about getting a job, and of course, his parents, they got really worried'.



Writing: Yue Weng's failure to gain a degree and his subsequent refusal to look for work, caused his parents considerable concem.

This may seem fairly obvious but what about the use of a word such as like (a particular bone of contention, as we have seen, for the reviewer in The Daily Telegraph). • • •

It tastes like pineapple. [Similar to] He's so like his father. [Gradable and attributive] He involved the staff in everything, like a good manager should.

13 English as a Global Language



A: I fancy going somewhere really cold this year. B: What, like Norway or Russia or like...? [Focusing attention by giving or requesting examples]



A: What did you get up to today? B: Not a lot. There were a few things going on. A: Hmm, like what? [When examples are asked for a common structure is conversation is 'like what']



Then she got out of the car all of a sudden like, and this bike hit her right in the back [Like placed in end position to qualify a preceding statement]



So this bloke came up to me and I'm like 'Go away, I don't want to dance'. [A marker of reported speech]



They think.. .like.. .by now we should be married and if we were married then it's okay like.. .to get on with your life. [used as a 'filler' to give the speaker time to think]



It's like if you go to another country you always get muddled up with the money. [Like used in the structure it+be+like which introduces an example]



Be like and look like are not the same. Be like refers to someone's character or personality. Look like refers to their appearance. E.g. What's your new teacher like? Would you recognize her again? What does she look like?

What Does This Mean Then for English as a 'Global Language'? Language changes with the people that use it. For the first time in history, a language has reached truly global dimensions and is being shaped in its intemationai uses, at least as much by its non-native speakers as by its native-speakers. There are now more non-native speakers of English than there are native speakers. Kachru (2005) quotes the 1997 survey commissioned by the magazine India Today which states that 333 million people in India

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use English every day...in other words one in every three. That is more than the USA or UK put together! Of course, one might argue that there exists an unspoken mechanism operating through the global industry of English teaching, which has the effect of preserving the unity of English in spite of its diversity. Regardless of whether the norm is native-speaker or non-native speaker variety, irrespective of whether English is a foreign or second language, two components of English are taught and leamed with little variation: a basic grammar and core vocabulary. However, as Brutt-Griffler (1998) has pointed out, we also have to realize that we must make a distinction between 'language spread' and 'language maintenance'. This is because as English spreads into new societies, it does not remain unchanged. New varieties of English have emerged and will continue to emerge. That this is the cause of some concem for the 'purists' is inevitable. However, one could also argue that such maintenance is not of the language/?er ,se, but of the standard variety in relation to these developing new varieties. Additionally it could also be argued that with a global form of English, it is the non-native users of the language that will become the main agents of change. What can be said with certainty is that the issue of the standards of pluricentric English is in flux. The diversity of coexisting and, in certain parts of the world competing, norms makes it unlikely that a single standard will emerge in the foreseeable future,,,[speakers] have an interest in keeping English together to secure intercommunicability, but at the same time they are no longer wilHng to look at English as a gift they received by those who made it. It is theirs and they claim the right actively to take part in shaping its future, because it is the language of their choice (Coulmas 2005: 230-31),

There are dialectal variations of English throughout the world and they are unlikely to ever be the basis of a more standard variety, mainly because they have a restricted function and really only exist in the spoken form. The following is an example a colloquial form of English found in S ingapore/Malaysia. Ivy: So who owns the place, Wan Choo? Wan Choo: We call him the Big boss, but I work here for 25 years also never see him before. Only Mummy got chance to see him. They say is living in a big ang-moh bungalow by the seaside, near Pasir Panjang, (Michael Chiang's Beauty World Act 2 Sc 2),

15 English as a Global Language

Much the same could be said for this extract of Cumbrian dialect found in the north-west of England. Thoughts of a Small Boy T'unwanted Gift Ah dunt think Ah'll ga tet scheul today Ah dunt care if Ah deue git t'stick Cos we've gitten a babby at oor hoose Dunt it mek yer sick! (The Dalesman undated).

