<?page no="0"?> Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Claus Gnutzmann / Frauke Intemann (eds.) The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom Second edition <?page no="1"?> The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom <?page no="3"?> Claus Gnutzmann / Frauke Intemann (eds.) The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom Second edition Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen <?page no="4"?> Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über <http: / / dnb.d-nb.de> abrufbar. 2., durchgesehene Auflage 2008 1. Auflage 2005 © 2008 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: http: / / www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Printed in Germany ISSN 0949-409X ISBN 978-3-8233-6388-0 <?page no="5"?> The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom <?page no="7"?> Claus Gnutzmann / Frauke Intemann (eds.) The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom Second edition Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen <?page no="8"?> Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über <http: / / dnb.d-nb.de> abrufbar. 2., durchgesehene Auflage 2008 1. Auflage 2005 © 2008 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: http: / / www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Printed in Germany ISSN 0949-409X ISBN 978-3-8233-6388-0 <?page no="9"?> Contents Preface.......................................................................................................................... 7 C LAUS G NUTZMANN AND F RAUKE I NTEMANN Introduction: The Globalisation of English. Language, Politics, and the English Language Classroom ..................................9 Section 1 Political and Sociocultural Dimensions ............................................... 25 J ANINA B RUTT -G RIFFLER “Who do you think you are, where do you think you are? ”: Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa .........27 M AHENDRA K. V ERMA English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? ..............41 Section 2 Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Exemplification .................................. 55 U LRICH B USSE The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German: Facts, Figures, and Attitudes ..................................................................................57 F RAUKE I NTEMANN “Taipei ground, confirm your last transmission was in English ... ? ” - An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language.....................................71 C HRISTIANE M EIERKORD Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon.................................................89 Section 3 Teaching and Learning English in a Global Context: ’Old’ and ‘New’ Standards .................................................................... 105 C LAUS G NUTZMANN ‘Standard English’ and ‘World Standard English’. Linguistic and Pedagogical Considerations.......................................................107 S VENJA A DOLPHS “I don’t think I should learn all this” - A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English .........119 <?page no="10"?> 6 A LLAN J AMES The Challenges of the Lingua Franca: English in the World and Types of Variety........................................................133 J ENNIFER J ENKINS Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: A Sociopolitical Perspective .................................................................................145 B ARBARA S EIDLHOFER Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? Descriptive and Pedagogic Bearings on the Globalisation of English ...........159 Section 4 Learners in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education: Focus on Europe ...................................................................................... 175 J ANET E NEVER Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? .........................................................177 M ARGIE B ERNS AND K EES DE B OT English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Comparative Study of Four European Countries .........................................193 E LIZABETH J. E RLING Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? A Profile of Students of English at the Freie Universität Berlin......................215 U LRIKE J ESSNER Expanding Scopes and Building Bridges: Learning and Teaching English as a Third Language ......................................231 A NGELIKA K UBANEK -G ERMAN Global English and Global Education.................................................................245 Section 5 Teacher Education................................................................................... 259 M AIKE G RAU English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? ...............................................................261 G EORGE B RAINE A Critical Review of the Research on Non-Native Speaker English Teachers ...............................................................275 Author Biographies................................................................................. 285 <?page no="11"?> Preface to the First and to the Second Edition Almost all of the contributions to this volume originate from papers presented at the conference on “The globalisation of English and the English language classroom”, held from 16-18 June 2003 at the Technische Universität Braunschweig. The conference provided three days of rich, controversial and inspiring discussion. It brought together young researchers and well known colleagues in the field of the globalisation of English, non-native, ‘seminative’, and native speakers of English from Asia, Europe, and the USA. The conference, as well as the present volume, would have not been possible without the help and support of many people and institutions. In particular, we are grateful to the Technische Universität Braunschweig, and especially to its former President Professor Jochen Litterst. In his welcome address, Professor Litterst underlined the outstanding role of English in international scientific discourse and, consequently, the urgent need to undertake research into its communicative and pedagogical dimensions. We are also very grateful to the Braunschweigischer Hochschulbund, which generously provided a beautiful location for the conference - the Gästehaus - and supported the preparation of the book manuscript. With their efficiency and friendliness, our student assistants Bettina Beinhoff, Monique Kleinschmidt, Nadine Salden and Christian Weiß contributed greatly to the success of the conference. Bettina Beinhoff also did an excellent job in proofreading and supporting the preparation of the book manuscript. Very many thanks to all of them. We would also like to thank our publisher Gunter Narr for the interest he has taken in the publication of this book. We owe a particular debt to all our contributors for their patience in answering our ongoing queries and for their continuing support of the project. The international attention which the first edition of this book received has led the editors and the publisher to prepare a second edition. Except for a revised introductory chapter, all other contributions remain unchanged. Braunschweig, January 2005 Claus Gnutzmann Braunschweig, July 2008 Frauke Intemann <?page no="13"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann Introduction: The Globalisation of English. Language, Politics, and the English Language Classroom Globalisation The world-wide spread of English is one of the many different developments which are subsumed under - and elements of - the general phenomenon of globalisation. As the term refers to various processes, a universal definition does not exist. The term did not appear before the 1970s, even though it can be argued that globalisation processes already started much earlier (cf. Block & Cameron, 2002: 2) and is generally connected to global economy, global communication systems - especially the Internet - and global mass culture (cf. Robinson, 2002: 9). Mass culture itself is economy: Disney, MTV, AOL Time Warner, Sony BMG, and other international companies provide entertainment (music, movies, TV shows) for a world-wide audience. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are other representations of a global mass culture as food habits are usually strongly connected with cultural traditions. Globalisation is furthermore associated with boundless mobility, world-wide travel and the transport of goods, and, of course, with English as the language of globalisation. From a critical perspective, globalisation stands for environmental threats like global warming, for the extinction of species, for the exploitation of people living in developing countries, for the spread of AIDS, for widening the gap between the first and the third world, for international terrorism, and as far as language is concerned, for a threat to smaller and endangered languages because of the growing dominance of English. Another striking feature of globalisation is a world-wide military network; this especially concerns the global presence of US military forces. The United States have troops in 47 countries - in addition to multinational missions under the flags of NATO or the United Nations (UN) (cf. National Geographic Magazine 5/ 2004). The United Nations lists a total of 119 countries that contribute to UN peacekeeping operations with military observers, police or troops. With 258 people in the service of the UN, the United States are by far not the most active contributor (cf. http: / / www.un.org/ Depts/ dpko/ dpko/ contributors/ 2008/ jun08_1.pdf, accessed July 18, 08). Although no generally accepted definition of globalisation exists, there are a number of common characteristics which allow different interpretations depending on the attitude towards globalisation. Held and McGrew (2002: <?page no="14"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 10 37) speak of “sceptics” and “globalists” and list several characteristics from the views of both sides. Whereas globalists see a development towards “[o]ne world, shaped by highly extensive, intensive and rapid flows, movements and networks across regions and continents”, sceptics prefer to speak of internationalisation than of globalisation, and they note a growing regionalisation as well. Indeed, it seems paradoxical - at first sight, at least - that in an era of globalisation there are so many severe regional conflicts throughout the world. This development is closely connected to another characteristic of globalisation: on the one hand, the “[e]rosion of state sovereignty, autonomy and legitimacy” (ibid.); on the other, however, a “[r]esurgence of nationalism and national identity” (ibid.), often accompanied by an increasing awareness of, and pride in, the region one comes from and belongs to. From a post-modern perspective, the growing uncertainty and the erosion of formerly stable concepts goes along with growing dichotomies, both seem to be defining features of globalisation. The development of English is no exception in this respect. The concept of the native speaker is under attack; the norms of written and spoken English for international purposes are not necessarily identical with those of the British and American standard varieties of English any more; the concept of standard varieties itself is critically discussed. English is not only the language of globalisation, but it is itself deeply affected by it. What is more, and this again depends on the attitude of the analyst, English may be regarded as liberating and uniting the world and being the key to the benefits of globalisation, or it may be seen as a dangerous language, threatening other languages and cultures, and as the language of oppression (Alexander, 2003). Waswo (2002: 41) states that “[g]lobalization need not mean homogenization, uniformity, the eradication of all difference”. It does not, in itself, promote the death of cultures; cultural identity can also be preserved in a global context, although the appearance of a global language might be seen as an indicator for a growing uniformity. On the other hand, the English language, as such, does not develop uniformly; and it is questionable if there ever will be something like a “World Standard Spoken English”, as Crystal (1997a: 137) predicts. However, following McArthur (2001: 14), “we have had for some time a World Standard English with a fair degree of standardization for print and writing”, predominantly based on American English usage. A global language English has become a world-wide language for several reasons. 1 England started discovering new territories in the 16 th century, established its first colonies in North America in the 17 th century, claimed land on the Australian continent in the 18 th century, and occupied the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope in 1795. The use of English grew rapidly when colonies were <?page no="15"?> Introduction: The Globalisation of English 11 conquered all over Africa and Asia on behalf of the British Empire in the 19 th century. In the end, the language was present all over the globe; only South America remained nearly untouched. Nevertheless, the most important factor for today’s situation is probably the military and economic dominance of the United States of America in the 20 th century. In continental Europe English became significant when the USA entered World War II and intervened in international politics (cf. Gnutzmann, 2000: 28). It was the military power of the British Empire and the USA that established English as an International Language, but the economic power of the USA managed to maintain its status and even expanded the use of English (cf. Crystal, 1997a: 110f.). Several developments shortly after World War II contributed to this: The Headquarters of the United Nations were located in New York, English was established as the lingua franca for international, i.e. world-wide, civil aviation (cf. Intemann, this volume), and the United States attracted many scientists from all over the world due to an undestroyed infrastructure, which provided advantageous conditions for research and development. Further factors that contributed to the spread of English included the global success of American music and movies, as well as the development of computer technologies and the Internet, which are based on programming languages derived from English. It is especially the factors of mass media, global trade and popular culture which are connected with the USA, and so the growing use of English is regarded as involving a “McDonaldization” or consumerism (Alexander, 1999: 33). On the other hand, English is a medium of a “Westernization” that has its origins in Atlantic Europe and that is “widely perceived as desirable” (McArthur, 2002: 18). All these factors support the development of a global lingua franca: Apart from political relations, increasing global trade, travel, migration, mass media, popular culture and the internet have provided additional factors that push forward the need for lingua francas as well as the spread of given languages as lingua francas, which at present is the case with English (Meierkord & Knapp, 2002: 12). The spread of English has therefore an ambivalent character; it is a lingua franca necessary for international communication, and it is a vehicle for the spread of a culture influenced by the USA and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe. Dovring (1997: x) has researched into the “problems in understanding double talk in political English around the world” by analysing the massive impact of electronic media on the spread of English as a global lingua franca. English is not only seen as a threat to other languages, but also to the cultures connected with these languages. When English is taught, it is seldom ever entirely separated from its cultural background, which is generally American and British. Non-native users of English may fear an ‘anglification’ of their own culture, or they may feel communicatively disadvantaged, because native speakers of English can use their native language. On the other <?page no="16"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 12 hand, native speakers may fear that through the increasing use of English as a lingua franca, non-native speakers may have considerable impact on the English language and “take possession” (van Els, 2000: 22) of it. According to Alexander (1999) the globalisation of English can signify liberation for those taking advantage of globalisation or a trap for those who feel threatened by this process. Undoubtedly, knowledge of the English language is a requirement to participate actively in the globalisation process. Chew (1999) reports on the linguistic development of Singapore, where the English language has been established as an official language, not as a result of natural development or because of historical reasons, but by law. The use of English has been enforced by the government and therefore it has become a dominant language, which has enabled the country to take part in the global economy and profit from globalisation. At the same time, English is seen as serving as “the courier of many cultures and sub-cultures” (Chew, 1999: 42) and the population of Singapore “views the adoption of English not so much as a threat to their own languages but as the key to a share of the world’s symbolic power” (Chew, 1999: 43). The diversity of English and the diversity of its speakers The major concept to categorise speakers of English is the distinction between native speaker and non-native speaker. A native speaker is generally considered to be a person who has learned a language “in a natural setting from childhood as first or sole language” (Kachru & Nelson, 2001: 15), whereas the term non-native speaker generally refers to a person who learned English at school or at another institution as an additional language. Authors argue about the identity of the native speaker, a fact which becomes apparent in Paikeday’s radical title The Native Speaker is Dead! (1985). The native speaker used to be the point of reference when teaching English to non-natives, but in recent years this authority has been seriously questioned. 2 When attempting to count the number of native speakers of English, the first task is to define the countries and territories where English is spoken. As it turns out, the number of those countries or territories is unclear. Whereas Graddol (1997: 11) speaks of “75 or so countries in which English has special status”, Ethnologue lists 106 countries and territories where English is spoken (http: / / www.ethnologue.com/ show_language.asp? code=ENG, accessed July 18, 08). McArthur (2002: 3) is in-between with his statement that “English is used in over 70 countries as an official or semi-official language and has a significant role in over 20 more”. Moreover, it is difficult to define what may be considered to be ‘English’, as some languages are called varieties of English, others are recognised as pidgins and creoles, but the boundary is not clear-cut. Facing these uncertainties, it becomes obvious that counting speakers is nearly impossible and that all data available is largely, if not exclusively, <?page no="17"?> Introduction: The Globalisation of English 13 based on estimates. As a result, these estimates differ tremendously, and it is questionable as to whether the development of the estimated numbers really reflects reality. Crystal (1997a: 54) estimates the number between 320 and 380 million, whereas Crystal (2003: 109), somewhat surprisingly, counts 329,058,300 native speakers. If the number of speakers of English as a Native Language (ENL) is uncertain, then the estimates for speakers of English as a Second Language (ESL) are even more so. Crystal (1985: 7, referred to in Phillipson, 1992: 24) approximates the number of ESL speakers at 300 million, whereas Graddol (1997: 10) states a total number of 375 million. Crystal (2003: 109) counts 422,682,300 ESL speakers. The number has risen from 300 million to nearly 423 million within 18 years. A rise by 40% seems impressive, but doubtful at the same time. Perhaps the first estimates were based on insufficient data, but it may be that the estimates reflect the growing importance of English around the world. Estimating the number of speakers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) cannot be anything more than a good guess, the estimates range from 100 million to 1.000 million (Crystal, 1997a: 54; cf. also McArthur, 2002: 3). The numbers are bound to differ, especially for non-native speakers, because “everything depends on just how great a command of English is considered acceptable to count as a ‘speaker of English’” (Crystal, 1997a: 61). It is impossible to count the speakers of English, but the estimated numbers give an impression of the relevance of the language in today’s world. ENL/ ESL/ EFL The distinction between native and non-native speakers has been questioned, and so has the distinction between English as a Native Language, English as a Second Language, and English as a Foreign Language. The general position is that in ENL countries people acquire English as their first language and are therefore native speakers of this language. In ESL countries (e.g. India, Nigeria, Singapore) English is used for a range of purposes or has an official status. As pointed out above, the estimated number of ESL speakers world-wide has risen by 40% within two decades. The main reason for this is the estimates on India. Following a statement from an article in India Today (18 August 1997) that “almost one in every three Indians claims to understand English although less than 20 percent are confident of speaking it”, Kachru (2005: 15) comes up with a far more optimistic figure: “The estimated population of India is now over one billion. The survey figures, then, add up to 333 million Indians who possess varying degrees of bilingual competence in Indian English and almost 200 million in China”. Crystal (2003: 109) estimates 200 million ESL speakers in India, thus counting only the 20% of people who are “confident” speakers. Even though these numbers are estimates, it becomes clear that India almost equals the <?page no="18"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 14 United States in the number of speakers of English, including second language speakers, of course. In EFL countries English is usually learned through education for international and occupational purposes (cf. McArthur, 1992: 353). The distinction between ESL countries and EFL countries is questionable since 20% of the Indian population consider themselves to be confident speakers of English, whereas 38% of all non-native English speaking citizens of the European Union (aged fifteen years and over) claim to speak English well enough to hold a conversation. In Sweden the percentage is as high as 89% (http: / / ec.europa.eu/ public_opinion/ archives/ ebs/ ebs_243_en.pdf, accessed July 18, 08). As a result, it can be said that the categories ‘ESL country’ and ‘EFL country’ do not help to make qualitative statements on the English proficiency the citizens generally have. It is arguable whether the inhabitants of the Netherlands should be classified as EFL speakers because English has no official status in that country, or as ESL speakers because of the enormous exposure to English through TV and radio (cf. Berns & de Bot, this volume) and increasingly in tertiary education, not only at postgraduate, but also at undergraduate level (Wilkinson, 2008). Furthermore, it is unknown how many citizens of Norway, for example, use English as a daily second language. English is widely used in Higher Education in Norway; many research groups have international teams, and many lectures are given in English. English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) English is increasingly used as a lingua franca in politics, trade, tourism, media and science and is therefore present in many people’s lives. This has not only influenced the development of the language, but the definition of the term lingua franca as well. Samarin (1987: 371) defined a lingua franca as a “medium of communication between people of different mother tongues for whom it is a second language”. This traditional definition excludes native speakers of English who contribute to a discussion with persons of different mother tongues in an EFL country. In order to include native speakers, McArthur (2002: 2) defines lingua franca as “a language common to, or shared by, many cultures and communities at any or all social and educational levels, and used as an international tool”. The question of whether ELF can be assigned the status of a variety of its own has been widely discussed; as yet there is no conclusive answer (for a recent critique of the status of ELF as a variety of English see Prodromou, 2007). Linguistic varieties can be conceived as systems of linguistic expression whose use is determined by extralinguistic, i.e., contextual variables. Varieties are usually described in terms of features which differ from the standard variety of a language, or in the case of English, from one or more of the standard varieties. One of the problems with ELF is that it develops faster <?page no="19"?> Introduction: The Globalisation of English 15 than established varieties of English spoken by native speakers, as the number of speakers increases rapidly all over the world. Seidlhofer (2006: 46) states that “[i]t is likely that ELF, like any other natural language, will turn out to vary, and to change over time. It does not make much sense, therefore, to talk about a monolithic variety as such”. This statement implies that ELF is not a variety of English, but seen as a language on its own which will develop its own varieties. Linguistic evidence for ELF as a variety or even as a language, seems, at least so far, to be very scarce. Research on ELF has changed over the past years. The linguistic description is still an important tool, but in addition, “common underlying processes of how speakers make use of ELF, and what they do to the code when using it” (Seidlhofer, 2006: 46f.) are under investigation. Native speakers could, or even should, adjust their language in order to meet the appropriate level for lingua franca communication, so there must be features beyond what has been described so far - native speakers and the majority of proficient non-native speakers will not stop inflecting 3 rd person singular verbs. Perhaps in the future there will be evidence for two different modes of interaction. It is difficult to imagine that native speakers of English will submit themselves to the ‘phonology’ of ELF (for example by substituting the interdental fricative by another sound, unless they are speakers of certain dialects). However, it can be envisaged that native speakers will make allowances on the pragmatic level of communication by adjusting their grammar and lexis as well as refraining from idioms and colloquial expressions, i.e., reducing and simplifying its complexity in ELF communication, in order to ensure communicative success. As long as there is no sufficient evidence for the existence of a new variety, there is no basis to identify ELF as phenomenon in its own right; in accordance with James (this volume) it would at present seem more appropriate to conceptualise ELF as a phenomenon that is “fragmented, contingent, marginal, transitional, indeterminate, ambivalent and hybrid in various ways.” Jenkins (2000; see also this volume) lists a set of phonemes, the “Lingua Franca Core”, consisting of all phonemes necessary for intelligibility and therefore for successful lingua franca communication. All features which do not belong to the core are free for variation and can be considered variants of an ELF-accent. This model has, according to Jenkins (2007: 25), often been misinterpreted as a model for imitation. “This is not at all the case. It is, rather, a core of pronunciation features which occur in successful NNS-NNS communication and whose absence leads to miscommunication.” (ibid.). For international communication, Crystal (1994: 113) stresses the relevance of an agreed standard: If the reason for any nation wishing to promote English is to give it access to what the broader English-speaking world has to offer, then it is crucial for its people to be able to understand the English of that world, and to be understood in their turn. <?page no="20"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 16 In short, internationalism demands an agreed standard - in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation and conventions of use. The agreed standard so far is a native speaker standard, which does not necessarily mean British, American, South African or Australian English, but may also include Nigerian or Indian English - depending on where English is taught. As far as grammar and spelling is concerned, there are probably relatively few differences between the standards. Cultural traditions are more influential on the level of vocabulary. With regard to cultural differences, the various first languages of participants in ELF communication and other highly individual factors like self-perception, it is debatable whether English can be said to be - unreservedly - “uniting the world”, as Crystal (1997b) put it. “[A] serious consequence of the spread of English has been that it has created a false sense of mutual intelligibility” (García & Otheguy, 1989: 2). The most problematic level is pronunciation. Communication breakdowns rarely occur because of grammatical problems. If communication fails because of lexical problems, meaning can be negotiated by paraphrasing or replacing the relevant word or phrase, but if pronunciation is mutually unintelligible, the result tends to be a total communication breakdown. Therefore, it is desirable to have common phonetic ground. The role of English in Europe English has a special role in Europe for three reasons: it is an official language in three countries, it is the unofficial European lingua franca and it is the global lingua franca (cf. Graddol, 2001: 55). The linguistic diversity of Europe is difficult to administer, especially in an organisation like the European Union (EU), where all member states and citizens are - officially - granted linguistic equality. 3 This means that almost all languages spoken in these member states have official status, except for minority languages like Sorbian (a Slavic language spoken in Germany by approximately 50,000 people), which have no official status in their countries. With the expansion of the European Union in January 2007, the number of official languages has grown to 23, and all documents and contributions to sessions of the European Parliament have to be translated into all languages. However, each institution of the EU usually has two or three working languages, these always include English, usually French, and often German. The budget of the EU translation service is over 800 million Euros, but it is not only the costs that are a problem (http: / / europa.eu/ rapid/ pressReleases Action.do? reference=MEMO/ 05/ 10, accessed July 18, 08). Apart from the fact that translation, especially simultaneous translation, inherently alters what is said, the communication situation influences the speakers: “Speakers who are more familiar with the situation know that simultaneous translation is no easy task for the interpreters, and as they are aware that what they say can often not be rapidly translated literally or very precisely, they tend to <?page no="21"?> Introduction: The Globalisation of English 17 simplify their texts [...]” (van Els, 2000: 18). Furthermore it might be necessary to translate speeches from one language to another and then again to another language, because it seems very difficult, if not impossible, to find skilled interpreters who can fluently translate an Estonian contribution into Maltese or a Danish speaker into Slovene. It is no wonder then, that from time to time English is discussed as the only official language for the EU, although many Europeans fear that other languages may ‘lose’ and eventually disappear due to the widespread use of English. They see English as a ‘killer language’ which destroys weaker languages (cf. Skutnabb-Kangas, 2003). Lesser-used languages are seen to be particularly threatened by English. Of course, the cultural identity of smaller communities is strongly connected to the respective language, so a loss of the language would have a considerable impact on the culture, all of which does not seem desirable. If a language loses importance and eventually dies out, speakers would rather adopt other regional languages as their primary language and not English (Graddol, 2001: 47). With regard to other countries that once adopted English as their official language and kept their own culture “[t]he fear that the possible adoption of English as a lingua franca in the EU, or as only a working language of the EU institutions, will seriously threaten the diversity of languages and cultures appears to be completely without foundation” (van Els, 2000: 26). Nevertheless, English is the dominant language in the educational sector in Europe, where learners prefer to have English taught as the first foreign language. The spread of other European languages outside their native speaker-territory could in this way be ‘threatened’ by English. The varieties of English taught at European schools are usually British English with Received or BBC Pronunciation, or American English with a General American accent. Features of these varieties are often mixed by many Europeans, not only due to differences in classroom practice, but also because of music, movies and TV. The result may be called Mid-Atlantic English (MAE) (Modiano, 2000). In the context of English as a Lingua Franca in Europe, scholars argue if there will ever be a European standard of English (sometimes called ‘Euro-English’). So far, there is no convincing evidence for a European variety which includes features of all European languages, but it has been proposed to establish a European variety of English to signal national identities in international contexts (Jenkins & Seidlhofer, 2001 and Modiano, 2003; for a critical view cf. Gnutzmann, 2008a). However, Mollin (2006: 197) concludes that Euro-English is the “Yeti of English varieties: a mythical entity surrounded by legend, but without any real-life evidence”. She even suggests discarding the term Euro-English as there seems to be no empirical evidence for a “variety of English that deserves a variety label […] in Europe” (2006: 199). <?page no="22"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 18 English in academic communication One particular area where the use of English has increased tremendously over that last few decades is in academia. Some time ago, the well known phrase ‘publish or perish’ was an appropriate indicator of the academic situation. This phrase needs to be updated: ‘publish in English or perish’ would be more appropriate. More and more journals only accept contributions in English, even though the journals might have a non-English title. This development can be seen as ‘liberating’, as well as economical, because it restricts the number of languages an individual needs in order to communicate with the scientific world. On the other hand, the anglification implies that national research cultures might have to be given up and replaced by an Anglo-American research culture. 4 This is valid in particular for research areas like information technology, mathematics, or the natural sciences, where articles in languages other than English will not be recognized by the academic community outside the respective language community. And even if non-native English speaking scientists publish in English, the quality of the publication might suffer because of a lack of language proficiency - not necessarily because of insufficient vocabulary, but because nuances of meaning cannot be expressed or conveyed. In an empirical study of “Dutch scientific English”, Burrough-Boenisch (2005) discovered that it was above all the lack of cohesion, the inappropriate use of hedging and the overuse of the present tense, which were felt to be ‘disturbing’ in the writings of Dutch scientists. Although there are obviously languageand culturespecific influences, particularly with regard to discourse structure (cf. Horn- Helf, 2007; Hyland & Bondi, 2006), the deviant linguistic features which were identified for Dutch English scientific writing can also be found in the writing style of non-native writers of other language backgrounds. Wherever universities establish international study programmes, with few exceptions, courses are partially or fully delivered in English. Davison and Trent (2007: 200) state that in Asia as well as in Europe there is a clear tendency towards an “Englishisation in higher education” and report that in “China, the Ministry of Education demands that 5-10% of courses at each higher education institution should be taught in a foreign language”. As academic education is an international market, universities from all over the world try to attract students with English-medium study programmes. However, not all students appreciate international programmes. In a study conducted by Gnutzmann, Intemann, Janßen and Nübold (2004), a German student of engineering stated that he has enough difficulties understanding his subject in German, and that he would definitely not want English-medium courses. In contrast to this, a student of information technology stated that he would prefer English-only courses as all the relevant literature is written in English anyway. <?page no="23"?> Introduction: The Globalisation of English 19 Classroom perspectives The title of this volume includes the ambiguous phrase “English Language Classroom”. The ambiguity was intended, but unfortunately, we were not able to find contributors for articles on the impact of the globalisation of English on the teaching of English in a native language classroom, so the contributions will concentrate on English in the non-native language classroom. As a result of globalisation the function of English as an international tool for communication needs rethinking in the English language classroom. This does not only include linguistic skills to understand various kinds of accents and to be understood by others, but it also includes knowledge of other cultures which provides the learners with the ability to respond adequately to problems arising from cultural differences between the participants in international communication. The diversity of the English language calls for new aims in ELT; apart from good linguistic skills learners need to develop intercultural competence for successful communication in an international or cross-cultural context. According to Byram (1997: 70) intercultural competence refers to the “ability [of speakers] to interact in their own language with people from another country and culture”, whereas intercultural communicative competence includes the use of a foreign language and focuses on “establishing and maintaining relationships” rather than just on the exchange of information (Byram, 1997: 3). This intercultural (communicative) competence is necessary to build up a basis for communication shared by all participants to enable them to maintain the socio-cultural identity of each participant (cf. Gnutzmann, 2001). There is no thoroughly described - let alone institutionalised - variety of ELF as yet and so it is not possible to teach and learn it. “The ELT institutions and publishing houses will argue, rightly, that it is difficult to teach and to develop texts around a model that is virtually undescribed.” (Kirkpatrick, 2006: 78). 5 What has been decribed is a conceptual difference between traditional ELT and teaching EIL. McKay (2003: 18f.) presents three major assumptions concerning teaching EIL. These include the following: that speakers are bilingual and have specific purposes, that near-nativeness is no goal for many speakers, and that English is not connected to a specific culture, but that “there is a need to be culturally sensitive to the diversity of contexts in which English is taught and used.” (cf. also McKay, 2002). Therefore it seems that teachers as well as learners have to concentrate on the function of ELF and on the structure of an ENL variety for successful international communication. For that reason it is very difficult to discuss this lingua franca use of English with reference to ELT. Native speaker varieties, however, are considered to be ‘unrealistic standards’ and consequently unreachable goals for non-native learners, who need the language for different purposes than native speakers. Non-native speakers have to be intelligible to other non-natives and be able to understand other non-natives as most <?page no="24"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 20 of them will never communicate with a native speaker of English, therefore the adoption of a native speaker accent is not necessary (Jenkins, 2000). On the other hand a very strong foreign accent might irritate the listener and could raise prejudices with regard to the intellectual abilities of the speaker. One classroom perspective which has received considerable attention within the last two decades is the non-native language teacher. In the international market for English language teachers there is a definite preference for native speakers. Non-native speakers are often not even considered for teaching posts. Braine (1999: 26) observed a growing discrimination of non-native teachers especially in Asia, and current job advertisements (see e.g. http: / / www.eslteachersboard.com, accessed July 18, 08) seem to substantiate this claim, especially for China. In most job advertisements, apart from being a native speaker of English, minimal qualifications in ELT are expected (often only on CELTA level); some employers even just want one qualification: being a native speaker of English born in the UK, the US, Canada or Australia. So why are non-native teachers discriminated? In his well-known book Linguistic Imperialism, Robert Phillipson (1992: 193ff.) calls this tendency the ‘native speaker fallacy’. Phillipson argues that this fallacy can be traced back to the influence of Noam Chomsky’s concept of competence and performance - where the native speaker is the one who can finally decide on the acceptability of an utterance. The native speaker has the ultimate language competence, knows intuitively what is right and what is wrong. “Thus idealized,” Rajagopalan (2005: 285) comments, “the native speaker became a potent and awe-inspiring trademark of the billion-dollar EFL industry world wide […].” Studies like Medgyes (1994), Benke and Medgyes (2005) or Mahboob (2004) have proven that students do not have a general preference for or against non-native speakers, but do differentiate between the pros and cons of each. Native speakers are considered to be better in giving conversation classes, are a role model for pronunciation and bring their cultural background into the classroom. Non-native teachers have an advantage in explaining grammar; they are very good in preparing classes for tests and they are a role model for successful foreign language learners. The topic is not so relevant in countries which have a long tradition in teaching foreign languages in schools, as in many European countries. However, the results can have an impact on teacher education. When future teachers are made aware of their advantages and disadvantages, it might be easier for them to look for ways to counterbalance their disadvantages and thus improve their teaching. <?page no="25"?> Introduction: The Globalisation of English 21 The present volume The articles of this volume do not stand for a monolithic view of English as a Global Language but represent different, sometimes controversial perspectives. The contributions are organised into five sections, which are all closely interrelated, but have different focuses and use different approaches to the globalisation of English and its possible consequences for the language classroom. Each of the sections is preceded by a brief introduction and summaries of the following papers. As the authors are native and non-native speakers of English from Europe, the USA, and Asia, the articles represent written manifestations of several varieties of English. Consequently, no attempt has been made to use one unified spelling system throughout the whole book. However, within each article the orthography used is consistent. Notes 1 For a comprehensive account of the subject of “World Englishes” covering its historical and political aspects and including current sociolinguistic and pedagogical issues cf. Brutt-Griffler (2002) and Jenkins (2003). 2 Cf. e.g. Holliday, 2008; Jenkins, 2000; Piller, 2001; Seidlhofer, 2001. However, for a more positive account of the native speaker cf. Mukherjee (2005). 3 Cf. Phillipson (2003) for a highly critical account of the dominant role of English in Europe and his plea for challenging language policy. 4 For a very recent discussion of the ambivalent implications of the use English in academia cf. Gnutzmann 2008b. 5 Cf. also Seidlhofer (2007: 145): “At this stage, no reliable findings based on quantitave investigations can be reported.” References Alexander, R.J. (1999) Caught in a Global English trap, or liberated by a lingua franca? Unravelling some aims, claims and dilemmas of the English teaching profession. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.), 23-40. Alexander, R.J. (2003) G.lobal L.anguages O.ppress B.ut A.re L.iberating, too: the dialectics of English. In C. Mair (ed.), 87-95. Benke, E. and Medgyes, P. (2005) Differences in teaching behaviour between native and non-native speaker teachers: As seen by the learners. In E. Llurda (ed.), 195- 215. Berns, M. and de Bot, K. (this volume) English language proficiency at the secondary level: A comparative study of four European countries. Block, D. and Cameron, D. (2002) Introduction. In D. Block and D. Cameron (eds) Globalization and Language Teaching (pp. 1-10). London; New York: Routledge. Braine, G. (1999) From the periphery to the center: One teacher’s journey. In G. Braine (ed.) Non-Native Speaker Educators in English Language Teaching (pp. 15-27). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. <?page no="26"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 22 Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English. A Study of its Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Burrough-Boenisch, J. (2005) Culture and Conventions. Writing and Reading Dutch Scientific English. Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics. LOT Dissertation Series 59. Online document: http: / / www.lotpublications.nl/ publish/ issues/ Burrough/ index.html, (July 18, 08). Byram, M. (1997) Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Chew, P.G.-L. (1999) Linguistic imperialism, globalism, and the English language. AILA Review 13: English in a Changing World, 37-47. Crystal, D. (1985) How many millions? The statistics of English today. English Today 1, 7-10. Crystal, D. (1994) Which English - or English which? In M. Hayhoe and S. Parker (eds) Who owns English? (pp. 108-114). Buckingham: Open University Press. Crystal, D. (1997a) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. (1997b) English. How one language is uniting the world. Spotlight 7, 12-16. Crystal, D. (2003) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2 nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davison, C. and Trent, J. (2007) Contradictory discourses. Learning and teaching in and through English in an English-medium University in Asia. Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen (FLuL) 36, 200-216. Dovring, K. (1997) English as Lingua Franca. Double Talk in Global Persuasion. Westport, CT; London: Praeger. García, O. and Otheguy, R. (1989) Introduction. In O. García and R. Otheguy (eds) English Across Cultures. Cultures Across English. A Reader in Cross-Cultural Communication (pp. 1-10). Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gnutzmann, C. (ed.) (1999) Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language - Native and Non-Native Perspectives. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. Gnutzmann, C. (2000) Englisch als globale lingua franca: Funktion und Entwicklung - Fragen des Lehrens und Lernens - Lernziel “Mehrsprachigkeit”. Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen (FLuL) 29, 23-36. Gnutzmann, C. (2001) English as a global language: Zu einigen möglichen Konsequenzen für den Englischunterricht und die Englischlehrerausbildung. In F.G. Königs (ed.) Impulse aus der Sprachlehrforschung - Marburger Vorträge zur Ausbildung von Fremdsprachenlehrerinnen und -lehrern (pp. 93-110). Tübingen: Narr. Gnutzmann, C. (2008a) Can Euro English or English as a European lingua franca contribute to establishing a European identity? In G. Rings und A. Ife (eds) Neo-Colonial Mentalities in Contemporary Europe? Language and Discourse in the Construction of Identities (pp. 19-34). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Gnutzmann, C. (ed.) (2008b) English in Academia. Catalyst or Barrier? Tübingen: Narr. Gnutzmann, C., Intemann, F., Janßen, H. and Nübold, P. (2004) Die englische Sprache in Studium, Wissenschaft und Verwaltung - Ergebnisse einer Online-Umfrage. Fachsprache 26 (1-2), 14-34. Graddol, D. (1997) The Future of English? A Guide to Forecasting the Popularity of the English Language in the 21 st Century. London: The British Council. Graddol, D. (2001) The future of English as a European language. The European English Messenger X/ 2, 47-55. Held, D. and McGrew, A. (eds) (2002) The Global Transformations Reader. Cambridge: Polity Press. <?page no="27"?> Introduction: The Globalisation of English 23 Holliday, A. (2008) Standards of English and politics of inclusion. Language Teaching 41(1), 119-130. Horn-Helf, B. (2007) Kulturdifferenz in Fachtextsortenkonventionen: Analyse und Translation; ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch. Frankfurt am Main [et al.]: Lang. Hyland, K. and Bondi, M. (eds) (2006) Academic Discourse Across Disciplines. Frankfurt am Main [et al.]: Lang. Ilmberger, F. and Robinson, A. (eds) (2002) Globalisation. Tübingen: Narr. Intemann, F. (this volume) “Taipei ground, confirm your last transmission was in English ... ? ” - An analysis of aviation English as a world language. James, A. (this volume) The challenges of the lingua franca: English in the world and types of variety. Jenkins, J. (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2003) World Englishes. A Resource Book for Students. London; New York: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (this volume) Teaching pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: a sociopolitical perspective. Jenkins, J. (2007) English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. and Seidlhofer, B. (2001) Bringing Europe’s lingua franca into the classroom. Online document: http: / / www.onestopenglish.com/ culture/ global/ DEBATE.htm (July 7, 04) Kachru, B.B. (2005) Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kachru, B.B. and Nelson, C.L. (2001) World Englishes. In A. Burns and C. Coffin (eds) Analysing English in a Global Context (pp. 9-25). London: Routledge. Kamhi-Stein, L.D. (ed.) (2004) Learning and Teaching from Experience. Perspectives on Nonnative English-Speaking Professionals. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2006) Which model of English: Native-speaker, nativized or lingua franca? In R. Rubdy and M. Saraceni (eds), 71-83. Llurda, E. (ed.) (2005) Non-native Language Teachers: Perceptions, Challenges, and Contributions to the Profession. New York: Springer. Mahboob, A. (2004) Native or nonnative: What do students enrolled in an intensive English program think? In L.D. Kamhi-Stein (ed.), 121-147. Mair, C. (ed.) (2003) The Politics of English as a World Language. New Horizons in Postcolonial Cultural Studies. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. McArthur, T. (1992) The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McArthur, T. (2001) World English and world Englishes: Trends, tensions, varieties, and standards. Language Teaching 34, 1-20. McArthur, T. (2002) The Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKay, S.L. (2002) Teaching English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKay, S.L. (2003) Toward an appropriate EIL pedagogy: re-examining common ELT assumptions. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 13 (1), 1-22. Medgyes, P. (1994) The Non-Native Teacher. London: Macmillan Publishers. Meierkord, C. and Knapp, K. (2002) Approaching lingua franca communication. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds) Lingua Franca Communication (pp. 9-28). Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. <?page no="28"?> Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann 24 Modiano, M. (2000) Euro English: Educational standards in a cross-cultural context. The European English Messenger IX/ 1, 33-37. Modiano, M. (2003) Euro English: A Swedish perspective. English Today 74 , Vol. 19 (2), 35-41. Mollin, S. (2006) Euro-English. Assessing Variety Status. Tübingen: Narr. Mukherjee, J. (2005) The native speaker is alive and kicking: linguistic and languagepedagogical perspectives. Anglistik 16(2), 7-23. Paikeday, T. (1985) The Native Speaker is Dead! Toronto: Paikeday Publishing. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2003) English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London; New York: Routledge. Piller, I. (2001) Who, if anyone, is a native speaker? Anglistik 12/ 2, 109-121. Prodromou, L. (2007) Is ELF a variety of English? English Today 90, 47-53. Rajagopalan, K. (2005) Non-native speaker teachers of English and their anxieties: Ingredients for an experiment in action research. In E. Llurda (ed.), 283-303. Robinson, A. (2002) Introduction. In F. Ilmberger and A. Robinson (eds), 9-11. Rubdy, R. and Saraceni, M. (eds) (2006) English in the World. Global Rules, Global Roles. London; New York: Continuum. Samarin, W.J. (1987) Lingua franca. In U. Ammon (ed.) Sociolinguistics. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society 3.1. Berlin: de Gruyter, 371-374. Seidlhofer, B. (2001) Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11, 133-158. Seidlhofer, B. (2006) English as a lingua franca in the expanding circle: What it isn’t. In R. Rubdy and M. Saraceni (eds), 40-50. Seidlhofer, B. (2007) Common property: English as a lingua franca in Europe. In: J. Cummins and C. Davison (eds) International Handbook of English Language Teaching. Part I (pp. 137-153). New York: Springer. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2003) Linguistic diversity and biodiversity: The threat from killer languages. In C. Mair (ed.), 31-52. van Els, T.J.M. (2000) The European Union, its institutions and its languages - Some language political observations. Paper of the final public lecture given at the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. Waswo, R. (2002) Europe: from ancient marginalization to modern globalization. In F. Ilmberger and A. Robinson (eds), 31-47. Wilkinson, R. (2008) English-taught study courses: principles and practice. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.) (2008b), 169-182. <?page no="29"?> Section 1 Political and Sociocultural Dimensions The aims of section 1 are to explore some of the social and political facets of the concept of globalisation and apply it to the globalisation of English. South Africa and India, two countries in which competence in English is - more than ever - a must to participate in social and especially in economic life, serve as the basis for discussing the relevance of English language proficiency in these multilingual societies on an individual as well as on a general level. Taking South Africa as its case study, the paper of Janina Brutt-Griffler highlights the importance of sociolinguistic variables such as gender, class, ethnicity, and rural versus urban space in understanding the political economy of English. It argues for the need to move beyond surface level center versus periphery analysis and the reductionist views of political economy and linguistics that emerge out of the school of linguistic imperialism and language rights advocacy. It puts forward the notion of the neocontainment policy, one not so much concerned with entirely preventing access to English, but with limiting the ultimate degree of linguistic proficiency attained by socioeconomically disadvantaged speakers. In his paper, Mahendra K. Verma addresses the issues which have arisen in the last few decades from globalisation in India. It focuses on the conflict and tension between the economic and political advantages of the increasing popularity of English in education, commerce, and Information Technology (IT), and the ensuing impediments in the growth and development of Indian languages. The contribution examines how the knowledge-driven economy - in which English has become the right enterprise to invest ‘capital’ in - has affected society. Verma also discusses the question of whether English has reinforced the creation of a socio-economic divide in communities in India and other south Asian countries. <?page no="31"?> Janina Brutt-Griffler “Who do you think you are, where do you think you are? ”: Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa Introduction: the context of English language practice 1 In a white suburban enclave of Johannesburg, South Africa, sometime this weekend a middle-aged woman will be reading to her four-year old grandson in English as she does every weekend. In the specific circumstances of this seemingly unremarkable event lies a window into the political economy of World English. The woman herself is not of European descent, and she lives not in the house it is her occupation to keep clean, but behind it in the almost invisible servant’s quarters, a one-room shack. Mrs. L comes from a rural area in the impoverished Limpopo Province, part of the stream of migrants over the last century who have flocked to urban areas throughout the world in the desperate search for livable conditions. Mrs. L’s grandson, Thato, lives in Alexandra township - one square mile with something on the order of half a million residents, the vast majority of them unemployed. Thato’s mother has a job - one that employs her at odd shifts seven days a week, although it does not pay her enough for her to move out of Alexandra. Mrs. L helps out her daughter - a single mother - by taking care of Thato on weekends. What makes Mrs. L’s reading to her grandson all the more remarkable is that her proficiency in English is limited - a typical circumstance for someone employed in her capacity. The literacy event (see Appendix) takes place in a combination of Sepedi (the language she knows best) and English - and this might be the most surprising description. It amounts to an English lesson, as she goes over Sepedi words and their English equivalents, or reads to her grandson in whole sentences that neither entirely understands. Though she will never make a penny from it, Mrs. L is thus a practitioner in the field of ELT - to be sure one confined to what will be for her perpetual voicelessness. Yet, however disempowered we may view her as being, she and the millions like her are actively determining the future of World English. For some, the brief description I have given might be clear evidence of the existence of linguistic imperialism - the growth of World English as the fulfillment of an Anglo-American ideological agenda. Mrs. L’s motivation involves an understanding of the political economy of World English that theorists of linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992) for the most part choose to ignore, the socioeconomic privilege that attaches to a knowledge of English. <?page no="32"?