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The global spread of English 125 identity or repository of culture, and for this reason it is better adapted to explain the spread of lingua francas such as English, which are adopted principally for the instrumental, practical advantages they confer, than it is to explain the condition of lesser-used national languages, where identity considerations are more finely weighed against practical communicative benefits. The reason for this is that while external network effects operate relatively unimpeded in the case of spreading lingua francas, with lesser-used ‘central’ or ‘periphery’ languages, there are countervailing forces. First, linguistic protectionism: we have already referred to the powers states have to insist on the use of the national language in certain reserved public domains, policies that may be duplicated on a lesser scale by minority communities who take collective action, coercively or cooperatively, to maintain the community language and the cultural capital it represents. Second, identity considerations, and the emotional costs of deserting the ancestral language, are likely –even in these unequal conditions – to not so much prevent an eventual switch to the dominant language as to retard it, or – in the best circumstances – produce a more or less stable bilingualism. These points are, however, minor qualifications to the value of de Swaan’s (2001a) framework, which – drawing on well-founded social science concepts – does more to illuminate the dynamics of language spread than the hypothesis of linguistic imperialism. One of its principal contributions, particularly relevant in this context, is that it highlights the self-reinforcing nature of, and the very diffuse agency underlying, the spread of English, suggesting thereby that this spread is not under the control of any single collection of institutions, countries or individuals. This being so, calls by Phillipson (2000a: 102) and others for language policy/planning to restrain the spread of English and mitigate its effects, while well-intentioned, are overly optimistic about its potency. This is not to say that the unbridled spread of English is to be lauded. Far from it, as we see, as we now turn to the effects and implications of the global spread of English. 5.2 EFFECTS OF THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF ENGLISH A benign view of the effects of the global spread of English, what Pennycook (2001, 2000: 108) calls the ‘colonial-celebratory’ and ‘laissez-faire liberalism’ positions, is sometimes portrayed as the dominant one. This is questionable, however, for recent publications (e.g. Pennycook 2001, 2000a, Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Tollefson 2002a) have given greater prominence to critical views, which now tend, one might argue, to define the terms of the debate over global English. Because they problematise rather than accept the dominance of English, they are also more intellectually provocative, and for these reasons we now engage with them, albeit more briefly than is ideal. Surveying the literature, there appear to be four main criticisms focused on the effects of the spread of English: 1. English as a global lingua franca produces inequalities in communication between native and non-native speakers of English, leading to inequity (e.g. Phillipson 1992, 2000b, 2003; Ammon 2000; Braine 1999).
126 Language Planning and Education 2. English contributes to, and consolidates, socio-economic inequalities within and between societies, leading to inequity. Its spread is also implicated in manifest, and increasing, global inequality (e.g. Pennycook 1995, 2001; Tollefson 1991, 2002a; Ricento 2000a; Phillipson 2000a). A related criticism is that the use of English as a medium of instruction in many of the postcolonial countries of Africa and Asia is educationally ineffective, and thereby impedes rather than promotes human development (Williams and Cooke 2002). 3. The spread of English is a threat to global linguistic diversity. It disrupts linguistic ecologies, directly endangering some languages and marginalising others – principally by squeezing them from important public domains, such as scientific communication and higher education (e.g. Phillipson 1992; Phillipson and Skuttnab-Kangas 1996, 1997, 1999; Mühlhäusler 1996; Skuttnab-Kangas 2000). 4. English is implicated in processes of cultural homogenization. Specifically, it is a vector of ‘Americanisation’, what Phillipson and Skuttnab-Kangas (1997: 28) call ‘McDonaldization’ (see also Phillipson and Skuttnab-Kangas 1996, 1999; Pennycook 1995). Two key notions – inequality and diversity – are central to these criticisms and it is useful, therefore, to structure our discussion around them, starting with the effects that the dominance of English has on linguistic and cultural diversity. 5.2.1 English as threat to linguistic diversity: assessing the claims In discourses on language diversity and language endangerment one sometimes encounters the term ‘killer languages’ (e.g. Skuttnab-Kangas 2003: 33) applied to English and other dominant languages. This term, and other similar ones – linguicide, language murder and so on – are obviously metaphorical in that languages do not have an existence independent of their speakers, nor can they themselves act agentively. But while metaphors can illuminate, they can also obscure, as they do in this instance. They do so because they distract attention from more soundly founded explanations of language loss. Fundamental among these, as discussed in Chapter 4, is a breakdown in the intergenerational transmission of the ancestral language, a process which typically sets in gradually as speakers of a less widely spoken, socio-economically marginal language come into contact with a more prestigious, more economically useful language that they choose, or feel economically obliged, to transmit to their offspring. As Mufwene (2002:12) argues: languages do not kill languages; their own speakers do, in giving them up, although they themselves are victims of changes in the socio-economic ecologies in which they evolve. Solutions that focus on the victims rather than on the causes of their plights are just as bad as environmental solutions that would focus on affected species rather than on the ecologies that affect the species.
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