It would be more difficult, however, to claim that the following example from The Nation, a Pakistan daily, is difficult to understand although it may not exactly conform to the forms of English as identified by The Daily Telegraph reviewer: ,., The Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, currently shuttling in the region to find a solution to the Afghan problem, met Sahabzada Yuqub Khan this moming for about 45 minutes,.,sources at Pakistan's Foreign Office are adamantly evasive to comment on the progress made,,, (Kachru and Nelson 2006: 32),

This last example well illustrates that with language spread comes language change. Conclusion Users of English as a world language and, therefore, a lingua franca pose a fundamental problem of how to remain Singaporean, Indian, Korean, Japanese or Thai without losing their identity. When we speak a language, we are telling a story about ourselves, how and why we talk, why we talk as we do, and ultimately who we are. How we are like others, and how we are different. The very existence of language and languages is bound up with identity (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). The argument that has been put forward in this article, thus my two satangs' worth (cents in Thai), is that we are witnessing the emergence of a concept of English as a lingua franca which creates a set of attitudes about correctness and in particular 'grammatical correctness'. But it does not have to be driven by native-speakers from the economically dominant 'Western' world. Certainly, changes in what could be termed 'native-speaker norms' will continue to be constrained by institutional needs for 'assessment' and

16 Regional Language Centre Journal 38,1

'standardization'. But assessment itself is an integral part ofthe process of identity construction, and shouW be reconceived as such in order to be integrated more fully into teaching and leaming. Technological advances towards a fonn of extensive continuous assessment involving online or computer-based work can make this possible. Ultimately, the leaming of a language, in particular a 'globally' used language, is not about 'standardization' in terms of one form ofthe language and particular cultural norms but rather the construction of an 'identity' which will cross cultural boundaries and open up the individual's perspectives on the world. Indeed, it is this very process by which English has become an intemationai language that has exerted important effects on the language itself. At the same time, this process is in contrast to national language development, which can be looked at partly as the tendency towards the fomiation of a national culture, which encourages homogenization. Finally, the use of English involves a bi-directional model. Each speech community has its own context: the local and the international. Consequently, in this tnodel, the point of reference of the language ofthe local English-using community is not the 'native-speaker' but the 'non-native' speaker within the global intemationai community. This also means that what is acceptable grammatically will depend on recognizing that English as a national language is only the source of English as an intemationai language, not the intemationai language itself. REFERENCES Biber, D,, S, Johansson, G, Leech, S, Conrad and E, Finegan 1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Harlow: Longman), Brutt-GHffler, J, 1998 'Conceptual Questions in English as a World Language: Taking Up an Issue', World Englishes 17(3): 381-92, Carter, R,, and M, McCarthy 2006 Cambridge Grammar of English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Chiang, M, 1994 Private Parts and other Play Things (Landmark Books: Singapore), Coulmas, F, 2005 Sociolinguisties: The Study of Speakers' Choiees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Halliday, M,A,K,, and C,M,1,M, Matthiessen 2004 An Introduction to Functional Grammar (London: Amold, 3rd edn), Hewings, A,, and M, Hewings 2005 Grammar and Context (London: Routledge),

17 English as a Global Language Kachru, B,B, 1985

'Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle', in R, Quirk and H, Widdowson (eds,), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 11-30, Kachru, Y,, and CL, Nelson 2006 World Englishes in Asian Contexts (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press), Leech,G, 2003 'Modality on the Move: The English Modal Auxiliaries 1961-1992', in R, Facchinetti, M, Krug and F, Palmer (eds,), Modality in Contemporary English (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), Le Page, R,, and A, Tabouret-Keller 1985 Acts ofIdentity: Creole-based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Quirk, R,, S, Greenbaum, G, Leech and J, Svartvik 1985 A Comprehensive Grammar ofthe English Language (London: Longman), Sinclair, J, 1990 Collins COBUILD English Grammar (London: Collins), Wee, L, 2002 'When English Is Not a Mother Tongue: Linguistic Ownership and the Eurasian Community in Singapore' .Journal ofMultilingual and Multicultural Development 23: 282-95,

NOTE

* A version ofthis article was first presented at the 41 st RELC Intemationai Seminar, 24-26 April 2006.

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