> Janina Brutt-Griffler 28 It is a case of linguistic exclusion that has constrained her all her life - leaving her a bleak set of employment alternatives - but something that at least, she believes, does not need to yoke in her grandson. Is she a victim of ideological hegemony, as linguistic imperialism’s advocates like to explain away any understanding that differs from their own? Or does she have real insight into the political economy of World English that they lack? We hear much about the ELT industry and who profits from it; we hear much less about the political economy of World English that contextualizes the motivations of Mrs. L and millions like her. Language as a social practice: language rights and linguistic exclusionism Linguistic exclusionism is one of the most powerful economic forces in the world today, one that linguists and language educators cannot afford to ignore. To be sure, there is much discussion of the power of language, but it has yet to be recognized explicitly that the power does not lie in the language but in the exclusion. It is as though by virtue of being linguists that language rights advocates perceive that they owe their first loyalty to languages rather than their speakers. It is, to be sure, somewhat ironic that those who champion the study of language and power can be so silent on the economic privileges that a knowledge of it bestows. It is, at the least, a contradictory line of argumentation to say that languages accrue power but that this power would be of no avail to its speakers. The language rights movement has been out of step in another respect. While it essentializes and privileges ethnicity, nationality, and culture, it is almost silent on competing social experiences such as class and gender that have increasingly occupied scholarly attention in the social sciences (see Mazrui, 2004). Mrs. L, a female domestic worker, experiences both, and she is not alone in viewing her own personal intervention into the realm of language policy as more centrally gendered and classed than ethnicallymotivated. A young woman who lives in the townships of the Cape flats, the still erect monument to apartheid separated from the wealthy city and suburbs of Cape Town by a mountain and a virtually impenetrable economic wall, describes her motivation to learn English in gender and class terms. She says without English, “I would stay at home, do everything around the township. You go to school there, you don’t finish school, you get pregnant sometimes, you have to stay and help your mother, or you work as a domestic worker - your parents will ask you to go find a job, if you don’t know English, so you work as a domestic worker”. Rather than being confined to such a life, Pamela has struggled to learn English at the high level of proficiency required to work outside a township - and today she works in Cape Town, as a waitress - though she still lives in the townships. She has also finished three years toward a college degree. <?page no="33"?> Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa 29 Mrs. L and Pamela embody the political economy of World English. Both see exclusion from high proficiency English as a prime determinant of lack of access to wealth in the world they inhabit. They have decided to base their quest for a better world on ending the pernicious effects of linguistic privilege that have been so central to the colonial and neocolonial projects - something which it is at least in their power to do. They do so in a nation, South Africa, that has been held up as a model of progressive language policy - with its eleven official languages. In fact, language policy there has accomplished all that language rights advocates have asked of it. And yet language policy has made no practical inroads on the political economy of World English (cf. Tollefson, 2004). What do the experiences of Mrs. L and Pamela say about the claim made by language rights advocates that English should not be held up as a potential economic solution to the less affluent? Stanley Ridge (2002) has pointed out that proponents of linguistic imperialism and its associated school that calls itself language rights have succeeded in encasing World English in the “hermeneutics of suspicion” - its alleged culpability in language death, linguicism and linguistic imperialism. Worse still, in my view, they have done so by propagating all too successfully crudely reductionist views of both political economy - and more surprisingly - linguistics. For instance, leading language rights advocate Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (2004) claims that poverty reduces to something called ‘capability deprivation’. The poor do not have the same choices as the rich. Ignoring the abundant literature on colonialism and neocolonialism, the political economy of migration in Asia and Africa, relations of dependency or world systems, and theories of development, she tells us: “today’s consensus from economic, social and psychological studies state unanimously that [here she quotes Misra and Mohanty] ‘poverty is no longer to be viewed simply in terms of generating economic growth; expansion of human capabilities can be viewed as a more basic objective of development’” (p. 130). Mrs. L, then, is poor, because her ‘human capabilities’ are not those of someone who is not poor, a conclusion quite insulting toward people like Mrs. L. It reminds one of ageold explanations of how the well to do and less affluent develop in society, and what keeps them in such positions - very conservative views that one hardly expects the self-described radicals like those found in the language rights camp to promote. There is, of course, a not so subtle irony that a position that claims to base itself on the results of the system of imperialism should be so concerned with its linguistic and cultural results and so very blind to the economic realities with which we are left. Skutnabb-Kangas (2004) tells us at the same time, that there is a remarkably simple solution to this narrowly conceived problem. She prescribes as the key to ending poverty the old colonial formula of mother tongue education, which she asserts assure “the best possible development of these ‘cognitive and intellectual functions’ which enhance children’s ‘human capabilities’” (p. 130). <?page no="34"?> Janina Brutt-Griffler 30 I quote her discussion of political economy to demonstrate exactly what is involved if we as linguists and applied linguists take our political economy from the linguistic imperialism camp. It is, of course, alarming that any scholar would so distort the picture of the academic enterprise as to assert the existence of consensus and unanimity on any question, let alone one so crucial as the causes and remedies of poverty. As I argue elsewhere, when the proponents of a theoretical model like linguistic imperialism are in retreat because that model does not fit the facts, they fall into a mass of contradictions (Brutt-Griffler, 2004). Even if we accepted Skutnabb-Kangas’s (2004) contention that social science has reached a consensus that poverty should be defined as ‘capability deprivation’ (p. 130), what would we logically conclude? According to her own analysis, there exist languages of power that give differential access to resources, of which English is the most powerful (particularly in nations like India - of which she writes - and also South Africa). Nothing could be clearer than that one of the central capabilities the poor are deprived of is that of speaking the language of power. And yet Skutnabb-Kangas argues the reverse, that it is deprivation of their mother tongue that leads such people as Mrs. L straight down the road of poverty, because it prevents (quoting Skutnabb-Kangas again) “the best possible development of [the] ‘cognitive and intellectual functions’ which enhance children’s ‘human capabilities’” (p. 130). Theoretical retreat produces all manner of contradictions. While she agrees that “[m]any parents in parts of Asia and Africa want to send their children to English-medium schools” (p. 130), she argues that language policy, guided by language rights, should provide English to them only as an additional language, because, in her opinion, those parents are simply wrong. Their belief that a knowledge of English amounts to “a way out of poverty and […] a prerequisite for upward mobility” constitutes false explanations which it is up to us to “overcome” (p. 130). Such an argument shows something of a disdain for the rights of the poor, in my view. One would think that Skutnabb-Kangas, who argues purely from the basis of a human rights perspective, rather than one of outcomes, would have to come down on the side of the parent’s right to choose. But, on the contrary, she tells us that this right is to be overridden because, in her opinion, it would lead to bad outcomes for the disempowered. The whole point of rights is to protect people, even the less affluent, from such paternalistic intervention. Sociological considerations in language policy and practice: the case of the neocontainment policy Linguistic imperialism/ language rights has succeeded in influencing how we conceive questions of the relation of language and political economy in other respects. For example, it has become common to refer to languages of power, as well as language rights, as I do above. Such a mode of expression, how- <?page no="35"?> Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa 31 ever, takes attention away from a fundamental point - languages do not have either power or rights, their speakers do. Languages can serve or hinder the purposes of their speakers, but on their own they are not social agents. When proponents of linguistic imperialism insist that power is not evenly distributed among different languages, they really mean that is not evenly distributed among the speakers of those languages. Rather than languages of power, what we really observe are languages of the powerful. The difference is crucial, because the term languages of the powerful reminds us of the power of linguistic exclusionism in the world today. Brutt-Griffler (2002) exposes the myth that has been widely disseminated by the school of linguistic imperialism that the language policy goal of the British empire had been to spread English for purposes of an ideological agenda. In fact, the basis of colonial language policy was quite different. It involved the limitation of the spread of English that inevitably accompanied British political and economic rule within the narrow bounds of the indigenous elite of African and Asian colonies necessary for the functioning of colonialism. Far from encouraging the spread of English, British colonial policy was designed to prevent it. Toward this end, colonial education was based on the use of non-English linguistic mediums - which were neither necessarily indigenous nor mother tongues. The purpose was clear and unambiguous - to educate the masses of colonized Africa and Asia for a life of manual labor - to produce the raw materials on which metropolitan European industry depended. Specifically, it was to ensure that middle class branches of employment, which necessarily required a knowledge of English, were beyond the grasp of the vast majority of the population. Language policy was directed toward the end of keeping the non-English speaking majority separate from the English-speaking elite by a system of linguistic exclusionism. I call this colonial language policy agenda the containment policy. The end of colonialism did not displace English from the newly emergent postcolonial societies of the former British empire. On the contrary, it is more entrenched now than ever, since the realities of these mainly multilingual nations do not allow the replacement of English as national lingua francas as well as the world language. In part, this represents the legacy of something that Ali Mazrui and Alamin Mazrui (1998) and Alamin Mazrui (2004) have stressed, that English represented the language of the anticolonial movement. Moreover, to the extent that English has spread beyond the confines of the elite in Africa and Asia, it has been a postcolonial phenomenon. Postcolonialism in language policy has been attached to the extension of access to English beyond the carefully demarcated limits to which it was kept under colonialism. Here is where the conceptual lens through which we view postcolonial language policy matters so greatly. A focus on languages and ethnicities makes it appear that there is a struggle between the main English-speaking nations and the non-English-speaking postcolonial nations, in which English is sometimes described as an alien language. A focus on languages of the pow- <?page no="36"?> Janina Brutt-Griffler 32 erful reminds us of the class realities that belie such notions - that it is just as convenient a circumstance to maintain English as a class privilege now as it was under colonialism. It emphasizes that limiting access to English serves the same class interests now as it did then. Taking class as the unit of analysis allows us to examine the internal workings of the political economy of World English, getting beyond the surface level of center versus periphery. While the postcolonial in language policy in Africa and Asia is measured by the extent to which English becomes widely available to those who were excluded from it under colonialism, neocolonialism in language policy attempts, under whatever pretext or justification, to preserve the colonial linguistic dispensation of English as the language of the privileged and the powerful. I call this the neocontainment policy, one not so much concerned with entirely preventing access to English, but with the question of the ultimate degree of proficiency that speakers attain. The insistence that nonmother tongue English speakers learn the language as what is euphemistically called an “additional language” represents a central pillar of neocolonialism in language policy, of the neocontainment policy as it is carried out in nations like South Africa. The case of Pamela, the young woman from the townships outside Cape Town, illustrates this point. In South Africa, the neocontainment policy of limiting access to high-level English proficiency is carried out in explicitly class terms. Public education in South Africa, though state supported, is nevertheless fee-based. The majority of South Africans are kept out of the English-medium schools because they simply cannot afford the extremely high fees that they charge. In the township and rural schools that they can afford, English is offered as an “additional language”. It is important to note that this policy in no way violates the “language rights” of the children excluded from the English-medium schools. On the contrary, the policy achieves everything that language rights advocates like Skutnabb-Kangas (2004) recommend. The constitution recognizes all the (eleven) major languages of the country as official, and English is offered to its non-mother tongue speakers as the additional language that is supposed to afford them the best environment for “human development”. Like most rights-based approaches, this one masks oppressive class-based realities. Pamela describes how this policy - so liberal in theory - operates in practice. First of all, in contrast to those excluded from English-medium schools, the few privileged township residents who go to these schools, she says, “speak English fluently”. She comments, “[y]ou watch the TV and you see this [black] child [who speaks English fluently], and you think, how come I can’t speak like that, but you think I did not have the opportunity, but you know that you want to be like that child, and you want to know, to speak, to understand like that child”. She puts it flatly, “those are people who are very lucky”. She goes on to explain that, although English is offered as a subject in the township schools, “those who went to the township schools will say, I can’t speak English […]. They are scared. Children who speak English flu- <?page no="37"?> Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa 33 ently laugh at children who can’t speak [English]. […] Those who went to multiracial schools, the ones that really speak the language, they speak loudly, they make sure everyone hears them. You want to do the same, but you can’t, because your parents don’t have the money to send you to those schools.” The low level of proficiency attained in township schools, as Pamela explains in giving her motivation for raising her proficiency, is just enough to gain them positions as domestic workers, or in other capacities at the bottom of South Africa’s socioeconomic structure. It is enough to make them useful to potential employers, but not enough to be really useful to them. To those who attend the English-medium schools, a world of opportunity opens up. To those who do not, a world of opportunity is closed off. This is a phenomenon that Guadelupe Valdes (2004) calls linguistic ghettoization - an idea I would like to return to subsequently. To escape the stark reality of this linguistic exclusionism and its class consequences, language rights advocates have created an equation between the spread of English and the erosion and disappearance of mother tongues - a myth that Mufwene (2002) systematically and persuasively debunks. In response to my article raising the class implications of access to English, Skutnabb-Kangas (2004) said that my view “amount[s] to wanting to grant access to English AT THE COST of mother tongues” (p. 130). This is exactly the “hermeneutics of suspicion” that Ridge (2002) referred to as accompanying any positive assessment of the role of English in people’s lives. Linguistics and language rights: the issue of presentation Having discussed the reductionist political economy of the linguistic imperialism/ language rights perspective, I now want to turn to the reductionist linguistics that language rights relies on. For the notion that English-medium education deprives young people of their mother tongues relies on a particular view of the nature of bilingualism - that its normative condition is a first language, a mother tongue, and a second language, an additional language. Each represents a competing and separate system in what amounts to a zero sum game. How else can we explain the notion that non-mother tongue education constitutes a threat to the mother tongue, that, as Skutnabb-Kangas (2004) puts it, “access to English” when it is not as an additional language is “AT THE COST of mother tongues” (p. 130). Although this type of standpoint is the baseline for language rights literature, the available evidence shows that bilinguals do not use language the way monolinguals do. They refuse to hold their two (or more) languages as distinct, disconnected systems. They even transform the languages they speak in unexpected ways, with still less anticipated results. In other words, the notion that the attainment of high level proficiency in another language constitutes a threat to the mother tongue is problematic (see Brutt-Griffler and Varghese, 2004). <?page no="38"?> Janina Brutt-Griffler 34 There is another set of assumptions at work at the same time about the social context of bilingualism. A basic flaw of much of the language rights literature is that it takes place in what amounts to two-dimensional linguistic space of fixed language boundaries in ethnically homogenous communities, rather than the three-dimensional space of postcolonial societies. One of the legacies of colonialism that seems to be all but ignored by theory is the multilingual nature of postcolonial societies, or of the postcolonial political economies that cross national boundaries along with the migrants who perpetually pass through them. This is not only true for the reason that we commonly hear about - that colonial boundaries were in many cases arbitrarily drawn, grouping together linguistically and ethnically disparate groups. This was true also because colonial labor systems created a political economy of migration. Even so seemingly simple a principle as mother tongue medium education is complicated by this circumstance. It leads to the ironic phenomenon in many parts of Africa, so far entirely ignored by the language rights movement, that “mother tongues” as they are used in schools are less and less the home languages of the students educated through them. This is clear evidence of a politically, rather than educationally motivated policy. It is neocolonialism in language, replicating to the letter the colonial language policy of the British. One would expect that if the language rights advocates associated with the school of linguistic imperialism were not in essential agreement with this policy, they would explicitly criticize so egregious a violation of the right to be educated in one’s home language. To be sure, such a course would require the admission that, not English, but the pan-ethnic argots represent the real threat to the indigenous languages they like to call mother tongues. Language rights advocates want us to focus on one set of issues to the exclusion of others, though they never justify why we as social scientists should privilege the standpoint of ethnicity over competing social divisions, such as class, gender, and one that almost no one talks about, despite its importance for the vast majority of the world - that between rural and urban. As ethnic identities inevitably begin to break down in the multiethnic milieus of cities, it falls to rural populations to become the custodians of ethnicities, and the languages that are held to be central to their preservation. These are also the social spaces where mother tongue education is most feasible - and where the less affluent are most oppressed. It cannot be lost on the observer that limiting access to other languages, especially a lingua franca and world language like English, can help keep people in rural areas, from which their desperate poverty perpetually induces them to flee. When they arrive in urban areas, they may find themselves linguistically constrained, exactly as Mrs. L. Deprivation of a knowledge of English can be even more devastating on those from the rural areas Samir Amin so accurately describes as Fourth World. When they come to cities - as they must, given the political economy of migration they are locked into - any inability to function in the multilin- <?page no="39"?> Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa 35 gual environments they encounter marks their rural origin. Here is the reason that urban ethnographies reveal a prevalent desire among Black South Africans to, in the words of Patrick, a man in his thirties from a township near Cape Town, “lose their mother tongues” - the telltale sign of their socalled “ethnic identity”. It is not only that persons from rural areas are looked down on, as they have been throughout history and across cultures. Worse still, their rural origin, exacerbated by any lack of multicompetence in a multilingual society, leaves them to take their place at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. There is no question of their taking up residence in the suburbs peopled by speakers of the language of the privileged - unless, as Mrs. L, it is as domestic labor whose poverty and social marginalization becomes a convenience to the well to do. Rather, the refugees from the desperate poverty of the rural regions of the world fill the often-illegal squatter camps at the edge of every large city and even small town. “Who do you think you are, where do you think you are? ”: The geography of socioeconomic class and language use in South Africa and its implications The connection between townships and language is very close. Pamela describes the linguistic terrain of South Africa’s urban geography from the standpoint of a township resident: “in the townships no one speaks English, everyone speaks Xhosa”. But in the suburbs, “everyone speaks English”. She comments, in the townships, “if you speak English, everyone will look at you, like, hey what’s wrong with you, who do you think you are, where do you think you are”. Language rights activists might think they discern something hopeful from this description - that township residents are resisting English encroachment. They should rather see it as a warning sign. As Widdowson (2003: 57) remarks, “[t]he fate of languages is a function of socio-economic and political circumstances”. This description of township language use is evidence of the existence of linguistic ghettoization as a concomitant of economic ghettoization. The less affluent of the world do not so much live in ethnically circumscribed social spaces. As in the townships of South Africa, they live in class demarcated social spaces, the economic and linguistic ghettoes called townships in South Africa, favelas in Brazil, shanty towns, migrant labor camps, and so forth. Townships were set up to house the working class. They are not ethnically-based, or only ethnically-based as a function of class. Just as they are economic ghettoes, so too do they become linguistic ghettoes - where residents find themselves excluded from access to the language of the powerful and the privileged. Their language use constitutes the marker of their class status. “Who do you think you are, where do you think you are? ” The class content of that message is unmistakable, no matter how accustomed we may be to dividing the world in purely ethnic terms. Township residents, <?page no="40"?> Janina Brutt-Griffler 36 inhabiting class demarcated social space, will opt for class-based language policy struggles rather than those, like language rights, constructed on an ethnic basis. It is no accident that the student uprising in the townships of South Africa in the mid-1970s that marked the beginning of the end of apartheid was prompted by the demand for access to English. Nor should we be so naïve as to believe that the struggle against linguistic exclusionism is a thing of the past. We should not be surprised that Patrick reports that Xhosa parents are far more concerned that their children receive English-medium instruction, while not feeling equal concern for them to learn Xhosa literacy. Their preference illustrates an important point raised by Stanley Ridge (2002) in his AILA plenary, that “denying people proper access to the language they perceive as offering them major advantages leaves them little room to discover the value and uses of their mother tongue”. Conversely, those who have attained high level proficiency in English express the determination to maintain their mother tongues. The more we attempt to use the poverty of the less affluent against them to attempt to confine them to their mother tongues - as does South Africa’s blatantly class-based education policy - the more they will turn their efforts to acquiring English. The more economic ghettoization coincides with linguistic ghettoization, the more the struggle against the former will manifest itself as a struggle against the latter. Township residents know that high proficiency English constitutes a gatekeeper to middle class employment. They rightly do not want to be barred from such categories of employment - so they learn English. This is true of a young South African named James from a rural area, who practices English every chance he can. James, a high school aged teenager from the Western Cape, where his father owned a farm until he recently lost it. James was forced to drop out of school to find a job to help support his parents and sister. Though he comes from a poor family, he does not see that as an adequate reason that he should not realize his dream of becoming an engineer. Denying access to high proficiency English has a class result that is all too often rather conveniently ignored - it debars the vast majority of the population from the pool of applicants that fill the middle class jobs that require fluent English. It thereby provides an economic incentive for maintaining linguistic exclusionism by limiting power and privilege to the already wealthy together with the small number of those from other classes who manage somehow to gain possession of a knowledge of English. It shows high proficiency English is today as “convertible into” money, in the words of a Hong Kong colonial administrator, as it was a century ago when he put the matter so starkly (Brutt-Griffler, 2002: 72). And in the meantime language rights advocates will ignore the fact that those outside the fraternity of privilege must live in townships, favelas, shantytowns, and migrant labor camps, and be confined to domestic, manual, and farm labor. The act of calling this condition linguistic imperialism and the deprivation of language rights does nothing to change it. More damaging still to the cause they espouse, the construction of South African language policy along the enlight- <?page no="41"?> Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa 37 ened lines called for by proponents of language rights has left the political economy of World English entirely in tact, and serves to remind us that language rights constructed on the basis of the theory of linguistic imperialism serves neocolonialist language policy ends. So should we be surprised that given such a choice hundreds of millions of people around the world, like Pamela, Patrick, and James, are drawn so irresistibly to English? Should we be surprised that alongside the paid army of ELT we find the volunteer irregulars made up of the Mrs. Ls? Mrs. L knows the socioeconomic geography of South Africa firsthand, the economic ghettoes of the townships like Alexandra where her grandson lives, and the middle class suburbs where the well to do dwell. She understands the political economy of World English, the language of the privileged, like the people whose house she cleans for a few dollars a week. She knows that to escape the ghetto fluent English is a practical necessity for Thato. And so once again this weekend, Mrs. L will spend her day off reading to her grandson in English. Note 1 The findings presented are taken from a larger ethnographic study that focuses on language policy in Southern Africa partially supported by a faculty research grant from the University of Alabama awarded in 2002. I wish to thank the participants and express my appreciation to Pinky Makoe, of the University of Johannesburg, for her assistance in the data collection process. References Brutt-Griffler, J. (2004) The sound of retreat: the linguistic imperialist camp in disarray. The Journal of Language, Identity and Education 3 (2), 134-140. Brutt-Griffler, J. and Varghese, M. (2004) (eds) Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Press. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English. A Study of its Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Press. Mazrui, A.A. and Mazrui, A.M. (1998) The Power of Babel: Language & Governance in the African Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mazrui, A. (2004) English in Africa: After the Cold War. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Press. Mufwene, S. (2002) Colonisation, globalisation, and the future of languages in the twenty-first century. Online document: http: / / www.unesco.org/ most/ vl4n2mufwene.pdf (April 1, 04). Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ridge, S. (2002) English, Ideology and Need. Plenary at AILA. Applied Linguistics in the 21 st Century: opportunities and creativity. 13 th World Congress of Applied Linguistics. 16-21 December 2002, Singapore. <?page no="42"?> Janina Brutt-Griffler 38 Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2004) ”Do not cut my tongue, let me live and die with my language”. A comment on English and other languages in relation to linguistic human rights. The Journal of Language Identity and Education 3 (2), 127-134. Tollefson, J. (2004) Theory and action in language policy and planning. The Journal of Language Identity and Education 3 (2), 150-155. Valdes, G. (2004) Between support and marginalization: The development of academic language in linguistic minority children. In J. Brutt-Griffler and M. Varghese (eds) Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Press. Widdowson, H. (2003) Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Appendix Literacy event: Date: October 5 2002 Day: Saturday Afternoon Time: 15: 30 Place: suburban Johannesburg, South Africa Participants: Mrs. L and her grandson, Thato Description of Event Thato and Mrs. L are looking at books and magazines in her small home behind her employers’ house. Thato notices a children’s book about animals (“On the Farm” by Richards Powell and Steve Cox) and gives it to his grandmother, who pages through it. Thato and his grandmother are both holding the book although Thato lets go a couple of times to stare at the animal pictures in the book. The grandmother reads to Thato in English. Literacy event: Thato and his grandmother reading a book. Participants: Thato (T); Grandmother (G) 1. G: I spy with my little eye … horse. 2. T: Horse. 3. G: I spy with my little eye … sheep. 4. T: Sheep (looks at the sheep picture and laughs). 5. G: I spy with my little eye … pig. 6. T: Pig. 7. G: I spy with my little eye … cow. 8. T: Cow. ke kgome ye. (‘This one is a cow.’) 9. G: Ee kgomo ka sekgowa ke cow. (‘Yes in English it is a cow.’) 10. T: Kgome ge e lla e re moo! (‘When a cow cries it say moo.’) 11. G: Ee, o e bone kae kgome? (‘Yes where did you see a cow? ’) 12. T: Ko Alexander. (‘In Alexandra.’) 13. G: Go na le dikgomo Alexander? (‘Are there cows in Alexandra? ’) 14. T: Ee di gona tse dintshi (‘Yes, there are many.’) 15. They return to the book and Thato pulls it to look at the pictures again. Granny starts the reading. 16. G: I spy with my little eye … goat. 17. T: Goat. 18. G: I spy with my little eye … farmer. 19. T: Farmer. 20. G: I spy with my little eye … duck. 21. T: Duck. (struggles with pronunciation) 22. G: (repeats) D-u-c-k (emphasizing pronunciation) <?page no="43"?> Language Policy and the Political Economy of English in South Africa 39 23. T: (repeats) Duck (pronounces it better) 24. G: (granny says it one more time slowly) D-u-c-k. 25. T: (imitating his grandmother) D-uc-k. 26. G: Ee duck. (‘Yes, duck.’) 27. G: I spy with my little eye … tractor. 28. T: (shouts) Tractor! 29. G: I spy with my little eye … Kittens, Kitchens? (Sounding doubtful) 30. T: (makes sounds of boredom and starts losing concentration). 31. G: (still clarifying if she read and understood the word correctly) Kittens. 32. G: Ee, kittens. (‘Yes, kittens.’) 33. T: (laughs at his grandmother talking to herself) Ha, ha! 34. G: (she burst out laughing too) Ha, ha, ha! 35. TOGETHER: Ha, ha, ha! <?page no="45"?> Mahendra K. Verma English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? Introduction Globalisation is rapidly spreading throughout the world, and with it, the unstoppable advance of English, impacting on language use and language attitudes. Already, Macintyre (2004: 30) estimates, there are “some 37 million speakers of English as a second language, and perhaps up to 300 million who can use the language passably” in India. This paper will address the issues which have arisen in the last few decades from globalisation in India. It will focus on the conflict and tension between the economic and political advantages of English’s increasing popularity in education, commerce, and Information Technology (IT), and the ensuing impediments in the growth and development of Indian languages. It will examine how the knowledge-driven economy in which English has become the right enterprise to invest ‘capital’ in, for quick and secure returns in society and employment, has affected society, and will also determine if English has reinforced the creation of a socioeconomic divide in communities in India and other south Asian countries. Since 1853, the presence of English has been felt within India. Many have sought to escape India’s British past, such as the character Nirode in Desai’s novel Voices in the City (1965). Although Nirode believes his British past is dead, wishing to escape it, Afzal-Khan (1993: 35) argues that he is denying “the fact that the past is never quite ‘ended’, that on the contrary, it always encroaches on the present and shapes our identities in subtle ways”. She quotes Nirode’s unknowing admission: “They [his family] had outgrown it [Bengali] and brothers, sisters and mother now conversed and corresponded almost exclusively in English” (Afzal-Khan, 1993: 68). Today, a wide variety of speech acts are embraced in Indians’ speech repertoires: monolingual, bi-multilingual, bidialectal and the mixed code. But a striking picture is developing of overwhelming English use and Englishdominated mixed code, spurred by the onset of globalisation, among the aspiring urban bilingual elite (especially the youth). For the privileged elite, a small minority, English is the icing on the multilingual cake. As Macintyre (2004: 30) acknowledges: Globalisation and the unstoppable march of commercial English has made India’s vast and adaptable English-language reservoir highly lucrative [...] English has become the language of the aspirant Indian middle class, with increasing numbers of parents opting for private English language schools. <?page no="46"?> Mahendra K. Verma 42 English and the colonial past and present: Public and political perceptions In the last two decades of the 20 th century, India has liberalised the economy and embraced the philosophy of the free-market. An examination of the historical perspective can help us to understand the current language situation. Nearly 168 years ago, Lord Macaulay imposed English on the Indians in 1835 and succeeded in creating a small class of ‘Indians in blood and colour but English in taste and intellect’, and it is almost 56 years since India achieved its independence and enshrined English in the Indian Constitution as an associate national official language. The role of English has not diminished, it has accelerated, and its importance in the life of the nation in education, information, and industry has increased dramatically. In spite of the ideologicallydriven ‘Angrezii haTaao, Hindi biThaao’ (English out, Hindi in) movement supported by the powerful politically-charged voices opposing English and promoting Indian languages in particular Hindi area. Many ambitious and pragmatic parents make enormous efforts and financial sacrifices to enrol their children in private English-medium schools. Some of the well-known ones, such as the Woodstock School in the hill station of Mussoorie, are the legacy and lasting reminder of Macaulay. Within India, English increasingly presents itself to a large section of the population as a societal barrier promoted through education. Tully & Masani (1988: 95f.) quote the Chairman of the Central Government’s Board of Secondary Education, Father Kunankal, who believes that “class and language barriers converge to ensure that students of the elite and expensive, privately run, English-medium schools enjoy far greater opportunities in life”. He continues: I consider India a divided country, and a very potent instrument for division is education. It leads on to a better college, to better jobs, economic status, house and all that goes with it. It’s like a conveyor belt; once you get on, you’re on. There is a very strong vested interest that is keen on preserving this, because it is to their advantage not to allow too many people to get onto this conveyor. There is a lot of hope and effort also from others who are not on the conveyor belt to get on to it. That is why there is a tremendous proliferation of so-called English-medium schools. The very announcement that ‘this is an English-medium school’ attracts people. No matter what the quality or the competence of the teacher; it sells. (my italics) George Fernandes, a well-established socialist politician and the ex-Defence Minister of India, also acknowledges the power of English. Commenting on the relics of the British Raj, he argues: This establishment has the upper castes of India. It has the money-bags of India too, the industrialists who have international linkages. This establishment also has the English-knowing elite in India. So you have caste, you have money, and you have English, a language of exploitation in India, a language which is used to instil a feeling of inferiority in the overwhelming mass of people, making them totally <?page no="47"?> English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? 43 irrelevant to the whole democratic process. This threesome is the bane of our national situation today (Tully & Masani, 1988: 47f.). English, Information Technology and the digital divide Both Father Kunankal’s and Fernandes’ perception of modern India is of a divided nation, in which the new elite, upper privileged class/ caste with English and ‘money bags’ constitute the ‘core’ circle, while the large population outside the core circle has neither English nor money. Access to modern communication technology via English remains an aspiration for individuals on the periphery. Since the end of the Second World War and the decolonisation of the British Commonwealth, America and the UK have had their ‘second coming’ in developing and undeveloped countries through the promotion of English and economic packages. This may well have inspired Quirk (1985: 1) to argue that “English is the language on which the sun does not set, whose users never sleep”. Kaplan (1993: 155) continues this argument: The economic domination of the United States through the middle years of the century served also to expand the use of English into other domains; […] Not only is the bulk of the material stored in the world’s great information storage and retrieval networks in English, but the access dictionaries are based on an English sociology of knowledge. In the 21 st century, the ongoing development of the Internet and the software tools for working with Web technologies could serve as a means of expanding language-learning opportunities. In the economically developed and powerful nations of the world, the World Wide Web has become an established reality in classrooms. It is used for a variety of computer-mediated communication forms, e.g. e-mail, chat, bulletin boards, instant messaging, a variety of virtual environments, and conferencing. But in rural India and for the rural population, who are migrating to urban areas in large numbers, seeking a higher standard of living, the picture is quite different. Instead, the overwhelming use and associated power of English within digital communication has led to the creation of a divide. Walia (2003) refers to the “anglophonic tide” spreading across India courtesy of “the IT-call centre-BPO [Business Process Outsourcing] boom” which has resulted in “’speak English’ centres [...] mushrooming all over, from New Delhi to Nellore, arming aspirants for a wired, electronic India”. But in education, the increasing use of IT in the developed countries raises concerns about access and equity for the aspirant youths in countries outside this privileged core circle, caught on the wrong side of the digital divide. Warschauer (2000) indicates that only a very small percentage of the world’s population (5% by a 1999 estimate) have access to the Internet, emphasising the world-wide divisions between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The ‘have-nots’ include countries from the African continent as well as countries such as Bangladesh, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Ma- <?page no="48"?> Mahendra K. Verma 44 laysia, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Venezuela, which cannot provide online access in the majority of classrooms. Cummins’ (2000: 538) critique of the digital divide quotes Delpit’s (1988) belief that “IT comes with its own codes of power”. Cummins adds that these codes “make no claim to neutrality”: The English language and its speakers are privileged [...] We work in global and domestic contexts where the unequal distribution of power, in the form of access to both material and symbolic resources, is painfully evident and is increasing rather than decreasing. To assume a posture of innocence in relation to the social contexts in which we teach is naive at best. Our commitment is not only to the individual student who sits in front of us but also to the social fabric into which our individual realities are woven. In South Asia, in particular in India, English has clearly become a cherished and valued commodity. The association and partnership between English and IT promoted by native owners of English is making rapid inroads into the core of urban Indian society, more precisely the upwardly mobile affluents. Bourdieu (quoted in Watts, 1999: 41f.) makes reference to “three different kinds of capital”: Material capital (involving the economy and the production of material goods), cultural capital (involving different forms of knowledge, acquired abilities, competence and skills) and symbolic capital (involving social status, honour, fame, respect, prestige, etc.). Each of these ‘capitals’ differ and function in different ‘market places’ but English language as a product contains all the qualities and characteristics of Bourdieu’s capitals, rapidly gaining ground in urban Indian society. Learning a language and/ or the IT skill amounts to investing time, money and effort (capital), and acquisition of the highly valued English in the present day climate and culture of globalisation results in the enrichment and enhancement of human capital, which is “generally understood to consist of the individual’s capabilities, knowledge, skills and experience” (Dess & Picken, 1999: 8). Pushkarna (2003) attributes this attraction towards English as a commodity to the social prestige and economic value it has become associated with due to globalisation. Krishnaswamy & Burde (1998: 1) identify the advantages to be gained from English: The ‘worship’ of English is expected to bring the devotee the wealth of this world in the ihaloka, the here and now - a promising career, a prosperous bride (groom), a coveted green card and a Non-Resident Indian status with all its ‘perks’. (my italics) Even the state governments have begun to capitalise on the English commodity. The advantages of IT and English are being recognised by state governments in India; many of whom are competing against one another by investing money in creating purpose built ‘Cyber Cities’. Bangalore and Hyderabad have already attracted many multinationals to transfer their businesses into the hands of the English-medium young educated IT profes- <?page no="49"?> English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? 45 sionals. Even American and European companies have lured these skilled people to their own countries by offering better pay packages. The leaders of industry and commerce are emphasizing the importance of English in an India which is on the verge of becoming the global service capital for knowledge-based services. The changing attitude of many state governments towards English in India is reflected in their realisation of the disadvantages students suffered due to their ill-considered anti-English policies in the early days of independence. The new pro-English policy has led to the re-introduction of English in the curriculum by the governments of Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan and West Bengal. For example, as Pushkarna (2003) notes: In a fit of Bengali chauvinism, the Left government in West Bengal abolished English in government run primary schools in 1981. Though it did a volte-face three years ago and decided to teach English from class two, by then, even teachers needed to be taught the language […] The aim: to ensure that Bengalis can join the Internet bandwagon. Ganguly & Nagar (2003) also report changing attitudes toward English in West Bengal. There, they argue, business houses and leaders of commerce and industry felt that the unemployed youth had become unemployable because “they were poor in English”. Measures employed to address this issue include the formation of associations such as the English Language Lovers’ Association (ELLA), formed in 1995 by a retired technologist with “a new goal in life - to improve the Bengali’s English”. As Ganguly and Nagar note, such organisations have gained support, especially within the commercial world as this is the main environment in which English truly prospers and rewards its speakers. The government of the state of Rajasthan has also acknowledged the importance of English as an International Language and introduced English as a compulsory subject from class three. Consideration is currently being given to the introduction of English in nursery classes too. In the Punjab, the Akali Dal government (which once fought for the supremacy of Panjabi) has introduced English from the primary level, claiming that this would extend English language learning opportunities to rural children (Pushkaran, 2003). English for sale: The British Council and local perceptions But despite this new enthusiasm for English among the public, industrialists, and government, the activities of foreign agencies promoting English are not always universally welcome in South Asia. The rejuvenated British Council’s interest in English in Bangladesh has not had overwhelming support. This is for example illustrated by Alam’s observations of the role played by the proponents of English in Bangladesh, which has led some people to label the British Council Library as “the New East India Company” (Alam 2003). Islam (2003: 11) says that the British Council “does not need us, who are from mid- <?page no="50"?> Mahendra K. Verma 46 dle class background with sub-altern culture, with pockets that are not puffed up”. The reality of globalization has raised the question of affordability and accessibility of the commodity English. As Li & Hart (1996: 9) note, there is an increasing division between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and despite access to the English language, a large portion of ESL learners in developing countries are still unable to access the Web due to scarcity of suitably equipped computers or the expense of Internet communications. Forecasting the changing status of languages in 2050, Graddol (1997: 59) includes more languages alongside English in the top layer of the world language hierarchy. But it is hard to imagine any language superseding English in the global race under the conditions created by its powerful owners, both the native and non-native elite. The reality is that irrespective of the growing numbers of Hindi learners in India and around the world, this language or any other would find it incredibly difficult to acquire the global power and status of English. Graddol is right in thinking that “sheer numbers of native speakers do not in themselves explain the privileged position of some languages”. Neither Spanish, Mandarin nor Hindi can claim to be the lingua franca of the new global village, in which English continues to dominate in the fields of IT, international academic journals, commerce and industry. Mallikajurn (2003: 42) attributes this to the fast-pace dominance of English: As of today the Indian languages’ technology has failed to catch up with the fast developing technology. We do not have any robust software that can help the use of Indian languages for administrative purposes or governance. Hence, these Indian languages that had made great strides in their use in administration are unfortunately giving place again to the increased use of English. English or mother tongue as medium of instruction? It is not just the presence of English, but the claim of English as a superior medium of instruction, displacing the natural contender - the mother tongue, that has generated a lot of debate in the subcontinent. The issue of English as the medium of instruction versus English as a subject in the curriculum has had pedagogical, ideological, and economic repercussions in South Asia. The situation in Bangladesh, for example, is a typical illustration of the dilemma of the parents of masses of children in education in South Asia. This dilemma is well illustrated by an artist in a Bangladeshi newspaper. A picture depicts a child as the ‘nation builder of tomorrow’ who is drinking from two cups, one entitled ‘English’, the other ‘Bangla’ to come to the most important decision of her life. “English medium or Bangla medium ... which tastes better? ”. The issue of the Mother Tongue versus English medium has been hotly debated across the Indian subcontinent ever since decolonisation. Not so long ago, as a result of the continual decline in demand for places in Hindimedium Delhi Municipal schools, the authorities were compelled to introduce English medium into the curriculum. The teaching of English in Indian <?page no="51"?> English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? 47 primary schools has also increased in recent years and there has been a phenomenally rapid growth in the number of English-medium private schools. Gupta’s (1995: 206) study of 78 pupils aged 15-17 years identifies the reasons for this popularity of English-medium schools: One of the reasons why there is a great rush for seats in the English medium schools is the poor quality of English teaching in the mother tongue medium schools. There is a strong belief that unless English is the medium of instruction, it can never be learnt adequately. For some there is no access to either English medium teaching or British Council teaching at all, even in urban areas. Ramanathan’s (1999: 228) research into the educational plight of the ‘Dalits’ and other ‘backward’ classes (traditionally the excluded castes) in India explains why: These are the students most in need of English, yet English seems farthest from them. Their economically disadvantaged status does not permit them to enrol in language classes in the city, nor does it afford them access to other realia available to learners in Circle 1: the Internet, newspapers, TV shows in English, and English movies. The drive for a place in an English-medium school is pushing mother tongue medium schools aside. South Asian Voice (2000) notes the disappearing socioeconomic attraction for investment in Indian languages and in non-English medium schools, particularly among the young (upper) middle classes: For the English-speaking upper middle-class, this has come as a boon. Although these sections of society are in numerical terms a very small minority in the country, they are able to wield considerable authority on account of their financial clout. Their voices are far more likely to be heard in the Indian media, and they are much more likely to be able to influence important political decisions in the country. Because of their familiarity with English, and privileged access to major media outlets and institutions of higher learning, they are taken to be more credible, and are thus able to exercise tremendous influence on public policy. Rahman (1999: 98) indicates that this is also a contentious issue in Pakistan: English remains the language of power and high social status in Pakistan. It serves to facilitate the entry of the rich and the powerful into elitist positions, while filtering out those who are educated in Urdu […] the medium of instruction controversy can be seen as a part of the power struggle between different pressure groups, or elites and proto-elites, in Pakistan. The overpowering charisma of English is such that parents, teachers, and policy makers completely ignore the long-term pedagogical impact of the role assigned to English as the medium of transmitting knowledge to young children, especially on their learning of the mother tongue. The academic and intellectual significance of the mother tongue gradually begins to erode and this results in local languages surviving largely as languages of entertainment provided by the popular film industry and as the languages employed for winning votes during local and national elections. <?page no="52"?> Mahendra K. Verma 48 The perceived value of English in the Indian multilingual setting: A pilot study Having given the socio-political contexts in which English is prospering in urban India and in other South Asian countries, I will now selectively report on the findings of an empirical study I have been engaged in as part of a project on Images of English. The pilot study is based on participant observation and the administration of a questionnaire followed by interviews, all of which examine their sociolinguistic background and attitudes towards English. The sample consisted of 34 randomly selected respondents (12 female and 22 male), all of whom were well educated and knew English. The research was carried out in Mumbai, a multilingual cosmopolitan capital city, Some of the participants were already known to the researcher. My earlier visits to Mumbai had already established a network of friends from various backgrounds. My visits in 2003 simply renewed my friendship, and facilitated my research. Other contacts were based on ‘friend of a friend’ basis. The pilot study is based on participant observation and the administration of a questionnaire followed by interviews, all of which examine their sociolinguistic background and attitudes towards English. Thirty had received an English medium education and four a mother tongue education. Their language behaviour suggested that both English and mother tongue were used in most domains except ‘work’ in which English predominated. Opinions towards English were elicited through a series of questions (see Appendix A), which can be categorised into four areas: opinions about English; reasons for learning English; government and ELT in India; and English in India. Analysis of the responses (see Appendix B) demonstrates that a few more than half of the respondents clearly reject the idea of accepting English as the most prestigious world language. Less than half associate the language with prestige. For those who do not, it may be possible that personal nationalistic pride is at stake. Interestingly, in a similar study of European bilingual adults this premise was overwhelmingly rejected. In the Indian data, more than half of the respondents unhesitatingly accept that no national or international language can compete with English in the fields of the sciences and Information Technology, at least not in the near future. Although they had no difficulty in accepting that English is the most useful Internet and IT language of the world, the most important language of economic power and the most important language for good lucrative jobs there is an unambiguous commitment to mother tongue learning and teaching. In addition, all of the respondents felt that English had contributed to their work and studies, indicating that they are instrumentally motivated towards learning English, despite acknowledging that English has divided the country socially into elite and non-elite classes. With regards to investment, the majority indicated support for government funding of the teaching of both the mother tongue and English, but were evenly divided regarding the benefits of spending their own money on English. Their commitment to English is clear as the <?page no="53"?> English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? 49 respondents are against the government banning the use of English in government offices, banning English-medium private schools or banning TV programmes in English. The respondents are also aware of the social inequity in accessing English-medium education and are conscious of the aspirations of even the poor parents who know which medium of instruction ‘tastes’ better. Overall, the majority of the respondents felt positive about English. But these are the privileged elite who have had the opportunity to learn English and reap the benefits of their parents’ investment in this commodity. Their commitment to their mother tongues is strong but does not warrant support of the ‘English out, Hindi in’ or any other radical language movement. These are urban Indians who are guided by pragmatism and high aspirations, including those who had received a mother tongue medium education. This supports Pushkarna’s (2003) belief: “Public sector officers, lawyers, engineers and other professionals who studied in the ‘vernacular’ medium [...] now want to mouth the globalspeak.” For those eager to capitalise on the use of English, the linguistic and digital division of their society is not a priority. Pragmatism rules, money helps. Conclusion The world of the urban elite in South Asia is truly switched on to English and the digital age. In the Indian context, the question one should ask is: what does the rapid spread of the supremacy of English and IT skills mean to the vast majority of an Indian population, which currently exceeds more than a billion people? What benefits can English, and the hi-tech tongue of IT give to those who have not achieved literacy in their mother tongue, who do not have equal access to this ‘capital’, whose parents do not have capital to invest in an ‘English’ company? Who is in control: the elite, the multinationals or the agents of English? The answer might sound simplistic, but it appears to be true that it is the multinationals, the owners of the call centres and the ELT and IT industries, together with the ‘whiz kids’ of the privileged middle and upper class Indians who are in control. To these privileged few, English offers good value for money. It is a case of sheer empowerment. Those who embrace English feel empowered in India and abroad. Even in European countries, which have traditionally guarded the interests of their national languages with jealousy, English has made deeper inroads into the hearts and minds of the younger generations and their children. Indeed, the language of social and business discourse among members of the European Union is more often English than not, and the owners of the English language schools in Europe and in the UK successfully sell English as a commodity. The dilemma of Mr Lal, a character from another South Asian novel is a parallel to that faced by many Indians with regards to their language use. Mr <?page no="54"?