Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

The dominance of English as an international languageEnglish is the dominant lingua franca in virtually all international activitiesconcerned with business, politics, science, academia, travel, popular culture orsport. It is the working language of many multinational companies based in non-Anglophone countries, including states like Germany (Deutschebank) and France(European Aerospace and Defence Systems based in Toulouse, where it assemblesthe European Airbuses). Most research publications in scientific journals are nowpublished in English, whatever the mother-tongue of the author or the country inwhich the journal is based and an increasing number of academics from the socialsciences and humanities do likewise. Thus, a 1997 study revealed that 98 per cent ofGerman physicists claimed English as their working language while the comparablefigures for sociology, philosophy and literature were 72 per cent, 56 per cent and 23per cent respectively (Graddol, 1997:9). There are more publications in English thanany other language and they are extensively outside of English-speaking countries(Graddol, 1997). English overwhelmingly dominates as the language of internationalconferences, often being the only language that can be used. Associated with all thisdominance, there is often an implicit cultural assumption that any truly ‘modern’person must have a working knowledge of English.The reasons for the geographical spread and dominance of EnglishPolitical power and its associated economic strength does much to explain thislinguistic dominance. First, the vast British Empire laid the foundations for itsgeolinguistic pre-eminence and today the political, economic, military and culturalstrength of the USA builds upon them (Holborow, 1999). The ability of the USA topromote its culture globally has no match in the contemporary world. Vast numbers ofthe publications emanate from its universities and publishing houses and its popularculture is ubiquitous, diffused by a multitude of audio-visual products to consumersworldwide from enormously powerful ‘cultural industries’. Other Anglophone countriesshare these language-based advantages to a greater or lesser extent.In addition, a cumulative process compounds these advantages. In a ‘globallanguage market’ English is perceived by ‘linguistic consumers’ as the most valuable‘linguistic commodity’ to acquire because it offers more scope for internationalcommunication than any other language (Calvet, 2002). English has thus obtained atruly global role and those who speak it as a second language now greatly outnumbernative speakers of the language (Crystal, 2003). Let us briefly identify some dimensionsof its dominance in the educational and cultural domains.The dominance of English in second language learning in Europe’s schoolsIn 1998/99 about 93% of secondary school pupils in the EU-15 studied English as aforeign language compared with 28% and 20% respectively for French and German,its nearest competitors (Eurostat 2001). The enlargement of the EU to 25 MemberStates has not undermined this pre-eminent position (see Table 1).293