The Globalization of English

Prior to the onslaught of current twentieth century technologies that now enable world communities to communicate with each other in a matter of milliseconds, the evolution of English had been contingent upon the nature of ecological factors present in a particular setting.

The compromise of idiolects and dialects in America was slowly but surely influenced by other languages that it came in contact with via immigration and migration. Communication demands forced adaptations of our language for the sake of commerce and co-existence. Linguistic variations depended very much on the interaction of individuals and cultures, much to the chagrin of past and present prescriptionists.

            Simplified versions of English are rearing their ugly or inevitable heads, depending on how one embraces the evolution of the English language, in most corners of our society. I have just learned there are several subsets of English contrived to facilitate the limited vocabulary of nonfluent speakers. One of these tools, Special English, has roughly 1,500 words that it uses to broadcast news and special features to its millions of listeners worldwide. It would, however, seem apparent that such manifestations of English are restricted to social class and have become the vernacular of an underground English movement that has been in existence for over forty years.   Other examples of English transformation are seen in business, medicine, science and technology, navigation and academia. As people have come to be increasingly mobile, both physically and electronically, English has become the most populous language spoken in the world, second only to Mandarin, largely due to U.S. military and economic prowess. It is the lingua francas used in most economic and political arenas as well as cultural venues. This integration of world’s societies, known as globalization, is mainly the result of one technological advance in communication: the Internet.

            The Internet originated in English speaking countries and uses programs with key words based on the English language. It is reported that there exists as much as an 80% bias towards all web content written and stored in English. Perhaps the main reason English has become such a dominant language in the economic and political world is its ability to be shaped and sliced and redefined by its speakers, much the same way America has been redefined by its members since WWII. The globalization of English lends itself, therefore, to the emergence of ‘Englishes’, or hybrid varieties of English, with the possibility of its native speakers one day acknowledging they speak just another version of its form.

            Because of its contact with different users in different geographical areas of the world, the perpetuance of Standard English as the unifying language of the universe has long since passed into the night. As these groups learn to communicate outside their own elite spheres of influence they will create and conform their own language according to their individual needs. As more and more countries are insisting their children learn English to be internationally competitive in our global society, it would seem prescriptionists will have to do their best to preserve the English language with all its complex rules as an art form while at the same time closing their eyes and ears to the reality that language is a dynamic beast of its own that cannot be constrained by any human force on earth.