> Mahendra K. Verma 50 Lal, who comes from a low caste family but has risen to high status as a top scientist, is sent to the South Pole to carry out research for his country and countrymen. He becomes concerned and questions the goals of scientific research, in particular the hidden agenda that serves to increase profits and empower the few who are already privileged. He feels ethically compromised. Gandhi (1925: 319f.) answers Mr Lal’s dilemma: What, however, Indian democracy will be no one can tell. It is easy enough to foresee the future; if English were our common language. For it would be then the democracy of a mere handful [...] the common language of the vast mass can never be English [...] Our English speech has isolated us from the millions of our countrymen. India has become increasingly distant from Gandhi’s dream of basic education and basic subsistence for all. The green revolution has made the country largely self-reliant in food but the IT revolution has created a digital divide, and English continues to rule the roost. In the 21 st century India, Indian English is inevitable, but monolingual English is not. The growth and development of knowledge-based operations in Indian languages, albeit slow, could be one kind of dividend, while the other would be the economic mobility of the young across class and caste boundaries. The future of Indian languages in India will be more secure if, and only if, unlike the family of Nirode, the majority of the population reject the exclusive use of English in their interpersonal discourses, in their creative writings and in formal settings. The last word will ultimately be that of the language and economy planners, including both the supporters and opponents of multilingualism, but in ‘changing ideologies and uses of language’ consideration must be given to Cameron’s (2001: 14) recommendation: “When we think about the position of English in the world, its relationships with other languages and its impact on other cultures, this too should be part of our thinking.” Investment in Indian languages should be made equally attractive, and one way to achieve it is by recognising the pedagogical and social value of the mother tongue as medium of instruction, at least during the school years, before it is too late. For now the investment in English is yielding dividends to the more fortunate sections of society. Pushkarna (2003) argues that “the truth [...] is out” and “the days when people conversed in English were labelled angrez ki aulad (children of the British) are gone”, English is now “the tongue for survival, the custodian of the future”. Although English does have a dominant presence in India, Pushkarna’s assumptions are by no means universal (Verma, 2002; Alam, 2003). But we must be realistic. In the present context, Indian languages cannot offer the same financial and career benefits to their speakers as English can, and until they can boost the economic value of Bourdieu’s three different kinds of capital they will forever surrender to English. 1 <?page no="55"?> English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? 51 References Afzal-Khan, F. (1993) Cultural Imperialism and the Indo-English Novel. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Alam, F. (2003) The British Council Library: the new East India Company? Online document: http: / / www.thedailystar.net/ 2003/ 11/ 08/ d31108210286.htm (July 13, 04). Cameron, D. (2001) Globalizing ‘communication’. Paper presented at the Language, the Media and International Communication conference held at the University of Oxford. Crystal, D. (1997) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cummins, J. (2000) Academic language learning, transformative pedagogy and information technology: Towards a critical balance. TESOL Quarterly 34 (3), 537-548. Delpit, L.D. (1988) The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Howard Educational Review 58, 280-298. Desai, A. (1965) Voices in the City. New Delhi: Orient Longmans India. Dess, G.D. and Picken, J.C. (1999) Beyond Productivity: How Leading Companies Achieve Superior Performance by Leveraging their Human Capital. New York: American Management Association. Gandhi, M.K. (1925) The scientific spirit, a student’s questions, Young India, 17 Dec. In R. Iyer (ed.) (1986) The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Vol.1 (pp. 319-320). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ganguly, T. and Nagar, C. (2003) New goal: West Bengal awakens to the need for English. Online document: http: / / www.the-week.com/ 23nov09/ cover.htm (July 13, 04). Graddol, D. (1997) The Future of English. London: The British Council. Gupta, A.S. (1995) Medium of instruction in a multilingual context. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (eds) English Language Teaching in India (pp. 201-211). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Islam, S. (2003) The British Council. Online document: http: / / www.thedailystar.net/ magazine/ 2003/ 04/ 02/ letters.htm (July 19, 04). Kaplan, R.B. (1993) The hegemony of English in science and technology. Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development 14 (1&2), 151-172. Krishnaswamy, N. and Burde, A.S. (1998) The Politics of Indians’ English. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Li, R. and Hart, R.S. (1996) What can the World Wide Web offer ESL teachers? TESOL Journal 6 (2), 5-10. Macaulay, T.B. (1835) Minute on the necessity of English education. In H. Sharp (ed.) (1920) Selections from Educational Records: Part 1- 1781-1839. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing. Macintyre, B. (2004) English has a party-warty as India prepones her nabbing of our language. The Times (January 31, 2004). Mallikarjun, B. (2003) Globalization and Indian languages. In J. Vielberth and G. Drexel (eds) Linguistic Cultural Identity and International Communication. Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag, 23-46. Pushkarna, V. (2003) Learn English, Go Places. The Week. (November 9, 2003). Online document: http: / / www.the-week.com/ 23nov09/ cover.htm (July 13, 04). Quirk, R. (1985) The English language in a global context. In R. Quirk and H.G. Widdowson (eds) (1985) English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-6. <?page no="56"?> Mahendra K. Verma 52 Rahman, T. (1999) Language, Education and Culture. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Ramanathan, V. (1999) “English is here to stay”: A critical look at institutional and educational practices in India. TESOL Quarterly 33 (2), 211-230. South Asian Voice (2000) Perspectives on Economic Policy and the South Asian Region. August 2000 edition, updated May 2001. Online document: http: / / members.tripod.com/ ~INDIA_RESOURCE/ globalization.html (July 13, 04). Tully, M. and Masani, Z. (1988) From Raj to Rajiv. George Fernandes’s Interview. New Delhi: Universal Book Stall. Verma, M. (2002) English in India: Whose English, for whom, and what about Indian languages? Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, Special issue on ELT in India 28 (2), 101-120. Walia, N. (2003) Desi babu, English game! The Times of India Online (August 10, 2003). Online document: http: / / timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ cms.dll/ html/ uncomp/ articleshow? msid=122860 (July 13, 04). Warschauer, M. (2000) The changing global economy and the future of English teaching. TESOL Quarterly 34 (3), 511-535. Watts, R.J. (1999) The social construction of Standard English: Grammar writers as a ‘Discourse Community’. In T. Bex and R.J. Watts (eds) Standard English: The Widening Debate. London: Routledge, 40-68. Note 1 I'm indebted to Izzy Sidwell for commenting on an earlier draft of the paper. For this paper I have analysed the questionnaire responses only selectively. This paper is part of a larger project on Images of English. Appendix Questions asked in the ‘Images of English’ project Questionnaire: A. Personal Details (not included here) B. Patterns of Language Use (not included here) C. Opinions about English 1. It is the most prestigious world language 2. It is the most useful world language 3. It is the most important language of economic power 4. It is the most useful Internet & IT language 5. It is more important than any language of my country in my profession/ work 6. It is the most important language for science & technology 7. It is the language which kills other languages <?page no="57"?> English as an Economic Investment: Who will Earn the Dividends? 53 8. It is the only language which makes society feel that you are educated 9. It is the most important language for the prosperity of my country 10. It is the most important language for good and lucrative jobs 11. It is a language which has divided my country socially into elite/ non-elite class 12. It is the only language that helps communication across the world D. Reasons for learning English 1. I wanted to study academic books & journals in English 2. I wanted to study abroad 3. I wanted to have good job opportunities 4. I loved the language 5. I liked the native English people & their culture 6. I liked English music/ movies 7. I liked reading journals/ newspapers/ novels in English 8. It gave me a sense of independence 9. It raised my status in my society/ my country 10. It helped me in my studies 11. I thought my mother tongue could not compete with English in (medical) science and (information) technology 12. I thought no language could compete with English in (medical) science and (information) technology 13. I thought English was like a good company to buy shares in 14. I could help my country become economically powerful E: Q: Government and ELT in India My government should…. 1. invest money in teaching English 2. make English compulsory in education 3. allow multinationals to invest in our country 4. invest money in mother tongue teaching 5. make mother tongue teaching compulsory in education 6. ban the use of English in most government offices 7. ban private English-medium schools 8. not give preference to English in jobs where English is not essential 9. ban television programmes in English <?page no="58"?> Mahendra K. Verma 54 F. Q: English in India 1. Do you think in your country the value of ENGLISH is increasing rapidly? 2. Do you think in your country even poor parents want their children to learn English? 3. Do you think your countrymen learn English to improve their financial position? 4. Do you think only the children of the rich and privileged families are able to learn proper English, computing and information technology in your country? 5. Do you think only the children of the rich and privileged benefit from the multinationals in your country? <?page no="59"?> Section 2 Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Exemplification The aims of section 2 are to demonstrate the impact of the globalisation of English on other languages, in particular the lexical influence of English on German, to offer an analysis of a selected domain of global communication, airspeak, in which the English language plays a pervasive, if not an exclusive part, and to examine interactions across Englishes when English is used as an international language in informal communication situations. The attitudes towards lexical borrowings from English into German is the theme of the paper by Ulrich Busse. The influence of English on German grew especially through the introduction of new media, and young people make use of Anglicisms to distance themselves from others. Language users who have difficulties understanding English, but are confronted with Anglicisms through the media, may feel offended by this ‘Americanization’. By analysing the use of lexical borrowings from English, Busse concludes that the majority of Anglicisms belong to the periphery of the vocabulary and are often used in technical or informal registers. From a pedagogical perspective he argues that raising language awareness is important in restricting the abuse of Anglicisms. Aviation English is often mentioned as being the only standardized world language. In her study, Frauke Intemann shows that the actual use of aviation English by pilots and air traffic controllers is far from being identical all over the world. English is the lingua franca of aviation, but it is used differently depending on the speakers involved. After discussing the features of the official aviation terminology, Intemann analyses cockpit recordings from several flights and observes a striking difference between native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English. In the case of non-native speakers, the general English language competence of the speakers proves to be an important factor. Christiane Meierkord analyses the lexicon used in interactions across Englishes when participants bring their variety of English into international communications. According to her findings, the lexicon used in such communication situations receives very little input from indigenised Englishes (e.g. Nigerian or Indian English). There is also only a limited use of phrasal verbs or idioms from British English or American English. Meierkord characterises the lexicon as unstable and heterogeneous as it varies according to the strategies employed by the participants. She concludes that learners of English need to be taught how to handle stabilised varieties and how to negotiate the lexicon in international interactions. <?page no="61"?> Ulrich Busse The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German: Facts, Figures, and Attitudes Introduction Even though German has been in contact with English for centuries, it was only during the second half of the twentieth century that the impact of English on German and other European languages became stronger. With the advent of new media such as the Internet and especially with the dominance of English in domains such as computing, this influence became particularly pervasive from the 1990s onwards. Nowadays some social groups, for instance youths, quite purposefully draw on Anglicisms 1 or on code-mixing and -switching to distance themselves from others. Furthermore, the language of advertising abounds with Anglicisms for the purpose of creating a unique selling proposition. In consequence, many language users who are confronted with Anglicisms in the media may have difficulty in understanding them, feel excluded from discourse in certain domains, or may have objections on principle to cultural and linguistic ‘Americanisation’. In view of this, it seems necessary to put things into proportion. In order to do so, the concept of Anglicism needs to be defined and further analysed so that it can be worked out which types of Anglicisms prevail in which subject areas and are used by which kinds of speakers for which purposes. It is admittedly very difficult to determine the number of Anglicisms current in present-day German, but since we now have both a comprehensive national dictionary of Anglicisms (AWb 1993-96) and also an international one (DEA 2001) covering German among fifteen other European languages, these shall - together with evidence from other dictionaries - serve as reliable databases for the above analyses. Impressionistically speaking, the vast majority of Anglicisms in German belongs to the periphery of the vocabulary, is prone to fluctuation and often used in special either technical or informal registers (see Busse & Görlach, 2002: 28). To my mind neither the banning of Anglicisms from official use as practised in France nor the formation of new societies to preserve the integrity of the German language are viable solutions for this development, because ‘stemming the tide’ seems to be a futile undertaking. The answer can only be that persons and authorities entrusted with the education of young people take part in creating critical language awareness. <?page no="62"?> Ulrich Busse 58 Periodisation of Anglo-German language contacts The cultural and linguistic exchange between Britain and Germany has a long-standing tradition going back to the Germanic settlement of Celtic Britain in the fifth century on the one hand, and to the Anglo-Irish mission under Bonifatius in the sixth century on the other. The lexical give and take in sociocultural transfer has almost always been uneven, with the English language taking in fewer words from German than the other way around (see Stanforth, 1968; 1996). Although it is hardly possible to summarise the lexical impact of English on German in a few sentences, nonetheless its main stages can be outlined as follows (see Busse & Görlach, 2002: 13f.): Before the eighteenth century, the lexical impact of English on German was rather marginal compared to that of other European languages, such as French and Latin in particular (see von Polenz, 1994: 78f.). Due to close cultural ties and the reception of British literature in particular, it reached a first climax in the eighteenth century. Through the succession of the House of Hanover to the English throne, both countries were linked more closely. Travel accounts, as for instance by Fürst Pückler, made British lifestyle popular in Germany. With England’s leading role in the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, the focus shifted from the domain of culture to that of technology and commerce, with terms from shipbuilding, steel production, and the manufacture of textiles coming to the fore. During the twentieth century, four different phases of borrowing can be made out. 1) In the early twentieth century the impact of American English began to be felt for the first time, as manifested, for example, by terms from popular culture such as Charleston and jazz. 2) After a recession of borrowing after the First World War, the number of borrowings rose again during the interwar years. 3) As the description of sixteen European languages in comparison by Görlach (2002) impressively documents, the situation after World War II and the adoption of the ‘American way of life’ has left its imprints not only on German, but on many other Western European languages as well. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, it also quickly affected the eastern European languages. Until German reunification in 1989, the Eastern and Western parts of Germany were affected by the steadily growing influx of Anglicisms to different extents. Lehnert (1990) has shown that even though the GDR lagged behind in the reception of Anglicisms as regards their time of borrowing and their frequency, there were obviously more words of English origin in use than the government would have liked. In West Germany, the main in-roads of <?page no="63"?> The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German 59 Anglicisms have been the media, i.e. newspapers, magazines, films, and popular music. 4) From the 1990s onwards, the influence became even more intense and more widespread, turning the issue not only into a European one, but into a truly global matter. Through economic globalisation, in particular with multinational corporations and the ease of worldwide communication via the Internet, terms of English origin seem to dominate in such areas as the technical languages of business and commerce, advertising and technical registers of computing and information technology. The ever-growing influx has also aroused criticism. Thus, it seems to make sense to correlate the impact of borrowing during the above-mentioned phases of contact with the prevailing attitudes of the language users towards these phenomena. The attitudes of the language users towards the use of Anglicisms The history of the German language shows that complaints about the intake of foreign words are by no means a recent phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century, this criticism was directed primarily at words of French origin. As outlined earlier on, due to the political and economic dominance of England the influx of English words grew steadily and began to be criticised. While until this time criticism had been practised by individuals it was institutionalised with the formation of the Allgemeiner deutscher Sprachverein [General Society for the German Language] in 1885, going hand in hand with the replacement of then well-established French words in the domains of the railway and postal services terminology, replacing e.g. Couvert by Briefumschlag and Billet by Fahrkarte. One of its leading activists was Hermann Dunger. In the extended version (1909) of his talk given in 1899 “Wider die Engländerei in der deutschen Sprache” [Against Anglomania in the German language] he stated: “Für manchen jungen Deutschen ist es das höchste Ziel seines Ehrgeizes, für einen Engländer gehalten zu werden. Wie der Deutsche früher der Affe des Franzosen war, so äfft er jetzt den Engländern nach” (1909: 3). [For some young Germans it is the highest objective of their ambition to be regarded as an Englishman. Much in the same way as the Germans used to be the clown of the French they are now aping the English]. 2 Later on, the tenor of purists became even more nationalistic and chauvinistic. Interestingly enough, these aims did not match with the intentions of the new National Socialist leadership, so that Hitler himself ordered by decree on 19 November 1940 an end to the witch-hunting of foreignisms (see Korlén, 1976; von Polenz, 1967). This policy also shows in the treatment of Anglicisms in the Duden dictionary, as neither the edition from 1934 nor that of 1941 shows a drop in the number of headwords of English origin. The edition from 1929 contained a total of 1,277 Anglicisms (amounting to 1.99% of the overall number of headwords). Their figure rose slightly to 1,300 items (1.91%) in the <?page no="64"?> Ulrich Busse 60 edition from 1934, and more sharply to 1,546 (2.22% of the overall word stock and 20.19% of the new entries in the edition from 1941; see Busse, 1993: 71). Furthermore, the position of English as a subject in secondary schooling was strengthened, because in 1937/ 38 the National Socialists introduced English as the first foreign language in grammar schools. As of 1942, this also goes for the newly introduced type of Hauptschule (see Lehberger, 1991: 477). After the Second World War, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache [Society for the German Language] was founded. As regards its attitude, it cannot be compared with its predecessor the Allgemeiner deutscher Sprachverein, but Sprachpflege [concern for the purity of language] was not institutionalised. Usage or abusage of individual terms were documented in the society’s journal Die Sprachpflege (two collected volumes by Joachim Stave, 1964; 1968). Regular columns about questions of usage appeared and still do so in newspapers or magazines such as Hohlspiegel in Der Spiegel or Aktuelles Lexikon [Dictionary of Current Words] (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Among the journalists keeping track of their colleagues’ language use, Karl Korn in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Dieter E. Zimmer in Die Zeit (see also his two books from 1986 and 1997) deserve a special mention. As book titles are quite suggestive of underlying attitudes, such titles as Amideutsch [“Yank-German”; derogatory] (Probst, 1989), Dummdeutsch [“Silly German”; i.e. usage of German which is considered as foolish or stupid] (Henscheid, 2000), or a recent and popular work such as Modern Talking auf Deutsch [“Modern Talking in German”; a pun on the former German popgroup “Modern Talking” singing rather shallow songs in English] by Krämer (2000) to name but a few, are highly indicative. These books are not dictionaries, but wordlists of Anglicisms garnished with satirical or polemical comments. Nowadays, the increasing use of Anglicisms is often negatively labelled as Denglisch, Germang, Engleutsch, Neudeutsch, McGermish and BSE (in the sense of bad spoken English, a metaphorical extension of the term bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad-cow disease), out of which, according to my observations, Denglisch seems to be used most often. The term is quite obviously modelled on the example of Franglais used by René Étiemble as early as 1964. The blending of etymologically heterogeneous wordmaterial is intended to suggest the pending danger of a ‘pidginisation’ of German. In order to scrutinise the prevailing attitudes of Germans towards their mother tongue, the Institut für deutsche Sprache [Institute for the German Language] in Mannheim carried out a representative opinion poll (see Stickel & Volz, 1999: 19-21). One question asked was whether there have been a great number of lexical changes in present-day German over the last five to ten years or not. The participants gave the following answers: 12.7% of the participants said that very many changes had taken place during this time. 44.8% were of the opinion that there were many changes. While 37.7% answered that there were some changes, only 4.8% found that there were only <?page no="65"?> The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German 61 few changes. Among the observed changes the Anglicisms feature prominently. All in all, Anglicisms were mentioned 182 times (75 times in West Germany and 107 times in East Germany). Out of the 29 items which were individually criticised there are no less than 20 Anglicisms. In order of declining frequencies these were: cool, Kids (instead of Kinder), okay/ o.k., Team, in, out, Internet, Shopping/ shoppen, mega-(gut, in/ out …), Handy, hallo (as a greeting), relaxen/ relaxed, Elchtest, managen/ Manager/ Management, Mobbing, Peanuts, Shop (instead of Geschäft, Laden), City, Job (instead of Arbeit), and Power. In addition, several other words of English origin were mentioned, but these occurred only once. More recently, on the basis of circa 330 letters, Hoberg analysed the reasons for the prevailing negative attitudes towards Anglicisms. The following arguments were mentioned most often: 1) Anglicisms are superfluous. This is true in particular of recent loans, which are considered especially objectionable. 2) Anglicisms make communication more difficult. 3) Their use is just a way of showing off linguistically. 4) Germans have too little national pride and loyalty towards their own language (see Hoberg, 2002: 172-173). These critical attitudes were given a public voice when in 1997 a new purist society, the Verein Deutsche Sprache [Society for the German Language], originally named Verein zur Wahrung der deutschen Sprache “Society for the preservation of German”, was founded. According to the information given on their homepage (http: / / www.vds-ev.de, accessed March 21, 04), they have more than 18,000 members. Its objectives are clearly purist, and their activities are manifold, ranging from the publication of a dictionary of superfluous Anglicisms (Pogarell & Schröder, 2000, for a review article see Busse, 2002), to public media events in which the worst linguistic performance of the year (Sprachhunzer and Sprachpanscher) is awarded a prize (see also Niehr, 2002). Spitzmüller analyses their activities in the framework of the public debate on the state of the German language. He concludes that the controversial discussion about Anglicisms in German is part of a larger discourse on the topics of nation, identity and alterity, which expresses the uncertainty brought about by a change in values, attitudes and mentalities (2002: 247). In his opinion the problems that many speakers seem to have with Anglicisms are not primarily of a linguistic nature, a point I also made earlier (see Busse, 1999). In any case, the matter also acquired a political dimension when in 2000 the then senator of Berlin, Eckart Werthebach, argued in favour of legislative action, similar to that taken in France. So far, this initiative has not led to a law governing the official use of Anglicisms as in France (loi Touban), but nonetheless, media coverage brought the issue to public attention just when the public discussion about the beneficial or detrimental effects of the spelling reform from 1998 had begun to die down. <?page no="66"?> Ulrich Busse 62 In the late 1990s, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache set up a committee called “Besseres Deutsch” to work out guidelines for a “Better use of the German language”, but these did not gain much popularity, and it is doubtful whether such endeavours will provide a lasting effect. In May 2003, the Deutscher Sprachrat was founded in order to coordinate the manifold activities of the various institutions working on Sprachpflege in Germany. Its further objectives are to offer guidance for language users in questions of usage, and to create awareness by making these issues public via the media, schools and other centres of secondary education (see Der Sprachdienst 47 (5) 2003, 181-183). The number of Anglicisms in German In order to put the criticism into perspective it seems to be imperative to do two related things, namely to account for the number of borrowings at a given point in time and to categorise them into different groups. As it is not possible to give a tally of the number of words in any natural living language, it is also difficult to specify the quantity of English words in German. Thus, we will have to make do with information from secondary sources, in particular from dictionaries. However, the registration of a word in a dictionary should not be regarded as a sign that all language users necessarily either actively use a term or passively know an item. At any rate, one of the first official mentions of Anglicisms in Germany can be found in the short treaty by Kinderling in 1795. There he lists the following twelve words of English provenance: bill, bombast, dogge, frack, guinee, jury, lord, mops, park, pudding, quaker, and spleen. Dunger (1882) mentions 148 Anglicisms, of which 28 are no longer in current use, eleven are nowadays rare, another eleven are foreign words, i.e. their denotata pertain to the English-speaking world, and fourteen are no longer felt to be English. In the extended version (1909) of his paper, originally given ten years earlier in 1899, he documents circa 900 Anglicisms. Since those days, a good many new borrowings have entered the field, while others have become obsolete. As a reference point against which to judge the lexical impact of English both past and present and also for comparison to the borrowings from other languages, the chronological and the etymological registers of the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch [DtFwb] (vol. 7) have proved an invaluable resource. The main results of Alan Kirkness’ and Rachel Caughey’s work can be looked up in Peter von Polenz’ Deutsche Sprachgeschichte (vol. 1, 2000: 209-212; vol. 2, 1994: 77-80, and vol. 3, 1999: 391-395): during the seventeenth century (as in the preceding centuries) the loans from English amount to less than one per cent of the words documented in the DtFwb. They rise from six to ten per cent in the middle of the eighteenth century (see von Polenz, vol. 2: 79). Borrowings from English then rise from around eight per cent (around 1800) to 36% (around 1900), reaching a climax <?page no="67"?> The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German 63 of 88% after the Second World War. This high percentage roughly equals that of Latin and Greek words in the first half of the sixteenth century, and is partly due to the incorporation of words which are of ultimately Latin or Greek origin under the etymological label engl. As a concomitant, the number of German word-formations taking words of English origin as their base also rises continually from 20% in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to 46% (around 1800), to circa 74% (around 1900) and to 89% (around 1970) (see von Polenz, vol. 3: 394). In order to determine changes in the number of Anglicisms in German, I used the Duden spelling dictionary as a database, finding that the amount of Anglicisms documented there rose from 1.36% in 1880 (385 tokens in 28,300 headwords) to a moderate 3.46% in the nineteenth (West German) edition from 1986 (3,746 Anglicisms in 108,100 entries). It needs to be mentioned though that only items marked as “from engl.” or with similar etymological labels were incorporated, that is to say only overt Anglicisms, hybrid compounds (with one component of English origin) and derivatives were taken into consideration (see Busse, 1993: 69-71). A study of the CD-ROM version of Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache has shown that in following along the same lines by activating the search path “field > etymology > engl.” 4,395 words of English origin can be retrieved (see Busse, in press). The two dictionaries solely devoted to documenting Anglicisms in German, i.e. the Anglizismen-Wörterbuch [AWb] (1993-1996) and in Europe, i.e. the Dictionary of European Anglicisms [DEA] (2001) include circa 3,500 Anglicisms (AWb), and 3,800 (DEA), respectively (see Görlach, 2003: xi). Even though Busse and Görlach warn about the dangers implied in forecasting the future development of the impact of English on German, on the basis of the material above, the following prognosis seems to be quite safe: “the number of English loanwords considered dictionary-worthy will pass the mark of 5,000 in the next century (which would make the figure still only a fraction of loans from French or Latin/ Greek)” (2002: 31f.), provided of course that neither linguistic purism, including legislation, nor a sociopolitical re-orientation away from the transatlantic alliance takes place. Towards a typology of Anglicisms The lexical impact of English on German can take on various forms, and over the years, many attempts have been made to categorise the borrowings (for a recent overview see Busse, 2001). In the following I will not go into questions concerned with the terminology of lexical borrowing at great length, but nonetheless, a distinction needs to be made between items that were borrowed wholesale, ones which after borrowing have entered into German word-formation processes, and finally those which, by applying formal crite- <?page no="68"?> Ulrich Busse 64 ria such as spelling and/ or pronunciation, cannot without background knowledge be identified as English in origin. As two examples of how these different types can be categorised and dealt with in dictionaries, I will now introduce the typologies used in the two dictionaries of Anglicisms, namely the AWb and the DEA. The treatment of Anglicisms in the AWb The AWb takes the formal properties of a linguistic sign as its starting point and distinguishes whether the form and content of an English word were borrowed or not. In most cases the words are directly borrowed from English, ranging from simple words such as job and trend, via compounds, e.g. babysitter and paperback, to phraseologisms like big brother is watching you or last (but) not least. Below the word level we find combining forms such as miniand super-. The second major group is made up of those items whose form does not show any overt signs of English origin. The content of these words has been translated more or less freely or rendered in German. This is true in particular for compounds such as Erste Dame (after engl. first lady), Flutlicht (after engl. floodlight), Wolkenkratzer (after engl. skyscraper), and phrases like Stehende Ovationen (after engl. standing ovations), or in einem Boot sitzen (after engl. to be in the same boat). This category also includes suffixes such as -sicher (as in kugelsicher after engl. bullet-proof), and new meanings of indigenous German words which can be attributed to the influence of English, as e.g. feuern ‘to sack’ (after engl. to fire) or realisieren ‘to grasp’ (after engl. to realise). The group of partial substitutions comprises compounds and prefixations consisting of one part of English origin and another part from German, such as for instance Campingplatz (after engl. camping site or -ground), Heimcomputer (after engl. home computer), Live-Sendung (after engl. live broadcast), and verbs with particles such as ab-, aus-, durchand einchecken. In addition to this, a distinction needs to be made as to whether the combination was borrowed wholesale as in Computerspiel (after engl. computer game) or is, moreover, an example of the morphological productivity of an Anglicism in German forming the base of new compounds by means of word-formation, as in Managerkrankheit, which does not exist in English. This leads on to the last category of pseudo-Anglicisms, which are not borrowings, but where German manufactures English word material in an un-English way, as in Dressman. While both parts of this word exist as English words, their combination does not; the corresponding English term being male model, or, to take a more recent example, the German Handy is called a mobile phone in British English and a cell(-ular) phone in American English. The AWb covers all of the subtypes above, but concentrates its documentation on the period from 1945 into the early 1990s. For the AWb the answer to the interesting question: “To what extent did these categories individually <?page no="69"?> The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German 65 contribute to the overall sum of 3,500 headwords? ” can now, at least partially, be given. On the basis of the first volume of the AWb (A-E), Kirkness and Woolford (2002) have investigated the ratio of borrowings in comparison to German word-formations of the type of Deo, Eros-Center, Einkaufszentrum, etc. For this purpose, they modified the original classification used in the dictionary. After their re-classification they arrived at the following results: out of the 1,044 entries, 825 (79%) are direct borrowings from English and 203 (ca. 19.5%) are German formations with English word-material, and only sixteen entries did not fit into these categories. Basically, this proves two things, namely that one fifth of the entries were not borrowed but originated in German through word-formation processes such as compounding and derivation. Furthermore, this gives ample testimony to the strong impact of English on presentday German, or, depending upon one’s point of view, also impressively underlines the capability of German to absorb the foreign material in the sense of Goethe’s famous dictum that a language’s strength does not rest upon keeping foreignisms at bay, but on incorporating them: “Die Gewalt einer Sprache ist nicht, dass sie das Fremde abweist, sondern dass sie es verschlingt” (Maximen und Reflexionen) [979. “The effective power of a language does not consist in rejecting but in assimilating what is alien.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and reflections. Translated by Elisabeth Stopp (1998: 127)]. The DEA - Anglicisms and their usage The dictionary is comparative in scope and gives evidence on sixteen European languages from different language families, that is 1) Germanic (Icelandic, Norwegian, Dutch and German), 2) Romance (French, Spanish, Italian, and Rumanian), 3) Slavic (Russian, Polish, Croatian, and Bulgarian) and 4) four other languages (Finnish, Hungarian, Albanian and Greek). It covers the time-span from 1945 into the mid 1990s with a cut-off date in 1995, laying special emphasis on the more recent loans. Unlike the AWb, it omits all types of calques or other substitutions as entries. Loan translations etc. are mentioned only if there is an entry for the English word. In such cases as with German Airbag, a wedge pointing to the right (>) signals that Airbag is more frequent than the creation Prallsack. Whereas the AWb categorises its entries according to formal criteria, the DEA classifies them according to the categories of acceptability and currency paired with elements of morphological and phonological integration. Thus, the Anglicisms are arranged on a cline of increasing integration ranging from 0 to 5. Görlach (1998: 215) states that “these currency values are probably the most important piece of information in the entry”. <?page no="70"?> Ulrich Busse 66 The words not really forming part of the language in question, are subcategorised in three groups: — : The word is not known (no entry for the individual language, but a calque or other native equivalent may be provided): thus, for example, Cleverness and Gully are absent from all languages except German. 0 : The word is known mainly to bilinguals, but is felt to be English, like Weekend in German. Ø : The word is known but used only with reference to British or American situations, i.e. it is a foreignism, e.g.: Acre, Barrister, College, County, Earl, Lord, etc. If a word is accepted by native speakers, it can be regarded to be part of the linguistic system. However, acceptance can vary in degree depending upon a number of socio-linguistic variables. In many cases, restricted use in only particular registers goes along with incomplete morphological and phonological integration. 1 : The word is restricted in use: the nature of the restriction (age, style, technical, regional distribution, etc.) is indicated by diachronic, diastratic, diatechnical, diatopic or other markers, e.g.: Ballyhoo (journalese), Event (youth language, journalese), Scoop (journalese rare) are all examples of journalese language. 2 : The word is fully accepted and found in many styles, but still marked as English in its spelling, pronunciation or morphology, e.g.: Jeans or Thriller. 3 : The word is not (no longer) recognised as English; the fact can only be established etymologically, e.g.: Frack, Humor, Keks, Pudding, Rum, Sport. 4 : The word is identical with an indigenous item in the receiving language, so that the contact resulted only in a semantic loan, e.g.: Maus for computers. 5 : The word as far as an individual language is concerned, comes from a source other than English. This category covers items of neo-classical provenance (in particular Latin or Greek) whose English origin is impossible to determine from a morphological or phonological point of view. For these reasons such words as German Fotografie and Grammophon are excluded from the DEA. However, if the same etymon proves to be an Anglicism in a particular language it is included. Thus, for example, Aktion in German as an older loan from Latin is not featured in the dictionary, but Action as a more recent one from English is included (for the above categories see DEA, 2001: xxiv; Görlach, 1998). In short, the results from the data gathering for the dictionary have proved that the Anglicisms are distributed unevenly over the German vocabulary <?page no="71"?> The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German 67 and that they concentrate especially in peripheral domains and jargons. Thus, in following Busse and Görlach (2002) two major groups may be discerned: 1) The first group is made up of Anglicisms labelled as technical. These are either used as technical terms proper and form part of terminologies of sciences and technologies, or words belonging to shop talk and jargon. The latter ones “tend to be infrequent, incompletely integrated, written, and attitudinally neutral” (Busse & Görlach, 2002: 28). 2) The second group consists of Anglicisms labelled as colloquial or slang. They occur more often in the areas of youth language, journalism and especially in advertising and are more typical of spoken language. For many speakers with only limited knowledge of English their meaning is often only vague, but these words seem to convey an air of fashionable prestige. Their degree of integration is difficult to pin down (see also Görlach, 2003: 109-116). Summary and conclusion To my mind, the preceding presentation of linguistic data on the one hand, and the public opinion on the other hand are two different sides of one and the same medal. As a linguist still devoted to the principles of recording usage rather than correcting it, I would like to argue that the use or overuse of certain Anglicisms can indeed be a nuisance, but that the German language as such is not endangered by lexical borrowing from English. Five years ago, the journalist Thomas Steinfeld, writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, put it this way: “Das Deutsche ist nicht bedroht, wenn die Bundesbahn einen ‘Servicepoint’ einrichtet.” (FAZ 27 November 2000). [The German language is not endangered when the railway introduces ‘Servicepoints’], but the use of individual words can be considered as silly, arrogant, or inappropriate. Hence, the trendy usage of Anglicisms has become the butt of a publicly led debate about a putative decay of the language. Neither legislative action nor the formation of new purist societies will solve the problem. Apart from international companies using English as a means of internal communication, the English language does not (yet) have the status of a second language in Germany. Most Germans do not have direct contact with the language, but they are confronted with Anglicisms via the media. If the syllogism is true that we live in an age of media coverage and that the media are the arbiter of (linguistic) fashion, then the journalists especially carry a high responsibility. On the other hand, educationalists on all levels of instruction should help to create a critical attitude towards language use in the media in general and the (ab-)use of Anglicisms in particular. For instance, joint projects during English and German lessons could be used to point out the stylistic values of Anglicisms (see Galinsky, 1975; Pfitzner, 1978). In this way, operational criteria for the use of Anglicisms in private and in public communication need to be developed on the cognitive, affective, and on the pragmatic levels. <?page no="72"?> Ulrich Busse 68 Notes 1 In this article, the term Anglicism functions as an umbrella term for words or phrases borrowed or adapted from a variety of the English language regardless of their origin in Great Britain, the United States, or elsewhere (see also the section: Towards a typology of anglicisms). 2 If not indicated otherwise, English translations of German quotations are mine, U.B. References 1. Dictionaries AWb = Carstensen, B. and Busse, U. unter Mitarbeit von Schmude, R. (1993-1996) Anglizismen-Wörterbuch. Der Einfluß des Englischen auf den deutschen Wortschatz nach 1945. Berlin: de Gruyter, 3 vols. DEA = Görlach, M. (ed.) (2001) A Dictionary of European Anglicisms: A Usage Dictionary of English in Sixteen European Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DtFwb = Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, vol. 7: Systematische Register (1986-1988), bearbeitet von A. Kirkness. Berlin: de Gruyter. Dunger, H. (1882) Wörterbuch von Verdeutschungen entbehrlicher Fremdwörter, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der von dem Großen Generalstabe, im Postwesen und in der Reichsgesetzgebung angenommenen Verdeutschungen. Leipzig: Teubner [reprint 1989 together with Engländerei in der deutschen Sprache, Hildesheim: Olms with a preface by W. Viereck]. Henscheid, E. unter Mitwirkung von Lierow, C. und Maletzke, E. (2000) Dummdeutsch: Ein Wörterbuch. Stuttgart: Reclam, new enlarged edition. Krämer, W. (2000) Modern talking auf deutsch: Ein populäres Lexikon (2 nd edition). München: Piper. Pogarell, R. and Schröder, M. (2000) Wörterbuch überflüssiger Anglizismen (2 nd edition). Paderborn: IBF Verlag. Probst, A. (1989) Amideutsch: Ein kritisch-polemisches Wörterbuch der anglo-deutschen Sprache. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. 2. Secondary sources Busse, U. (1993) Anglizismen im Duden: Eine Untersuchung zur Darstellung englischen Wortguts in den Ausgaben des Rechtschreibdudens von 1880-1986. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Busse, U. (1999) Keine Bedrohung durch Anglizismen. Der Sprachdienst 43 (1) 1999, 18- 20. Busse, U. (2001) Typen von Anglizismen: von der heilago geist bis Extremsparing - aufgezeigt anhand ausgewählter lexikographischer Kategorisierungen. In G. Stickel (ed.) Neues und Fremdes im deutschen Wortschatz: Aktueller lexikalischer Wandel. Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache 2000 (pp. 131-155). Berlin: de Gruyter. Busse, U. (2002) Lexicography as a sign of the times: A study in socio-lexicography. In H. Gottlieb, J.E. Mogensen and A. Zettersten (eds) Symposium on Lexicography X. Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium on Lexicography May 4-6, 2000 at the University of Copenhagen (pp. 49-61). Tübingen: Niemeyer. <?page no="73"?> The Impact of Lexical Borrowing from English on German 69 Busse, U. (in press) Anglizismen im Großen Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. In H.E. Wiegand (ed.) Studien zur kommerziellen Lexikographie des Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Busse, U. and Görlach, M. (2002) German. In M. Görlach (ed.) English in Europe (pp. 13- 36). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dunger, H. (1909) Engländerei in der deutschen Sprache. Berlin: Verlag des Allgemeinen Deutschen Sprachvereins S. Bergold. Zweite, umgearbeitete und stark vermehrte Auflage des Vortrags „Wider die Engländerei in der deutschen Sprache“ [1899]. [reprint 1989, Hildesheim: Olms with a preface by W. Viereck]. Étiemble, R. (1964) Parlez-vous franglais? Paris: Gallimard. Galinsky, H. (1975) Stylistic aspects of linguistic borrowing: A stylistic view of American elements in modern German. In B. Carstensen and H. Galinsky (eds) Amerikanismen der deutschen Gegenwartssprache: Entlehnungsvorgänge und ihre stilistischen Aspekte (3 rd edition) (pp. 35-72). Heidelberg: Winter. von Goethe, J.W. (1998). Maxims and Reflections. Translated by Elisabeth Stopp. London: Penguin. Görlach, M. (1998) The Usage Dictionary of Anglicisms in Selected European Languages: A report on progress, problems and prospects. Links & Letters 5, 209-221. Görlach, M. (2002) English in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Görlach, M. (2003) English Words Abroad. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hoberg, R. (2002) English rules the world: Was wird aus Deutsch? In R. Hoberg (ed.) Deutsch - Englisch - Europäisch: Impulse für eine neue Sprachpolitik (pp. 171-183). Mannheim: Dudenverlag. Kinderling, J.F.A. (1795) Über die Reinigkeit der deutschen Sprache: Und die Beförderungsmittel derselben, mit einer Musterung der fremden Wörter und anderen Wörterverzeichnissen. Berlin [reprint 1977, Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR]. Kirkness, A. and Woolford, M. (2002) Zur Herkunft der Anglizismen im Deutschen: Beobachtungen und Vorschläge anhand des Anglizismen-Wörterbuchs. In R. Hoberg (ed.) Deutsch - Englisch - Europäisch (pp. 199-219). Mannheim: Dudenverlag. Korlén, G. (1976) Die Couch, Hitler und das Fremdwort: Sprachpurismus gestern und heute. Moderna Språk 70, 329-342. Lehberger, R. (1991) Geschichte des Fremdsprachenunterrichts. In K.-R. Bausch, H. Christ and H.-J. Krumm (eds) Handbuch Fremdsprachenunterricht (pp. 475-480). Tübingen: Francke. Lehnert, M. (1990) Anglo-Amerikanisches im Sprachgebrauch der DDR. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Niehr, T. (2002) Linguistische Anmerkungen zu einer populären Anglizismen-Kritik. Oder: Von der notwendig erfolglos bleibenden Suche nach dem treffenderen deutschen Ausdruck. Sprachreport 4, 4-10. Pfitzner, J. (1978) Der Anglizismus im Deutschen: Ein Beitrag zur Bestimmung seiner stilistischen Funktion in der heutigen Presse. Stuttgart: Metzler. Spitzmüller, J. (2002) Selbstfindung durch Ausgrenzung: Eine kritische Analyse des gegenwärtigen Diskurses zu angloamerikanischen Entlehnungen. In R. Hoberg (ed.) Deutsch - Englisch - Europäisch (pp. 247-265). Mannheim: Dudenverlag. Stanforth, A.W. (1968) Deutsch-englischer Lehnwortaustausch. In W. Mitzka (ed.) Wortgeographie und Gesellschaft (pp. 526-560). Berlin: de Gruyter. Stanforth, A.W. (1996) Deutsche Einflüsse auf den englischen Wortschatz in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Mit einem Beitrag zum Amerikanischen Englisch von Jürgen Eichhoff. Tübingen: Niemeyer. <?page no="74"?> Ulrich Busse 70 Stave, J. (1964) Wie die Leute reden: Betrachtungen über 15 Jahre Deutsch in der Bundesrepublik. Lüneburg: Heliand. Stave, J. (1968) Wörter und Leute: Glossen und Betrachtungen über das Deutsch in der Bundesrepublik. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut. Stickel, G. and Volz, N. (1999) Meinungen und Einstellungen zur deutschen Sprache. Ergebnisse einer bundesweiten Repräsentativerhebung. Mannheim: Institut für Deutsche Sprache. von Polenz, P. (1967) Sprachpurismus und Nationalsozialismus: Die ‘Fremdwortfrage’ gestern und heute. In B. von Wiese and R. Henß (eds) Nationalismus in Germanistik und Dichtung: Dokumentation des Germanistentages in München vom 17.-22.10.1966 (pp. 79-112). Berlin: Schmidt. von Polenz, P. (1994-2000) Deutsche Sprachgeschichte. Berlin: de Gruyter, 3 vols. Zimmer, D.E. (1986) Redens-Arten: Über Trends und Tollheiten im neudeutschen Sprachgebrauch. Zürich: Haffmans Verlag. Zimmer, D.E. (1997) Neuanglodeutsch: Über die Pidginisierung der deutschen Sprache. In D.E. Zimmer Deutsch und anders: Die Sprache im Modernisierungsfieber (pp. 7- 104). Reinbek: Rowohlt. <?page no="75"?> Frauke Intemann “Taipei ground, confirm your last transmission was in English ... ? ” - An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language Introduction The continuing growth of world-wide passenger and cargo volume in civil aviation is an indicator of the ongoing process of globalization. Many airlines operate world-wide, and they have to succeed in a global market. In order to handle international aviation, a common language is needed: English. Aviation English, the language used by pilots and air traffic controllers (ATCs), is usually the subject of linguistic investigation when language-related problems are the reason for aviation disasters. Failing aviation communication has been analyzed (cf. Cushing, 1994) and the results of studies on aviation accidents have led to adjustments in aviation terminology. 1 Successful aviation communication, however, has not been the focus of many linguistic research activities. Seidlhofer (2004: 222) notes that “it is surprising how little research has been undertaken to date in describing this lingua franca [English in international air and sea travel] as it actually occurs”, although aviation English is regularly mentioned when it comes to naming standardized languages. One reason for this might be that it is quite difficult, not to say impossible, to get the permission to make cockpit recordings for research purposes. Aviation English standards are defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and are accepted almost all over the world. But can aviation English really be regarded as a standardized and properly working lingua franca or world language when it comes to aviation English in use? A world language, according to Gnutzmann (2001), is a natural language that is used in both its spoken and written manifestations, is taught and learned world-wide, and has its largest possible spread in regions where it is not the native language. Aviation English is an artificial language based on the English language. In order to differentiate between the different uses of the word English, the natural language will be called natural English, the artificial language defined by the ICAO will be called formal aviation English, and the language actually used in transmissions will be called spoken aviation English. This paper is based on transcripts from cockpit voice recorders (CVR) available on the Internet, on commercial video and DVD material as well as on personal interviews. 2 <?page no="76"?> Frauke Intemann 72 Formal aviation English: the ICAO-Phraseology In 1944, 32 members of what is now known as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) agreed on a common civil aviation vocabulary. Crystal (1998: 99) comments on this decision: […] English should be the international language of aviation when pilots and controllers speak different languages. This would have been the obvious choice for a lingua franca. The leaders of the Allies were English-speaking; the major aircraftmanufacturers were English-speaking; and most of the post-war pilots in the West (largely ex-military personnel) were English-speaking. The choice of English as the international aviation language may therefore be regarded as a direct result of World War II. The military dominance of the United States and the United Kingdom was the political factor; the economic factor was that, in contrast to North America, the European aircraft industry had been widely destroyed during the war. Today 188 member states of the ICAO have agreed on this phraseology. The phraseology consists of words and phrases which have exactly one meaning: Word/ Phrase Meaning Acknowledge Let me know that you have received and understood this message. Cleared Authorized to proceed under the conditions specified. Read back Repeat all, or the specified part, of this message back to me exactly as received. Wilco I understand your message and will comply with it. (Smith, 1995: 18) The basic principle of the ICAO phraseology is to make radio transmissions as unambiguous as possible in order to avoid potential misunderstandings. Nevertheless, English is not the only aviation language. Cockpit crew trainer Tom O’Grady (2003, e-mail) reports: “[…] ATC in France and Spain are still likely to follow the ICAO permission to use local language to speak to local operators. This can cause problems to crews listening out to get a picture of the traffic in their vicinity.” This holds even for international airports like Paris Charles de Gaulle. Other countries have stricter regulations concerning the use of languages. In Germany, the use of English is obligatory for all pilots and ATCs at international airports and in flight (e.g. area control, approach control). Exceptions may be made, for example, if the pilot has no or very low proficiency in English. German is the official language for small local airports not controlled by the Deutsche Flugsicherung (German air navigation services, cf. Deutsche Flugsicherung, 2002). As language plays an important role for aviation safety, it seems surprising that the ICAO started working on English proficiency regulations only in the late 1990s. In 2000, the Proficiency Requirements in Common English Study Group (PRICESG) was established; this group “set as its priorities the establishment of English as the common language of aeronautical communica- <?page no="77"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 73 tion” (ICAO, 2001: 1). The ICAO phraseology is to be used whenever possible and specified; for other situations natural English is the preferred language. The tone of the ICAO regulations is very diplomatic since it is a United Nations agency and therefore “can’t force any member states to do anything” (Feldman, 1998: 43). In March 2003, the ICAO strengthened the role of English; nevertheless, it still permits the use of other languages on the basis of mutual agreement between all air traffic control units involved. Lexical and phonological features of formal aviation English When the vocabulary was established, words with Latin roots were preferred to ensure that non-English speaking European pilots had as few problems as possible (cf. Varantola, 1989: 174). Other words were chosen in order to avoid misunderstandings because of phonological similarities. Instead of ‘ascent’ the word ‘climb’ is used as the antonym of ‘descent’. The number ‘three’ is pronounced / tri: / (spelled ‘tree’ in the CVR transcripts below); ‘nine’ is pronounced / ( )/ (spelled ‘niner’ in the CVR transcripts below). It is not imperative that the interdental fricative must always be realized as an alveolar plosive; furthermore, it occurs only rarely in the ICAO phraseology. Some words and phrases may differ from location to location, e.g. ‘radar contact’ is called ‘radar surveillance’ in South America. Grammar and style in formal aviation English The syntax of formal aviation English is kept to a minimum. Determiners, personal pronouns and auxiliary verbs are rare, subjects are omitted whenever possible. The flight number may fill the subject position at the beginning of a transmission: “Air Braunschweig 345 cleared to land”. 3 The use of inflection is reduced in contrast to natural English. Nonperiphrastic verb forms are used for imperatives as in 1a), and for declaratives as in 1b): 1a) [Tower to cockpit]: “Air Braunschweig 345 taxi to holding point Charlie.” (Air Braunschweig 345, do taxi to the holding point Charlie! ) 1b) [Cockpit to tower]: “Air Braunschweig 345 request taxi.” (Air Braunschweig 345 requests taxi instructions) The progressive is used by the cockpit to give information on ongoing actions: “Holding position”. Note that this phrase does not have a future meaning (will be holding position). The use of a marked future is very rare, e.g., “will cross runway”, and is always realized as a will-construction. Confirmation of action is always realized as a passive: “brakes released”. Interrogative sentences are avoided whenever possible because they require specific prosodic features, which may not be transmitted because of a <?page no="78"?> Frauke Intemann 74 poor radio signal or a lack of language proficiency. Interrogatives are replaced by imperatives. If for instance a radio transmission is interrupted, speakers should not politely ask for a repetition: “Can you please say again? ”, they have to demand one: “Say again! ”. As the example shows, there are no registers, no devices to alter stylistic levels in formal aviation English. Statements are short in length; there is nothing comparable with complex sentences. In emergency situations, conditionals can be found in the phraseology: “If you read rock your wings” (read = understand the transmission). Formal aviation English is an artificial language; it lacks levels of style, has restricted grammatical features and restricted vocabulary and semantics. It is a phraseology based on natural English vocabulary and selected grammatical features of the English language. Aviation English as spoken language The title of this paper: “Taipei ground, confirm the last transmission was in English! ? ” (Wittenstein, 2002, e-mail) gives a different impression. In contrast to the rules of formal aviation English, this is a complete English sentence, including a determiner. One would have expected the pilot to say, according to the ICAO phraseology, “Taipei ground, say again”. Obviously, there is a difference between theory and actual verbal behavior. The pilot expresses his annoyance because of a totally incomprehensible pronunciation. Aviation English standards are written, but in fact aviation English manifests itself exclusively as a spoken language. Spoken aviation English is the language actually used for communication between aircraft and ground as well as for communication within the cockpit. Speakers of aviation English have the choice to speak either ‘fully grammatically’ in the sense of natural English, or to restrict themselves to the ICAO phraseology whenever needed and appropriate, although a mixture of both is usually used. A core of fixed terms and speech groups remains as a constant, but much of the communication between ground and mobile stations takes place in a language which contains fashionable elements and many group and individual amendments which have never been officially sanctioned by the air traffic control authorities (Nübold & Turner, 1983: 10). As the data will show, several factors are relevant for this code switching. In international aviation, it is very likely that pilot, first officer and ATC represent speakers of English as a Native Language (ENL), speakers of English as a Second Language (ESL) and speakers of English as a Foreign language (EFL). Problems sometimes occur when pilots or ATCs lack sufficient language proficiency, or when native speakers do not adapt their language: […] Africa, the Middle East, China and South America, all of which can include ATC of very marginal English. Flying to the US often exposes European trained pilots, who expect a high degree of aviation ‘formality’ from native English speakers, <?page no="79"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 75 to a faster, often slang ridden delivery, particularly at high density terminals. (O’Grady, 2003, e-mail) A lack of language proficiency has been the reason for several catastrophes, e.g. the Tenerife accident (1977), where language-related problems between the Spanish ATC and a Dutch pilot led to the accident with the most fatalities in civil aviation history. The Dutch pilot of KLM flight 4805 transmitted: “We are now at take off”. This statement - a natural English sentence - proved to be ambiguous. The Spanish ATC interpreted the sentence as “We are standing at the take off position”, whereas the pilot thought he already had a take off clearance and wanted to express that the process was going on: “We are currently starting to take off.” The starting KLM crashed into a Pan Am aircraft that was on the runway because of other reasons related to communication problems with the ATC; 583 people died. As another example, Feldman (1998: 51) reports that in 1993 the reason for a crash of a China Northern aircraft was that the crew did not understand the phrase “pull up” blaring from the warning system. As language proficiency is a crucial factor in aviation safety, the ICAO established an English language proficiency rating scale, which will be obligatory for pilots and ATCs from March 2008 onwards. The scale focuses on non-native speakers; nevertheless, native speakers of English need to be evaluated too. However, the evaluation of native speakers will be informal: In practice, language proficiency assessment for native and/ or “Expert” speakers can consist of a brief interview with a representative from the Licensing Authority such as a flight examiner, which is usually sufficient. If a problem is noticed (speech impediment or inappropriately strong regional accent) during such an interview, the applicant should be referred to a specialist for follow-through. (http: / / www.icao.int/ icao/ en/ trivia/ peltrgFAQ.htm, accessed February 8, 04) The document makes no statement on what exactly is meant by “Expert” speakers, and there is no information on the status of speakers from ESLcountries. Keeping in mind the importance of successful aviation communication, it seems strange that ENL-speakers will not be evaluated for their ability to adjust their language in order to meet an appropriate communication level for native/ non-native situations. The required level on the rating scale is called operational level. The levels are defined in terms of pronunciation, structure, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and interactions. For the field of pronunciation the document states: “Pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation are influenced by the first language or regional variation but only sometimes interfere with ease of understanding”; and concerning vocabulary: “Vocabulary range and accuracy are usually sufficient to communicate effectively on common, concrete, and work related topics. Can often paraphrase successfully when lacking vocabulary in unusual or unexpected circumstances” (http: / / www.icao.int/ anb/ sg/ pricesg/ Scale/ scale.doc.rtf, accessed February 8, 04). In terms of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, the operational <?page no="80"?> Frauke Intemann 76 level is comparable with level B1, the third out of six levels (http: / / www. culture2.coe.int/ portfolio/ documents_intro/ common_framework.html, accessed February 8, 04). Cockpit data analysis Cockpit transcripts show that spoken aviation English is a mixture of natural English and formal aviation English. Colloquial expressions can be found (2a), grammatical elements of natural English are added (2b), and expressions of politeness are used (2c). 2a) [Warsaw approach]: Call tower one-two-one point six, thank you, see you later. 2b) [Warsaw tower]: Lufthansa two-nine-zero-four, you are cleared to land runway one-one. 2c) [Pilot to ATC]: Thank you very much. [ATC to pilot]: Pleasure. (2a and 2b: http: / / aviation-safety.net/ cvr/ cvr_lh2904.shtml, italics added; 2c: Cargolux video 4 ) The data discussed below shows that the verbal behavior of both ATCs and pilots includes a constant code switching between formal aviation English, natural English, and other native languages. The situations analyzed are standard routines before and during a flight. They should not represent anything which is above the usual stress level for pilots. The first example is taken from a German pilot training handbook Englisch für Piloten (English for Pilots) (Bachmann, 2000: 148), which comes with an audio CD and includes transcripts of the audio examples. 3) [Pilot]: Delta Echo Bravo Alpha Charlie, Cessna one eight two VFR, parking in front of hangar two, request taxi. [Tower]: Delta Alpha Charlie, taxi to holding point Charlie runway two tree, via Victor, Mike and Charlie, hold short of runway tree tree, wind two five zero, one two knots. QNH one zero one two. [Pilot]: Delta Alpha Charlie, taxi to holding point Charlie runway two tree, via Victor, Mike and Charlie, will hold short of runway tree tree, QNH one zero one two. (QNH: altimeter subscale setting in hPa, VFR: Visual flight rules, italics added) The verbal behavior of both tower and pilot is according to the rules. Both have a German accent, which is stronger in the case of the tower, but he speaks slowly with a clear voice. The pilot uses a progressive to indicate what he is doing (parking), the tower gives instructions using an imperative, then the pilot repeats the transmission nearly word for word, but altering the last line to “will hold”. Note that he does not say “will taxi”. Even though the pilot seems to stick to the ICAO-phraseology, his use of a periphrastic form - <?page no="81"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 77 will hold - indicates a mixture of formal aviation English and natural English. The switch here is perhaps motivated on a pragmatic level, because the pilot wants to underline that he will really hold short of the runway and not enter without permission. Real taxi instructions may sound quite different. As noted above, instructions in native English speaking countries, especially in the US, may be as follows: 4a) [Boston Ground]: And American eleven heavy, I’m gonna have to give you sierra and then alpha to the bravo hold point so just hold short of sierra for now. 4b) [Detroit Approach]: You may cross him [incomprehensible] Foxtrot, left turn at the Zulu bravo and then right turn at the yankee alpha. (4a: http: / / www.nytimes.com/ 2001/ 10/ 16/ national/ 16TEXT-FLIGHT11. html, accessed February 2, 04; 4b: Cargolux video) Example 4a shows a native speaker/ native speaker (ns/ ns) situation, which is characterized by a high degree of informality and many features of natural English. It includes, e.g., a personal subject (I), which is not to be found in the ICAO phraseology, a colloquial contraction (gonna) and more informal additions (just, for now). Example 4b is an ns/ ns situation as well, which the ATC might not have noticed because the airline involved is Luxembourg-based. The utterance is less informal, nevertheless it is a grammatical, natural English sentence, again including a personal subject (you). Neither sentence is an imperative, which the ICAO phraseology demands for those situations. Moreover, the Detroit ATC uses the modal ‘may’, which requires a certain language competence on the part of the pilot to understand the utterance as formal permission. The difference in the degree of informality may also be caused by the fact that in 4a, the aircraft is on the ground, so the quality of the radio signal is better than in situation 4b, where the aircraft is still flying, but not too far away from the airport. Example 4c shows taxi instructions as well, but in a totally different context: 4c) [Pilot LH 4374]: Lufthansa four tree seven four requesting taxi [Düsseldorf Ground]: Lufthansa four tree seven four taxi via tango mike hold in position runway two tree [Pilot LH 4374]: tango mike two tree Lufthansa four tree seven four (LH video 1) Both Pilot and ATC are native speakers of German, and the ATC’s verbal behavior is as it should be according to the ICAO phraseology; his utterance does not include any redundant information. Pilots have to confirm information by reading back the message to the ATC. The pilot’s confirmation is elliptic; he reduces it to the very essence of the taxi instructions, leaving out anything which is inherent or obvious, namely to taxi via the taxiways tango <?page no="82"?> Frauke Intemann 78 and mike and then to hold in position and not to enter the runway without explicit permission. In the first line, the pilot uses the inflected verb requesting, which indicates a switch to natural English, even though a sentence like “Lufthansa four tree seven four is requesting taxi instructions” seems somewhat odd. In non-native speaker/ non-native speaker (nns/ nns) situations, language proficiency is only relevant if the proficiency of one or more of the parties involved is very low. First Officer Jürgen Wittenstein (personal interview 2003) reported of an Algerian ATC who was not able to say “report estimated arrival time at Hogar” (Hogar is a waypoint on an airway over Africa), probably either because of insufficient vocabulary, or because the syntax of the utterance was too complex for that ATC. Instead, he asked: “What time Hogar? What time Hogar? ” The ATC used an escape strategy; he was able to transport the meaning of the message, but was unable to use the ICAO phraseology. This escape did not do any harm here, but because of the very poor radio signal pilots and ATCs are sometimes faced with, it is important for all parties to stick to the ICAO phraseology, because unusual expressions may not be comprehensible under such circumstances. “Most of the communication situations in air traffic are highly predictable routine situations followed by routine actions. If we are expecting to hear a certain instruction we often hear it in that form even if the instruction is garbled or contrary to expectations” (Varantola, 1989: 179). This fact underlines the necessity for all pilots and ATCs to use standard phrases. The same Algerian ATC was involved in the following transmission: 5) [Pilot]: We will call you Hogar next, understand? [ATC]: Report approaching Hogar! According to the ICAO phraseology, the ATC should have said “Next report at Hogar”. Obviously, the ATC has both a marginal proficiency in natural English as well as only limited knowledge of formal aviation English. The pilot, a high proficiency non-native speaker of English, adjusts his language to the situation and replaces the term ‘confirm’, which would have been the formally correct term, by the word “understand”, thus changing the utterance from a request to a question. From a pragmatic point of view, this conversation is unusual, because normally the ATC first gives instructions which are to be confirmed by the pilot, not the other way around. Here, the pilot reacts to the low-proficiency ATC by defining further action instead of waiting for instructions. Greetings Several cockpit recordings show a typical feature of spoken aviation English: The use of greetings in languages other than English. If both speakers share the same mother tongue, greetings in that language are common: <?page no="83"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 79 6a) [Pilot LH 4374]: Düsseldorf Tower schönen guten Tag Lufthansa four tree seven four If pilots and ATCs do not have the same mother tongue, the pilots often use the language of the ATC for a greeting, whereas ATCs prefer English: 6b) [French ATC]: Lufthansa four tree seven four contact de Gaulle on one two one five good day [German Pilot]: de Gaulle on one two one five Lufthansa four tree seven four au revoir (6a and 6b: LH Video 1) Sullivan and Giringer’s study (2002), carried out at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, confirms this data: “One American pilot described the use of greetings as an international tradition, a sort of grace code” (p. 401). Data from commercial cockpit videos suggests that this holds even if the pilot has - apart from the greeting - probably no knowledge of the destination country language (cf. From a Pilot’s Point of View 2, clip 2: Beijing landing). ATCs only rarely use other languages than English for greetings in nns/ nns situations, probably because it is not easy to guess the mother tongue of a pilot, as airlines may have international cockpit crews. Progressive The use of the progressive is the most inconsistent of all grammatical features. 7a) [Hong Kong Tower]: Lufthansa seven tree one line up runway one tree [Pilot LH 731]: Lining up one [pause] runway one tree Lufthansa seven tree one (From a Pilot’s Point of View 1) Here, the progressive might have a future meaning (we will be lining up) or the pilot wants to indicate an ongoing action: the aircraft is rolling and they will continue straight ahead to the runway. If the ATC does not have visual contact with the aircraft, the progressive form makes the statement ambiguous. The use of the progressive is quite frequent in transmissions concerning the change of flight levels. In formal aviation English, the transmission should be as follows: 7b) [ATC]: Cargolux seven seven eight descend and maintain flight level one niner zero [Pilot Cargolux 778]: Descend to maintain one niner zero Cargolux seven seven eight heavy (Cargolux video) The video material analyzed suggests that the following structure occurs more often: <?page no="84"?> Frauke Intemann 80 7c) [Düsseldorf radar]: Lufthansa four tree seven four Düsseldorf identified climb to flight level one four zero [Pilot LH 4374]: Climbing level one four zero Lufthansa four tree seven four (LH video 1) If an action starts right after the transmission, the use of the progressive is not unusual. Nevertheless, it indicates a mixture of natural English and formal aviation English. Complete switch to natural English If unusual situations occur, pilots have to switch to natural English in order to negotiate how to proceed. The situation of the next transcript is as follows. Cargolux flight 779 from Detroit to Keflavik, Iceland, probably has to be redirected to Prestwick, Scotland, because of unexpected weather conditions in Keflavik. The quality of the radio signal is very poor, so parts of the utterances were incomprehensible. 8) [Pilot Cargolux 779]: If the weather is not improving, we will [incomprehensible] follow um be proceeding to our alternate Prestwick [ATC Keflavik]: Cargolux 779 [incomprehensible] say again please? [Pilot Cargolux 779]: Yes if there is no improvement in the weather then we will be proceeding to our alternate um Prestwick. (Cargolux video) The pilot, who is a native speaker of English, switches to natural English. His first utterance was partially incomprehensible even though the video was recorded in the cockpit. The pronunciation of the pilot was somewhat lax, and he changed his planned sentence, indicated by the utterance “um”. For the ATC (native language unknown, probably Icelandic) the message was totally incomprehensible, so that he - this again is interesting to note - asks for a repetition of the transmission. After this, the pilot repeats the message using a very clear pronunciation. Pronunciation The pronunciation of pilots and ATCs depends on their proficiency in natural English. It does not differ from the verbal behavior observed in studies of non-native English speakers (cf. e.g. Jenkins, 2000). Native speakers sometimes do not obey the rule of saying ‘tree’ and ‘niner’: 9) [ATC, Scotland]: Cargolux seven seven nine [...] climb to flight level three seven zero <?page no="85"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 81 [Pilot, ns of English]: Cleared to three seven zero Cargolux seven seven nine (Cargolux video) The pilot makes a problematic statement, because the “to” could be misinterpreted as ‘two’. Therefore, ‘to’ should never be uttered in direct connection with numbers. Information Structure Transmissions may consist of a) the call sign of the aircraft, b) the call sign of the ground station, c) one or more semantic units such as status information or instructions, and d) a greeting or a leave-taking. The order of the units is not defined by the ICAO, except for the first contact between aircraft and ground, which the aircraft crew has to establish: [Aircraft]: Call sign of the ground station, call sign of the aircraft. [Ground]: Call sign of the aircraft, call sign of the ground station. In spoken aviation English, a greeting is usually added: 10) LH 4374: Düsseldorf Tower [call sign receiving ground] schönen guten Tag [greeting] Lufthansa four tree seven four [call sign sending aircraft] Düsseldorf Tower: Lufthansa four tree seven four [call sign receiving aircraft] guten Tag [greeting] number two [information] (LH video 1) 11) Cargolux 778: [incomprehensible] [call sign receiving ground] good afternoon [greeting] Cargolux 778 heavy [call sign sending aircraft] with you [additional] (Cargolux video) Greetings usually occur after the call sign of the station addressed, whereas leave-takings usually occur at the end: 12) Düsseldorf Tower: Lufthansa four tree seven four [call sign receiving aircraft] wind one six zero niner knots [information 1] cleared for take off runway [information 2] two tree left good by [leave-taking] Lufthansa 4374: Lufthansa four tree seven four [call sign sending aircraft] <?page no="86"?> Frauke Intemann 82 cleared take off two tree left [confirmation information 1] Tschüss [leave-taking] (LH video 1) Sometimes the leave-taking can be found in the second to last position as well, if the last position is filled by the call sign of the sender: 13) Taipei Ground: Singapore six [call sign receiving aircraft] contact tower one two nine [information] point three good day [leave-taking] Singapore 006: one two nine point three [confirmation of information] good day, sir [leave-taking] Singapore six [call sign sending aircraft] (http: / / aviation-safety.net/ cvr/ cvr_sq006.shtml, accessed February 2, 04) Information units or confirmation of information may fill the last position: 14) Lufthansa 4374: Düsseldorf radar [call sign receiving ground] schönen guten Morgen [greeting] Lufthansa four tree seven four [call sign sending aircraft] out of two thousand two hundred [information 1] climbing five thousand [information 2] (LH video 1) 15) Tower: Cargolux 778 heavy [call sign receiving aircraft] [incomprehensible] hold short runway two one [information] Cargolux 778: Ok yankee and hold short of [confirmation of information] two one (Cargolux video) The order of the different units seems relatively free, but the data shows patterning: Greetings only occur in the second position. Leave-takings occur in the last position, or, if this is filled with a call sign of the sending unit, in the second to last position. If the call sign of a receiving unit occurs, it always fills the first position. If more than one information unit is given, the parts are never interrupted by a greeting or a call sign. Confirmation of information occurs in all positions. <?page no="87"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 83 The call sign of a sending aircraft occurs in all positions. Some of these findings are the result of the communication situation. The call sign of a receiving aircraft always fills the first position, because ATCs usually talk to more than one plane so they must make sure that the cockpit crew they are talking to is alert when the central information is transmitted. As shown, the information structure of spoken aviation English is not free; only some elements have no fixed position. The general structure is as follows: [call sign receiving unit] [greeting] [information] [leave taking]. Only the call sign of a sending aircraft and confirmation of information can fill any position. The status of aviation English Can aviation English be called a world language? There are two main reasons to come to a negative answer. First, in many areas of the world English is only used if pilots and ATCs do not share a common mother tongue; this holds especially for South America and Asia. Second, in some areas pilots and ATCs usually have very low or no competence at all in English, especially in Asia, including the Asian part of Russia. Some airlines make sure that there is at least one native speaker of the destination country on board, and “airlines like some Chinese operators [...] include translators aboard their aircraft to help the crew understand English ATC” (O’Grady, 2003, e-mail). The same holds for Russian airlines (cf. Feldman, 1998: 47). As mentioned above, in 2000 the ICAO set up a group to establish English as the common language of aviation; and there still is some work to do. On the other hand, English is of course the language of aviation, as the internationally agreed upon ICAO phraseology is English-based. As the importance of the English language in general will continue to rise, aviation English will eventually be a real world language, though a specialized one. The question of whether aviation English can generally be regarded as a lingua franca is more difficult to answer, as the term has to cover different communication situations. These are marked by typical features. For the following paragraphs, I will use the term ‘native speaker’ (ns) for native speakers of English, not of other languages, and non-native speaker (nns) for non-native speakers of English. Aviation English in ns/ ns situations The language in ns/ ns situations is marked by a high degree of informality; it shares many features of natural English, e.g., fully grammatical sentences. Colloquial expressions are usual, and “[o]ne might have expected that by <?page no="88"?> Frauke Intemann 84 1998, all [US] controllers at least would be using the same phrases to direct traffic to certain flight levels, but they aren’t” (Feldman, 1998: 49). Aviation English in ns/ nns situations The verbal behavior of the non-native speaker is largely dependent on his/ her general English language proficiency. If the proficiency is low, some formal aviation English expressions are replaced by other words or phrases. In the cockpit data analyzed, there is more informality on the side of the native speaker, but all native speakers adjusted their language to the situation at least to some extent, i.e., they used fewer features of natural English. Highly proficient non-native speakers have a tendency to include a certain degree of informality, especially in read backs, i.e., when they confirm information using the same words they received from the native speaker. Aviation English in nns/ nns situations, same mother tongue In nns/ nns situations, speakers who share a mother tongue stick to the ICAO-phraseology - if they use it at all - with only few alterations, this concerns mother tongue greetings and verb inflection, especially the progressive form. Other features of natural English are very rare. Confirmation of information is elliptical; the utterances are sometimes characterized by a maximum reduction to the core meaning. Aviation English in nns/ nns situations, different mother tongues The verbal behavior of the speakers is largely dependent on language proficiency. If the participants are proficient speakers of English, they usually follow the ICAO phraseology, sometimes adding phrases of natural English. If the English language proficiency of a speaker is low, formal aviation English phrases sometimes are replaced by other phrases. Greetings in the language of the ground station occur regularly. All situations are implicit lingua franca situations as pilots of different mother tongues may listen to transmissions, but they vary linguistically. Therefore, it could be argued that whenever only native speakers of English participate actively, aviation English is a language for special purposes, not a lingua franca. The same holds for situations when non-native speakers of English who share a mother tongue communicate. In all nns/ nns situations, independent of the mother tongues involved, the language could be classified as ESL, because it has an official status; it is the daily second language for all pilots and ATCs. Aviation English serves as a second language in those areas of the world where a) mother tongue use is not permitted and b) pilots usually have a comparatively high proficiency in English. <?page no="89"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 85 On the other hand, even in ns/ ns situations, speakers do not speak freely, but follow at least some rules: they use core phrases of the ICAO-phraseology and alter the information structure of transmissions only as described above. These features, the core phrases and the information structure, can be regarded as characteristic to aviation English as a lingua franca. Figure 1 illustrates the ‘linguistic richness’ of the different uses of aviation English. Figure 1: Linguistic richness of the uses of aviation English. SAE/ SL: spoken aviation English as a second language, FAE/ LF: Formal aviation English as a lingua franca, SAE/ LSP: spoken aviation English as a language for special purposes, NE: natural English. Formal aviation English is defined as the lingua franca of aviation by the ICAO. When it is used as a second language by non-native speakers of English, the degree of similarity to natural English decreases, no redundant or inherent information is transmitted, and utterances, especially confirmation of information, are often elliptical. When native speakers of English use aviation English as a language for special purposes, more features of natural English are used, utterances may even be grammatical in the sense of natural English. However, the degree of similarity to natural English may decrease at high density terminals. Conclusion It is a myth that English is the only language of aviation. If possible, pilots and ATCs use their mother tongues almost all over the world, except for those (mostly European) countries where the use of English is obligatory and SAE/ SL FAE/ LF SAE/ LSP NE Degree of similarity to natural English SAE/ SL FAE/ LF SAE/ LSP NE Degree of similarity to natural English <?page no="90"?> Frauke Intemann 86 enforced by national law. The ICAO, a United Nations agency, has the will to promote English as the only language for reasons of aviation safety, but lacks the political power to do so. If English is used, the features of the utterances - spoken aviation English - differ depending on the speakers involved. Obviously, a high proficiency in natural English is the best basis for a high proficiency in aviation English (cf. Mathews, 2001: 25f.; Mell, n.d.; Sullivan & Giringer, 2002: 402). Most of the pilots investigated in this study fly for two airlines: Cargolux and Lufthansa. Airlines train their pilots to work as a team and to follow communication routines which may differ from airline to airline. Unfortunately, cockpit data of longer flights over linguistically critical regions like Africa or Asia was not available. Nevertheless, it has been shown that spoken aviation English is not a standardized language that is used the same way all over the globe. Formal aviation English, the ICAO phraseology, provides a kind of lingua franca framework, which allows speakers to adjust the language to their needs. Proficiency in natural English and the proficiency in aviation English are interdependent. “The lack of knowledge of the English language can be a burden to pilots and air traffic controllers, and continues to be a problem in international operations” (Verhaegen, 2001: 30). Therefore non-native English speaking pilots and ATCs should not only be trained in aviation phraseology, but airlines and air traffic control agencies should provide opportunities for pilots and ATCs to improve their natural English, although, as Mell (2004: 27) argues, language training and testing is expensive. Users of aviation English have to cope with various linguistic situations. For non-native English speaking persons it may be difficult to communicate with native speakers of English who speak natural English, i.e., their local dialect, instead of formal aviation English. For the linguistic training of native speakers of English, this finding has several implications. First, native speakers should be made aware of the fact that natural English and aviation English are two different concepts, as the latter is an artificial language based on a natural language. Second, native speakers of English need to learn to reduce natural English features and to restrict themselves to the ICAO phraseology. Third, if their pronunciation is strongly locally colored, they need training in speaking at an appropriate speed with an internationally understandable pronunciation. Of course, non-native speakers of English need an understandable pronunciation, too. If their transmissions are phonologically strongly influenced by their mother tongues, problems may occur. Nonnative speakers of English should also train receptive skills, i.e. listening to transmissions of speakers of different linguistic backgrounds. <?page no="91"?> An Analysis of Aviation English as a World Language 87 Notes 1 For recent studies on aviation communication and aviation safety see e.g. the homepage of the research project “Group Interaction in High Risk Environments (GIHRE)”: http: / / www2.hu-berlin.de/ GIHRE/ . 2 I would like to thank Eyjolfur Hauksson (Senior Vice President Flight Operations, Cargolux Airlines) and Tom O’Grady (cockpit crew trainer, O’Grady Partners) for their help and support; very special thanks to the former student of linguistics and now pilot First Officer Jürgen Wittenstein (Cargolux Airlines) for his great support and for patiently answering all my questions. 3 All “Air Braunschweig” examples are theoretical examples; no airline of that name exists. 4 All transcripts from commercial videos are my own. References Bachmann, P. (2000) Englisch für Piloten. Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag. Crystal, D. (1998) English as a Global Language. Canto Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cushing, S. (1994) Fatal Words: Communication Clashes and Aircraft Crashes. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. Deutsche Flugsicherung (2002) Nachrichten für Luftfahrer. Teil 1: Bekanntmachung über die Sprechfunkverfahren. NFL 1 248/ 02. Feldman, J. M. (1998) Speaking with one voice. Air Transport World 11, 43-51. Gnutzmann (2001) English as a global language: Zu einigen möglichen Konsequenzen für den Englischunterricht und die Englischlehrerausbildung. In Königs, F. (ed.) Impulse aus der Sprachlehrforschung. Marburger Vorträge zur Ausbildung von Fremdsprachenlehrern (pp. 93-110). Tübingen: Narr. Jenkins, J. (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language: New Models, New Norms, New Goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mathews, E. (2001) Provisions for proficiency in common aviation language to be strengthened. ICAO Journal 56/ 3, 24-26; 41. Mell, J. (n.d.) Emergency calls - Messages out of the blue. Online document: http: / / www.icao.int/ anb/ sg/ pricesg/ background/ OotB.htm (February 08, 04). Mell, J. (2004) Language training and testing in aviation need to focus on job-specific competencies. ICAO Journal 59/ 1, 12-14; 27. Nübold, P. and Turner, J. (1983) Linguistic Redundancy in English Aeronautical Radiotelephony: A Case Study. Braunschweig: Technische Universität Braunschweig, Seminar für Anglistik und Amerikanistik. O’Grady, T. (2003) Personal e-mail (May 02, 03). ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) (2001) Proficiency Requirements in Common English Study Group (PRICESG/ 3). Third Meeting. Summary of Discussions and Conclusions. Online document: http: / / www.icao.int/ anb/ sg/ pricesg/ Report/ Report3.pdf (April 04, 04). Seidlhofer, B. (2004) Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24, 209-239. <?page no="92"?> Frauke Intemann 88 Smith, D.J. (1995) International Air Band Radio Handbook: The Guide to World-Wide Air Traffic Control. Sparkford: Patrick Stephens. Sullivan, P. and Giringer, H. (2002) The use of discourse analysis to enhance ESP teacher knowledge: an example using aviation English. English for Specific Purposes 21, 397-404. Varantola, K. (1989) Natural language vs. purpose-built languages. The human factor. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 90/ 2, 173-183. Verhaegen, B. (2001) Safety issues related to language use have come under scrutiny. ICAO Journal 56/ 2, 15-17; 30. Wittenstein, J. (2002) Personal e-mail (October 10, 02). Commercial Videos Cargolux Video: Cargolux Airlines. Flight in the Cockpit 4. Boston: Just Planes Videos. From a Pilot’s Point of View 1: From a Pilot’s Point of View. Aus der Sicht des Piloten. Part 1. Kassel: B.L.&P. Film und TV Produktion. From a Pilot’s Point of View 2: Aus der Sicht des Piloten. Teil 2. Kassel: B.L.&P. Film und TV Produktion. LH Video 1: Flug in Originallänge mit Funk in einer Boeing 737 von Düsseldorf nach Paris. Kassel: B.L.&P. Film und TV Produktion. LH Video 2: Mit 4 Kameras im Cockpit eines Lufthansa A 320 in Echtzeit von Frankfurt nach Wien. Kassel: B.L.&P. Film und TV Produktion. <?page no="93"?> Christiane Meierkord Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon Introduction Interactions in English are no longer restricted to encounters with native speakers (whoever might be categorised as such) of the language. Rather, they involve speakers of a potentially indefinite number of different mother tongues. Consequently, it has frequently been demanded that English language teaching (ELT) take this change into account (cf. e.g. Gnutzmann, 1998; or Burger, 2000). In fact, the official guidelines for the teaching of English in German secondary schools increasingly consider the new role which English plays in a world-wide context. In North Rhine-Westphalia, this has been the case for over a decade now (cf. Kultusministerium des Landes Nordrhein- Westfalen, 1993), and the proposed new guidelines for English explicitly conceive English as a language for wider communication with individuals from all over the world (cf. http: / / www.learn-line.nrw.de/ angebote/ kernlehrplaene/ , accessed July 14, 2004). At the end of grade ten, pupils are expected to dispose of a vocabulary which allows them to engage in everyday conversation, to talk about their personal life (e.g. job prospects), and to comment on socially significant topics (e.g. human rights or information technology). While the guidelines and curricula usually do not specify the individual lexical items to be taught, applied linguists have frequently discussed which principles of vocabulary selection may assist the language learner in successfully communicating in a second or further language (e.g. Nation & Waring, 1997). Following the changes in the curricula, recent proposals argue that vocabulary teaching should be based on the factual use of English as a Global Language. The present paper provides an initial description of the lexicon in those interactions which the above guidelines increasingly place at the centre of ELT: interactions between non-native speakers of English. It examines a corpus of informal spoken interactions and addresses a variety of research questions, which will be outlined below. Conceptualisations of globalised English(es) and its lexicon The demand that ELT attend to the English language’s use as a global lingua franca follows decades of research into English as an International Language. The spread of the English language and the diversity of its users have been addressed by scholars devoting their work to reconceptualising English or <?page no="94"?> Christiane Meierkord 90 Englishes. While some discussed the sociolinguistic issues pertaining to the world-wide spread and use of English (e.g. the papers in Fishman et al., 1977), others considered the implications which the spread of English has for teaching the language for its use in international contexts (cf. e.g. Quirk & Widdowson, 1985). A number of authors have attempted to model a new ‘standard’ form of English (Crystal, 1997b; Johnson, 1990; McArthur, 1994; Smith, 1981; 1983), which - as they take it - would guarantee its global intelligibility, but others have approached the subject from a different angle: Scholars such as Pride (1982) and especially Kachru (e.g. 1986) have emphasised the variability of the forms which English assumes in originally nonnative speaking communities. Depending on the paradigm from within which the individual studies originate, the lexicon has also been approached in broadly two different ways. It is either discussed as a component of a prescriptive model of English, or it is treated descriptively and from a variationist point of view. The lexicon in models proposing one International English Based on the assumption that the world needed English as a unifying language for international communication, a number of proposals were put forward which aimed at modelling a form of English that would be easy to learn, yet communicatively adequate. One of the earliest proposals is Ogden’s (1935) Basic English (discussed in its relevance for present-day reasoning by Seidlhofer, 2002). In Basic English, the lexicon is made up of 850 items only. Later suggestions were not as radical but also less precise. For example, Quirk (1985: 156) merely proposed that what he called Nuclear English required a lexicon that is a “subset of the properties of natural English”. More recently, Johnson (1990: 303) envisaged International English (IE) as a variety of English which is “learned through formal education without reinforcement outside the classroom. It is used by the growing number of people (and nations) who need access to international scholarship, policy-making and administrative bodies, commerce and technology, and who do not use English as a community or national language, L1 or L2.” Surprisingly, however, Johnson does not seem to conceive English-speakers from e.g. Jamaica to contribute to his model. In fact, he sees no need to capture the particularities of any of the international varieties in IE. He explicitly states that “community varieties, intraor inter-, can be excluded” (1990: 304) and that IE is an “engineered” variety of English. Following Fishman’s (1982: 20) description of English in international communication as being a variety “without love, without sighs, without tears and almost without affect of any kind”, Johnson (1990: 309) describes the lexicon of IE as follows: IE vocabulary needs to be both modern and limited in size to achieve its essential purposes. As an illustration, the core IE vocabulary would include terms for such universally established occupations in the modern world as “doctor”, “psychiatrist” and “policeman”. It would exclude terms which have historical connotations <?page no="95"?> Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon 91 (saw-bones, bobby, peeler) or which reveal particular attitudes (quack, trickcyclist, pig) or group membership on the part of the speaker. Similarly, Crystal (1997a: 15) claims that what he prefers to call World Standard Spoken English is a variety which individuals choose for interactions with speakers who belong to a different speech community. Crystal argues that speakers will use their regional varieties of English to convey their national identities, but that the form of English used for communication extending beyond a speaker’s speech community’s boundaries would be a culturally neutral variety. He implies that individuals do not enact their identities when they interact with speakers from other speech communities, but this is difficult to conceive. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in discussing a possible core vocabulary for English in international interactions. The current approaches differ from the previous ones in that they tend to be based on corpora and their analyses. For example, Peyawary (1999) bases his argumentation on analyses conducted on the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen corpus of British English, the Brown corpus of American English and the Kolhapur corpus of Indian English. Based on frequency analyses conducted on the three corpora, Peyawary derives a core vocabulary which to him contains the most fundamental words of IE. At the University of Vienna, a project is underway, which aims at collecting a corpus of ELF interactions on which subsequent recommendations for ELT objectives in the areas of the lexicon and grammar can be based (cf. Seidlhofer, 2001a and this volume). The lexicon in the variationist paradigm The variationist paradigm has traditionally placed its emphasis on the description of the individual varieties of English, rather than on prescribing what the lexicon of a planned global form of English might or should look like. The different Englishes encountered throughout the world are commonly discussed as falling into three larger categories (owing to Kachru’s circles model): First, there are the mother tongue (L1) Englishes spoken in Britain and in those countries to where English was transported in the 16 th to 19 th centuries by emigrants from the British Isles. Secondly, the colonisation of large parts of Asia and Africa necessitated English language training of individuals in India, Nigeria, Kenya and other areas to facilitate the government and administration of the British colonies. The resulting bilingualism eventually led to the development of what are called nativised varieties of English. Thirdly, in numerous other countries, English is learned in an institutional context, largely with the aim of enabling communication with speakers from other nations. Often, these Englishes are unstable learner languages. Since the interactions which will be analysed later in this paper do not include native speakers, the lexicons of the traditional L1 varieties will not be discussed here. The lexicons of the Englishes spoken in the outer and in the <?page no="96"?> Christiane Meierkord 92 expanding circle have been discussed from within two frameworks: the World Englishes and the Learner Englishes paradigm. Indigenised Englishes have been described as possessing hybrid lexicons, which are characterised by frequent borrowing from the indigenous languages spoken in the individual countries (e.g. makan in Singapore English for ‘food’), by loan translations from the native languages (e.g. to throw water for ‘to offer a bribe’ in Nigerian English), by hybrid words consisting of indigenous and English parts (e.g. policewala for ‘policeman’ in Indian English), and by newly coined words and expressions (e.g. head-tie, referring to a piece of cloth which women wear around their head in West African Englishes). Some of these local expressions are now used beyond their original users’ communities, and words such as karma, kraal or sarong have made their way into learner dictionaries such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003). Discussions which address the lexicon of L2 Englishes from a learner language perspective, such as Swan and Smith (1987), usually investigate potential interference problems. As Swan and Smith point out, for example Dutch, the Scandinavian languages, and German share a large part of their Germanic vocabulary with the English language. On the one hand, this is held to facilitate the acquisition of English. But it also leads L2 speakers to transfer partial translation equivalents from their L1 into English - words which seem to match each other in both languages, but which are different in their meanings. For example, a German learner might use the word fabric to denote ‘a building where goods are manufactured’, because it resembles the German word Fabrik. Such instances of transferring L1 lexis, often referred to as ‘false friends’, also occur in the Englishes of speakers whose mother tongues are French, Italian or Spanish. Here, the transfer results from the shared Romance or Latin vocabulary. Other language differences leading to problems in the acquisition of L2 English vocabulary are compounding habits, complementation rules, phrasal verbs and idioms. In non-Indo-European L2 Englishes, particularities at the level of the lexicon do not usually result from transfer. Rather, modern technology and the introduction of sciences and technical goods into individual countries have resulted in the adoption or borrowing of a large number of English words (cf. Swan & Smith, 1987 for mother tongue speakers of Farsi or Thai). The resulting linguistic processes, which e.g. Kay (1995: 68) describes with reference to English in Japan, indicate that the borrowed items “show orthographical, phonological, structural or semantic integration into the native linguistic system”. A result of phonological adaptation is e.g. heddohon (from headphone). Semantic change, i.e. the acquisition of culture-specific meaning, occurs for example in the case of manshon. Although the word is derived from mansion, it means ‘a high-class block of flats’ in Japanese. Some of the borrowed words have even been compounded in a number of unique combinations, which are known as wasei eigo (English which has become Japanese). For example, chiiku dansu, derived from cheek and dance, means ‘a slow <?page no="97"?> Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon 93 dance’. 1 These examples document that the changes at the different levels of language often result in a form or use which diverges considerably from the original, and which may be unintelligible if the word is used in an international context. Furthermore, the lexicon of speakers of Englishes in the outer or expanding circle needs to be approached as being constrained by the amount of lexemes which have been acquired by the individual speakers. Characteristically, a learner’s lexicon contains gaps, the sizes of which vary according to the stage of second language acquisition which the learner has reached. As a result, mental concepts which are not yet matched by a target language expression can only be expressed by what are generally referred to as communication strategies, i.e. the speakers use either mother tongue expressions or literal translations of these, or they choose to paraphrase the missing lexical item. Interactions across international Englishes Today, interactions conducted in English are very heterogeneous. For example, they include conversations between Turkish and Norwegian speakers of English or between Jamaican and Guernsey speakers of English. As a result, English does no longer have a stable community of language users but rather one which is in constant flux, and the conversations are in fact Interactions across Englishes (IaE). Cape Coloured English Jamaican English Turkish English New York English Guernsey English IaE Figure 1: Interactions across Englishes <?page no="98"?> Christiane Meierkord 94 As Figure 1 illustrates, this term indicates that participants bring different forms of English into such interactions, e.g. Guernsey English, Jamaican English, Cape Coloured English, Turkish English, and New York English. The individual Englishes mix as their speakers interact, and they potentially merge into a new form of English. The figure draws on Mufwene’s (2001) notion of a “feature pool” from which speakers would select individual features as a new variety emerges. However, the participants in my corpus - as well as in other instances of IaE - may not necessarily use their variety of English in the same way as they would use it when talking to speakers of the same variety. Studies into IaE therefore need to describe the processes that take place when different Englishes interact. Analyses at the different levels of language need to identify the features which enter the “pool” as well as those that are eventually selected for regular use in IaE. 2 The processes which can be observed at the level of syntax are discussed in Meierkord (2004): The interactions are characterised by an overwhelming correspondence to the rules of L1 Englishes, transfer phenomena, developmental patterns, nativised structures, simplification, regularisation, and levelling processes. At the discourse level, IaE is characterised by a low type/ token ratio for phatic speech acts, shorter overlaps and a frequent use of supportive back channels and gambits. The excessive use of pauses and laughter to replace verbal strategies for topic shifts or changes and for back channelling is particularly noteworthy (cf. Meierkord, 1996 and 2002). The results obtained in the three studies indicate that speakers in IaE largely adhere to the norms of either BrE or AmE whilst at the same time retaining a set of highly heterogeneous individual features. However, these observations characterise interactions involving international participants. For interactions which are confined to the European context, Seidlhofer (2001b: 15) assumes: We are witnessing the emergence of an endonormative model of lingua franca English which will increasingly derive its norms of correctness and appropriacy from its own usage rather than that of the UK or US, or any other ‘native speaker’ country. The present paper supplements the analyses which I conducted at the levels of discourse and syntax with findings regarding the lexicon of IaE. It attempts to identify the resources from which IaE’s dynamic lexicon receives its input as well as the features which the lexicon of IaE shares with varieties of English world-wide, especially with nativised or interlanguage varieties. Another question, which shall be addressed, is whether the structure of the lexicon in IaE diverges from that of the major native English varieties with regard to its type-token ratio, its lexical density, and the complexity of the individual vocabulary items. The analyses furthermore aim at describing the strategies which speakers employ when they cannot put complex semantic notions into concise expressions. <?page no="99"?> Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon 95 Database and methodology The subsequent analyses draw on material collected in a corpus of approximately 24 hours of informal interactions. To date, the corpus comprises of 40,474 words. The interactions take place between speakers of English who originate from countries generally held to belong to the outer or to the expanding circle in the sense of Kachru (1986). For all of the 74 speakers whose productions were analysed, English is neither the first nor the dominant language. They have not acquired English as their mother tongue, and they also do not use English for the majority of their communicative activities. Approximately half of the conversations which make up my corpus were collected in a student hall of residence in the UK. The hostel accommodated overseas students who had come the UK to receive tertiary education or to take an internationally recognised exam in medicine or a law degree. The other half of the corpus consists of interactions which were mainly recorded at the University of Erfurt. 3 The participants in all of these conversations come from a vast range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds with home countries all over the world as presented in Table 1. Table 1: Linguistic and cultural background of speakers Outer circle Expanding circle (competent speakers) Expanding circle (less competent speakers) Female speakers Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Pakistan (2) Argentina, China (2), Colombia, France, Germany (5), Greece (2), Italy, Iran, Jordan, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, Spain, Tunisia Eritrea, France (4), Germany, Korea, Romania, Russia, Spain (2), Ukraine Male speakers Botswana (2), India (2), Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan (5), Uganda (2), Zambia Egypt, Finland, France/ Vietnam (bilingual), Germany (2), Iraq, Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, Vietnam, Zaire Bulgaria, Eritrea (2), France/ Laos (bilingual), Germany (3), Iraq, Norway, Saudi-Arabia, Spain Total 20 31 23 The speakers mastered English at varying competence levels. For the purpose of this study, Zimmermann’s (1984) definition of communicative competence was utilised to identify speakers as being either ‘competent’ or ‘less competent’. A speaker was held to be competent if s/ he was able to form utterances which were grammatically structured, adapted to the linguistic resources <?page no="100"?> Christiane Meierkord 96 available to the speaker, suitable for the particular conversation, and commonly used in the particular situation. While some of the speakers had reached native-like competence, others struggled to perform even basic communicative tasks. 4 This heterogeneity may also be reflected in the vocabulary acquired and employed by the individual speakers. Speakers who had mastered English at a fairly basic level only have a limited vocabulary, and thus they frequently encounter situations in which a concept they would like to express is not met by a lexical item in their English L2 vocabulary. To address the research questions outlined in the previous sections, the paper combines quantitive, statistical analyses with qualitative methods. The corpus was run through a concordancer to calculate the lexical density and the type-token ratio of the conversations. Additionally, the conversations were hand-searched to detect the individual instances in which forms or processes characteristic of IaE surfaced in the data. The lexicon in interactions across international Englishes Sources of input to IaE’s lexicon As I have pointed out above, a number of different varieties of English meet in IaE. Consequently, the lexicon of IaE needs to be conceived as potentially receiving its input from all the different sources mentioned in Figure 2. 5 Figure 2: Input to IaE’s lexicon This chapter examines the corpus with the aim of determining which of these potential sources of input are actually reflected in the productions of the individual participants. Input to IaE’s lexicon British English as taught in school Nativised international varieties Interlanguage varieties of English International L1 varieties Creole varieties of English American English as taught in school <?page no="101"?> Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon 97 Different from what can generally be observed with indigenised Englishes in the countries belonging to Kachru’s outer circle, i.e. a hybrid vocabulary containing items borrowed from the indigenous languages, IaE’s lexicon contains only one such lexeme. The Urdu word ne is used as a tag, meaning ‘won’t you’, by one single speaker, a very competent male Pakistani. (1) Book a squash court, ne, sometime. In the above example, the speaker uses the tag when talking to another Pakistani speaker. However, he was also recorded employing ne when addressing a European student. It may be noteworthy that the item is a filler and as such does not impede understanding at the propositional level of the utterance. Apart from this borrowed item, particularities of nativised English surface in an utterance observed with a Nigerian speaker. He uses the lexeme brothers brothers to refer to male siblings, which, however, causes some confusion. The following example presents the sequence which occurs after Anja, a female German speaker, has introduced her two brothers Stefan and Martin to Igbo, the male Nigerian speaker. It is preceded by a long pause of eleven seconds. (2) 6 1 Igbo: D’you really mean brothers brothers? 2 (2 seconds) 3 Igbo: Brother brother? Or just Germans? 4 Anja: No, brothers bro[thers brothers.] 5 Stefan: [Brothers brothers.] 6 Igbo: Brothers bro[thers brothers brothers.] 7 Anja: [@@ brothers broth]ers. 8 Stefan: Yes. 9 Igbo: That’s nice. You’re welcome then. As the pause in line 2 indicates, the Nigerian speaker’s interlocutors are puzzled by his use of brothers brothers, a lexeme which is peculiar to West African English, and which they are not familiar with. The fact that knowledge of particular vocabulary items is not shared by speakers from outside of the area in which the word originates seems to potentially impede communication. After Igbo’s utterance, his interlocutors fail to react, and after a pause of two seconds Igbo produces a modified version of his original sentence. Apparently, the second part of Igbo’s utterance in line 3, Or just Germans? , triggers a correct interpretation. But it seems that Anja still does not appreciate why brother has been used twice. She seems to interpret the reduplication as an intensifying or humorous device, and this interpretation makes herself triple the word (line 4). Both Stefan and Igbo then join her in producing multiples of brother, until the three speakers arrive at a joined interpretation, which is indicated by Stefan’s confirmation of his being a sibling of Anja’s with a Yes in line 8, and by Igbo’s concluding remark That’s nice. You’re welcome then. <?page no="102"?> Christiane Meierkord 98 Different from the speakers whose home countries are in the outer circle, those from countries in the expanding circle displayed a significantly higher number of L1 lexical items in their utterances. Interestingly, all of these items were observed in the conversations collected at a German university. In these interactions, the speakers, who were enrolled in an international course in intercultural communication, shared both English and German as lingua francas for their daily interactions. Their productions contained a share of 3.4% of German lexical items such as Mitbewohnerin, Bundestag or Teilnahmeschein. Furthermore, two French items, allors and toujours, occurred in the data. Altogether, the lexicon of IaE receives only very limited input from the Englishes the participants bring into the conversations. The vocabulary employed in IaE seems to be largely that of the traditional L1 varieties, but the linguistic environment also seems to determine the input to IaE’s lexicon. In a next step, the data were analysed to determine whether they reflected a lexicon that might be of a particular British or American character in terms of containing phrasal verbs or idioms. Since both are taken to be characteristic of the English language, phrasal verbs and idioms have traditionally played a prominent role in curricula as well as in textbooks and dictionaries. In the present corpus, they occur only infrequently. Nevertheless, speakers from all backgrounds incorporate both in their utterances as Table 2 documents. Table 2: Phrasal verbs and idioms in the present corpus Outer circle Expanding circle (competent speakers) Expanding circle (less competent speakers) total phrasal verbs (used correctly) 20 14 11 45 phrasal verbs (used deviating) 5 0 6 11 idioms 5 1 1 7 Table 2 also reveals that the speakers do not necessarily use phrasal verbs appropriately. In 11 instances, a speaker produced an item which is not listed in any of the major dictionaries of English. The following examples (3) to (5) are representative of the multi-word lexical items which the corpus contains. While (3) and (4) contain correctly used phrasal verbs, example (5) is of special interest, since it documents the deviating use of the phrasal verb sleep off, which is here taken to denote the meaning ‘sleep away’. <?page no="103"?> Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon 99 (3) That’s quite interesting e: h, when you look into cases and that. (Pakistan, competent) (4) If I ... don’t get in, I ... I’m having more interview. (Korea, less competent) (5) I wish you sleep off, so you can’t go again, and you come back in. (Nigeria, competent) All the above explications indicate that the form which English assumes in IaE is largely characterised by the speakers’ drawing on a lexicon which is British and/ or American to a high extent. The subsequent quantitative analyses look at the interactions as a type of text and describe their formal attributes. Properties of IaE’s lexicon Statistical measures such as lexical density and type/ token ratio have commonly been utilised to provide figures which allow for systematically meaningful statements with regard to the lexical properties of a written text or a conversation. Conversation, in general, is characterised by a relatively low lexical density in comparison to written texts or formal spoken registers and genres. For the present corpus, a lexical density of 42.9% and a type-token ratio of 7.95 were calculated. The first figure matches the one commonly obtained for informal conversations (cf. Biber et al., 1999 for their results for the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English). The type-token ratio, however, indicates that the participants in the conversations collected in my corpus use a restricted vocabulary. The corpus reveals less variation of individual lexemes than is the case in native speaker conversation. Another aspect of the formal properties of IaE’s lexicon is the complexity of the individual lexical items which participants use in IaE. Native speakers of Englishes utilise derivation and compounding to express semantically complex notions, and they can also deploy these strategies for ad hoc word formation. Since the participants in IaE master English at different proficiency levels, the individual strategies English makes available for word formation (and for the formation of multi-word items) may not be known to all participants in a particular conversation. In fact, most of the lexemes observed in IaE reveal a simple word structure, i.e. they are neither compounded nor do they contain any derivational affixes. Of all tokens collected in the corpus, 96.7% consisted of a root morpheme with grammatical affixes only (89% of all types). Of the 3,216 different lexemes detected by the programme, only 355 were results of either compounding (112 items) or of derivation (243 items). Although complex words are infrequent in the conversations, some individual forms which could be observed in the corpus are of considerable complexity. They include items such as beatification, misdecision, pressurous, <?page no="104"?> Christiane Meierkord 100 specialisation, or unpredictable. Of these five items, the words misdecision (meaning ‘false decision’) and pressurous (meaning ‘full of pressure’) are of special interest. Both misdecision and pressurous would not commonly be used by educated native speakers of BrE. However, both occur on the Internet and misdecision is listed in The Oxford English Dictionary as a neologism coined by Jeremy Bentham in the 19 th century. Apparently, the speakers in the corpus overgeneralise patterns of word formation which they recall as appropriate when applied to other stems. Further research is required to determine whether speakers in IaE tend to employ words or word formation processes which deviate from those commonly encountered in the utterances of native speakers. The individual topics the speakers engage in, which range from student life to politics and religion, frequently require that they express complex notions and ideas. In replacement of complex or unfamiliar words, learners employ a number of communication strategies (cf. Ellis, 1994). In the present corpus, these are mainly paraphrases, which take the form of approximations in Tarone’s (1977) sense, i.e. the speakers substitute the lexical item commonly used in the native speaker varieties with an item which shares some of the semantic features of the correct item. This is the case in examples (6) and (7). (6) 1 Rashid: I went to supermarket. 2 Anja: Supermarket, wh [at supermar]ket? 3 Rashid: [I mean this-] I mean .. you said to this 4 .. Camden Town market. 5 Anja: Hm? 6 Rashid: This Cam [den Town.] 7 Anja: [Camden] Town market. It’s not a supermarket. 8 Rashid: Well, Saturday market. The word supermarket in Rashid’s first utterance in (6) is used to refer to Camden Market, a popular open air flea market in London. The speaker’s lexicon seems to lack the item flea market, and he employs the word supermarket instead. Both items are semantically related in that they refer to places where goods are sold and can be bought. But the words differ in that flea market usually refers to an informal open-air venue where prices for goods can be negotiated, whereas supermarkets are located in buildings and sell their goods at fixed prices. The sequence following Rashid’s use of supermarket in substitution of flea market documents that at least one of the other speakers objects to using the item, and that she also does not appreciate that its use results from a production problem on the part of her interlocutor. In line 7, Anja explicitly remarks that supermarket is not the correct term to describe Camden Market. Rashid then replaces supermarket with the phrase Saturday market, which is a further paraphrase, and which indicates that flea market is not contained in his personal mental lexicon. <?page no="105"?> Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon 101 The strategy of substituting an unknown item by another one which approximates its meaning is also apparent in example (7). In this sequence, Jens and Hasif discuss the kind of work they had to do when training as accountants. (7) 1 Jens: You haven’t got clients eh for whom you have to .. 2 sum up eh small receipts and do thetheehm ... the taxes 3 for .. for every three months? 4 Hasif: I- Yes, when I was- I’ve taken some time off now. [I ]used to work 5 Jens: [Mhm.] 6 Hasif: for a .. for a firm … Then I did that. Yes. Uhm. .. But I’ve taken 7 this three months off from work just to study. U: hm, bu’ when I 8 was working, then I do that ( ). You have to add up their 9 receipts. Add up their payments. @ Just eh- It seems that the German speaker’s (Jens) vocabulary lacks the item petty cash, which native speakers conventionally use to refer to the receipt of, or expenditure for, small cash items. Jens replaces petty cash by the noun phrase small receipts. His use of small shows that he appreciates that receipts needs to be modified in order to express the particular referent. Both petty and small share the semantic feature [+small], but unlike petty, small does not collocate with cash. Hasif’s reaction indicates that he does not successfully derive the meaning Jens has intended to convey in his utterance. Hasif’s failure to interpret Jens’ construction surfaces in his own utterances You have to add up their receipts. Add up their payments. Both do not exactly refer to the action Jens was referring to, namely adding up numerous petty cash receipts for stationary, courier services, and the like. Conclusion The analytical sections above have documented that the lexicon of IaE receives only very limited input from indigenised Englishes, such as Nigerian or Pakistani English. At the same time, it contains only few phrasal verbs or idioms, which are usually held to characterise BrE or AmE. The type-token ratio as well as the lexical density of the conversations indicate that speakers in IaE use a restricted vocabulary, and the low amount of derived or compounded words suggests that the vocabulary is also simplified in comparison to that used by native speakers of English. In sum, the lexicon presents itself as reduced and culturally largely neutral. At the same time, it is instable and heterogeneous in that items and strategies vary according to the participants of the individual conversations. While these findings hold for my own corpus, a number of studies indicate that the lexicon of IaE potentially develops stable particularities. This seems to be the case in regular interactions of a stable group of participants. <?page no="106"?> Christiane Meierkord 102 Sampson and Zhao (2003) discuss processes which can be observed aboard international merchant vessels, which today tend to have multinational and thus multilingual crews. Although a number of attempts have been made to introduce a standardised vocabulary for communication between the ship and the shore, Sampson and Zhao (2003: 37) observed the following: Despite the attempts of the industry to impose a common language from ‘above’, the use of Maritime English was not witnessed on any of the vessels that researchers sailed upon either in ship-shore communications or aboard vessels in the course of crew communication. Maritime English relies upon somewhat unnatural forms of speech that seafarers did not appear to readily adapt to. In fact, it seems that the crews develop their own vocabulary whilst aboard a particular vessel for a contracted time. In the case of a particular vessel studied by the authors, which had Indian and Bangladeshi officers and Filipino ratings, Sampson noted the following: “They have picked up patterns of speech from each other, for example, many of the officers and some of the ratings say ‘like this’ when they have finished explaining something to you and I am sure they have picked it up off the captain who says it a lot. Another shared expression is ‘very less’ [used as ‘much less’ or ‘very little’]” (2003: 40). It thus seems that the stability of the community aboard the vessel eventually results in the negotiation of a common variety, and - as Sampson and Zhao find - “where basic levels of communication can sustain social contact, what can develop is a ship-based ‘language’ which we might think of as a Santos Sunset English or Norwegian Imp English! ” (2003: 41; the names of the vessels are invented). A similar process has been documented by Sutherland (1994) for communication in the German subsidiary of a Japanese company. The employees in the subsidiary eventually made use of a hybrid vocabulary, which - though largely based on English - contained a number of fixed or formulaic items from both Japanese and German, which the speakers had tacitly agreed to be used within the office. Whether items are selected for regular use in IaE depends on the frequency of the encounters of its speakers. Learners need to be prepared to master both stable varieties as well as interactions in which the lexicon still needs to be negotiated. ELT therefore needs to provide today’s learners with opportunities to encounter different varieties of English and to participate in interactions across these varieties. Modern technology allows for both, and teacher training increasingly enables teachers to make effective use of the facilities and materials available to them. Notes 1 Such observations indicate that structures found in the Englishes traditionally conceived as occurring in the outer circle (i.e. the use of hybrid lexical items or new creations) also pertain in the Englishes used in the expanding circle (e.g. Handy in German), which can thus no longer be held to be norm dependent only, as Kachru (1986) established. <?page no="107"?> Interactions Across Englishes and their Lexicon 103 2 For a general overview of the studies which have become available over the last decade, see Lesznyák (2004) or Meierkord (2004). 3 Four of the interactions were recorded at another German university, which will be kept anonymous. 4 For more information on competence levels and on how speakers were assigned to either the category ‘competent’ or ‘less competent’, see Meierkord (1996: 71-73). 5 Given the origins of the speakers participating in the conversations which make up my corpus, creole Englishes and L1 Englishes do not form a potential source of input here. 6 Key to transcription symbols: The transcripts largely follow standard orthographic conventions. In addition, ‘[ ]’ indicate boundaries of simultaneous speech, ‘@’ laughter, ‘..’ a short pause, and ‘: ’ the lengthening of the preceding phone. Italics are used to highlight a particular word or phrase which is discussed in the main text. Empty round brackets ( ) indicate a sequence which could not be transcribed. References Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Burger, G. (2000) Englisch als globale lingua franca: Überlegungen zu einer notwendigen Neuorientierung des Englischunterrichts. Fremdsprachenunterricht 44 (53), 9-14. Crystal, D. (1997a) English. How one language is uniting the world. Spotlight 7, 12-16. Crystal, D. (1997b) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, R. (1994) The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fishman, J., Cooper, R.L. and Conrad, A.W. (1977) The Spread of English. The Sociology of English as an Additional Language. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Fishman, J. (1982) A sociology of English as an additional language. In B.B. Kachru (ed.) The Other Tongue. English Across Cultures (pp. 15-22). Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press. Gnutzmann, C. (1998) Englisch als lingua franca. Implikationen für die Lehrerausbildung und für den Englischunterricht. In K. Schröder (ed.) Fremdsprachenlernen und Verbandsarbeit. Beiträge zur fremdsprachenpolitischen Bewusstseinsbildung (pp. 12-19). Berlin: Langenscheidt. Johnson, R.K. (1990) International English: Towards an acceptable, teachable target variety. World Englishes 9 (3), 301-315. Kachru, B.B. (1986) The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions and Models of Non- Native Englishes. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Kay, G. (1995) English loanwords in Japanese. World Englishes 14 (1), 67-76. Kultusministerium des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (ed.) (1993) Richtlinien und Lehrpläne für das Gymnasium - Sekundarstufe I - in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Englisch. Frechen: Ritterbach. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003) Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd. Lesznyák, Á. (2004) Communication in English as an International Lingua Franca. An Exploratory Case Study. Norderstedt: BoD. McArthur, T. (1994) Organized Babel. English as a global lingua franca. In J.E. Alatis (ed.) Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1994 (pp. 233- 242). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. <?page no="108"?> Christiane Meierkord 104 Meierkord, C. (1996) Englisch als Medium der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Untersuchungen zum non-native-/ non-native-speaker-Diskurs. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. Meierkord, C. (2002) ‘Language stripped bare’ or ‘linguistic masala’? Culture in lingua franca conversations. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds) Lingua Franca Communication (pp. 109-133). Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. Meierkord, C. (2004) Syntactic variation in interactions across international Englishes. English World-Wide 25 (1), 109-132. Mufwene, S. (2001) The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nation, P. and Waring, R. (1997) Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. In N. Schmitt and M. McCarthy (eds) Vocabulary. Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy (pp. 6-19). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ogden, C.K. (1935) Basic English versus Artificial Languages. London: Routledge. Peyawary, A.S. (1999) The Core Vocabulary of International English: A Corpus Approach. Bergen: The Humanities Information Technologies Research Programme. Pride, J.B. (ed.) (1982) New Englishes. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Quirk, R. (1985) International communication and the concept of Nuclear English. In L.E. Smith (ed.) English for Cross-Cultural Communication (pp. 151-165). London: Macmillan. Quirk, R. and Widdowson, H.G. (eds) (1985) English in the World. Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sampson, H. and Zhao, M. (2003) Multilingual crews: communication and the operation of ships. World Englishes 22 (1), 31-43. Seidlhofer, B. (2001a) Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11, 133-158. Seidlhofer, B. (2001b) Towards making ‘Euro-English’ a linguistic reality. English Today 17 (4), 14-16. Seidlhofer, B. (2002) The shape of things to come? Some basic questions about English as a lingua franca. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds) Lingua Franca Communication (pp. 269-302). Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. Seidlhofer, B. (this volume) Standard future or half-baked quackery? Descriptive and pedagogic bearings on the globalisation of English. Smith, L.E. (ed.) (1981) English for Cross-Cultural Communication. London: Macmillan. Smith, L.E. (1983) English as an international auxiliary language. In L.E. Smith (ed.) Readings in English as an International Language (pp. 1-6). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Swan, M. and Smith, B. (1987) Learner English. A Teacher’s Guide to Interference and other Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sutherland, J. (1994) Ad-hoc English and creolized corporate culture: Translingual and intercultural communication in a Japanese computer-assembly plant in Germany. TESL-EJ 1 (2). Online document: http: / / www-writing.berkeley.edu/ TESL-EJ/ ej02/ a.2.html (June 01, 04). Tarone, E. (1977) Conscious communication strategies in interlanguage: a progress report. In H. Brown, C. Yorio and R. Crymes (eds) On TESOL ’77. Washington D.C.: TESOL. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) Volume IX. Look - Mouke (2 nd edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Zimmermann, R. (1984) Pragmalinguistik und kommunikativer Fremdsprachenunterricht. Heidelberg: Groos. <?page no="109"?> Section 3 Teaching and Learning English in a Global Context: ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Standards Section 3 sets out to examine the political, curricular and pedagogical impact of the globalisation of English on the teaching of foreign languages in nonnative English speaking countries. The role of the native speaker norm in foreign language teaching is controversially discussed: it ranges from a plea for native speaker standards as a teaching model (for international communication purposes as well) to the opposite approach, i.e. rejecting the concept of the native speaker and postulating lingua franca English as a variety of English in its own right. This section provides a deliberative discussion between the positions. In his article, Claus Gnutzmann presents a discussion of the concept of Standard English with reference to its linguistic, functional and attitudinal features, and examines to what extent the results of this discussion are applicable to the concept of World Standard English. Having shown that the latter concept bears very little resemblance to the former and cannot be ‘derived’ from it, the author suggests that Standard English should continue to act as a teaching model, both in the context of English as a Foreign Language, as well as in the context of English as a Lingua Franca. Since the term ‘model’ is understood as an idealisation, from which learners can diverge, there is sufficient scope for tolerance towards errors in English language teaching. Thus there should be no dogmatic insistence on the norms of the standard language. Svenja Adolphs considers the attitudes of non-native learners of English towards native English speaker norms. The study, carried out at the University of Nottingham, UK, shows that extended contact with native speakers over a period of time had a substantial impact on foreign students’ attitudes towards the value of conforming to native speaker norms. The students who took part in this longitudinal study re-defined their concept of the native speaker and changed their perception of native speaker English. Based on this study there is some indication that exposure to native speaker English makes learners more critical of local and international varieties and leads them to re-define their language learning goals with a greater emphasis on mutual intelligibility in an international context. Allan James discusses the use of English as a Lingua Franca in Europe by focusing on evidence for the existence of structural commonalities. By comparing the European use of ELF to the use of English in other countries he concludes that in Europe there is a strong orientation towards standard Brit- <?page no="110"?> 106 ish or American English. Structural features that vary from these standards are caused by the type of discourse and the level of language proficiency of the speakers. James identifies a great heterogeneity in local functions and forms of ELF, which he categorises as dialect, register and genre. The focus within this constellation shifts with use and occasion. In her article, Jennifer Jenkins questions the appropriacy of using native speaker models for learners of English from the expanding circle. These speakers communicate in English in lingua franca situations rather more than they communicate with native speakers of English. Jenkins summarizes the data from which the Lingua Franca Core was derived and stresses the differences of its main characteristics from traditional pronunciation syllabuses. She also takes into account the role of accommodation in lingua franca interaction and the habit of speakers who adjust their pronunciation to increase intelligibility. Furthermore she considers lingua franca pronunciation from a socio-psychological perspective and examines attitudes towards accent. In her contribution, Barbara Seidlhofer critically discusses the perception of non-native speakers’ use of English reflected in Randolph Quirk’s writings about the educational significance of Standard English. She argues that the unprecedented global spread of English requires a rethinking of what constitues standards and appropriate objectives for learning, and that notions of ‘nativeness’ are irrelevant in contexts where English is used (and learnt) as a lingua franca. She suggests that empirical research currently underway may well reveal regularities in salient features of lingua franca English which would call for a reappraisal of traditional norms and standards, and, in turn, new priorities for pedagogy. <?page no="111"?> Claus Gnutzmann ‘Standard English’ and ‘World Standard English’. Linguistic and Pedagogical Considerations Introduction Though there is by no means a generally accepted definition of Standard English (SE) with regard to its linguistic and functional features, there is a strong consensus that SE is the variety that should be taught to learners of English as a Foreign or Second Language. Apparently, the concept of SE is viewed as a far more controversial topic within linguistics, compared to the field of foreign language teaching and learning. A relatively recent notion such as World Standard English (WSE) (Crystal, 1994), which owes its existence to the world-wide proliferation of English, ought to be related to the concept of SE, perhaps even ‘derived’ from it, in order to be meaningful. However, if the concept of SE is unclear, it can be assumed that the concept of WSE is even less clearly understood. Concerning the definition of SE by linguists, there is disagreement as to which linguistic levels are involved: Is pronunciation a part of it or can SE be spoken with any accent? Does it only pertain to grammar (e.g. Trudgill, 1999), or does it extend to lexis, discourse and pragmatics as well? Or is SE just a “mythical dialect”, which has only existed “in the textbooks of its pedagogic proponents” (Harris, 2002: 60)? This paper will present a discussion of the concept of SE with reference to its linguistic, attitudinal and functional features, and examine to what extent the results of this discussion are applicable to the concept of WSE. Recent interest in the subject and a few questions on SE Over the course of the last 10-15 years the subject of SE has undergone a revival in several European countries. In Britain this revival can be attributed partly to the polemic popular-science publication of Honey (1997). This book is essentially an attempt to ‘settle accounts’ with representatives of the difference (vs. deficit) hypothesis, which basically includes the overall majority of linguists at British universities. What Honey criticises most is the idea of ‘linguistic equality’, i.e. the view that all linguistic varieties are functionally equivalent. The Theory of Functional Equivalence of Linguistic Varieties states that all languages and all dialects are ‘equally good’. Honey believes that this doctrine has actually hindered the teaching and learning of SE at school. This conception, he continues, has had detrimental effects on those who never <?page no="112"?> Claus Gnutzmann 108 learnt SE, or more accurately, those who never had the chance. Honey’s book went down very well amongst branches of the general public, e.g. in the daily newspapers. The reaction of linguistic academics has been documented in several articles in the anthology edited by Bex and Watts (1999). It comes as no surprise that the reaction of linguists to Honey’s book has been highly critical and not without dispute. Of course, increased interest in the subject of standardisation and SE must also be viewed with regard to the ever increasing globalisation of English (cf. Brutt-Griffler, 2002; Crystal, 1997). Many questions arise, e.g.: Is a new form of English emerging, a form which breaks entirely free of its native varieties? Could it be possible that forms of English are coming into existence that bear very little or no connection at all with the culture(s) of English-speaking countries, particularly those of the U.S.A. and Great Britain? Are the new forms of English so different from SE that a native speaker of English would have trouble understanding them? And if so, would this always matter? In the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1992) the noun standard is defined as: “A level or degree of quality that is considered proper or acceptable: We work to a high standard of precision./ This teacher sets high standards for his pupils.” However in the same dictionary the adjective standard is defined as: 1. of the usual or regularly used kind; not rare or special: These nails come in three standard sizes. 2. generally recognized as correct or acceptable: It’s one of the standard books on the subject. It is clear from these definitions that the term standard has several semantic qualities and possible interpretations. In one sense it means the conventional norm or the unmarked, as illustrated in this example: That’s standard, nothing special. (e.g. to have a bathroom and toilet in the home.) In another sense though, according to LDOCE, it represents what is considered to be ‘proper or acceptable’; in other words what is viewed as a model or reference point. The ambiguity of the word standard is also reflected in the use of the term Standard English. A closer look at the current definitions of SE is enough to prove that there is no one generally accepted use of the term. Instead, an abundance of questions are raised, including the following: 1. What is (still) classified as Standard English? How easy is it to identify sentences, phrases, words or texts as standard or non-standard? 2. What percentage of the British population write SE? What percentage of the British population speak SE? 3. How did SE arise? Which historical and political factors contributed to its development? <?page no="113"?> ‘Standard English’ and ‘World Standard English’ 109 4. Does SE belong to the dialect or variety of a specific class, e.g. the upper or middle class? Or does SE have no connection with social class at all? 5. If SE belongs to the dialect of a specific social class, is it used as a way of suppressing other social classes? 6. Is SE restricted (either partially or wholly) to the printed word? Is spoken SE reserved for formal contexts or is it also used in informal contexts? 7. On which linguistic levels does SE manifest itself? Is its use only apparent through grammar, e.g. syntax, or are there other ways in which it manifests itself? What role does pronunciation play? 8. Does people’s concept of SE differ depending on the context it is used in? That is, does SE mean something different for native speakers in an English classroom than for those who are learning English as a Foreign Language, e.g. in Denmark or Germany? If so, what are the differences? 9. In which communicative contexts and with what function is SE primarily used? What are the specific communicative benefits of this variety? 10. How can we comprehend the concept of WSE? How can the relationship between SE and WSE be described? The phenomenon of SE must be looked at from a variety of different perspectives if we want to understand it in its full complexity and bearing on the notion of WSE. So according to the questions raised, the following perspectives and dimensions must be considered: a historical-political dimension a sociological dimension a linguistic-historical dimension a linguistic (structural/ formal) dimension a socio-linguistic and communicative dimension: Who uses SE, when and what for? a socio-psychological dimension: the attitudes of speech communities to SE (prestige) a pedagogical dimension, under which the area of English as a Foreign Language is of primary interest. As my overriding interest in this article is in the pedagogical area, I will deal with the linguistic and socio-linguistic questions in relation to pedagogical <?page no="114"?> Claus Gnutzmann 110 interests. This would mean, for example, that it is flawed to discuss the Theory of Functional Equivalence of Linguistic Varieties without taking into account the context of schools, whose considered aim it should be to foster competence in written SE. The concept of SE and its definitions Here are two quotations by Sweet (1908) and Wyld (1934), which - despite being quite old - clarify very effectively why the subject of SE in Britain is still so fraught with emotion even today. They have definite connotations of social alienation and segregation, especially that of Wyld. Standard English, like Standard French, is now a class-dialect more than a local dialect: it is the language of the educated all over Great Britain … The best speakers of Standard English are those whose pronunciation, and language generally, least betray their locality (Sweet, 1908: 7f., in McArthur, 1998: 122). Everyone knows that there is a type of English [Received Standard] which is neither provincial nor vulgar, a type which most people would willingly speak if they could, and desire to speak if they do not. […] I suggest that this is the best kind of English […] because it has two great advantages that make it intrinsically superior to every other type of English speech - the extent to which it is current throughout the country, and the marked distinctiveness and clarity in its sounds […] How different are the conditions with Modified Standard. Here all is variety. Every province, every town, nay, almost every suburb, and every class, has its own idiosyncrasies of pronunciation (Wyld, 1934, in McArthur, 1998: 125). It is noteworthy that SE is associated very distinctly with pronunciation or accent in both of these definitions. A more recent definition from the Merriam Webster website, an American resource, provides the following rather ‘more neutral’ definition: Merriam-Webster Online www.m-w.com (accessed June 21, 2004) main entry: Standard English, function: noun, Date: 1836 “[...] the English that with respect to spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary is substantially uniform though not devoid of regional differences, that is well established by usage in the formal and informal speech and writing of the educated, and that is widely recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken and understood.” Thus, SE has the following characteristics: It encompasses all linguistic levels, including pronunciation. It is used by the educated in written and spoken form, and in both formal and informal contexts. It is accepted everywhere where English is spoken and understood, therefore also in non-English speech communities. <?page no="115"?> ‘Standard English’ and ‘World Standard English’ 111 In Britain there is still particular dispute and difference of opinion on the question of pronunciation, in its origin this can probably be traced back to the above quotations of Sweet and Wyld. To some extent they still ring true today and starkly illustrate the social implications of accent and pronunciation. The modern British definitions of SE, on the other hand, exclude pronunciation as a criterion. According to Strevens, SE “may be spoken with an unrestricted choice of accent” (Strevens, 1983: 88), similarly Trudgill: “Standard English has nothing to do with pronunciation” (1999: 118). For Trudgill the criteria for SE can even be reduced down to grammar: “Standard English is a social dialect which is distinguished from other dialects of the language by its grammatical forms” (1999: 125). Trudgill disregards vocabulary as a criterion, claiming that speakers of a standard variety have the freedom of stylistic differentiation. He argues that even when speakers swear or use slang they are still speakers of the standard variety. On the other hand, the use of slang as the language of a specific group stands in sharp contrast to the generally accepted feature of a standard variety, i.e. serving as the non-regional, socially unmarked mode of communication of a national speech community. As was illustrated with the quotations by Sweet and Wyld, the idea of a standard variety of English is firmly attached to a clear valuation and ideology. This is not at all surprising considering that language is a social and political phenomenon. Perhaps it is even less surprising when taking into account that in Britain, specifically England, the ideas of class consciousness and class differences have always been significant, probably more significant than in other countries. So is SE the exclusive property of a specific social class? Most likely not, as it is not possible to attribute the use of a standard or non-standard variety exclusively to a certain social class: “‘Standard English’ is not ‘upper class English’ and it is encountered across the whole social spectrum, though not necessarily in equivalent use by all members of all classes” Strevens (1983: 87). In this case Strevens’ analysis is a more accurate one; that in principle a standard variety is spread, (though not necessarily evenly) over the social spectrum. Most of the definitions of the term SE view grammar and lexicon as the defining criteria. However, the lexicon plays a lesser role. Interestingly enough orthography is only mentioned in passing, whilst pronunciation is generally excluded in British contexts. Quite surprisingly, the ability and competence to produce coherently written texts is hardly dealt with at all. This state of affairs can probably be put down to the fact that SE is very much viewed as a structural or formal phenomenon. It is yet to be discussed how pronunciation should be tackled in the context of a foreign-language-learning environment. If this factor remains unconsidered, as is the case in English language lessons for native speakers, then SE “may be spoken with an unrestricted choice of accent” (Strevens, 1983: 88). The values and ideology of society are often connected with the idea of SE, in particular the repressive side of its character is emphasized. In the words of Stubbs: “It [SE] is related, in particular, to the power and wealth of <?page no="116"?> Claus Gnutzmann 112 the educated middle classes and, conversely, is used to exclude others from certain roles and professions” (Stubbs, 1986: 85). On the other hand, the fact that someone communicates in SE does not necessarily mean this person is from the wealthy classes. However, it is also considered necessary that SE in its written form should be taught to children at school, and for all intents and purposes the so-called “enemies of Standard English” share this view: “First, all children, must have access to SE, and therefore must be taught it in school, if necessary. […] It is very much more doubtful whether children should be explicitly taught spoken SE” (Stubbs, 1986: 95). So there are limitations, which are also voiced by Milroy: “No one opposes the teaching of Standard English” (Milroy, 1999: 22). This of course also means ‘No one enforces the teaching of Standard English’. Though the stance of British linguists towards the linguistic and pedagogical dimensions of SE in Britain is widely varied, their suggestions about the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language are, on the contrary, clear-cut: “It is the variety taught to non-native learners” (Trudgill, 1999: 118). However, the actual relevance of SE as a teaching model for nonnative learners has been critically questioned largely due to the rise of English as a Lingua Franca. The basis for this argument is the development of English as a global and European language, and the new forms and functions this will entail (cf. the contributions by Jenkins and Seidlhofer in this volume). Terminological aspects of the globalisation of English Many concepts and terms have emerged in connection with the world-wide spread of English. McArthur (2001: 4f.) has compiled the most important of these: Global English, Global Language, International English, International Language, International Auxiliary Language, International Standard English (ISE), World English, World Englishes and World Language. One could also add to this list the concepts Global, International or World-wide Lingua Franca. Some of these terms refer to the same thing, others have slightly different meanings. However, it can be argued that these terms, in fact, refer on the whole to no more than just usages of English. Thus assigning them the same status as linguistic varieties seems problematic. Varieties can be viewed as distinct forms of a language and are often classified as - depending on the type of variation referred to - regional, social or functional. Varieties can differ in pronunciation, lexis, grammar and pragmatics. Following Crystal (1991: 370) a variety can be defined as “any system of linguistic expression whose use is governed by situational variables”. “System of linguistic expression” means the capacity to identify distinct linguistic sub-systems for the different linguistic levels. On the other hand, speakers from the most different linguistic and cultural backgrounds participate in the use of English as a Global Language. Many of these speakers use spoken forms which are <?page no="117"?> ‘Standard English’ and ‘World Standard English’ 113 strongly influenced by their mother tongue. They use English “with its own pattern of interference from the mother tongue” (Crystal, 2001: 57). The result is an enormous spoken diversity and heterogeneity. In view of this situation it seems difficult, if not impossible, to adequately compare spoken products uttered in world-wide lingua franca communication. Such a comparability - or calibration - would be a requirement, however, if concepts such as International English or lingua franca English were to be allocated the status of linguistic varieties. How is it possible to come to grips with a concept such as WSE and how can its relationship to SE be conceived? In the context of the globalisation of English, it can, at least to start with, be taken to mean the emergence of a new world-wide Standard of the English language. With regard to the relationship between SE and WSE one would have to somehow express the idea that WSE expresses for the globe what SE expresses for regions, e.g. Great Britain, the USA or Australia. I will attempt to do so, referring to a model describing standard languages, which leans heavily on thoughts from the Prague School with regard to cultivation and standardisation of languages or varieties (cf. Garvin, 1974). Compared to other more recent accounts of standard languages, which in their definitions focus on structural and formal aspects, it is the advantage of the Prague School’s account that it employs an integrated approach paying attention not only to linguistic but also to functional and attitudinal properties of a standard language. After briefly introducing the main characteristics of this model it will be examined to what extent the criteria it uses are relevant in describing a phenomenon like WSE. 1. Intrinsic properties of a standard language: Flexible stability, intellectualisation Flexible stability is concerned with the requirement that a standard language is stabilised by it being codified in grammars and dictionaries. Furthermore, the codification should be laid out flexibly enough for it to allow for changes in language. For WSE, no codifications exist in English reference grammars, which would describe the specifics of this phenomenon. By specifics, I mean structures that systematically differ from the British or American standard. Intellectualisation deals with the stylistic differentiation of the standard language in accordance with increasing accuracy. So-called functional dialects, such as everyday language, factual language/ the language of the workplace and scientific language vary in their precision and abstractness. Scientific language is generally considered to be the most precise and abstract. This criterion does not apply to WSE either, least of all because there are hardly any scientific publications in WSE that significantly differ from the British or American Standard. 2. The functions of a standard language within the culture of the speech community unifying, separatist, prestige, frame of reference <?page no="118"?> Claus Gnutzmann 114 In view of a culturally and linguistically wide-reaching phenomenon like Global English, terms such as culture and speech community can only be used with difficulty, if at all. The unifying and separatist criteria - originally used “to set off a speech community as separate from its neighbours” (Garvin, 1974: 522) - could perhaps be said to apply to those who participate successfully in world-wide communication by means of English. As a consequence, it could be argued that their collective use of English unites them and, at the same time, separates them off from those who cannot communicate in English. The prestige function can also be attested to those international users of the language for whom it has an additional benefit. As there is no codification of WSE in grammars and dictionaries, the frame of reference function for linguistic correctness (norms of correctness) is not applicable to the orientation of its speaker. 3. The attitudes of the speech community towards the standard language language loyalty, pride, awareness of the norm Since these attitudes are connected to the four functions - language loyalty to the unifying and separatist functions, pride to the prestige function, and awareness of norm to the frame-of-reference function - they are not applicable to WSE either. The use of English in a global context emphasises its function as an auxiliary means of communication. Following Garvin (1974: 522) a standard variety and a national variety in particular can be defined as “a codified form of a language, accepted by, and serving as a model to a larger speech community.” However, the previous discussion has shown that the criteria linguistic properties, functions of the standard language and attitudes of the speech community do not really allow themselves to be applied to a concept such as WSE. Thus, at this stage of its development WSE should not be treated as a natural descendant of SE. This conclusion is also supported by the general trend that world-wide lingua franca communication in English is above all spoken communication. For Crystal (2001: 58) World Standard Spoken English (WSSE) is “a regionally neutral international spoken standard, acting as a stabilizing force on global diversity. […] people are using English as their spoken lingua franca, while trying to avoid the idiosyncrasies associated with national varieties of expression”. Crystal further points out that in WSSE, sentence construction is simplified, idioms and slang vocabulary are avoided, linguistic tempo is reduced and assimilations, elisions and weak forms are avoided. Again, the question arises whether such phenomena are, in fact, indicative of a linguistic variety. Since their function is to express adaptation to the respective ‘constrained’ or ‘restricted’ competence of the communication partner they can be more appropriately described as reduction and simplification strategies. For this reason, they seem less suitable to function as formal-linguistic constitutive features of WSSE. The idea that WSE be conceived as a concept that could possibly refer to the emergence of a new world-wide standard being significantly different <?page no="119"?> ‘Standard English’ and ‘World Standard English’ 115 from British or American Standard English may be attractive for ‘ideological’ reasons: It could give international, non-native users of English the impression that their use of the language would constitute an autonomous phenomenon independent of native speaker norms and control. As a psychological result of this, international speakers could feel more at ease when using English as a world-wide lingua franca, but also with native speakers of English. Which variety/ varieties for the English language classroom? The following discussion of WSE, which is not primarily linguistics-oriented, but is mainly of a pedagogical nature, refers first and foremost to the European and particularly to the German school context. It has emerged from the preceding discussion that at present there is no solid basis for the assumption of a WSE, neither for the spoken nor for the written language. As a consequence, with regard to the teaching of English in Europe, SE should continue to form the basis for the written language. As far as the area of grammar is concerned, on the basis of the closeness between the two varieties there is no need to systematically distinguish between British and American English in English lessons. A glance into the majority of reference grammars shows that relatively little space is granted to a systematic treatment of the syntactic differences between British and American English. Vocabulary is probably a different, though not a decisive issue on the level of teaching English at school. All the same, it seems to be increasingly the case that American words are entering the British vocabulary. Hence, one could argue that the lexical differences between British and American English are becoming even smaller. With regard to pronunciation, the situation is different, as there are obviously striking differences between the two varieties. On the other hand, from the definitions of SE - given by British linguists, one might add - we have seen that SE can be spoken with every accent. Why then should one refer to a model when teaching English as a Foreign Language? And which model should it be? Two arguments can be put forward in favour of basing the teaching of pronunciation on a phonetic model - one from language teaching, the other from the acquisition of pronunciation in the first language: Firstly, there is the common tendency that open norms, i.e. highly flexible and descriptive norms unsettle the learners at a time of their learning process when they are very much in need of ‘orientation’. Secondly, when children acquire the pronunciation of their mother tongue, the phonetic input which they receive is relatively homogenous. This homogeneity, which, admittedly, presupposes the growing up of children in a more or less monolingual environment, facilitates the acquisition of their respective accent. Equivalent considerations also apply to the teaching of pronunciation of a foreign language. Therefore it would appear to make sense to first offer the learners a relatively homogenous, generally accepted input. Such a phonetic <?page no="120"?> Claus Gnutzmann 116 input serves the orientation of the learners and provides the basis for a relatively unmarked, neutral accent. A relatively unmarked accent can be doubly effective, as it creates a certain distance from the target culture, without distancing from it fully, however. By an unmarked learner accent, a form of pronunciation is envisaged that does not allow the first language of the learners to show excessively. With regard to the phonetic variety that could act as a model there are still good reasons to opt for pronouncing with a British accent - something like Received Pronunciation (RP) (Gnutzmann, 2003). ‘Model’ does not refer to a goal to be met at all costs, but to rather a target, a kind of orientation framework. As RP is nowadays strongly shrouded in ideology, one could take something like BBC English. Roach and Hartman have done exactly this when they “abandon the archaic name Received Pronunciation” in favour of BBC English (Roach & Hartman, 1997: v). Furthermore, most pronunciation materials are based on RP or BBC English, respectively. There are - in Germany and Europe - additionally geographical and political reasons to go for a British variety as opposed to an American variety. After all, Great Britain is in Europe and politically part of the European Union, though to some observers this may sometimes be a debatable issue. Conclusion Beneke (1991) assumes that 80% of interactions in which English is used as a foreign or second language happen without the presence of native speakers. However, no evidence or criteria for calculation are given for this estimation. It is certainly true that English is being increasingly used as a lingua franca, and this is the case in Europe too. In view of this development, the political side of foreign language teaching is coming very much to the fore. In the tradition of Phillipson’s book Linguistic Imperialism (Phillipson, 1992), the notions of cultural rejection and the loss of identity are moving to the foreground. So, for example, Modiano (2000: 34) suggests: “One possible way to counteract the impact of Anglo-American cultural, linguistic and ontological imperialism is to develop a form of English which allows Europeans when communicating in English to retain their divergent cultural distinctiveness.” Even if the notion of a linguistic imperialism cannot be dismissed offhand, this does not imply that it is possible to develop something like a variety of European English and to standardise it. Apart from other considerations the propagation of such a development would only be justified, if one supposes that English native speakers do not take part in international communication in English. However, if they do they would have to instead learn the structures of Euro-English, which would be equally unnatural and unrealistic. For young people Great Britain and Ireland, and also the U.S.A. and Australia, are popular destinations, not least because of their language and culture. For this reason it seems highly appropriate that pupils also learn and get to know <?page no="121"?> ‘Standard English’ and ‘World Standard English’ 117 English as a Foreign Language, i.e. a language that explicitly refers to the native English-speaking territories and societies. There is no doubt that under the influence of the globalisation of English, the topics and learning targets of English teaching will change in the direction of fewer Anglo- American and more global topics. However, detaching communication in an international context entirely from the standard variety of English and its associated cultures seems problematic, for linguistic and pedagogical reasons, as well as political ones. The standard variety should act as a linguistic model, both in the context of English as a Foreign Language, as well as in the context of English as a Lingua Franca. A model is an idealisation, from which one can diverge. In this sense, the primary function of a model is to offer orientation for the learners and not to act as a frame of reference to signal errors. Consequently, teaching models will have to become as tolerant of errors as possible. Thus there will be no dogmatic insistence on the norms of the standard language. Undoubtedly, the issues of SE and WSE are at least to some extent ideology-driven. These concepts have to be analysed in their historical-political dimension, their sociological dimension, their communicative dimension, and also in their pedagogical dimension. However, as far as the latter is concerned, we must clearly keep in mind which type of learners we are talking about: beginners, intermediate or advanced. There is not much point in overloading the syllabus of a beginners’ class with political issues when language structures and functions are better viewed in terms of their instrumental potential, i.e. with regard to actually ‘doing things with words in English’. Teaching objectives should be precisely defined, provided the learners’ needs can indeed be clearly identified. Otherwise, it is better to define the objectives in a more flexible manner. For instance, it would be short-sighted to restrict pupils learning English at school to the use of English as a Lingua Franca. If English was only taught as a ‘cultureless’ language it would probably deprive many of our pupils of cultural encounters they were hoping to have through the medium of English. Questions about the relationship between English as a Lingua Franca and English as a Foreign Language, particularly their impact on the English language classroom must be dealt with in view of the learning objectives. No doubt, the needs and attitudes of users of English will also differ depending on which part of the world they live in. References Beneke, J. (1991) Englisch als lingua franca oder als Medium interkultureller Kommunikation. In R. Grebing (ed.) Grenzenloses Sprachenlernen. Festschrift für Reinhold Freudenstein (pp. 54-66). Berlin: Cornelsen. Bex, T. and Watts, R.J. (eds) (1999) Standard English. The Widening Debate. London, New York: Routledge. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English. A Study of its Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. <?page no="122"?> Claus Gnutzmann 118 Crystal, D. (1991) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (3 rd edition). London: Blackwell. Crystal, D. (1994) Which English - or English which? In M. Hayhoe and S. Parker (eds) Who Owns English? (pp. 108-114). Buckingham: Open University Press. Crystal, D. (1997) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. (2001) The future of Englishes. In A. Burns and C. Coffin (eds) Analysing English in a Global Context: A Reader (pp. 53-64). London; New York: Routledge. Garvin, P.L. (1974) The standard language problem - concepts and methods. In: D. Hymes (ed.) Language and Culture and Society (pp. 521-526). New York: Harper and Row. Gnutzmann, C. (2003) Global English: Anything Goes? Zur Rolle der Aussprache im Englischunterricht und in der Lehrerausbildung. In D. Abendroth-Timmer, B. Viebrock and M. Wendt (eds) Text, Kontext und Fremdsprachenunterricht. Festschrift für Gerhard Bach (pp. 295-308). Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Harris, R. (2002) English: How not to teach it. The European English Messenger 11, 57-61. Honey, J. (1997) Language is Power. The Story of Standard English and its Enemies. London: Faber and Faber. Jenkins, J. (this volume) Teaching pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: a sociopolitical perspective. Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1992) Harlow, Essex: Longman. McArthur, T. (1998) The English Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McArthur, T. (2001) World English and world Englishes: Trends, tensions, varieties, and standards. Language Teaching 34, 1-20. Milroy, J. (1999) The consequences of standardisation in descriptive linguistics. In: T. Bex and R.J. Watts (eds), 16-39. Modiano, M. (2000) Euro English: Educational standards in a cross-cultural context. The European English Messenger 9, 33-37. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roach, P. and Hartmann, J. (eds) (1997) English Pronouncing Dictionary. Daniel Jones (15 th edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seidlhofer, B. (this volume) Standard future or half-baked quackery? Descriptive and pedagogic bearings on the globalisation of English. Strevens, P. (1983) What is ‘Standard English’? In L.E. Smith (ed.) Readings in English as an International Language (pp. 87-93). Oxford: Pergamon. Stubbs, M. (1986) What is Standard English? In M. Stubbs (ed.) Educational Linguistics. (pp. 83-97). Oxford: Blackwell. Sweet, H. (1908) The Sounds of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trudgill, P. (1999) Standard English: What it isn’t. In T. Bex and R.J. Watts (eds), 117- 128. Wyld, H.C. (1934) The best English. Tract XXXIX of the Society for Pure English. London: The Society for Pure English. <?page no="123"?> Svenja Adolphs “I don’t think I should learn all this” - A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English Introduction While the general debate about introducing native speaker norms into the English language teaching classroom is on-going, recent research suggests that a considerable number of learners of English still regard the native speaker as a model that they strive to emulate to some degree (Timmis, 2002). However, since there is little exposure to different varieties of native speaker English in the ELT classrooms around the world, the positive attitudes displayed by learners of this language may appear to be somewhat questionable. Such attitudes are often based on an undefined notion of the native speaker that has become associated with successful language use. The current study explores the extent to which language learners’ attitudes towards native speaker English are affected by exposure to such discourse. Following a group of international students through their first year at a British university this study looks at the development of their perceptions of native speaker English over a period of time. This longitudinal perspective seems to suggest that many language learners have a rather simplistic notion of the native speaker which becomes more fragmented as they live in a native speaker environment. Exposure to native speaker English then plays an important part in assessing the value of this variety for one’s own language learning goals. 1 Background The notion of the ‘native speaker’ is one that has often been challenged (Pennycook, 1994; 1998; Phillipson, 1992). Recent research in the area of spoken corpus analysis suggests that the diversity of linguistic patterns found in naturally occurring language makes any attempt to create a label for this supposedly unified notion questionable (Carter, 1998). At the same time the type of English found in teaching materials and that found in a corpus can appear to be worlds apart (Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Carter, 1998; Holmes, 1988). Yet, learners of English seem to regard the notion of native speaker English as a benchmark that represents a desirable goal in their learning process (Timmis, 2002). This leaves some learners of English <?page no="124"?> Svenja Adolphs 120 in the awkward position of striving to conform to the undefined concept of the native speaker and at the same time studying a language that has little in common with this concept. In this context it is worth drawing a distinction between learners whose aim it is to use English as a Lingua Franca, i.e. in interactions with other nonnative speakers, and those who intend to use English in native speaker contexts. Many of the arguments that have recently ensued around native speaker norms as part of a classroom model centre around the former type of learner. Pioneering research by Seidlhofer (2001; 2002) and Jenkins (1998; 2000) illustrates patterns of a lingua franca that may in future form a worthwhile baseline for the teaching of this variety. And since a large percentage of the English that is used today occurs in interactions between non-native speakers (see Crystal, 1997) it would seem that there is a lot of scope in the emerging descriptions of both European and other international varieties of English. Learners of such varieties would become “successful bilinguals” (Alptekin, 2002) who are able to converse comfortably in both national and international contexts. However, a crucial aspect that is missing in this debate is that of learner aspiration. A recent survey of attitudes towards native speaker norms in the teaching context suggests that regardless of the meta-level discussion that is currently underway at an expert level, a considerable number of learners aspire to become native-like in their use of English (Timmis, 2002). While the results of Timmis’ survey play an important part in this debate, they don’t take into account the transient nature of aspirations, attitudes and indeed motivation (Dörnyei, 2000; 2001). It seems that learners would be better equipped to make statements about the value of assimilating to native speaker norms after they have been exposed to both a native-speaker context and a lingua franca context. The study This article draws on data collected as part of a study into the acquisition of multi-word units used by international students studying at a British University. 2 The study set out to investigate the development of language proficiency in the area of multi-word units by following a group of international students from the time they first arrived in England to the time of completion of their first semester in this country. A range of measurements were developed for this study (see Schmitt, 2004) including, among others, written tests, interviews and eye-movement studies with various sets of students. The current article reports on the interview sessions with a subset of students that have been recorded and transcribed. An overall number of 24 students from different, predominantly Asian, countries participated in this longitudinal study which involved 3 to 5 long interviews at approximately <?page no="125"?> A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English 121 two months intervals over a period of six months. 3 Most of these students were enrolled in an intensive pre-sessional language course offered by the Centre for English Language Education (CELE) at the University of Nottingham before continuing their studies in their respective departments. The semi-structured interviews were conducted by research assistants who used specially designed interview guides which included a mix of factual questions about the background of the students and more exploratory questions about the acculturation process that the students were undergoing. The latter included issues such as the students’ attitudes towards language learning and towards their host country, their motivation for language learning and any perceived progress, their social well-being and how this was affected by emerging social networks with both native and non-native speakers (see Dörnyei et al., 2004). The interviews thus explore “the participants’ motivation, attitudes and beliefs, as well as their personal experiences related to interethnic contact and cultural adaptation” (Dörnyei et al., 2004) and as such they lend themselves well to an attitudinal study towards native speaker English. The informal nature and the trusting relationship that was established between the interviewers and the interviewees meant that the participants were comfortable in expressing their views and actively shaped the direction of the interview. The focus was thus on the participants’ own interpretations of their life in this new setting rather than on a pre-determined agenda. While this type of data is exploratory and qualitative in nature it also offers a more in-depth picture of the participants’ thought processes and attitudinal developments. Meeting the native speaker Before analysing the various interview sets it seems important to elaborate further on the discrepancy between the image that many learners of English have of the native speaker and the actual usage of native speaker English. There has been a substantial amount of empirical research that suggests that the language we find in teaching materials can be vastly different to the language we use as evidenced in large collections of spoken texts (Holmes, 1988; Williams, 1988). It seems obvious that the native speaker model, as it is perceived by non-native speakers, is largely based on such teaching materials rather than on English in use. Over the past decade or so there has been an interesting and long overdue debate over the use of native speaker models in the classroom (Alptekin, 2002; Cook, 1998; Widdowson, 1996; 1998). The discussion centres very much around the question of authority of the native speaker model (Widowson, 1994). Invariably, the view taken on this issue determines whether one favours native speaker corpora as a basis on which teaching materials should be developed or whether it is more beneficial to search for patterns in corpora of international varieties of English or indeed whether any corpus-derived language is needed at all in this context. <?page no="126"?> Svenja Adolphs 122 It is not the aim of this paper to engage in the argument of whether or not teaching materials should be adjusted to reflect any one variety of English; however, it is an interesting fact that the perceptions that international students have with regard to the type of language they expect to find when they arrive in Britain often do not match the real picture. Looking at the interview data and at previous research in this area there appears to be a set of common themes that have received more attention than others in this context. These are detailed below. Pronunciation The area in which we expect to find the most significant level of discrepancy is pronunciation. With a general lack of exposure to native speaker pronunciation it is excessively difficult even for very advanced learners of English to emulate a native-like accent of any regional variety (Medgyes, 1994). It becomes clear from reading through the interview transcripts for the current study that the issue of pronunciation is one that is recurrently being evaluated in terms of the learners’ aspirations. The following extract which forms part of the third interview of one of the participants illustrates this point. In all of the following extracts is S1 the participant and S2 the interviewer. S1: Nottingham is very, very= Nottingham city accent is very different to surrounding accents S2: City? Mm…mmm? S1: because they= when they have a ‘y’ at the end of a word, like city S2: Mm…mmm S1: they say cit-eh. S2: Cit-eh. I don’t think I should learn all this [laughs]. S1: [laughing] No. [Laughter] S1: And go back to Thailand with a local S2: Mm…mmm S1: Nottingham accent. [Laughter] S2: They will laugh at me. [Laughter] […] S2: Mm…mmm. Mm…mmm. Let me get a BBC accent. Here we see the student passing an evaluation of a particular local accent. Her attitude has clearly changed from a previous interview in which she told the interviewer that she just wanted to acquire a ‘native-speaker accent’. The other interesting point to note is that she seems to relate her evaluation to her international context since a Nottingham accent would hinder her interactions in Thailand. The student differentiates between the local accent and a BBC accent and makes a semi-informed decision as to what variety would be most useful to her in her own context. And while this type of assessment is <?page no="127"?> A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English 123 somewhat removed from Jenkins’s suggestion of a Lingua Franca Core (1998) it still illustrates the student’s strategic judgement of what type of accent is desirable in an international context. Idiomaticity Formulaic sequences are one of the main building blocks of the English language (Erman & Warren, 2000; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Sinclair, 1991). Yet, similar to pronunciation, the use of such sequences most clearly marks the difference between native and non-native speakers. It would be beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the different strands of research in this area. It is interesting to note, however, that a number of participants in our study explicitly link native-like language to the ability to use idiomatic language as is illustrated in the following extract. S2: My learning English I have I think that I still need to use television newspaper and radio to help me to improve my English yeah S1: Eh ha S2: And I think I can improve my English by communicate with my supervisor my friends and get used to different accents and learn more about phrase and idioms S1: Idioms S2: Idioms yes because I think lot of native a lot of English language is idioms. S1: Yes S2: Yes I think I just stay here for three years so I think I have benefits to learn more about English and I hope that my English is going to be improved after that. The participant in this extract equates learning the English language with the acquisition of idioms which according to the student make up a large proportion of this language. In the last turn the participant then suggests that a prolonged stay in Britain will help her towards achieving her goal of learning the English language. In an in-depth study of two participants of the same group of students, Adolphs and Durow (2004) have found that the acquisition of multi-word units is related to the level of social-cultural integration of the student to a certain extent. This development seems to be borne out in the student’s explanation in the extract above. Spoken Grammar Another aspect of native speaker English that the participants in our study may not have encountered previously is that of spoken grammar. This aspect has been discussed extensively by McCarthy and Carter (1995). Since we find a considerable amount of pervasive patterns of spoken grammar in our corpora it could be argued that a certain degree of exposure to authentic discourse may be desirable to allow students to recognise such patterns when they interact in a native speaker environment. The example below illustrates <?page no="128"?> Svenja Adolphs 124 a particularly common use of the word ‘like’ in spoken English. It is taken from the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English, a 5million word database consisting mainly of casual conversation. CANCODE is a collaborative project between the University of Nottingham and Cambridge University Press who holds sole copyright for the data S1: And I hit the top step and and slipped. And erm hit my back and my head on all the steps on the way down. And landed on my back and I couldn’t feel my legs and I just like started screaming cos I was like fuck. I mean it it I had such a fright I just like screamed. And erm Fiona came running down and she was like ‘Oh my fucking God.’ And I was like ‘Fiona I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.’ And I mean I just couldn’t feel+ S2: Oh God. S1: +anything. Here the word ‘like’ is used in a speech reporting role, a feature which is particularly common amongst people under the age of 30 (see also Adolphs & Carter, 2003). The use of ‘like’ in this context adds to the vividness of the story that is being reported and allows for a more speedy representation of different speaker turns in the scenario. As such it has a particular place and function in spoken discourse that is not traditionally discussed in standard reference materials which are still mainly based on written examples. Creativity Research suggests that creativity is an integral part of language in use (Carter, 2004). A glance at the CANCODE corpus illustrates the pervasive nature of creativity in everyday conversation. The extract below shows the use of a new form of lexical hedging that seems to have emerged in a number of lexical fields (such as time, colour, personal attributes, etc). S 2: Well why did you say you can make the red stand out if there isn’t any red? It’s blue green red and yellow isn’t it. S 1: Well it’s a kind of orangey red isn’t it. S 3: Yeah. S 4: Or is it a reddy orange? S 2: It’s not a reddy orange. S 1: Orangey red. S 3: Or reddish. S 2: No. It’s orangey red not reddy orange. S 3: That’s good. S 3: Yeah. [laughs] The speakers in this extract disagree on the nature of a particular colour and to soften the disagreement they resort to creative derivatives of the conventional terms for different colours. Exposure to such patterns of spoken grammar and creative uses of the language may leave the learner bemused in the first instance since the image <?page no="129"?> A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English 125 that presents itself of the English language in this context bears little resemblance to the textbook English that he or she has been exposed to during the language learning process. It is not surprising then that a re-evaluation of both varieties takes place over the first few months of being in a native speaker environment. Attitudes towards native speaker English - a longitudinal perspective For the present study 93 interviews with international students have been analysed. The overall size of the interview corpus amounts to 403,427 words. The corpus has been split into interviewer turns and interviewee turns. The latter amounts to 261,473 words. There are 144 occurrences of the term ‘native speaker’ in the data of which 115 instances were attributable to the interviewees. For the purpose of the current study the interviews were divided into three datasets. The first dataset includes all initial interviews with the 24 participants. The second set includes all second and third interviews of the participants and the last set includes all fourth and fifth interviews. The interview data was subjected to two types of analysis. Since the number of instances of the term ‘native speaker’ is quite high in the complete dataset an initial analysis of the concordance output of this term was carried out. This methodology is a useful point of entry as it gives an overview of the way this term is used by the participants. A subsequent qualitative analysis of selected extracts in the different datasets and the development in attitude of individual participants complements the initial analysis of concordance data. Since a presentation of the complete set of concordance lines and relevant interview extracts would be beyond the scope of this article the most representative examples have been chosen to illustrate attitudinal trends as they emerge from the data. Concordance data Using Wordsmith Tools a concordance output of the term ‘native speaker’ was generated for all three datasets. In the first set of interviews the terms ‘native speaker’ and ‘native speakers’ are used 41 times and 21 times respectively. There are a further 88 occurrences of the terms in the second set and 56 occurrences in the third set. In all three sets the term ‘native speaker(s)’ is predominantly associated with a positive semantic prosody (Louw, 1993) which is expressed through the pattern of adjectives in the close vicinity of this term (e.g. ‘nice’, ‘wonderful’, ‘important’, ‘relaxed’, ‘good’). As such the ‘native speaker’ is presented as an ideal model that students aspire to. <?page no="130"?> Svenja Adolphs 126 There seem to be two interrelated contexts in which the term ‘native speaker’ is used by the interviewees: a) the problems involved in meeting and thus talking to native speakers and b) the native speaker’s role in the language learning process. With the latter we find a clear distinction between a sense of need to be able to speak like a native speaker and a sense of wanting to speak like a native speaker in the data. The latter is often not qualified any further and seems to be the result of an unchallenged belief of native speaker superiority in the language learning process. The concordance lines which describe this type of association account for the vast majority of cases in the data and this trend is illustrated in the following examples: S2: Em I want my English to be like native speaker but it’s very difficult. em like native speaker that is the final goals for me. S2: Em I want to speak like native speaker. Em I hope I can speak like native speaker on the long run I, I really want to be a native speaker, like native speaker. I think the study I want to become native speaker level as much as possible. I need to learn. I want to speak like a native speaker [laughs] S2: someday I think try to live like a native speaker. S2: They go shopping this way S2: Like a native speaker is my dream so practically I The other association where the ability to emulate the native speaker is seen as a strategic gain in day to day life in the host culture only accounts for a small number of instances which are illustrated below: I think negotiate with native speaker is the only way that I can that I can practice they have to speak with native speaker for example the supervisor some students but if I talk with a native speaker, I um pay much attention on my ideas when I er um speak to a native speaker I can get more information about it. The predominance of positive associations with the notion ‘native speaker(s)’ in all three datasets suggests that at least some of the participants in the study maintained their original image of this concept throughout the first six months of living in the host culture. However, a closer consideration of extended extracts of the transcripts reveals that a number of students have undergone a considerable change in attitude towards the concept of the native speaker which manifests itself mainly in a more critical disposition towards the usefulness and learnability of certain aspects of this variety. Many of the participants also express a growing dismay towards the difficulty in meeting native speakers in the first place which means that most of their interaction takes place with other international students. This process is described further in the next section. Interview transcript data This part of the analysis will look more closely at extended stretches of transcripts and assess how students’ attitudes and aspirations have changed over the first six months of exposure to the host culture. While in the first set of <?page no="131"?> A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English 127 interviews students often expressed their wish to be able to ‘speak like a native speaker’ this view was clearly modified by a range of students in the second and third set of interviews. The focus was here clearly on some of the features of native speaker English discussed in the previous section especially in the areas of pronunciation and idiomaticity. Overall there are 21 instances in the data where the notion of native speaker English is being challenged in some way in the context of the participants’ language learning goals. Two of these instances occur in the first dataset and 19 instances in the second and third set. Seven out of the 24 participants explicitly describe a change in attitude towards the value of native speaker English in their own context. It should be noted that the interviews were semi-structured and that there was no direct question relating to this point. However, many students chose to talk about their goals in the language learning process when asked about their general well-being and social-cultural integration. Furthermore, it is important to highlight that the present study does not consider a re-evaluation of the native speaker as such, an area which has received even more commentary during the interviews, but only focuses on the notion of ‘native speaker English’. However, there are a few instances where the two are interrelated and difficult to separate as the following extract illustrates: S2: Mmm I think, I don’t know my= what is my l= level, what er my level is but I I just feel if I see something if I speak mmm the nons= the non er native speaker and the native speaker can understand me in general, in general but er hmm if I want to express something in details maybe some native speaker er can understand me but but er er, yeah, this morning, this morning when I want to book a taxi, I I I dial a phone to some taxi company and I I just repeat my er room number and the the street, er the name of str= street several times and […] and she just told me I cannot understand your English [laughs] […] I feel very sad because I think I I I have s= I have said er and try my best to tell him the road. It’s very clearly but er he just told me I ca= I couldn’t under= understand your English. I don’t why, maybe sometimes my er pronunciation will cause will will cause some problem or some cof= confusion, I don’t know. The student in this extract goes on to express an even stronger desire to acquire the language spoken by the person on the other end of the telephone line as this would allow him to carry out a specific task in this context. It is interesting that the student regards this type of misunderstanding as a clear failure on his part rather than questioning the behaviour of the employee of the taxi company. Other students, however, take a more pragmatic view of their situation and argue that as long as they can understand one another they do not feel the need to be able to ‘speak like a native speaker’. However, one common theme in the interview data is the distinction made by the participants between the type of English they require to communicate in the host culture <?page no="132"?> Svenja Adolphs 128 and that needed in the academic context as is illustrated in the following extracts: S1: Okay. So you need a certain level for the MSc. S2: Yeah. S1: Now, would you like to learn that level because it’s what you need? Would you like to learn English more […] S2: Mm, no. I, I think er because, because the my [indecipherable word/ s] I think I can’t er learn English as good as a native speaker. I think may= for for for me. It is important for me to just er we can talk each other and er learn something from the= in my class and er get some information, [indecipherable word/ s] English I think very good, [indecipherable word/ s], important. S1: Okay. Erm what level of English do you think you need? S2: Mmm. [indecipherable word/ s] level. Maybe, I think we can talk to a native speaker each other he can understand what I mean and I’m I’m I’m= also I know what he has said [indecipherable word/ s] is okay, and er in my academical study I will= I can get very knowledge from teacher [indecipherable word/ s] okay, I think. The student in this extract feels that the main goal for his language learning process is mutual intelligibility with both native and non-native speakers. At the same time the participants point out their problems in communicating with native speakers: S2: but er when we communicate with some local people, with some native speaker, it’s not easy. It is the ambivalent relationship with the native speaker that the students comment on most in the interview data in the context of the language learning process. On the one hand assimilation to this undefined norm would enhance the possibilities for communication and thus integration into the host culture but the same process is also associated with great difficulties and may compromise the initial language learning goals (see extract 1). This conflict of interest is also expressed by the student in the following extract: S2: Er if if [emphasis] I’m listening to, what we call, Standard English but [laughs] it could be something very [indistinguishable word] or very hard for me to listen to local accents S1: Yes. S2: something like that. Okay, if you’re speaking to me in er Standard English, I think it will be fine for me. S1: You think the problem was S2: No problem S1: the bus= You think the problem with the bus driver that you were telling me was S2: Yeah S1: he had a strong local accent? S2: Yeah yeah S1: Yeah. S2: because he spoke in local accent I think. S1: Mm…mmm <?page no="133"?> A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English 129 S2: and I did not understand. I think it’s totally different, you know S1: Mm…mmm S2: the local way of speaking and the Standard English. S1: The acc= S2: Me duck, me duck is something totally different from the Standard English, my dear and me duck [Laughing] […] S2: Yeah me duck. No, I couldn’t understand especially when I am new to the place. S1: Mm…mmm it’s a very common piece of S2: Yeah. S1: very common term of address. S2: Yeah yeah S1: both to men and to women. S2: [laughing] Not common for me. [...] S2: I find it not difficult to listen to, like BBC news, you know. S1: Yes. Here again we find a typical re-evaluation of the language variety that the student is exposed to in the host culture. As such the student differentiates between the language spoken in the local community and what he regards as ‘Standard English’. This is an important step as it is directly related to the language learning goal. Because the local way of referring to other people as ‘duck’ is not a ‘common’ usage for the student there is little value in learning this term other than for the purpose of interacting with native speakers in the local community. The student then points out that he has no difficulty in understanding ‘standard English’ and later on in the interview declares the ability to speak this type of English as his main goal. Conclusion Overall it appears that the evaluation of the host culture as well as the acculturation process (Schumann, 1986) play a significant role in the learner’s motivational disposition towards a particular variety of English. Since many international students can find it difficult to integrate with the native speaker community (S. Bochner, N. Hutnik & A. Furnham, 1985; Dörnyei et al., 2004) their attitude towards native speaker English may be affected. The very few encounters that they do have with the local community often lead them to reevaluate the usefulness of this particular variety of English for their own purposes. There is also a strong sense in the interview data that as the students progress in their acculturation process they become more aware of the concept of the ‘native speaker’ and at the same time they become more critical of the value of conforming to native speaker norms. In a number of cases the ideal model in the English language learning context is re-defined as someone who speaks ‘standard English’ or ‘BBC English’ and as such it is a model that is <?page no="134"?> Svenja Adolphs 130 clearly distinguishable from the type of native speakers that the students encounter in their day to day life in the host culture. The reason for this process of fragmentation of the ‘native speaker’ concept seems to lie in an increased awareness of what is really important in any international context and that is the ability to understand and to be understood. Thus the students’ definition of language learning goals becomes more strategic and more complex through exposure. There seems to be little evidence in the interviews that the students consider native speaker norms to be irrelevant either in the local or in a more global context. However, the data does suggest that exposure to native speaker English makes learners more critical of this variety and leads them to re-define their language learning goals with a greater focus on mutual intelligibility in an international context. Notes 1 I am grateful to Ronald Carter for feedback on an earlier version of this article. 2 This study was funded with a research grant from the Economic and Social Research Council. 3 It should be noted that language attitudes can differ according to the home country of the language learner (see Timmis 2002). However, since the current study is concerned mainly with the developmental aspect of attitudes this should not affect the discussion in any significant way. References Adolphs, S. and Carter, R.A. (2003) ‘And she’s like ‘it’s terrible like’: Spoken discourse, grammar and corpus analysis. International Journal of English Studies 3 (1), 45-56. Adolphs, S. and Durow, V. (2004) Social-cultural integration and the development of formulaic sequences. In N. Schmitt (ed.), 107-126. Alptekin, C. (2002) Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT. ELT Journal 56 (1), 57-64. Bochner, S., Hutnik, N. and Furnham, A. (1985) The friendship patterns of overseas and host students in an Oxford student residence. The Journal of Social Psychology 125, 689-694. Boxer, D. and Pickering, L. (1995) Problems in the presentation of speech acts in ELT materials: The case of complaints. ELT Journal 49 (1), 44-58. Carter, R. (1998) Orders of reality: CANCODE, communication, and culture. ELT Journal 52 (1), 43-56. Carter, R. (2004) Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk. London: Routledge. Cook, G. (1998) The uses of reality: A reply to Ronald Carter. ELT Journal 52 (1), 57-63. Crystal, D. (1997) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dörnyei, Z. (2000) Motivation in action: Towards a process-oriented conceptualisation of student motivation. British Journal of Educational Psychology 70, 519-538. Dörnyei, Z. (2001) Teaching and Researching Motivation. Harlow: Longman. <?page no="135"?> A Longitudinal View of Attitudes Towards ‘Native Speaker’ English 131 Dörnyei, Z., Durow, V. and Zahran, K. (2004) Individual differences and their effects on formulaic sequence acquisition. In N. Schmitt (ed.), 87-106. Erman, B. and Warren, B. (2000) The idiom principle and the open-choice principle. Text 20, 29-62. Holmes, J. (1988) Doubt and certainty in ESL textbooks. Applied Linguistics 9 (1), 21-44. Jenkins, J. (1998) Pronunciation norms and models. ELT Journal 52 (2),119-126. Jenkins, J. (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Louw, B. (1993) Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair (pp. 157-176). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Press. McCarthy, M. and Carter, R. (1995) Spoken grammar and how we should teach it. ELT Journal 49 (3), 207-18. 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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 7, 379-392. Sinclair, J. (1991) Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Timmis, I. (2002) Native speaker norms and International English: A classroom view. ELT Journal 56 (3), 240-249. Widdowson, H. (1994) The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly 28 (2), 377-389. Widdowson, H. (1996) Comment: authenticity and autonomy in ELT. ELT Journal 50 (1), 67-68. Widdowson, H. (1998) Context, community and authentic language. TESOL Quarterly 32 (4), 705-716. Williams, M. (1988) Language taught for meetings and language used in meetings: Is there anything in common? Applied Linguistics 9 (1), 45-58. <?page no="137"?> Allan James The Challenges of the Lingua Franca: English in the World and Types of Variety Introduction Recent discussion on the implications of English as used as a (mainly, European) lingua franca for classroom language teaching and the specification of language models and/ or targets (e.g. Jenkins, 2000; this volume; Seidlhofer, 2001; this volume) has led to consideration of the structural characteristics of such a lingua franca/ lingua francas (e.g. Firth, 1996; House, 1999; James, 2000; Knapp & Meierkord, 2002; Meierkord, 1996; this volume), but also poses further questions as to what constitute (legitimate? ) ‘varieties’ of the language, i.e. ‘Englishes’, in these contexts and how are they to be (socio-) linguistically located. It is the purpose of the present paper to explore these issues and in doing so, develop a perspective on English in the world which perhaps more closely reflects socio-cultural/ -lingual practices of the early 21 st century than previous descriptive frameworks have done (or were intended to do). To this end, structural characteristics of English(es) as Lingua Franca(s) (ELF(s)) will be re-examined in the light of varieties of English in the world at large and a differentiated model of language variety presented which, it is claimed, will be appropriate to locating ELF in sociolinguistic space. The evidence for ELF (1) Evidence for ELF has been adduced from various sources involving a great variety of speech situations, contexts and language users, ranging from youth talk in Austria (James, 2000) to business talk in Denmark (Firth, 1996) to student talk in London (Meierkord, 1996; this volume), the richest sources of data thus far being Knapp and Meierkord (2002) and the VOICE corpus (Seidlhofer, this volume). And while the functional essence of the lingua franca (LF) is generally recognized, there is nonetheless a serious striving to adduce empirical evidence for the existence of structural commonalities characterizing the LF in its various manifestations. It has been shown that such commonalities might be found at various levels of linguistic structure, including segmental phonology (Jenkins, 2000), inflectional (Seidlhofer, 2001) and derivational morphology (Dewey, 2003), within syntax in article, relative pronoun and tag use (Seidlhofer, 2001), preposition use especially in connection with prepositional verbs and delexi- <?page no="138"?> Allan James 134 cal verbs (Dewey, 2003), verb complementation involving prepositions (Alexander, 1999) and pragmatics involving dimensions of directness, politeness and supportive verbal behaviour (House, 2002; Meierkord, 1996). Many of the instances identified may be analysed as showing regularization of some standard UK/ US English structural pattern (e.g. with verb inflection, regularizing the simple present tense as zero-inflected also in the third person singular (Seidlhofer, 2001); with prepositions generalizing their meaning and collocability in new non-standard prepositional verb forms (about in mention about by analogy to discuss about (Dewey, 2003)). Even more significantly, certain of these structures have also been found in written British English (Gupta, 2001) - omission of article as in gone in flash, and non-standard use of prepositions as in to be in favour for and boasted to liking. And generally the point has been made by James (2000) and Gupta (2001), that in such analyses like must be compared with like, i.e. data from different Englishes should only be compared which are compatible, e.g. in terms of the language mode and/ or the text/ discourse type being produced. However, accepting that such structures are found in oral interactions in which English is employed as a lingua franca , i.e. pristinely, as functioning as a common language between persons not sharing any other language for communication purposes and not having English as their primary language, does not mean that we are here encountering a new emergent variety of the language, or a New English. Firstly, by far the most data providing such analyses are produced by speakers of English (predominantly older schoolchildren or students) who by conventional measures of EFL proficiency have at least an intermediate/ upper intermediate level of command of language and who have for the most part endured an institutional socialization in English in its UK or US standard form. Secondly, most of these verbal interactions are structured or semi-structured conversations and thirdly, almost all in any case take place in an institutional context. Therefore, one might conclude that, as far as the general type of English being used is concerned, this may be characterized as, if not overtly, then at least covertly, standardorientated. These speakers are producing a local form of standard or normalized English, much as local forms of standard or normalized English are produced in Kenya and Singapore, but also in Egypt and Indonesia, or in Cyprus and Malta, but also Germany and Turkey in various degrees of local codification, and remembering in any case that ELF is also present in such countries. The only differences are, of course, in the spatial, but also temporal, extent of the ‘local’, but also in the degree of exovs. endonormative influence on the shaping of the standard. In the case of this ELF, it is predominantly exonormative (orientation to standard British/ American English), whereas with the users of territorially localized Englishes it is endonormative to an extent (cf. Widdowson, 1997). As evidence for this position, data will be adduced in the next section to show that similar features and structural regularization at various levels of the linguistic system occur widely in a number of local standard territorial Englishes around the world. <?page no="139"?> The Challenges of the Lingua Franca: English in the World and Types of Variety 135 Concerning the temporal ‘localness’ of the English being employed in LF interactions, this is of course highly limited to the ad hoc, here and now, and the structures observed are equally likely to show ad hoc, here and now qualities and might therefore be unstable and hence not necessarily amenable to conventional linguistic codification. Indeed one important essence of the LF is that it is an ad hoc, in the broadest sense ‘special purpose’, verbalization. Extrapolating, one might conclude that the kind of ELF that has been most analysed to date and which has provided the impetus for the search for commonalities is of a specific type (notwithstanding the different language activities the informants are actually engaged in, which range from role plays of various kinds to unplanned conversation), that might be characterized as UK/ US standard-orientated but subject to online production and general processing pressures which induce the ‘local aberrations’ described above. Indeed, it is surely no coincidence that many of the structural characteristics noted can be interpreted psycholinguistically as priming problems, whereby two syntactically and/ or lexically similar structures ‘compete’ for realization and often come out as lexical blends or syntactic anacoluthons (cf., e.g. Garrett, 1980; Levelt, 1989). However, such phenomena are by nature temporary and are not necessarily indicative of any atemporally valid command or knowledge of the language, even if between the interlocutors ad hoc dialectlevelling or koinéization might occur in the context of temporary speech accommodation. That is, in Chomskyan terms, they are evidence of performance, not competence. Furthermore, they are in part reminiscent in type, if not always in token, of the kind of grammatical forms found in so-called native speaker spoken language (cf. Carter & McCarthy, 1997; James, 2000). English in the world Local varieties of English in the world 1 There has been much recent research on local varieties of English around the world, as evidenced in the pages of the journals English Today, English World- Wide and World Englishes, in the volumes by McArthur (2002) on World English, Kirkpatrick (2002) on Englishes in Asia and Schmied (1991) on English in Africa and by the establishment of the International Corpus of English. While certain research still focuses on UK/ US distinctions and the (post-) dominion Englishes of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and, by extension, South Africa, most analyses now address the (post-)colonial Englishes of Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, etc. (i.e. Kachru’s (1985) outer circle) and it is from these latter that most of the following data are taken. With reference to the structural features and regularization mentioned above as typifying one form of ELF speech, the following observations can be made: non-inflection of the 3 rd person singular regular simple present tense and article omission occur in Singapore English (McArthur, 2002); an invari- <?page no="140"?> Allan James 136 ant tag isn’t it occurs in East African English and Singapore English (McArthur, 2002) - but equally as innit in teenage British English (Stenström, Andersen & Hasund, 2002); prepositions in various verb constructions are different in Indian English compared to British English (e.g. to pay attention on, to be baffled with, to be prevented to go, to dispense (= ‘to do without’)) (Trudgill & Hannah, 1994); verb complement constructions are different in Indian English compared to British English (we are involved to collect poems, she was prevented to go). One might also add that other structural features noted anecdotally in ELF, such as the countability of nouns (furnitures, informations), are found in Kenyan English (McArthur, 2002). Of course, the mere co-occurrence of such features in local Englishes and ELF does not, strictly, in itself prove anything, but it is nonetheless highly suggestive of significant formal and functional links. Moreover, it would be fascinating to further explore the possibility that temporary processing constraints brought about by interactional pressure leading to variation and regularization of structures could ultimately lead to codifiable language change under favourable socio-political, socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions. Local varieties of English in the world 2 Of course there still remain local Englishes which have not formed a major focus of linguistic interest thus far, but whose existence and characteristics are equally relevant for the present discussion. Local Englishes, again in various degrees of codification, also exist in countries in which English has not been historically present nor enjoys any institutional status (i.e. Kachru’s (1985) expanding circle). Of these countries, those which maintain societal multilingualism, such as in Europe Belgium or Switzerland, might even be already allowing English to fulfil the function of an intranational LF. Shim (1999), for example, reports on a codified Korean English which evidences features such as: particular preposition use in connection with phrasal/ prepositional verbs (to make at (= ‘to attack’) [an anacoluthon of make for and go at? ], lexical verb constructions (to make a propose), and nouns like exercise, patience and work being countable. Erling (2002) identifies aspects of a German English - as ‘a New English’ - showing features such as: countable nouns advice and furniture, present tense continuous in phrases indicating a period from past to present as in I am reading this book since two hours, and use of progressive aspect/ continuous form with stative verbs as in she is having many shoes. As the author points out, such constructions are found in many different local Englishes world-wide. They are equally found in the type of ELF under current discussion. Returning to the structural and functional nature of the present ELF, it is emphatically not a coded ‘lect’ in the sense that territorially local Englishes are coded ‘lects’. ELF in general is an aterritorial, contextual, essentially ‘oneoff’ realization of the language for immediate communication purposes. It is <?page no="141"?> The Challenges of the Lingua Franca: English in the World and Types of Variety 137 a temporary, potentially variable and/ or unstable linguistic phenomenon, and in contrast to territorialized Englishes it is devoid of any conventional speech community identity value. The present ELF is furthermore a situational rendering of a (possibly fused) UK/ US standard lect, evidencing, however, temporary structural features reminiscent of local Englishes worldwide. The evidence for ELF (2) Whereas the argument developed thus far is largely based on the analysis of ELF as produced by more proficient users of the language engaging in quasiinstitutional encounters, it is now time to examine the characteristics of ELF as used by less proficient speakers/ listeners in other types of conversation, where ‘less proficient’ means something like ‘in the knowledge and realization of the forms of the language’. It will be shown that while the overall function of the ELF as a means of communication remains the same, differences emerge with regard to the signalling value of such varieties and their structural characteristics. The following set of data for analysis is taken from a study by Haegeman (2002) of ELF in telephone conversations between Belgian (Flemish) business executives and their partners outside the country. The immediate purpose of most of the conversations is to clarify business problems which have arisen, which usually involve the area of sales. The relative proficiency in English varies considerably among the interlocutors, and ostensive orientation to an exonormative UK/ US standard is equally highly variable. The pressure for success in transaction in any case heightens the pressure on expression, the aim being maximal clarity via minimal means. Hence, negotiation of linguistic meaning and form will be immediate and maximally overt/ explicit. At the same time there will be evidence of business jargon which is shared. As far as structural features are concerned, they are likely to be much more directly the product of the discourse type involved and the level of linguistic proficiency of the interlocutors than with the ELF verbal interactions reported on above. In the extract, M is a Belgian businessman, A his partner outside the country. (The present transcription has been somewhat simplified; cf. the original in Haegeman (2002: 143-144)). M I am ehm. .. well sales manager for Belgi(um) manufacturer of rugs and I’m coming to see you (ll) next week and I did A: aha 5 M: you see I did receive your address A: ya bery nice .. I hope M: okay because there is uh a textile day 10 <?page no="142"?> Allan James 138 A: (which) company M: uh this is a company called (name of company) .. company A: an da what kind of material you are using now M: uh wool it’s woollen rugs 15 A: how about uh viscose M: uh (no uh we do the uh) we don’t do the the viscose right now e are you interested in in uh the viscose As Haegeman points out, there is clear evidence in this ELF conversation of linguistic adjustment and indeed one of the main characteristics of ELF talk she is interested in exploring is what in the analysis of native/ non-native speaker interaction used to be referred to as ‘foreigner talk’. This kind of linguistic finetuning comes about as a “result of a participant’s orientation to the perceived much lower degree of proficiency of the coparticipant” (Haegeman, 2002: 139). It involves simplifying, clarifying and upgrading of meaning which leads to deletions, amplifications, reorganizations and substitutions of linguistic forms. For instance, in the present data in the interests of maximizing clarity, line 1 and 2 show M omitting articles before sales and Belgi(um) respectively, but inserting an article before viscose in line 18. Further evidence for M’s orientation to A is in the use of did as an explicit form of the past tense in lines 4 and 7. From a formal point of view, it is of interest to note that meaning reduction for clarification can involve not only structural reduction but also structural expansion (even of one and the same construction type - here article plus noun combinations). The main point of significance for present considerations is, however, the structural variability at the micro level of ELF use as the result of conversational dynamics, which again should temper any potentially premature typologizing of ELF at macro levels. The factors constraining the form of the ELF here are level of language proficiency, but also type of interlocution (business talk plus sales conversation) and in this case medium (telephone). The evidence for ELF (3) As a third example of an ELF, data will be presented from a conversation between younger language users ‘negotiating’ their social plans/ movements. The participants are male 15 year olds, come from respectively Slovenia (A), Austria (B) and Italy (C) and have had at least four years of formal instruction in English (at a lower secondary school). The data stem from a corpus of the English used by adolescents in the Alpine-Adriatic region of southern Austria-northeast Italy-Slovenia (see also James, 2000; 2001). The proficiency level of the participants varies slightly, but could be described as preintermediate in conventional terms. English is being used for want of any other shared local language. The tone of conversation is appropriate to the cooperative nature of the activity. In practical terms, the ELF users are - <?page no="143"?> The Challenges of the Lingua Franca: English in the World and Types of Variety 139 somewhat laboriously - stringing together bits of syntax partly as learnt wholes and partly constructed online and accessing basic items of vocabulary as best as they can. The hesitations are evidence of a struggle in language processing. The sources for their structures will partly be their school English, partly their English ‘picked up’ elsewhere, predominantly via the media, games and lifestyle sub-cultures. A: we gonna go in the town B: yeah….we must go er with the bus…over there C: how much it cost B: you wanna ticket C: yeah….where I buy one 5 B: in the…er…er.. little shop [that one A: [can we buy the ticket in the bus B: yeah but its cost more A: how long the bus go to the town B: er…ten minutes…ok we go to the shop 10 Much could be commented on concerning the details of the structures used, to what extent they are online influenced and/ or primary (or any other) language-influenced, and how the conversation unfolds, etc. Suffice it to observe that e.g. again prepositions (in the town) are in non-standard UK/ US use, that the 3 rd person singular simple present tense form is not inflected (cost in line 3 and in line 8, but here with the complication of a possible metathesis involving its), that the verb is generally in its present simple form in any case (no ‘do’-insertion either), that canonical sentence unit order is SVO and that gonna and wanna are syntactic wholes with the latter standing for ‘want a’ instead of the usual ‘want to’ (whereas must is used in line 2 for a potential hafta). The factors constraining the form of this particular ELF are in the first place proficiency level, but also the nature of activity plays a not inconsiderable role. The proficiency level is such that little meaning or structural adjustment to the conversational partners can occur, although the use of little shop after some hesitation in line 6 could be evidence for searching for the English translation of the Austrian word ‘Trafik’ (= ‘tobacconists’) and/ or adjustment to a non-local neutral equivalent of this very local lexical term in the cause of clarity. Obviously, there can be no question of a new ELF emerging here. The participants are doing their linguistic best to produce a locally - in the very narrow sense - acceptable form of internationally valid English, based on and orientated to UK/ US varieties. However, given the nature of the interaction, it is tempting to briefly explore to what extent structural characteristics of ‘limited purpose’ languages are manifest. While it has been argued that the development of an EFL/ ELF in terms of formal and functional expansion parallels that of the development of a pidgin into a creole at a very general level (James, 1999), there nonetheless remain significant differences in detail due to the socio-cultural position that the English has. Concerning structures observable in the present data, one <?page no="144"?> Allan James 140 notes that while certain forms are reminiscent of pidgins: zero verb inflection, simple verb forms generally, SVO sentence unit order (Sebba, 1997), other forms are not: presence of articles, modal verbs (must), complex adverbs (over there) and contracted verb forms (gonna, wanna). The reasons for this structural hybridity are not difficult to ascertain. Unlike users of pidgins which have English as their so-called ‘lexifier’ language, the present language users are actually speaking English and have UK/ US varieties as their orientation. The language forms they produce reflect this kind of exonormativity by containing target constructions. At the same time, the presence of other pidginlike forms reflects the (functional and) formal limitations of their present proficiency level. English here is not a contact language in the sense a pidgin is; it does not emerge as English-based pidgins do, i.e. as a result of the contact of two or more languages of which English is the dominant one. Nor is the ELF here an English-based creole, since the details of its formal and functional expansion are determined by its UK/ US variety orientation, and not by any internal dynamics of an elaborating pidgin. Variety types and locating the ELF in sociolinguistic space What has emerged from the above discussion of different ELFs is that: a) there is great heterogeneity in local function and form, and that b) structural features which differ from UK/ US standard varieties are seen to be the product of i. the level of language proficiency of the users and ii. the discourse/ speech type engaged in It is further claimed that the European EFL users’ macro orientation in terms of language targets and/ or models is to UK/ US standard varieties either separately or as an amalgam. There is no evidence to suggest that any general monolithic (Euro-) ELF is emerging. Concerning the two overall determining factors behind the ‘local colour’ in ELF, the level of language proficiency and discourse/ speech type, one can conclude that these are not very different from the local determinants of form in primary language (i.e. ‘native speaker’ to ‘native speaker’) English (as has already been argued for in James, 2000). With English as a primary language (EPL) as with ELF, users’ expressive power and command of locally appropriate language vary considerably. What ultimately differentiates the structural characteristics of EPL and ELF is the matter of a type-token ratio. However, moving beyond the surface manifestations of ELF to a consideration of its position in the world today, specifically in Europe, one might conclude that the displayed heterogeneity of function and form should lead linguists to review hitherto notions of ‘variety’ in the sense of ‘code’ and subsequently descriptive frameworks at macro levels, and to further reflect on the locating of ELF within sociolinguistic space in general. Indeed a num- <?page no="145"?> The Challenges of the Lingua Franca: English in the World and Types of Variety 141 ber of linguists have been calling in recent years for a redefining of linguistic models and approaches to bring our scientific understanding of language more in line with how language is positioned in postmodern society (Graddol, 1994; Graddol, Cheshire & Swann, 1994; Rampton, 1997; Pennycook, 2001). Sociocultural theory informs us that in postmodern discourses “there is now much more of a preoccupation with fragmentation, contingency, marginality, transition, indeterminacy, ambivalence and hybridity” (Rampton, 1997: 330) and that “[t]he postmodern language user is often decribed as a ‘speaking subject’ and personal identity as their ‘subjectivity’. Subjectivity is not given by their membership of well defined social groups but is constructed through discourse” (Graddol, 1994: 19). Discourse itself is performative, i.e. its reality is produced in the moment of instantiation (Pennycook, 2001: 149). Reflecting on the evidence for ELF and its analysis above, the conclusion might be drawn that ELF qualifies well as a (almost prototypical? ) instance of language in a postmodern world. It is fragmented, contingent, marginal, transitional, indeterminate, ambivalent and hybrid in various ways. Its users do not belong thereby to a well defined social group and their subjectivities are indeed diverse. Discourse is construable as a more significant locus for ELF subjectivity than, for example, code type. And finally ELF can certainly be conceptualized as a performative phenomenon. Accepting these theses as plausible, what are the consequences for frameworks of linguistic description? One way forward might be to extend the conception of (a) language variety as developed by Halliday (1978) as ‘dialect’ and ‘register’ to a notion of ‘genre’ (in the general sense of McCarthy (1998)) and to view the instantiation of language as the realization of the interplay/ competition of ‘variety according to the user’ (dialect), ‘variety according to the use’ (register) and a third ‘variety according to using’ [author’s formulation] (genre). The original characterization of dialect and register is as follows (Halliday, 1978: 35): Dialect (‘dialectal variety’) = variety ‘according to the user’ Register (‘diatypic variety’) = variety ‘according to the use’ A dialect is: what you speak (habitually) determined by who you are (socio-region of origin and/ or adoption), and expressing diversity of social structure (patterns of social hierarchy) A register is: what you are speaking (at the time) determined by what you are doing (nature of social activity) expressing diversity of social process (social division of labour) So in principle dialects are: different ways of saying the same thing So in principle registers are: ways of saying different things And tend to differ in: phonetics, phonology, lexicogrammar (but not in semantics) and tend to differ in: semantics (and hence in lexicogrammar) <?page no="146"?> Allan James 142 Extreme cases: antilanguages, mother-in-law languages Extreme cases: restricted languages, languages for special purposes Typical instances: subcultural varieties (standard/ nonstandard) Typical instances: occupational varieties (technical, semi-technical) Principal controlling variables: social class, caste; provenance (rural/ urban); generation; age; sex Principal controlling variables: field (type of social action); tenor (role relationships); mode (symbolic organization) Characterized by: strongly-held attitudes towards dialects as symbol of social diversity Characterized by: major distinctions of spoken/ written; language in action/ in reflection Within the original framework one may formulate ‘genre’ as follows: Genre (‘diageneric variety’) = variety ‘according to using’ A genre is: what actional mode you are speaking in determined by how you are doing it, and expressing diversity of social practice(s) So in principle genres are: ways of saying things differently and tend to differ in: syntax (and hence in lexicogrammar, and sometimes phonology as realization of this) Extreme cases: text messaging, chat(? ) Typical instances: conversational varieties Principal controlling variables: type of speech event; individual verbal capacities Characterized by: major distinctions in type of verbalization While one could of course question the topicality of certain formulations in the original version, it nonetheless provides a workable framework for linking a postmodern sociocultural view of ELF with what one could label a ‘post-functional’ linguistic apparatus. This tripartite interpretation of ‘variety’ as ‘code’ enables a finer-grained analysis of the multi-layered nature of linguistic patterning than has been hitherto practised and in doing so extends the original Firthian/ Hallidayan notion of the polysystemicity of language structure to a macro level of linguistic description. At the same time it acknowledges the inherent complexity and diversity in the signalling value of language. With ELF, the constellation dialect-register-genre will of course be shifting per use and occasion. However, on the macro level, one could conclude <?page no="147"?> The Challenges of the Lingua Franca: English in the World and Types of Variety 143 that: in ELF (1) above, dialect is the major variety factor in its realization, with genre constituting a minor one; in ELF (2) above register and genre would appear to hold the balance; and in ELF (3) genre is singularly dominant. On a micro level, the three variety types are always present in constraining moment to moment realization. On an in-between level, the idiolect of an ELF user in its internal diversity will equally reflect the interplay of the three modes of socio-linguistic patterning. Conclusion ELF poses an exciting challenge to conventional conceptions of language and it is not easy to pin down in its linguistic heterogeneity. However, it is, on the other hand, in sociocultural terms, to be easily identified as a typically postmodern phenomenon. Making this connection between linguistic description and sociocultural positioning is essential to a further understanding of its nature. References Alexander, R.J. (1999) Caught in a global English trap, or liberated by a lingua franca? Unravelling some aims, claims and dilemmas of the English teaching profession. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.), 23-39. Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (1997) Exploring Spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dewey, M. (2003) Codifying Lingua Franca English. Paper presented at the 25 th IATEFL Conference, Brighton. Erling, E.J. (2002) ‘I learn English since ten years’: The global English debate and the German university classroom. English Today 70, 8-13. Firth, A. (1996) The discoursive accomplishment of normality: On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 26, 237-260. Garrett, M.F. (1980) Levels of processing in sentence production. In B. Butterworth (ed.) Language Production: Vol. 1. Speech and Talk (pp. 177-220). London: Academic Press. Gnutzmann, C. (ed.) (1999) Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language. Native and Non-Native Perspectives. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Graddol, D. (1994) Three models of language description. In D. Graddol and O. Boyd (eds) Media Texts: Authors and Readers (pp. 1-21). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Graddol, D., Cheshire, J. and Swann, J. (1994) Describing Language (2 nd edition). Buckingham: Open University Press. Gupta, A.F. (2001) Realism and imagination in the teaching of English. World Englishes 20, 365-381. Haegeman, P. (2002) Foreigner talk in lingua franca business telephone calls. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds), 135-162. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. <?page no="148"?> Allan James 144 House, J. (1999) Misunderstanding in intercultural communication: Interactions in English as lingua franca and the myth of mutual intelligibility. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.), 73-89. House, J. (2002) Developing pragmatic competence in English as a lingua franca. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds), 245-268. James, A. (1999) English as a basilectal lingua franca in Europe: Some linguistic considerations. Paper presented at the MAVEN 2 Conference, Lincoln. James, A. (2000) English as a European Lingua Franca: Current realities and existing dichotomies. In J. Cenoz and U. Jessner (eds) English in Europe. The Acquisition of a Third Language (pp. 22-38). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. James, A. (2001) English as a lingua franca in a trilingual region of Europe: the challenge for bilingualism research and (socio-)linguistic analysis. Paper presented at the 3 rd International Symposium on Bilingualism, Bristol. Jenkins, J. (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (this volume) Teaching pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: a sociopolitical perspective. Kachru, B. (1985) Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: the English language in the Outer Circle. In R. Quirk and H.G. Widdowson (eds) English in the World (pp. 11-30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.) (2002) Englishes in Asia: Communication, Identity, Power and Education. Melbourne: Language Australia Ltd. Knapp, K. and Meierkord, C. (eds) (2002) Lingua Franca Communication. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Levelt, W.J.M. (1989) Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McArthur, T. (2002) The Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCarthy, M. (1998) Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meierkord, C. (1996) Englisch als Medium der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Meierkord, C. (this volume) Interactions across Englishes and their lexicon. Pennycook, A. (2001) Critical Applied Linguistics. A Critical Approach. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Rampton, B. (1997) Second language research in search of late modernity: a response to Firth and Wagner. The Modern Language Journal 81, 329-333. Schmied, J. (1991) English in Africa. Harlow: Longman. Sebba, M. (1997) Contact Languages. Pidgins and Creoles. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Seidlhofer, B. (2001) Towards making ‘Euro-English’ a linguistic reality. English Today 68, 14-16. Seidlhofer, B. (this volume) Standard future or half-baked quackery? Descriptive and pedagogic bearings on the globalisation of English. Shim, R.J. (1999) Codified Korean English: process, characteristics and consequence. World Englishes 18, 247-258. Stenström, A.-B., Andersen, G. and Hasund, I.K. (2002) Trends in Teenage Talk. Corpus Compilation, Analysis and Findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Trudgill, P. and Hannah, J. (1994) International English. A Guide to Varieties of Standard English (2 nd edition). London: Edward Arnold. Widdowson, H.G. (1997) EIL, ESL, EFL: Global and local interests. World Englishes 16, 135-146. <?page no="149"?> Jennifer Jenkins Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: A Sociopolitical Perspective Introduction: the legitimacy of non-native speaker pronunciation models It is now widely accepted that the world’s largest number of English speakers come from the countries of the expanding circle (Kachru, 1992) and that the majority of communication involving the use of English by its non-native speakers (NNSs) does not involve its native speakers (e.g. Beneke, 1991: 54 suggests a figure of eighty per cent). In other words, the changing function of English around the world - as a vehicle primarily for lingua franca (NNS- NNS) interaction - is generally regarded as unproblematic. The situation is rather different, however, when it comes to matters of (language) form. The logical consequence of the spread of English as a Lingua Franca, or ELF (also known as English as an International Language, or EIL), is that the appropriacy of native speaker (NS) norms should be called into question. And yet, attempts to replace NS norms with NNS norms have so far proved controversial, particularly at the level of accent, although it is not at present clear whether this relates to accent per se, or whether it is merely because pronunciation is the first linguistic level for which a detailed alternative has been proposed. Either way, the issue is one of the legitimacy (or not) of ELF pronunciation norms. Mufwene (2001: 107) talks of the “legitimate and illegitimate offspring of English”. The indigenised Englishes of the outer circle along with the English-based creoles, he argues, are typically characterised as ‘illegitimate’ Englishes on account of their contact with African languages, while NS Englishes are regarded as ‘legitimate’ because of the (mistaken) belief that they have evolved from Old English without ‘contamination’. The same metaphor currently obtains for ELF, the only difference being that here ‘contamination’ takes the form of influence from the ELF speaker’s first language, known at best as ‘L1 transfer’ and more commonly as ‘L1 interference’. The latter term clearly demonstrates that L1 influence is regarded as an obstacle to the learning of ‘proper’ (i.e. nativelike) English, and as regards pronunciation teaching is epitomised by the much-favoured approach known as ‘accent reduction’, that is, the attempt to rid learners of their L1 accent in their L2 English as far as possible. On the other hand, as is discussed in greater detail later in this article, an accent addition approach (one in which L2 speakers add to their accent repertoires and then select according to the demands of the <?page no="150"?> Jennifer Jenkins 146 specific interaction) would appear to have far more relevance for those who are learning English for international communication. The main purpose of this article, then, is to argue in favour of ELF accents as bona fide accent varieties of English, and to demonstrate (in line with Jenkins, 2000; 2002; 2003) that the contribution of pronunciation to successful communication in ELF contexts depends crucially on an approach grounded in intelligibility and accommodation skills rather than the mimicking of NS accents. Research into ELF pronunciation The research upon which the claims are based involved two types of evidence: miscommunication data and accommodation data. Both were collected from interactions between advanced level NNSs of English from different L1s. Miscommunication as the basis of an ELF pronunciation syllabus The aim of this first type of evidence, the miscommunication data, was to identify which departures from NS pronunciation targets obstruct intelligibility for an NNS listener from a different L1, i.e. in ELF communication (for details of the data collection see Jenkins, 2002: 86-91). The findings are summed up in Table 1. On the left-hand side are the generally agreed pronunciation targets for the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), where the aim is to prepare learners to blend in with, be understood by, and understand NSs of English. On the right-hand side are the targets (subsequently named the Lingua Franca Core) which emerged from the miscommunication data as necessary to ensure that pronunciation does not obstruct intelligibility in ELF (i.e. NNS-NNS) interaction. Table 1: EFL vs. ELF pronunciation targets EFL targets ELF targets 1. The consonantal • all sounds • all sounds except / / , / / inventory and • RP non-rhotic / / • rhotic / / only • GA rhotic / / • RP intervocalic • intervocalic only GA intervocalic 2. Phonetic requirements • rarely specified • aspiration after / / , / / , / / • appropriate vowel length before fortis/ lenis consonants 3. Consonant clusters • all word positions • word initially, word medially 4. Vowel quantity • long-short contrast • long-short contrast <?page no="151"?> Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca 147 5. Vowel quality • close to RP or GA • L2 (consistent) regional qualities 6. Weak forms • essential • unhelpful to intelligibility 7. Features of connected • all • inconsequential or unhelpful speech 8. Stress-timed rhythm • important • does not exist 9. Word stress • critical • unnecessary/ can reduce flexibility 10. Pitch movement • essential for indicating • unteachable/ incorrectly attitudes and grammar linked to NS attitudes/ grammar 11. Nuclear (tonic) stress • important • critical (Adapted from Jenkins, 2002: 99) Essentially, then, the Lingua Franca Core consists of: most consonant sounds; vowel length (but not quality) distinctions; absence of word-initial and -medial consonant deletion; and nuclear stress. For ELF, all the rest is in the realm of ‘non-core’. Further research into the intelligibility of pronunciation in interactions between NNSs from different L1s is needed before the Lingua Franca Core can be considered definitive, and the core will probably require some adjusting and fine-tuning in the process. For example, subsequent research by Peng and Ann (2001) has demonstrated that word-stress patterns appear to exist across three unrelated NNS Englishes (Spanish, Nigerian, and Singapore Chinese dialects), with stress tending to be placed on the phonetically longest syllable (e.g. ‘advertISE’, ‘educATE’). If their findings are borne out in research across a wider range of L2 Englishes, then the Lingua Franca Core will need to be adjusted to take account of the emergence of an ELF word-stress rule. Regardless of the ‘small print’, however, the principle on which the Lingua Franca Core is based is, I believe, far more relevant to ELF interaction contexts than is the principle of approximating an NS accent. A further advantage of the approach is that it validates - or, in Mufwene’s terms, ‘legitimises’ - NNS accents. Learners need acquire only the core items and have these in their pronunciation repertoires available for use as and when required. The non-core items, on the other hand, now assume the status of features of the respective (L2) regional accent: German-English, Japanese-English, Spanish-English and the like, thus allowing L2 English speakers the same sociolinguistic rights as those enjoyed by L1 speakers. This, in turn, has two important implications for classroom teaching. Firstly, the optimum pronunciation model is provided not by an NS teacher, but by a local bilingual teacher of English who shares the students’ L1. Secondly, there is a need for models that incorporate the core and local non-core features to be provided in dictionary transcripts (Hung, 2002). This is not to suggest that Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA) models should be abandoned altogether, merely that learners should be provided with a choice: RP and/ or GA if their goal is English as a Foreign Language and the (defini- <?page no="152"?> Jennifer Jenkins 148 tive) Lingua Franca Core if - as is more likely - their goal is English as a Lingua Franca. The role of accommodation in ELF interactions However, the situation is not quite as simple as the miscommunication data suggest. Accommodation also plays an important role in ELF interaction. The traditional accommodation literature discusses the phenomenon (mainly in relation to NS-NS interaction) in terms of the adjustments speakers make for affective reasons: that is, they tend to make their speech more similar to that of an interlocutor (i.e. to converge) in order to be liked. Accommodation researchers also identified another motivation underlying convergence, that of communicative efficiency, the desire to be understood. Beebe and Giles (1984) argue that in NNS-NNS interaction, where there may be a greater threat of intelligibility problems than there is in NS-NS interaction, communicative efficiency is more often the primary motivation underlying convergence. In addition, the way in which convergence operates in ELF appears to differ from that in which it typically operates in NS-NS communication, with ELF adjustments tending to be made in the direction of the target form rather than the interlocutor’s production (where this differs from the target). In the following two extracts (Figures 1 and 2) taken from Jenkins (2000: 64), attempts to replace pronunciation transfer in the ELF core areas that were outlined above (Table 1) vary according to whether the interlocutors are engaged in a social interaction task (in other words, a chat), or in some kind of exchange of information. (K) indicates that the Korean interlocutor spoke briefly at this point 1. Middle country, and here I I think I’ve been, I born there for a very long time, 2. I’ve never moved to the big city or the other place. Yes, but I’ve fin-I’ve 3. just finished the senior high school and come to Britain ... London, when I 4. first come here I don’t-I didn’t like London because first I don’t like the food, 5. yeah, it’s quite terrible in here I think, you know in Taiwan (unintelligible). ! " 6. (K)Then also I don’t like the weather. (K)But now I’m used to. (K)What do, what do # $# % # 7. you think? (K)But I think in your country there are lot(s) of sunshine. In your country " $ 8. it’s warm. (K)It’s a different way. Figure 1: Taiwanese subject, social interaction task (from Jenkins, 2000: 64). <?page no="153"?> Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca 149 1. In my picture I think they’re in a garden. The the house, be-er behind the house, they " & 2. have the small garden. And there are one two three four five six, six people in the '! ( 3. garden. And I think they er have er one man and with his wife and his mother I think, '! ( # " 4. and they’ve got er three children, two boy, one baby. And they are smiling, it seems 5. quite happy and...er, they’re in the garden and (unintelligible) I don’t know what else 6. I can say, but the woman, ah she hold a baby, and ... and, ah, the er old woman she sit & 7. in the chair in the left my picture, left-hand, and the man sit on the right side. And the 8. other people they are standing. (K) Figure 2 Taiwanese subject, information exchange task (from Jenkins, 2000: 64). This is apparent not only in the quantity of L1 pronunciation transfers, with a far greater number occurring in the former than in the latter, but also in the type of transfers involved. To summarise the findings, far more replacement of L1 transfer by a more target-like production occurred in the information exchange (Figure 2) than in the chat (Figure 1). This is particularly noticeable here with regard to consonant deletion, this Taiwanese subject’s most frequent L1 transfer, especially in consonant clusters such as ‘long’ (line 1), ‘finished’ (line 3), ‘don’t’ and ‘didn’t’ (line 4) and so on. On the other hand, in the information exchange there are very few instances of consonant deletion: ‘behind’ (line 1), ‘six’ (line 2), ‘garden’ (lines 2 and 3), ‘can’ (line 6), and ‘right side’ (line 7). And almost all the other transfers in this second interaction involve substitutions for ‘th’ and the vocalisation of dark ‘l’, neither of which was found to be critical for ELF intelligibility in the miscommunication data. This pair of conversations is typical of the vast majority of the accommodation data collected. Subjects made a great effort (which was confirmed in questionnaire and interview responses) to adjust their pronunciation in order to be more intelligible to their interlocutor in the presence of the following conditions: 1. the adjustment was in their phonological/ phonetic repertoire, 2. there was no processing overload (e.g. a concurrent problem with grammar or vocabulary), 3. the successful completion of the task demanded that the interlocutor understand, 4. the speaker perceived a particular L1 transfer as a threat to intelligibility. <?page no="154"?> Jennifer Jenkins 150 Implications for teaching It seems, taking into account the evidence from the miscommunication and accommodation data, that there is a strong case for an overhaul of pronunciation teaching for learners whose future English communication is more likely to involve other NNSs than NSs. But here we encounter a major difficulty: the discussion to date has taken place almost exclusively at the meta level, even in the small number of publications on the subject of the teaching of ELF (e.g. Gnutzmann, 1999; McKay, 2002), and even at this level, the issues have not yet been resolved. As Seidlhofer (2004) points out: “[T]he teaching of English is going through a truly ‘postmodern’ phase in which old forms and assumptions are being rejected while no new orthodoxy can be offered in their place”. At the practical level, Hung’s (2002) call for dictionary phonetic transcripts to be based on local models has so far not received any response. Nor have any of the major publishing houses commissioned teaching materials which prepare learners for lingua franca interaction. The best we can do for the time being, it seems, is to adapt existing ‘global’ (i.e. NS-based) materials for local use, to help learners acquire comfortable production of those core items not already in their repertoire. Dictation and minimal pair activities are particularly effective in this respect. Learners will also need to be able to adjust their pronunciation easily in accordance with the intelligibility needs of their NNS interlocutors, which means that the development of accommodation skills (rather than the teaching of a monolithic accent) should form an important part of any ELF pronunciation syllabus. Finally, in terms of reception, ELF learners need to be able to understand other NNS accents. This will best be achieved pedagogically by means of exposure to a range of L2 accents in classroom listening activities. For all these items to find their way into classroom practice, however, the first stage will be to persuade teachers themselves to adopt an ELF perspective as well as, or even instead of, the prevailing EFL approach to English teaching in general and pronunciation in particular. And before this is likely to occur, ELF will need to be included in teacher education programmes. The two areas that need particularly strong coverage in this respect are the sociolinguistic and socio-psychological factors involved in ELF. The sociolinguistics of ELF pronunciation As far as sociolinguistics is concerned, the first task is to problematise the notion of standard accent. Essentially there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ accent, merely prestige accents, primarily RP and GA, stigmatised accents both native and (more often) non-native (see Lippi-Green, 1997; Bonfiglio, 2002), and a range of variously tolerated regional and social accents between the two extremes. The so-called British-English standard accent, RP, is claimed nowadays to be used by a mere fraction of British NSs, possibly only three per cent in its unmodified form (see Trudgill, 2002: 171). The vast ma- <?page no="155"?> Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca 151 jority of NSs of English speak with regionallyand/ or socially-modified accents, whether tolerated or stigmatised. Clearly, then, the RP accent cannot be ‘standard’ in the sense of being a widely-used norm. Instead, ‘standard’ refers accent-wise to a level of pronunciation assumed by many to be better in some way than the others, and is thus standard only in the sense of a level of excellence to be aspired to. Excellence, however, is not something that can be measured linguistically: it is not intrinsic to an accent, but merely reflects the value judgements of the elitist group who habitually use it or would if they could. It should be a matter for teachers and their learners to decide whether they wish to subscribe to the (linguistically-unsound) belief in the superiority of RP. In some communication contexts an RP accent will undoubtedly provide them with a social advantage. This is more likely to be the case if learners intend to use their English to communicate and blend in largely with NSs, especially if the communication will take place in NS countries. Even here, though, their awareness should be raised to the fact that the majority of NSs with whom they communicate will not have an RP accent. At the most, it will probably be regionally-modified RP. On the other hand, having been apprised of the facts of sociolinguistic variation, learners may prefer to project their own (L2) regional and social identity through their accent. In this case their goal is more likely to be an accent that retains a clear trace of their L1, provided that it does not threaten the intelligibility of their pronunciation in their target (probably ELF) communication contexts. The critical point, though, is that learners should be put in a position where they can make an informed choice. And this can best be achieved by means of awareness-raising procedures of the type that Kubota (2001) used in a small-scale project with American secondary school children. Her questionnaire, which was designed to elicit and enable them to reflect on their attitudes to non-native varieties of English, could easily be adapted to suit other geographical contexts than the US, both L1 and L2, to focus exclusively on issues of accent and, if relevant, for use with adult rather than adolescent learners. Another aspect of awareness-raising involves addressing teachers’ concerns about ELF goals and varieties, and the misconceptions that occur when a traditional perspective is challenged and a new paradigm proposed. The idea of a core rather than a model is one which is initially difficult to grasp, as is the concept of ELF rather than EFL as the communication goal. Teachers (and their learners) inevitably question the educational integrity of aiming for - or, at least, not correcting - features such as substitutions for / / and / / , which up to now have been considered incorrect and in need of pedagogic intervention. One of the most frequent responses to the Lingua Franca Core and its lexicogrammatical equivalent (see Seidlhofer, 2001; Seidlhofer & Jenkins, 2003) is that they are attempts to promote error rather than to legitimise new L2 varieties of English. In this regard, Keys and Walker (2002) pro- <?page no="156"?> Jennifer Jenkins 152 vide an invaluable awareness-raising tool for teacher education classrooms, by presenting the ten most frequently-asked questions about the Lingua Franca Core, and providing insights gained from their experience of applying it in their own teaching and teacher education contexts in, respectively, Brazil and Spain. Socio-psychological factors in ELF pronunciation Moving on to social psychology, the main issues at stake for teachers of English are the link between accent and identity and, as mentioned in the introduction, the problems inherent in an accent reduction approach to pronunciation teaching. Although these issues are relevant for all learners, they have particular resonance for learners of ELF (as opposed to EFL), for whom the approximation of an NS accent is unlikely to be an advantage to them in their target (NNS-NNS) communication context. Instead, they are more likely to benefit from acquiring the core features to promote accent intelligibility for NNS interlocutors in general, and the ability to adjust their pronunciation to suit the needs of the specific interlocutor in the particular interaction context, as described in the section on accommodation/ convergence above. Because so much of an ELF speaker’s accent is legitimately free to transfer pronunciation features from the L1, the speaker is able to retain closer links with his or her L1 identity. For, as Daniels points out, our accent provides a strong if often subconscious link with our mother tongue. Daniels likens this link to “a sort of umbilical cord which ties us to our mother”, argues that “whenever we speak an L2 we cut that cord, perhaps unconsciously afraid of not being able to find it and tie it up again when we revert to L1”, and observes that “a possible way of avoiding the cut is to continue using the sounds, the rhythms and the intonation of our mother tongue while pretending to speak L2” (1997: 82). This may help to explain why, despite research findings (e.g. Dalton-Puffer, Kaltenboeck & Smit, 1997) showing that learners claim to prefer an NS accent as their goal, they rarely acquire one. The next stage, of course, is for learners, through awareness raising of the kind discussed above, to be helped to gain confidence in their own accents as the optimum accents for ELF communication contexts. Before this leap of faith is likely to occur, however, the concept of accent reduction, with its view of learners as subjects for speech pathology and its encouragement of them to lose all traces of their L1 accent, will need replacing. Jenkins (2000: 209f.) proposes for ELF the concept of accent addition: the adding of L2 pronunciation features to learners’ repertoires in accordance with their needs and preferences. This concept is also more in tune with current theories of bilingualism (additive rather than subtractive) and of learner autonomy. Five stages of pronunciation learning are suggested, each one involving the addition of pronunciation items to learners’ repertoires if they so desire: <?page no="157"?> Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca 153 addition of core items productively and receptively addition of a range of NNS English accents to the learner’s receptive repertoire addition of accommodation skills addition of non-core items to the learner’s receptive repertoire addition of a range of NS English accents to the learner’s receptive repertoire. Those learners who wish to preserve their L1 identity in their L2 but be understood by and understand other NNSs will probably choose as their goal the first three stages. On the other hand, those who want also to be able to understand NSs’ pronunciation will probably aim for all five stages. Whatever their decision, however, there is no requirement for learners to lose their L1 accent and, by implication, their L1 identity. Alternative attitudes and arguments Regardless of how much time and effort are expended in presenting the ELF argument in relation to pronunciation teaching (or to the other linguistic levels, for that matter), the most important factor in determining the outcome is going to be the teachers themselves. As mentioned earlier, teachers tend to be wary of proposed changes to their classroom practice, not least when those changes amount to an entire paradigm shift. Many teachers, native and non-native alike, are responding to ELF proposals with a certain degree of reservation. One problem is undoubtedly the lack of published materials available, but the issue goes far deeper than mere practicalities of this sort. For example, a number of NNS teachers and academics profess themselves to be in favour of ELF targets in theory, and argue for the rights of NNSs to claim ownership of English when it is used as a lingua franca in international communication. However, they tend to contradict themselves as soon as they start to talk about specific language practices and become, as Lippi-Green (1997: 242) puts it, “complicit in the process” of casting their own language variety as inferior and subordinate. The German-English speaker, Ammon, for example, argues that NS norms should not be the final basis of correctness judgements of English used in international contexts and that NNSs have rights in this respect. However, he spoils his argument both by describing non-native English features as “linguistic peculiarities”, and by labelling proficient ELF speakers such as himself as being linguistically “disadvantaged” and calling for “more linguistic tolerance from the language’s native speakers” (2000: 115-116). Seidlhofer (e.g. 2002: 205) refers to such ambivalence among proficient L2 English users of emerging ELF varieties as a kind of linguistic schizophrenia (and Ammon is by no means alone: see also, for example, Tsuda, 1997). It <?page no="158"?> Jennifer Jenkins 154 nevertheless represents a softening in attitude towards ELF as compared with that of, for example, Andreasson, who considers that it would be “far from a compliment to tell a Spanish person that his or her variety is Spanish English” and that this would imply that their English was incompetent (1994: 402). The ‘error rather than variety’ view is, unfortunately, still the most typical position of both native and non-native teachers in the expanding circle. Meanwhile, outer circle scholars who have only recently fought a hardwon battle for recognition of the legitimacy of their (indigenised) varieties of English, seem reluctant to extend the privilege to members of the expanding circle. And, of course, the majority of NSs continue to believe that English belongs to them, that there is no reason why they should have to adjust the way they speak, and that they are the arbiters of a correctness which NNSs should make efforts to replicate. Having heard all the arguments, teachers and teacher educators may or may not wish to engage with ELF. And no matter how strong they consider the arguments in favour of an ELF perspective to be, academics will not be able to implement it without widespread support from these professionals. As with any curriculum change or innovation, the teaching profession must be ‘on message’ for success to be ensured. This means that acceptability is going to prove a more critical factor in determining the outcome of ELF than either mutual intelligibility among NNSs (a central criterion in much ELF research, such as that which produced the Lingua Franca Core) or even, it seems, considerations of the language rights of ELF speakers. Rather than assuming the high moral ground, that ELF is by definition ‘a good thing’, and that teachers will agree with us once they understand, we should examine the issues from their perspective. In other words, it is we - the ELF ‘missionaries’ - who should be doing the understanding, by attempting to get to the root of teachers’ ideas about and attitudes towards this very new (for them) international approach to the English language and its teaching (see Decke-Cornill, 2003; Timmis, 2002, for two of the few attempts to date). Having done so, we will be in a far better position to weigh up the feasibility of the ELF enterprise. This will be important for all linguistic levels, although it seems to me that for teachers, pronunciation represents more of an ideological issue than the other linguistic levels, and that accent attitudes may prove the most difficult - perhaps impossible - to shift. Conclusion The future of ELF is at this point unpredictable especially, but by no means exclusively, in terms of pronunciation. If it succeeds it will not be without a struggle, as Holliday (forthcoming) makes very clear. It has, nevertheless, already gained recognition as a serious research area within World Englishes (see Knapp & Meierkord, 2002; Seidlhofer, 2004), rather than something to be dismissed as the minor campaign of a few eccentrics whose claims about <?page no="159"?> Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca 155 emerging ELF varieties should be likened to “corn circles” (Bruthiaux, 2003: 168). The sheer number of publications on the subject testify to its growing influence among academics, whether in challenging the idea of the NS as the best teacher (e.g. Braine, 1999) and of the NS yardstick in Second Language Acquisition research (e.g. Cook, 1999; 2002; Firth & Wagner, 1997), or in providing detailed accounts of emerging NNS varieties (e.g. Bolton, 2002; Gubbins & Holt, 2002; Kirkpatrick, 2002) and of NNS roles in the expansion of English (e.g. Brutt-Griffler, 2002; Watts & Trudgill, 2002). It emerges as a major defining issue in Widdowson (2003) and has an important place in the second edition of the most influential history of English Language Teaching (Howatt with Widdowson, 2004). Even English language testers, with their reputation for conservatism, are beginning to engage seriously with ELF (see e.g. Davies, Hamp-Lyons & Kemp, 2003; Lowenberg, 2002). Going back to where this article began - a sociopolitical perspective on pronunciation teaching - if ELF does ultimately succeed in practice, the teaching of English pronunciation will as a result sit much more comfortably with the sociopolitical World Englishes perspectives found in an increasing number of publications (e.g. Hall & Eggington, 2000; Holborow, 1999; Parakrama, 1995; Phillipson, 2000; 2003a; Tollefson, 2002). In a talk on the future of English and English Language Teaching, Phillipson (2003b) contrasted English as a Lingua Franca with World Standard Spoken English. ELF, he argued, belongs to a “World Englishes paradigm”, a paradigm which among other things “celebrates and supports diversity”, accepts “local linguistic norms, regional and national”, and which interprets ‘international’ as meaning “a cross-national linguistic common core”. World Standard Spoken English, he contended, belongs on the other hand to a “Global English paradigm”, one whose orientation is “assimilist”, whose linguistic norms are “anglo-american”, and whose interpretation of ‘international’ is of “US/ UK norms”. Pronunciation teaching from the sociopolitical perspective discussed in this article would be entirely in tune with Phillipson’s World Englishes paradigm, and it is my hope that teaching professionals and publishing houses will eventually rise to the challenge and enable it to be put into practice. References Ammon, U. (2000) Towards more fairness in international English: Linguistic rights of non-native speakers? In R. Phillipson (ed.) Rights to Language, Equity, Power and Education (pp. 111-116). London; New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Andreasson, A.-M. (1994) Norm as a pedagogical paradigm. World Englishes 13 (3), 395-409. Beebe, L. and Giles, H. (1984) Speech-accommodation theories: a discussion in terms of second language acquisition. In H. Giles (ed.) International Journal of the Sociology of Language. The Dynamics of Speech Accommodation (pp. 5-32). Amsterdam: Mouton. <?page no="160"?> Jennifer Jenkins 156 Beneke, J. (1991) Englisch als lingua franca oder als Medium interkultureller Kommunikation. In R. Grebing (ed.) Grenzenloses Sprachenlernen. Festschrift für Richard Freudenstein (pp. 54-66). Berlin: Cornelsen. Bolton, D. (ed.) (2002) Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press. Bonfiglio, T. (2002) Race and the Rise of Standard American. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Braine, G. (ed.) (1999) Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bruthiaux, P. (2003) Squaring the circles: issues in modeling English worldwide. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 13 (20), 159-178. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English. A Study of its Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cook, V. (1999) Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 33 (2), 185-209. Cook, V. (2002) Language teaching methodology and the L2 user perspective. In V. Cook (ed.) Portraits of the L2 User (pp. 327-343). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dalton-Puffer, C., Kaltenboeck, G. and Smit, U. (1997) Learner attitudes and L2 pronunciation in Austria. World Englishes 16 (1), 115-128. Daniels, H. (1997) Psycholinguistic, psycho-affective and procedural factors in the acquisition of authentic L2 pronunciation. In A. McLean (ed.) SIG Selections 1997 Special interests in ELT (pp. 80-85). Whitstable: IATEFL. Davies, A., Hamp-Lyons, L. and Kemp, C. (2003) Whose norms? International proficiency tests in English. World Englishes 22 (4), 571-584. Decke-Cornill, H. (2003) ‘We have to invent the language we are supposed to teach’: The issue of English as a Lingua Franca in language education in Germany. In M. Byram and P. Grundy (eds) Context and Culture in Language Teaching and Learning (pp. 59-71). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Firth, A. and Wagner, J. (1997) On discourse, communication and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal 81, 285-300. Gnutzmann, C. (ed.) (1999) Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language. Native and Non-Native Perspectives. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Gubbins, P. and Holt, M. (eds) (2002) Beyond Boundaries. Language and Identity in Contemporary Europe. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hall, J. and Eggington, W. (eds) (2000) The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Holborow, M. (1999) The Politics of English. London: Sage. Holliday, A. (forthcoming) The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howatt, A.P.R. with Widdowson, H.G. (2004) A History of English Language Teaching (2 nd edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hung, T. (2002) ‘New English’ words in international English dictionaries. English Today 18 (4), 29-34. Jenkins, J. (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language. New Models, New Norms, New Goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2002) A sociolinguistically-based, empirically-researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an International Language. Applied Linguistics 23 (1), 83-103. Jenkins, J. (2003) Intelligibility in Lingua Franca discourse. In J. Burton and C. Clennell (eds) Interaction and Language Learning (pp. 83-97). Alexandria, VA: TESOL. <?page no="161"?> Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca 157 Kachru, B.B. (1992) Teaching World Englishes. In B.B. Kachru (ed.) The Other Tongue. English across Cultures (2 nd edition) (pp. 356-365). Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Keys, K. and Walker, R. (2002) Ten questions on the phonology of English as an international language. ELT Journal 56 (3), 298-302. Knapp, P. and Meierkord, C. (eds) (2002) Lingua Franca Communication. Frankfurt a.M: Peter Lang. Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.) (2002) Englishes in Asia. Communication, Identity, Power & Education. Melbourne: Language Australia Ltd. Kubota, R. (2001) Teaching world Englishes to native speakers in the USA. World Englishes 20 (1), 47-64. Lippi-Green, R. (1997) English with an Accent. Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge. Lowenberg, P. (2002) Assessing English proficiency in the Expanding Circle. World Englishes 12 (3), 431-435. McKay, S. (2002) Teaching English as an International Language: Rethinking Goals and Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mufwene, S. (2001) The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parakrama, A. (1995) De-Hegemonizing Language Standards. Learning from (Post) Colonial Englishes about ‘English’. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Peng, L. and Ann, J. (2001) Stress and duration in three varieties of English. World Englishes 20 (1), 1-27. Phillipson, R. (2000) English in the new world order: variations on a theme of linguistic imperialism and “world” English. In T. Ricento (ed.) Ideology, Politics and Language Policies. Focus on English (pp. 87-106). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Phillipson, R. (2003a) English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2003b) The future of English (language teaching). Plenary paper at The future of English, 50 th Anniversary Conference, International House London, November 2003. Seidlhofer, B. (2001) Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (2), 133-158. Seidlhofer, B. (2002) Habeas corpus and divide et impera: ‘Global English’ and applied linguistics. In K. Spelman Miller and P. Thompson (eds) Unity and Diversity in Language Use (pp. 198-217). London: Continuum. Seidlhofer, B. (2004) Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24, 209-239. Seidlhofer, B. and Jenkins, J. (2003) English as a lingua franca and the politics of property. In C. Mair (ed.) The Politics of English as a World Language. New Horizons in Postcolonial Cultural Studies (pp. 139-154). Amsterdam: Ropi. Timmis, I. (2002) Native speaker norms and International English. ELT Journal 56 (3), 240-249. Tsuda, Y. (1997) Hegemony of English vs ecology of language: building equality in international communication. In L. Smith and M. Forman (eds) World Englishes 2000 (pp. 21-31). Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press. Tollefson, J. (ed.) (2002) Language Policies in Education. Critical Issues. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Trudgill, P. (2002) The sociolinguistics of modern RP. In P. Trudgill Sociolinguistic Variation and Change (pp. 171-180). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. <?page no="162"?> Jennifer Jenkins 158 Watts, R. and Trudgill, P. (eds) (2002) Alternative Histories. London: Routledge. Widdowson, H.G. (2003) Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <?page no="163"?> Barbara Seidlhofer Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? Descriptive and Pedagogic Bearings on the Globalisation of English This is Standard Future: the old measures, or existing grades, are inadequate, and we will aim at something better. It is a very interesting use. Instead of referring back to a source of authority, or taking a current measurable state, a standard is set, projected, from ideas about conditions which we have not yet realized but which we think should be realized. There is an active social history in this development of the phrase. (Williams, 1983 [1976]: 299) Introduction In English studies generally, an important point of reference is Standard English, and this is also what we endeavour to teach to our students. But ‘Standard English’ (henceforth StE) is actually very difficult to define and “there seems to be considerable confusion in the English-speaking world, even amongst linguists, about what Standard English is” (Trudgill, 1999: 117). Confused or not, it is a deeply entrenched notion which tends not to be called into question. However, at a time when non-standard forms of English around the world have achieved a wider currency both in terms of numbers of speakers and domains of use, an insistence on StE as the only option for all purposes is, as I shall argue in this paper, difficult to justify. StE, then, is difficult to define, and getting even more elusive as English, functioning as a global lingua franca, spreads and diversifies in its uses and its forms. As the inclusion of the term in Williams’ book Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (cited above) indicates, however, the notion of standard(s) is culturally and educationally a very important and powerful one. It stands to reason that any teaching requires the definition of goals and objectives, i.e. something that the teaching and learning is directed at: in pedagogical terms, prescription. And learning goals in language teaching have traditionally been formulated with reference to standard language. The Standard view revisited One way of tackling difficult issues is to consult experts, and this is what I propose to do in what follows. With issues to do with StE, a name that cer- <?page no="164"?> Barbara Seidlhofer 160 tainly springs to mind is Randolph Quirk, an acknowledged authority on English grammar, and an iconic representative figure in the field. Quirk has been called a champion of Standard English: he founded the Survey of English Usage and drew on the descriptions of educated British English which this database yielded for two celebrated grammars of English (Quirk et al., 1972; Quirk et al., 1985). But Quirk has not only described StE as such, he has also long been concerned with the relationship between this variety of the language and global uses and varieties of English. An early example of this work is to be found in a paper he presented at a conference celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the British Council in 1985 (subsequently published in Quirk & Widdowson, 1985) entitled ‘The English language in a global context’. In it, he made some widely-quoted statements about standard English, one of which provides us with a way into the issues that the present chapter will focus on: The relatively narrow range of purposes for which the non-native needs to use English (even in ESL countries) is arguably well catered for by a single monochrome standard form that looks as good on paper as it sounds in speech. There are only the most dubious advantages in exposing the learner to a great variety of usage, no part of which he will have time to master properly, little of which he will be called upon to exercise, all of which is embedded in a controversial linguistic matrix he cannot be expected to understand (Quirk, 1985: 6, emphases added). When read from a historical distance, this short passage contains a number of elements that would have to be questioned from today’s point of view. In homing in on these, my purpose is not to criticize Quirk for what he said then (and what he himself might well want to say differently now), but to highlight some of the quite dramatic changes that have taken place in the fairly recent past. His writing can thus be used as a yardstick for gauging just how swiftly globalisation has acted on manifestations of English and on attitudes to them. With the global spread of English, the language has now penetrated the daily lives of innumerable people to such an extent that it is not just needed for a “relatively narrow range of purposes” which can be catered for “by a single monochrome standard form”. As an epiphenomenon accompanying socio-economic and political developments in the world, English is allpervasive, from casual small talk to corporate business negotiation. As Melchers and Shaw put it, “wide use of English is a natural consequence of the way the world is now” (2003: 196). The consequence of these developments is that non-native users of English outnumber native speakers of the language, and this fact should lead to a reconsideration of a number of other propositions in the above quotation. Thus referring to a representative of the majority group of speakers as “the non-native” sounds somewhat outdated to say the least. Due to the lingua franca function of English, there are many people who avail themselves of this convenient means of communication on a daily basis, but they often conceive of themselves as users, not “learner[s]”, and they are quite automatically exposed “to a great variety of usage” while not <?page no="165"?> Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? 161 feeling any desire to “master” this range of forms “properly” themselves. It is, then, indeed a “controversial linguistic matrix” that lingua franca users of English inhabit. They live “in the presence of English” (Berns et al., forthcoming) but for this very reason it would seem patronising now to say that they “cannot be expected to understand” this situation. While linguistic laypersons may not have an expert understanding of the complex linguistic landscape surrounding them, this does not mean that people have not made conceptual adjustments in their thinking about ways of communicating in today’s world. As for linguists and particularly applied linguists, the challenge for them is to bring to bear their insights into the forms and uses of language to make sense of the “controversial linguistic matrix” we find ourselves faced with. In particular, future teachers of English might be given more support than they have hitherto received in teacher education courses to help them confront the issues resulting from the globalisation of English and what this means for their English language classrooms. Non-native varieties of English It may therefore be instructive to examine closely some authoritative views that are still holding sway in the areas of descriptive and applied linguistics that are usually deemed relevant for teacher education, and ask to what extent they may need to be critically reviewed in the light of recent developments in the role of English in the world. We can continue to refer to the authoritative voice already quoted, that of Randolph Quirk. For his concern for the global status of English did not end in 1985. In 1988, he delivered a lecture to the Japanese Association of Language Teachers that was subsequently published in the journal English Today, entitled ‘Language varieties and standard language’ (Quirk, 1990) - so we are still on the theme of the educational and pedagogic significance of Standard English. This paper was also reprinted in the 1995 collection Grammatical and Lexical Variance in English, so Quirk must have retained his views at least up to that time. Essentially, the thrust of Quirk’s argument in this 1990/ 1995 paper is that Standard English should be the only variety taught both in contexts where English is the first language (e.g. in British schools) and in those where it is a foreign or an additional official language (e.g. in Spain, but also in India). Quirk does not deny the difficulties of defining StE, but, as I shall argue, he does take a rather non-problematic view of its currency in the world at large, and in language education in particular. What I am most interested in are the criteria Quirk adduces in support of his argument and what it is like to reread his paper some 13 years on. I therefore propose to have a closer look at what he says and consider how things may have changed over the last dec- <?page no="166"?> Barbara Seidlhofer 162 ade or so, to revisit his perspectives on StE and offer, or juxtapose, my own, based on the observation and recognition of the global role of English today. In his discussion of varieties of English, Quirk draws a distinction between native and non-native varieties. The former are then subdivided into institutionalised and non-institutionalised varieties, while non-native varieties are all designated non-institutionalised. Among the institutionalised varieties, meaning “fully described and with defined standards observed by the institutions of state” (p. 6) Quirk includes American English and British English, plus “one or two others with standards rather informally established, notably Australian English” (ibid.). No non-native Englishes are included, and Quirk gives the following reason for this: “I am not aware of there being any institutionalised non-native varieties” (ibid.). This categorisation results in such long-recognised ‘types’ as Indian English or Nigerian English being lumped together with what Quirk calls ‘performance varieties’ such as Russian English, French English, or Japanese English. What this categorization leaves out of account is the sociocultural role of English in the various settings, in particular the role English plays in the construction of identities. Quirk is at pains to draw a clear distinction between ‘varieties identified on ethnopolitical grounds’ and ‘those identified on linguistic grounds’, but it has long been recognized that such a distinction is untenable. There are no linguistic criteria for the delimitation of varieties. Language is a continuum in time and space, so what linguists can do is indicate variable features, but they cannot, as linguists, identify the boundaries which demarcate one variety from another (see Chambers & Trudgill, 1998). Varieties are social constructs that exist in and through the perception of speakers. And so it is that if we consult publications on so-called nativized varieties of English from the last decade or so, it becomes very clear that e.g. Nigerian linguists such as Bamgbose would hold that a Standard Nigerian English is, in principle, just as desirable and feasible as a Standard New Zealand English: there is a complex dialectic between ethnopolitical/ sociocultural and linguistic factors in that whether or not an endonormative (linguistic) standard becomes a reality depends, more than anything else, on the (ethnopolitical/ sociocultural) self-perception of the speakers concerned. Quirk quotes Kujore (1985) in his support as saying that “although earlier observers have talked freely of Standard Nigerian English, the fact is ‘that any such standard is, at best, in process of evolution’”. But it is actually difficult to see what the real-world difference is between a standard that is “in process of evolution” (Nigerian English) and a standard that is “rather informally established” (Australian English). Just as there are efforts under way for establishing Australian and New Zealand English (cf. e.g. Bell & Kuiper, 2000; Blair & Collins, 2001; Delbridge, 1981; Gordon & Deverson, 1998), there are the same efforts being made for e.g. Nigerian English (cf. e.g. Bamgbose, 1998; Igboanusi, 2002, and especially the International Corpus of English (ICE), see http: / / www.ucl.ac.uk/ eng- <?page no="167"?> Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? 163 lish-usage/ ice/ index.htm, accessed July 14, 2004). It is difficult to see why, if say New Zealand English and Nigerian English are described to an equal degree, the former should be called ‘institutionalised’ and the latter not - the only reason being a preconceived notion that the nativeness criterion is crucial. As Achebe put it so wisely, “[t]he price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use” (Achebe, 1965, quoted in McArthur, 2002: 272). From today’s perspective of the globalisation of English, it would seem that the price the native speakers of a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of ‘owners’ of that language. That is to say, they must concede that the fact that a language (‘their’ language) has become the world language renders ‘nativeness’ as such irrelevant for the international uses of the language. But as an English speaker from the expanding circle, my main quarrel with Quirk’s description of non-native varieties concerns a statement he makes about what he calls ‘performance varieties’: The problem with varieties in this branch is that they are inherently unstable, ranged along a qualitative cline, with each speaker seeking to move to a point where the varietal characteristics reach vanishing point, and where thus, ironically, each variety is best manifest in those who by commonsense measures speak it worst (p. 5f.). Apart from the fact that all language is inherently unstable, to what degree exactly these expanding circle varieties are unstable is an empirical question which is as yet unanswered. And in the years that have passed since Quirk made this statement, considerable efforts have been undertaken to address that empirical question. For example, the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE for short, see e.g. Granger, 1998) is a large-scale project focusing on the (written) English of learners from a great variety of first language backgrounds, with the aim of describing systematic traits in that learner language. Another empirical project, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE for short, see e.g. Seidlhofer, 2001), while also gathering data from expanding circle speakers of English, is different from ICLE in that it is a spoken corpus, and, more importantly, that it conceives of these English speakers not as learners aiming at a more native-like competence, but as expert users of English for whom this language is the chosen lingua franca. What both projects (and some others, see e.g. Dewey, 2003; Dresemann, (in progress); Dröschel et al., (forthcoming); Hollander, 2002; House, 2002; James, 2000; Mauranen, 2003; Mollin, (in progress); Prodromou, 2003) have in common is that they aim at identifying salient features of non-native English. When more descriptions based on larger amounts of data become available, it may well turn out that on a certain level of generality, this non-native English exhibits regularities (much like any natural language) which contradict the notion that ‘performance varieties’ are totally arbitrary and uncontrolled. <?page no="168"?> Barbara Seidlhofer 164 The appropriation of English and speaker identity What seems particularly significant in the present context is that here are strong indications already from empirical findings to date that mutual accommodation among speakers plays a crucial role in lingua franca communication. Accommodation, of course, is something that happens in flight as it were, as speakers in a given situation, usually unconsciously, adjust their speech and non-verbal behaviour, fine-tune these to become more accessible and more acceptable to each other. This mechanism has been shown to play a very important role in international intelligibility (see especially Jenkins, 2000), but it is something that is easily overlooked, as it seems to be by Quirk, when one assumes that unless there is a norm that controls the way people speak, things fall apart. In this respect, linguists could learn a great deal from anthropology, biology and social psychology, which demonstrate that people naturally co-operate with each other, basically because it is in their interest to do so (see e.g. Dunbar, 1996; Giles & Coupland, 1991; Ridley, 1996). And again, the linguistic traits of these manifestations of English will depend very heavily on speakers’ perception of themselves as users of English. Increasingly, the recognition is taking hold that English as an International Language belongs to all who use it, and that people who learn it as an additional language have an active role in the way the language spreads and changes. For instance, Brutt-Griffler (2002) provides a carefully researched and well-argued basis for acknowledging the active role of non-native users of English as agents in the development of English: they are not just at the receiving end, but contribute to the shaping of the language and the functions it fulfils and so, as speech communities, take possession of the language in a process she terms ‘macroacquisition’. This emergent conceptualisation of themselves not as exonormatively oriented learners of English but as legitimate speakers of a world language that is shaped by all its users makes it more likely that nativization processes will gather momentum also in settings where English does not have a special sociocultural role, e.g. official or semi-official status. In Europe, for instance, “English […] is fast becoming a second language” (Graddol, 1999: 65), and efforts are under way to address a research question investigating, as Görlach puts it, the “[j]ustification of the linguistic identity of English as an international language (EIL) as used for communication by non-native speakers; how much regularity/ stability is there and under what communicational conditions” (Görlach, 1999: 16). It seems, then, that L2 users of English have come a long way from a mindset in which, as Quirk puts it in the above quotation, “each speaker seek[s] to move to a point where the varietal characteristics reach vanishing point”. This also entails that Quirk’s witty continuation that “each variety is best manifest in those who by commonsense measures speak it worst” has to be challenged. For ELF speakers, being able to use the language like native speakers and without traces of their L1, is increasingly perceived as <?page no="169"?> Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? 165 unnecessary, unrealistic, and, at least by some, as positively undesirable. Indeed, ELF speakers are beginning to assert their identities and to operate according to their own “commonsense” criteria, not of externally defined native-speaker norms but of emically perceived communicative efficiency in the current situation (cf. e.g. Jenkins, (forthcoming); Kordon, 2003; Penz, (2003); Pölzl, 2003). From this perspective, “each variety is best manifest” in those who manage to make use of ELF as a convenient means of communication while at the same time consciously retaining linguistic traits of their distinct identity - in that sense, there may be cases where those who “speak it [their variety] worst” by Quirk’s standards actually speak it best. This line of thinking has been referred to as “transcending the nativeness paradigm” (Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 2001), which has attracted considerable attention among scholars in recent years. Thus Brutt-Griffler and Samimy contend that “nativeness and nonnativeness among English users constitute non-elective socially constructed identities rather than linguistic categories” (2001: 99). With the degree of globalisation English has now reached, we are faced with an unprecedented situation which is giving rise to unprecedented ideas as to what it means ‘to speak a language’ to achieve effective standards of communication, who the legitimate speakers of the language are, and whose language is worthy of description. Quirk’s argument, however, is that standards of communication in English must necessarily depend on conforming to the norms of StE. Furthermore, StE can only be sanctioned and ratified by native speakers of English. Thus in the course of the paper being revisited here, the notions of ‘nativeness’ and ‘standard’ are merged to an extent that it becomes difficult to see them as essentially independent of one another. Quirk inserts a discussion of a famous psycholinguistic experiment (Coppieters, 1987) after his presentation of varieties of English before moving on to attack “liberation linguistics”, which he accuses of overvaluing regional, social and ethnic varieties to the detriment of StE. He describes Coppieters’ study of the competence differences between native and non-native speakers of French, which “strikingly underscores the native/ non-native distinction” (p. 6); it found that the ‘nearnative’ non-native speakers performed significantly less well on tests in which they had to judge the (un)acceptability of sentence pairs. Quirk goes on to comment on the results of this study: The difference in the sets of scores [betw. NSs and NNSs] was reflected in the comments by the non-natives. Though they always managed to understand and make themselves understood fairly well through the linguistic and situational context, they said repeatedly that they had developed no intuitions about the distinction between the imperfect and the passé composé: and two who said this had worked in important professional positions in France [TL=F] for 15 and 21 years respectively. It would be interesting to see similar controlled experiments for English with such pairs as “The spacecraft is now 1000 km from [+- the ] earth”, “She [+- has] lived there for three years” (p. 6f.). <?page no="170"?> Barbara Seidlhofer 166 Again, we are faced with issues of identity here: what Quirk is emphasizing is that individuals who are considered near-native and have lived in a ‘target language’ environment for a long time do not necessarily ‘become’ native speakers (see the discussion of this question in Davies, 2003). They often retain something of their L1 identity amidst the new setting into which they have moved. While the evidence in Coppieters’ study is of a grammatical nature, the observation as such has been particularly often made in relation to L2 pronunciation. As Jenkins (2000: 16) explains, Learners who in all other respects achieve a very high degree of proficiency in English frequently retain a number of L1 phonological features. Although motor control is likely to be an element in this process, identity is probably the more salient issue. As Dalton and Seidlhofer argue, ‘Pronunciation is so much a matter of self-image that students may prefer to keep their accent deliberately, in order to retain their self-respect or to gain the approval of their peers’. Therefore, insisting on learners conforming to target-language pronunciation norms and renouncing those of their mother tongue ‘may even be seen as forcing them to reject their own identity’ (1994: 7). I would thus read Coppieters’ results as corroboration of the overriding significance of identity in the use of language, as an argument for the assertion of identity rather than for the need to strive to mimic native speakers in the peculiarities of their verbal behaviour. In other words, the distinction between native speakers and non-native speakers that Quirk is at pains to make clear to his readers can indeed be important, but, I would argue, for entirely different reasons from those he is suggesting. To me, Coppieters’ results indicate very clearly that speakers can get by perfectly in an L2, that they can, as Quirk himself emphasizes in the above quotation, be successful in “important professional positions” without developing native-speaker intuitions about every aspect of the language. In a nutshell, what we are contemplating here is the intrinsic linguistic redundancy of these ‘shibboleth’ features: they are socio-psychologically important in that they serve the function of signalling membership of a certain native-speaker community and underscore the distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’, but they do not play a communicatively important role in that they are crucial for intelligibility. This tension between these two kinds of function language fulfils is discussed by Widdowson (2003: chapters 6-8) in reference to the terms community/ identity for the former and communication/ intelligibility for the latter. For the reasons outlined, the main conclusion from the Coppieters study I would draw is that native-speaker intuitions and ‘perfect mastery’ of French are simply not important to the individuals described, and are irrelevant for their success as full members of the society they live in. Quirk’s conclusion, however, is exactly the opposite: “The implications for foreign language teaching are clear: the need for native teacher support and the need for nonnative teachers to be in constant touch with the native language” (p. 7). <?page no="171"?> Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? 167 Old norms, new needs, and Anglo-Saxon attitudes Even allowing for the time lag between the publication of the paper under discussion and the accelerated globalisation of English in the meantime, this is a surprising assertion. It seems to be expressive of the conservative reflexes of many native speakers of English who effectively take Kachru’s term inner circle to imply that they are at the centre of the universe when it comes to English - no matter who uses it, wherever in the world it is used, and for whatever purposes. This would also explain why Quirk, after deploring the tendency he has observed in various teaching contexts “to permit learners to settle for lower standards than the best” (p. 9) concludes his paper: Certainly, if I were a foreign student paying good money in Tokyo or Madrid to be taught English, I would feel cheated by such a tolerant pluralism. My goal would be to acquire English precisely because of its power as an instrument of international communication. I would be annoyed at the equivocation over English since it seemed to be unparalleled in the teaching of French, German, Russian, or Chinese. I would be particularly annoyed at irrelevant emphasis on the different varieties of English when I came to realize they mattered so little to native speakers of English […] Of course, it is not easy to eradicate once-fashionable educational theories, but the effort is worthwhile for those of us who believe that the world needs an international language and that English is the best candidate at present on offer. Moreover, the need to make the effort is something for which we must bear a certain responsibility - and in which we have a certain interest (p. 10, emphases added). There are a number of points in the last two quotations that call for comment: a) the explicit analogy between English and French (and other ‘big’ languages), b) the implicit analogy between target language/ foreign language contexts and lingua franca contexts, c) the assumption of equivalence between ENL and ELF and the ensuing relevance of native-speaker judgments in ELF contexts, and d) the extrapolation from the findings of disciplines such as linguistics and psycholinguistics to the specification of what should be taught as a language subject. These all arise from the assumption of the legitimacy of native-speaker centrality which marginalizes other users of the language as ‘foreign’. This attitude is itself, one might argue, encapsulated in the reference made here to “a foreign student paying good money in Tokyo or Madrid”. For the “foreign student” is of course not a foreigner in his or her own country, but referred to as such by the native speaker of English talking about the teaching of ‘his’ language in a country that is foreign to him - an indication of ‘native speaker-centrism’ and particularly striking if we remember that the paper is the written record of a lecture delivered in Tokyo, to a predominantly Japanese audience, where very obviously it was the speaker that was the foreigner. But let us look a little more closely at the elements a) through d) listed above. As for a), this does not hold precisely because the role of English in <?page no="172"?> Barbara Seidlhofer 168 the world is unparalleled, and therefore ELF is, by definition, different even from other, regional lingua francas: Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the role of English has done nothing but grow. The decline of the British Empire has not entailed a corresponding decline in the language (compare the fate of French) - quite on the contrary. English is not an international language, after the fashion of Spanish or Russian, but a world language, a consequence of the economic and cultural strength of the Anglo-Saxon world (the United States) and the increasing role of the media (Chevillet, 1994: 118; translated by (and in) McArthur, 1998: 31). This is also why, for people who intend to make use of English as a world language, learning goals cannot be of the same kind as for traditional ‘foreign languages’(b). While in foreign language teaching contexts, the learning of a language combines with learning about and appreciating another culture, and there is sometimes even the desire to join the community that speaks that foreign language, ELF users operate in international settings in which native speakers of English may or may not figure, but certainly are not privileged. (cf. e.g. Firth, 1996; House, 2002; Meierkord, 2002; Pölzl & Seidlhofer, (forthcoming)). It follows c) that EFL and ELF are functionally and conceptually different (Seidlhofer, 2001) and can therefore also be expected to be different in their manifestations, with native speakers of English having no special status as yardstick of acceptability let alone intelligibility in ELF contexts. The English which has such “power as an instrument of international communication” is predominantly the English spoken by non-native speakers, and therefore, in its spoken forms at least, simply not the same as the English Quirk is talking about. Finally, d) concerns the assumption that one can extrapolate directly from psycholinguistic or linguistic-descriptive findings to pedagogic prescription, that there is a direct implicational relationship in that units of description correspond to units for learning, and by the same token, that authorities on language, descriptive linguistics and psycholinguistics are automatically authorities on learning and teaching. This is a highly problematic assumption which has recently been the focus of much debate and controversy (see e.g. Seidlhofer, 2003: section 2; Widdowson, 2003: chapters 5-7). As Widdowson puts it, “linguistic descriptions cannot automatically meet pedagogic requirement”, and it would therefore be wrong to assume that “findings should directly and uniquely inform what is included in language courses” (2003: 106). Language teachers should thus refer to, but not defer to, linguists. But this is difficult for some linguists to accept. Innovative attitudes, particularly if they call into question established belief, always run the risk of sounding like what Quirk refers to as “half-baked quackery” (1990: 9; 1995: 30) and clearly, this is a danger one has to guard against. But the situation with regard to the global spread of English is such that some rethinking about what constitutes standards and appropriate objectives for learning English is urgently called for. What I am arguing for is not a rejection of all norms and standards, but a reappraisal of their justifica- <?page no="173"?> Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? 169 tion. The central issue is whether ELF users should be accorded the right to be norm-developing rather than simply norm-dependent (Kachru, 1985: 16f.). Certainly, if one thinks of their sheer numbers (cf. e.g. Gnutzmann, 2000: 357), there is a prima facie case for so doing, though the jury is still out on this. There are, however, vigorous signs that it will soon be inevitable in sociolinguistic studies of language variation and change to investigate the possibility that basically the same processes are at work in ELF as there are with the New Englishes that are just being welcomed into the realm of legitimacy. In this respect, Schneider (2003) seems particularly relevant: he describes “the dynamics of New Englishes” (the first part of his title) as determined by general sociolinguistic processes: In elaborating his “Dynamic Model” of the evolution of New Englishes he pays particular attention to communication, accommodation and identity formation - all of which also figure prominently in our discussion of ELF above. Schneider believes that his model “holds promises of an applied nature by repositioning and suggesting a reconsideration of the role and assessment of norms of correctness in the usage of English in different countries” (p. 273). Of course, the sociocultural role of English is very different in New Englishes/ outer circle contexts and ELF contexts. Most crucially perhaps, ELF users do not interact within relatively homogeneous speech communities, but rather, as House (2003) observes, they often “have heterogeneous backgrounds and diverse social and linguistic expectations” (p. 573). Therefore, House suggests that ELF research should operate with the sociolinguistic concept of ‘community of practice’ (cf. Wenger, 1998). House argues (p. 572f.) that the three dimensions that, according to Wenger, characterise a community of practice would be appropriate for ELF interactions: mutual engagement, a joint negotiated enterprise, and a shared repertoire of negotiable resources. House’s suggestion would seem to hold great potential for ELF research. The vital question in the context of the concerns discussed in this paper will be in how far analogies with the evolution of New Englishes and the conceptualisation of ELF as a medium of communication within communities of practice are compatible. Contradictions and discrepancies More research is clearly needed, and work in this area has been gathering momentum recently (cf. Seidlhofer, 2004). At any rate, what is emerging with some clarity is that in view of the present globalisation through English and of English, insisting on a ‘monochrome’ native-speaker standard is an anachronism that inevitably leads to some confusion in the discourse of and about linguistics and language teaching which manifests itself in a number of contradictions and discrepancies, among which the following are perhaps the most obvious: <?page no="174"?> Barbara Seidlhofer 170 English in the world nowadays is predominantly English as a means of international communication, English as a Lingua Franca, but the control over the norms of how it ‘should be used’ is still assumed to rest with the minority of its speakers, namely English native speakers. This contradiction is due to a mismatch between what is happening at the meta-level (assertion of pluricentrism, see e.g. Canagarajah, 1999; Pennycook, 1994; Phillipson, 1992) and what is happening in most grassroots practice: (unquestioning) submission to native-speaker norms. This mismatch is also paralleled in the one-sided focus of descriptive research: while the role of English in the world is mainly ELF, descriptive research to date focuses practically exclusively on ENL (which, in turn, supports the hegemony of ENL, and so feeds reactions against it, which leads to a vicious circle). In many university English departments, we are faced with a somewhat schizophrenic situation: while in all parts of the course of studies except in language classes (i.e. cultural studies, literary studies, linguistics and language education), we celebrate multiculturalism, pluricentrism, postcolonial ‘writing back’, language variation and change, and pluriand multilingualism, the ideal as far as language proficiency goes is very much that of a usually monolingual native speaker of StE. What we need is a critical appraisal in language use and language teaching analogous to that we find in other areas of English study, and a fostering of language awareness in the true sense of the word of how language functions in social contexts of use. Language teacher education is where this process should logically begin. Conclusion I have argued in this paper that changes in the role of English in the world and its widespread and increasing use as a lingua franca for global communication call for a reconsideration of how the language has traditionally been perceived. With reference to the quotation from Williams’ Keywords at the beginning of this paper, I have suggested that “[i]nstead of referring back to a source of authority” or “old measures”, we need to project “from ideas about conditions what we have not yet realized but which we think should be realized”. And as Williams says, this is indeed a matter of “active social history”. My argument has involved the questioning of established authority - not, I should stress, in any spirit of disrespect or uncritical rejection, but in order to bring out what I believe to be issues of crucial concern for the description and pedagogy of English in the contemporary world. <?page no="175"?> Standard Future or Half-Baked Quackery? 171 References Bamgbose, A. 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(2003) Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, R. (1983) [1976] Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana. <?page no="179"?> Section 4 Learners in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education: Focus on Europe Section 4 aims to present ideas and empirical research on the teaching and learning applications of the globalisation of English in various types of schools and classrooms: primary school, secondary school, and higher education. Here, the focus is on the current situation in Europe, especially on political and societal developments, and on individual learners of English. Janet Enever investigates the process of early start foreign language policymaking in Hungary using data collected through interviews with senior Ministry officials and academics. Her aim is to profile the ways in which covert, latent and institutional power has operated in the processes of formulating a new national curriculum for foreign languages. Enever identifies a policy which has appeared as confirmation of a political and economic commitment to the forces for modernisation and increased globalisation, rather than radical reform. In revealing a process which led to ‘a policy to have no policy’, Enever discusses an emerging culture of parentocracy that has evolved as a consequence of ‘letting the market decide’. Margie Berns and Kees de Bot present results of a comparative study on the English proficiency of Belgian, Dutch, French, and German teenagers. Their analysis shows that contact with English outside of school and attitudes towards English have a direct relationship to the students’ proficiency in English. Young Europeans have many opportunities for contact with English due to an increase in the presence of English. This development results in a very specific and differentiated language proficiency among young people in Europe, since the availability of English differs between countries. The study suggests that the teaching of English has to respond to the increasing presence of English in Europe. Elizabeth J. Erling presents a qualitative analysis of the uses of and attitudes towards the English language of students of English at the Freie Universität Berlin. Erling identifies three types of students: the ‘US-friendly cluster’, the ‘pro-British cluster’ and the ‘lingua franca cluster’. Whereas the US and British oriented students mostly prefer a native speaker model, the lingua franca cluster represents a new type of learner. These speakers are not particularly interested in US or British culture, nor do they seek to reach a native speaker standard. This development seems to be characteristic of the changes in perceptions of English as a result of globalisation. <?page no="180"?> 176 One of the effects of globalisation is the increased use of English as a Lingua Franca which is often a third language. Ulrike Jessner takes up a number of issues currently discussed in the research on English as a third language in Europe. The contribution gives an up-to-date overview of socioand psycholinguistic aspects of research on multilingualism with a focus on English as a third language. Special attention is given to holistic approaches to the phenomenon of multilingualism and their relevance for applied linguistics research. The paper also presents some recent developments in multilingual education, concentrating on the role of English in particular. Considering the notion of the ‘Weltbürger’ (‘cosmopolitan citizen’) by Kant, Angelika Kubanek-German constructs a philosophically oriented framework, which allows a more general approach to the topic of globalisation in English Language Teaching (ELT), especially for ELT in Germany. According to her findings, in English textbooks for German secondary schools global issues are usually embedded in texts referring to the Third World. She concludes that pupils need more time in the classroom to reflect on their own experiences with regard to globalisation in order to find a connection between the texts presented in their textbooks and their own reality. <?page no="181"?> Janet Enever Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? Introduction Globally, the teaching of English within primary schools is on the increase. Whilst the current dearth of national statistics and the patchiness of research studies in this field make it difficult to account precisely for this phenomenon, some would account for this trend by proposing that both parents and schools have decided that their children will need English in their futures - thus an early start is more likely to ensure early competency. Parallel to the above trend, it also appears that globally, national education policies supporting an early start to foreign languages are on the increase. This trend is particularly noticeable across Europe, where, for example, during the late 1990’s a number of countries in Central Europe introduced policies for a compulsory early start or encouraged schools to move towards such programmes. In a similar pattern, some countries of Western Europe have issued policy statements for an even earlier compulsory early start since the year 2000. Again, we might speculate that policy makers have identified the potential of early start programmes to achieve early competency and chosen to support schools in moves towards accomplishing this through training and resource provision. Seasoned foreign language specialists who recall the research findings of Burstall et al. (1974) which reported the failure of primary French in the UK will regard the above trends with some scepticism - perhaps suggesting these trends will be short-lived as evidence emerges of the instability of young children’s potential progress and thus the limited cost-effectiveness of such programmes. It should be recalled here that the Burstall report acted as a catalyst for the closure of many early start initiatives across Europe, which now appear to be re-emerging some 30 years later. Other perspectives may position this trend within global patterns of increased focus on markets beyond the borders of nation states. Such speculation might hypothesise that the emergence of this type of policy statement says more about an individual country’s economic goals than about hard evidence of the linguistic potential of their children. In this paper I aim to make a start on teasing out some of the many factors that impact on school choices of foreign language start age and the making of policies within individual nation states by reporting a study of Hungarian policy-making, undertaken at a key point in Hungarian history - the early- <?page no="182"?> Janet Enever 178 1990’s when Hungary was faced with the unprecedentedly rapid challenges of policy reformation during the transition phase of moving from a centralised socialist system to a partially devolved form of democracy. Through this account I hope to stimulate others to review policies and practice in primary foreign language teaching contexts where similar trends are currently emerging. My experience of working closely with Hungarian primary foreign language teachers over a period of years has convinced me that whilst we continue to lack a clear understanding of the goals of early start programmes in Europe we may continue to be at risk of a repetition of the programme closures of some 30 years ago, rather than moving closer to the declared European goal of creating a trilingual community. It is with this thought in mind that I undertook this study as a first step in analysing current trends and clarifying achievable goals. In dividing this paper into three parts: I will provide firstly an overview of current European patterns; followed by a discussion of professional considerations around the early start question, and finally an analysis of the Hungarian policy-making process as one illustration of how decisions on early start are achieved. From this analysis I will argue that the evidence presented is more indicative of patterns of global influence than of any trend towards European harmonisation. Patterns of Early Start provision in Europe Since the early 1990’s there appears to have been a growing resurgence in the popularity of an early start to foreign language learning, as illustrated in Table 1 which shows the current pattern across Europe. The trend appears to have been linked in part to the opening of borders across Europe as reflected in the explosion of demand for English from all age groups in Central Europe between 1990-95. As this trend worked its way towards an increasingly earlier start in a number of Central European countries by the late 1990’s, other parts of Europe appear to have followed suit and, in some cases, overtaken Central Europe in their bid to achieve an increasingly lower mandatory start age (it should be noted here that whilst English is most frequently the first choice, there are specific local exceptions which reflect the cross-border proximity of another language group - most often German, French or the language of a neighbouring country). In reviewing the data in table 1 it is notable that only Hungary, Portugal, Ireland and the UK do not legislate for second/ foreign language introduction until age 11 (other than minority language provision). In addition, private language lessons outside the school are not available to the vast majority of under 11’s in these countries. However, despite the legislation, school-based foreign language classes are offered in some urban schools from grade 3 (or sometimes younger) in both Hungary and Portugal, whilst this is rarely the case in the UK. Classes in school are generally funded through a private <?page no="183"?> Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? 179 foundation, paid for by parents - thus some parents in both Hungary and Portugal are choosing to request an earlier start, despite the national policy. Table 1: Young Learner Foreign Language Policy across Europe Current EU Member States Country Policy introduced Mandatory start age Austria 2003 6 yrs Belgium 1963 8/ 10/ 12 yrs Denmark 10 yrs Finland 10 yrs France 2002 5 yrs Germany 2000-03 6-8 yrs Greece 1994 8 yrs Ireland 1998 11 yrs Italy 2003 6 yrs Luxembourg 9 yrs Netherlands 1985 10 yrs Portugal 1986 10/ 11 yrs Spain 1990 8 yrs Sweden 2003 6 yrs UK 1989 11 yrs (piloting primary start by 2010) 2004 Accession countries Country Policy introduced Mandatory start age Czech Republic 1998 10 yrs Cyprus 9 yrs Estonia 1997 6 yrs Hungary 1998 11yrs Latvia 2005 9 yrs (piloting age 6) Lithuania 1992 10/ 11 yrs Malta 1970 11 yrs * Poland 1994 10 yrs Slovakia 1990 8 yrs Slovenia 2002 8 yrs 2007: Future applicant countries Country Policy introduced Mandatory start age Bulgaria 2003 8 yrs Romania 1998 9 yrs Turkey 1994 10 yrs Note: a) Data accurate June 2003, but policies subject to rapid change b) * Malta - bi-lingual schooling (English/ Maltese) from yr 1. <?page no="184"?> Janet Enever 180 In contrast to this, countries such as Italy, Germany, Austria and Latvia have recently selected the start of schooling as the time to commence a foreign language, and are rapidly moving towards a national implementation of this policy. By enshrining this decision in legislation it could be argued that this provides a clear goal for schools to work towards ensuring satisfactory access to an early start on a national scale. The above national policy statistics are insufficient evidence from which to draw conclusions on actual provision however. It is not uncommon for school lessons to be privately funded by parents, either within the school curriculum or as an additional afternoon class. Indeed, in some countries the pressure from parents requiring provision even at kindergarten level is currently urging school principals to consider the potential for this as an additional marketing device. The emergence of a strong culture of parentocracy (Brown, 1990) appears now to be a feature increasingly in evidence in Europe. One further key element of the picture relates to the frequency and duration of language classes - particularly for early learners. For example, in Hungary parent-funded lessons tend to be 2/ 3 x 45 minutes per week, whilst in neighbouring Austria the pattern of state provision is 10-15 minutes daily, yet in Turkey teachers describe more than 10 lessons per week as common in urban situations. Such differing patterns may well reflect differing understandings of the goals of early start, or simply acknowledge the prioritising of this initiative within different national systems. As a cororally to the issues so far raised, it would be pertinent here to comment briefly on the inherent nature of policies. In policy-making, the legislation can be taken to be but a small part of the evidence. Contextual factors of implementation at school level will finally be what defines the value of a policy. Thus policy-making must be identified ultimately, as a bottom-up process. At this first stage of investigation however, I will focus principally on seeking an explanation of national policy formation and aim to reveal those factors most influential in defining early start policy currently operating within Europe. I hope in later research to relate these findings to the impact of these national policies on implementation at school level, and to consider where and to what extent teachers, pupils, parents and the wider community have actively shaped policies to meet local demands. In this brief outline of European provision, it appears that mandatory policy is used as a device to ensure national consistency of provision in some countries, elsewhere a later mandatory policy is in some instances giving rise to privatised provision for those able to pay. The example of school responses to the market in Turkey raises the question of professional issues once more. In the following section I will provide a summary of those relevant factors generally noted by experts in the field as key to identifying an appropriate early start age for foreign language teaching, together with what little research evidence there is available to clarify the picture. <?page no="185"?> Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? 181 Professional considerations for Early Start Programmes In the decision of a nation state to introduce a new early start policy it must be assumed that funding provision will be allocated for such items as: an adequate supply of appropriately trained teachers with an advanced level of language proficiency; an adequate supply of cultural and age appropriate teaching materials designed to achieve the agreed programme goals; the provision of appropriate school facilities, together with a positive school environment for the implementation of innovation. Country-specific evidence indicates substantially differing views on what such adequate provision might mean. Clearly, this is in part dictated by economics, yet the wide variety in the types of young learner (YL) training courses and teacher language proficiency in different countries is itself indicative of mixed understandings of the concept of professional competency in this field. Much research is needed to establish the optimum conditions if effective teaching of this age group is to be achieved across Europe. Debate also continues to surround the question of aims in early start programmes. Too often these are perceived purely in terms of progress towards language competency - as for adults. Empirical research could valuably inform understandings related to specific YL issues such as: The potential for developing positive attitudes to other cultures through an early start. Evidence of early start foreign language (FL) learning enhancing wider cognitive development. Evidence of early start FL’s enhancing literacy development in L1. For parents, school principals and some teachers, such data could support a re-definition of goals which currently tend to be framed in terms of progress towards proficiency, ignoring the vital broader educational aims that might lay firm foundations for the young child to confidently progress. Much of what has been summarised above might appear self-evident to any professional in the field and it might be presumed that discussions would focus on the financial implications of implementation at, say, 6, 8 or 10 yrs. In the subsequent section of this paper however, I will present a study of the process of policy-making related to foreign language learning in Hungary during the 1990’s which suggests that quite other factors were prioritised in the consultation process. Here, I do not suggest that this study is indicative of the practice elsewhere, rather that it might generate discussion on the role and purposes of educational policy-making in general and perhaps signal the importance of professionals gaining a stronger voice within that process. <?page no="186"?> Janet Enever 182 Foreign language policy-making in Hungary Introduction In studying the making of a policy it is important to recognise that no policy is formulated in a vacuum. It carries with it particular ideologies and reflects both specific temporal space and political expediency. Here, I will not aim to explore in detail the precise nature of that pre-history, but will seek to draw out those key points revealed during my interviews, data collection and analysis. My data is drawn from a study conducted in Hungary during 1999/ 2000. This I will present as evidence of how a policy statement on the introduction of early foreign language learning that can best be described as: ‘a policy to have no policy’ (Enever, 2001) has emerged. This statement, contained within the foreign language section of the National Core Curriculum for Hungary (NCC) (Ministry of Culture and Education, 1996) makes only a brief reference to the early years of schooling with a requirement that compulsory foreign language learning should commence ‘no later than 11 years’. The resultant confusion for both parents and school-based professionals caused uncertainty as to whether an early or later start would most benefit the coming generation of Hungarian Europeans and led to many schools (particularly those in rural or straightened circumstances) closing their early start classes and returning to the pre-1990 practice of foreign language introduction in the upper primary phase only (11+). In the making of this policy I will argue that a decision by élitist groups has provided the opportunity to perpetuate their participation in globalisation without being seen to have introduced an élitist policy. The emerging pattern reflects a culture of parentocracy (Brown, 1990) whereby parents in the more urban, wealthier areas require (and are prepared to pay for) early foreign language provision - thus creating a pattern of postcode élitism. Data Analysis To further illustrate the political nature of the endeavour, I will begin by drawing on data from the first pilot stage of my investigation. The responses of this first interviewee (a senior academic on the FL sub-committee) indicated that future interviews should be designed to explore economic and political factors as a priority. In this, the importance of developing a way of thinking about states in transition became evident, using Lukes’ (1974) 3 dimensions of power to interpret the exercise of state power in a number of different ways, with due regard to the quite different political, social and economic history which has formed Hungary today. Through this, my aim was to provide an account of policy making which contributed to understandings of specifically Central European factors in this process, during transition times. Below, I present the 7 interview items related to professional <?page no="187"?> Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? 183 factors, which formed a key section of my pilot interview. Interspersed, in italics, are the responses from my interviewee. Which of the following professional factors were most relevant to the policymaking process? 1. The current supply of qualified teachers. Not considered by the committee. 2. The cost of further training. Not considered. “…in those days people didn’t think in financial terms…” 3. The availability of institutions able to carry out further training. Not considered. 4. Previous traditions of foreign language teaching. Not relevant, except as a tradition to react against. 5. Expert submissions on the cognitive and linguistic abilities of children at different ages. Expert submissions generally not the most important factor. 6. Professional expertise amongst the decision-making group. Final decision-makers were politicians. 7. The relevance of Hungary’s interest in creating closer links with the West, to this policy decision. An early start age was not identified as making a difference in creating closer links. Here, my interviewee spoke at length of the political philosophy embodied in the writing of the national curriculum; describing an exercise that seemed to focus on something other than providing guidance for the teaching of foreign languages. In particular, it was noted that, at this point in Hungary’s history, with engagement in a process of democratisation newly available, the FL sub-committee sought to consult widely from schools and colleges throughout the country in the expectation of completing a document that would both guide and support future practice. Later in this paper my analysis will confirm a process which ensured ‘the rules of the game’ again prevented much of the evidence submitted from being considered relevant to the final document. To provide a fuller picture of the stages in the process, I will draw on subsequent interview data from both Ministers and senior academics central to the policy-making process at that time. My study considers 3 aspects: firstly - the recent history of FL policy-making in Hungary; secondly - stages of the policy-making process undertaken and a consideration of where and why compromises were made; thirdly - I will summarise the implications of such compromises and review contemporary evidence of this. <?page no="188"?> Janet Enever 184 Foreign language policy making in Hungary pre-1990 Two key themes have emerged from my interviews as recurring principles during the period 1948-89: firstly, the concept of centralised policy-making and implementation and secondly, the idea of unofficial ‘loopholes’ at implementation level which permitted both schools and individual teachers some greater degree of flexibility. a) Centralised policy-making: this was non-consultative, formulated by a committee of ‘experts’ advised by ‘scientists’, with no representation from currently practising teachers. The principal decision-making body was the Communist Party Headquarters, to which the Ministry of Education was directly responsible in its administration and implementation of policy. The underlying philosophy of the curriculum was guided by a rational view of knowledge, proposing facts to be learnt by students, as opposed to skills to be developed. This centralised policy formed part of the long-term planning mechanism employed generally under the Soviet-style socialist regime. Thus, a policy would define the needs of education for periods of at least 10 years with no expectation of review during that period. Whilst the practical implications of such a long-term perspective are difficult to pinpoint within the field of education, interviewees proposed that the centralised curriculum has failed to permit adaptation to the changing needs of society and individuals. b) Loopholes: despite the centralised structure some interviewees (not all) reported a degree of discrete flexibility at implementation level within schools, particularly in those with a good reputation (or good connections within the Party). For example, one person told of a report made to the Ministry in the late 1960’s, regarding their use of illicit books in the teaching of English. The teacher in question was to be summoned to the Ministry to explain themselves. The school principal promised to support this teacher’s use of books (supporting their professional belief that these materials offered better learning opportunities). The interviewee commented: Finally, I was not summoned. […] but there was that sort of threat. […] that was the sort of atmosphere. It was typically a sort of very hypocritical society, therefore I always had my students buy the compulsory books, and then when there was a teacher/ parent meeting I asked the parents whether they would be willing to buy a coursebook which I guaranteed would be better than this. […] that was never a problem as far as parents were concerned. Only I pretended to have it as supplementary material rather than main material - which, in fact it was. Interviewee’s references to “schools with a good reputation” and “teachers with good connections” suggests that not all teachers were free to use such flexibility. Thus some pupils presumably were subjected to the undiluted, heavy diet of vocabulary items and grammar structures to be learnt, suffused with the indoctrination of a political ideology hardly likely to stimulate enthusiasm for foreign language learning. <?page no="189"?> Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? 185 As the period of Soviet socialism drew to an end the emotional sense of a new beginning is reflected in the following quote from the new Minister of Education: “I wish the children of Hungary could sing and dance at school,” he announced at the first public meeting of professionals called to discuss plans for a new National Curriculum (Sekesfehervar, 1989). Within two years he had lost his post. “[…] nobody else wanted children to have a good time in school - this is not the country where you aim at giving people a good time [in school].” This view, expressed by one of my interviewees, indicates the serious nature of schooling in Hungary today. Nonetheless, people were very enthusiastic about the opportunity. Kovacs (2000: 78) recounts that “the newly appointed government were determined to carry through a radical political and economic transformation”. Making sense of this view (reflected by many interviewees), and relating this to a consideration of the position of FL’s in the modernisation process, is a more complex, layered process. My data indicates a number of conflicting perspectives, which are at times difficult to place in the emerging process. It seems possible that such different positions may be representative of Lukes’ view of power as being in conflict during this period. Below, I will apply Lukes critical positioning to my analysis of policy-making during the 1990’s, employing it as a tool for investigating its potential for clarifying understanding of the data collected. Policy-making during the 1990’s Key sources relating to this period demonstrate the extent to which a democratic process was sought, yet indicate ways in which covert power was used to limit effective democratic consultation. Further evidence gives some indication of remaining patterns of influence from Soviet Socialist times which continued to support a procedure where decisions were made centrally, by an élite group not fully accountable to the wider political and academic bodies. Much of the evidence presented indicates an overriding concern with the process of modernisation in policy formation, giving such priorities greater weight than the development of a curriculum document that met the expectations of parents and teachers, at least in the field of foreign languages. The process began in 1989 with a proposal for “a set of instructions, based on a national consensus, which serves as an instrument for those who draft and those who select the complete and/ or detailed curricula and the local programme adapted for the conditions […]” (Nagy & Szebenyi, 1990: 252). Initially, for foreign languages, a sub-committee was established, reporting directly to the main curriculum committee. This sub-committee contained no YL specialist teacher of foreign languages. Power appeared here to be operating in two ways. Firstly, the evidence is of inaction, of an apparent lack of awareness for the potential value even of such an appointment. Secondly, this inaction appeared to be vested within the institutional culture of the Ministry of Education, representatives of which were responsible for setting <?page no="190"?> Janet Enever 186 out guidelines for the selection of committee members. Through this early exercise of power an agenda was defined that would positively prevent any likelihood of serious proposals for compulsory early provision ever reaching the final stages of debate and inclusion in the statute (Lukes op. cit.). During the lifetime of the construction of this document there were to be three governments, with delays and re-focusing as each new one was ushered in. It is difficult therefore to provide a coherent account of the process, since none of my interviewees were continuously engaged throughout its construction. Below I will attempt to piece together the story, as far as I am able. In the first period the appointed FL sub-committee prepared proposals, submitted them to the main committee for consideration, followed by a main committee discussion of each section. The aim was to design a curriculum which would enable students to achieve a satisfactory intermediate standard of the foreign language by the age of 16. Views on an appropriate start age were shifting all the time within this committee stage. Opinions settled on the ages around 9, 10, and 11 years but little consideration was given to anything younger than this range. My interviews have, however, exposed the difficulties faced in defining policy through a process of consultation between groups of differing education specialism. Those with little or no expertise in the field of language education were, nonetheless, free to critique this section of the document, despite their lack of knowledge. In this first committee stage interviewees have provided graphic descriptions of the ordeal of responding to questions on policy wording, when the questioner has no knowledge of theoretical perspectives in FL teaching. A further Ministry interviewee summarised the difficulties faced by the committees, explaining: “[…] it’s always a question of how to decide, how to use the opinions, because it’s very subjective and not objective. It’s impossible to speak about pedagogy in a very objective way, […]”. These two perspectives indicate the difficult ‘marriage of ideas’ that all were engaged in at this point. In this description the evidence of institutional power affecting the decision-making process can again be observed. The ‘democratic’ process of presenting policy proposals to a series of committees effectively resulted in a weakening of the radical nature of the final policy. The non-existent expertise, in the field of YL foreign languages, unavailable at committee stages further prevented an informed critique of drafts and operated to exclude any potential for YL inclusion. Subsequent to this committee stage, a draft FL policy was compiled and sent out to over 4000 educationalists nationwide for further consultation. Guidelines requested commentary on the wording of each section. The responses were poor, only a small number of useful critiques were actually received. Little is known of the reasons behind this poor response, however, the move from a totally centralised system to an extreme model of a consultative system is likely to have resulted in confusion and lack of understanding <?page no="191"?> Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? 187 in the early stages, so it may well be that teachers were unready to be consulted. With a further new government came the key decision to re-draft much of the original document, with the specific aim of ‘neutralising’ the schooling process (the intention was to avoid any moral prescriptiveness in the new document). Within this framework, the National Curriculum clearly emerged as a key tool in the modernisation process. In the re-drafting, earlier reference to the consultative nature of the process also appears to have turned full circle, according to the report of one interviewee. Much of the NCC document had been worked through many times by then. The newly appointed Minister of Education was thus keen to ensure a final version worthy of his stamp of approval and took the unusual step of becoming personally responsible for this version. My interviewee reported on his courageous intervention, saying: […] courageous - because he brought in the old quarrelling parties, listened to their opinions, then with a few advisers, he, himself re-wrote the whole NCC - well at least the first part. He continued to lead the whole project for a time. Amongst these ‘quarrelling parties’ there existed no quarrels relating to an earlier start age; nor were YL specialists amongst his few advisers. Through the device of listening only to the former policy committees and to his current advisers the Minister imposed limitations on the scope of his own decision-making, with regard to the early start question. By such political means the issue was effectively prevented from ever being raised. A final document was approved in 1995 and implemented from 1998. The process of change continues however. With the advent of a new government in 1998, some of the radicalism of the NCC was again under review and school institutions now hold more of the decision-making power on the curriculum. Outcomes and implications The above evidence reports mainly on how compromise and political pressures rather than professional perspectives tended to drive the whole process forward. Much evidence underscores the view that the YL start age was peripheral to the frame in which policy was being constructed. Below, I outline two data items of particular relevance however. Only one sub-committee member was able to shed light on precisely who made the early start decision when. They reported that this decision was not taken by the FL sub-committee but by a part of the main committee at the first stage of planning. This team contained no experts on early start in FL’s (or indeed, any general FL experts). The key justification given by this committee, for not supporting an early start was the lack of qualified teachers in rural areas. This factor was referred to by almost all interviewees. However, no plans to remedy that situation have subsequently emerged - leaving open <?page no="192"?> Janet Enever 188 the question of whether this can truly be identified as an explanation for the compromise. One interviewee reported knowledge of submission of an “expert” view to the committee, which may have been a key factor in contributing to the final lack of support for early start. This expert opinion was provided by a university academic with no history of representing early start theoretical perspectives. The evidence presented focused on the difficulty inherent in proving the competency gain to be made through an early start. Indeed, such proof is notoriously difficult to acquire, yet the expert opinion of teachers daily engaged in the process, is that there is a gain to be made, provided the necessary conditions for implementing and continuing this process throughout the years of schooling are met. It is difficult to establish exactly how much influence each of the above concerns had, in the event. Yet a final salutary comment from one interviewee might place the whole question more fully in context: “Everyone you ask, who has read about this, would claim there is no evidence to support an early start. On the other hand, they would put their children in early start programmes.” This same interviewee reported on the extreme constraints forced by the requirement for the FL section of the document to be limited to 10 pages, summarising their understanding of the committee’s approach on the early start question as follows: So, let’s not say anything. Let’s leave things open - and it doesn’t lead to real changes; or, let’s say so little that everyone can interpret it in the way they like - or something like that. A policy to have no policy In exploring the consequences of what may from an early stage have been an intentional decision to have a policy of having no policy on early start provision, it seems that Offe’s (1996: 75) principle of omission in shaping policy is pertinent here in identifying how ‘a market opportunity’ appears to have been created as a consequence of the process of deregulation. In urban centres on the whole the FL start age has steadily fallen, to the point where a significant number of children begin a foreign language at the age of 7 years. Increasingly, as pupil numbers fell during the 1990’s due to the falling birth rate in Hungary, schools have found themselves in greater competition with one another. In an effort to keep their school afloat, many have offered both early start FL provision and computer studies as an additional customer attraction. Thus, schools have become markets for early start FL’s, parents and children have become customers. What has led parents to value an early start programme so highly? One interviewee has offered some tentative explanations, which I will discuss here. <?page no="193"?> Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? 189 i. Parents want the best for their children. They currently recognise their own difficulties in changing to meet new economic requirements and believe their children will have increased opportunities with fluency in a foreign language. ii. Today’s parents were educated during a period in which there was a strong belief that the school could do everything. In the old system children spent their whole time at school. This system taught that this was a good way to bring up a child. Thus, parents do not consider their own responsibilities in this process (of upbringing) very much. It appears then, that parents are at the forefront of the drive for ‘modernisation’ in provision at school level. Parents in local school settings are shaping local policy rather than central policies determining system wide policy. Parents, not policies, are defining the curriculum for the next generation. Parents are driven, quite understandably, by the desire to ensure their own children will have a secure economic future within the newly-allied European Hungarian state. Conclusions: English Language, Globalisation and Cultural Capital The question of why parents are so driven at this particular point in history to support their children’s advancement through the funding of early start English relates to the concept of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1997) to the argument. Parental awareness of an emerging job market in technical, managerial and professional fields can be identified as causing concern that their children should be fully equipped to become stakeholders in this process. Brown (1995: 44), in talking of western capitalism, suggests such careers were previously the domain of a small élite. Similarly, in Hungary during former times Party membership would have been a pre-requisite for entry. Extending this concept of ‘capital’ further, Brown (1995: 45) argues that within a “modern capitalist society the bourgeoisie constructs and maintains itself as a class through: the institutions of property and (of) academic or professional qualifications and credentials”. Further, he proposes that “each represents a set of legal arrangements for restricting access to rewards or privileges”. Relating this argument to the position of capital in post-Soviet Hungary provides an interesting re-working of this analysis, drawing on the arguments for “capitalism without capitalists” by Eyal, Szelyeni and Townsley (1998). Highlighted here is the different nature of the capitalist model emerging in Hungary. They identify the current task of dismantling the centralised ownership of property within Hungary as a very different process to that of the accumulation of capital which was the central aim of the bourgeoisie in the establishment of Western capitalist nations. The weakened position of the accumulation of capital in property as a credential for membership of the bourgeoisie is thus likely to increase the stress placed on the acquisition of academic and <?page no="194"?> Janet Enever 190 professional qualifications, particularly at this early stage of establishing a capitalist nation, before substantial opportunities for the accumulation of capital through property ownership have fully emerged. Indeed, as Hungary moves only gradually away from a position of mainly centralised property ownership, and if academic and professional qualifications become established as credentials for access to the new power base - the bourgeoisie - it is possible that the struggle for ‘positional advantage’ between the ‘old’ (power vested in property) and the ‘new’ (power vested in expert knowledge) middle classes may already have been circumvented by a more intensive competition for occupational success through the vehicle of academic and professional qualifications. Elsewhere, Brown (1990: 66) moves his arguments on cultural capital further by suggesting that an ‘ideology of parentocracy’ is developing, especially where markets operate. In these contexts ‘the wealth and wishes of parents, rather than the individual ability and efforts of pupils’ is the overriding factor in the competition for credentials. Within the urban centres of Hungary this can be identified through the practice of parents placing their children in schools offering early start programmes and extended opportunities for computer skills acquisition as a pre-requisite for entry to the technical/ managerial classes. This ‘policy to have no policy’ and the consequent trend of parental funding appears to be welcomed by politicians. Explanations for this response may position the trend within the new modernising paradigm of the market and civil society as part of the democratising pattern of Central Europe, predicated on a view that self-help in the community is the most effective way of coordinating the needs of the market. Within such a framework a range of start age provision across urban and rural Hungary can be portrayed as a positive outcome by committed ‘modernising’ politicians, reflecting a desire to fully participate in the global markets of tomorrow. References Bourdieu, P. (1997) The forms of capital. In A.H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown and A. Stuart Wells (eds) Education, Culture, Economy and Society (pp. 46-58). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P. (1990) The third wave: Education and the ideology of parentocracy. British Journal of Sociology of Education 11 (1), 65-85. Brown, P. (1995) Cultural capital and social exclusion: Some observations on recent trends in education, employment and the labour market. Work, Employment and Society 9 (1), 29-51. Burstall, C., Jamieson, M., Cohen, S. and Hargreaves, M. (1974) Primary French in the Balance. UK, Slough: Nelson/ NFER. Enever, J. (2001) The Politics of Non Decision-Making in Language Policy in Hungary. EdD thesis, University of Bristol. Eyal, G., Szelyeni, I. and Townsley, E. (1998) Making Capitalism Without Capitalists. London/ New York: Verso. <?page no="195"?> Europeanisation or Globalisation in Early Start EFL Trends Across Europe? 191 Kovacs, K. (2000) Transitions in Hungary. In D. Coulby, R. Cowan and C. Jones (eds) World Year Book of Education 2000: Education in Times of Transition (pp. 76-87). London: Kogan Page. Lukes, S. (1974) Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan. Ministry of Culture and Education (1996) National Core Curriculum. Hungary: Ministry of Culture and Education (Hungarian version Nemzeti Alaptanterv published in 1995). Nagy, J. and Szebenyi, P. (1990) Hungarian reform: Towards a curriculum for the 1990’s. The Curriculum Journal 33 (4), 247-254. Offe, C. (1996) Modernity and the State, East/ West. Cambridge: Polity Press. <?page no="197"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Comparative Study of Four European Countries Introduction The role and status of English has been expanding across Europe over the last 50 years, a process that, for better or worse, has been accelerated by globalization (Brutt-Griffler, 2002; Gnutzmann, 1999). Global media have contributed to this unprecedented spread, whether in audio-visual, digital, or print form. As consumers of mass media, young Europeans have numerous opportunities for contact with English outside of school (Hasebrink, Berns & Skinner, 1997). Does such contact with English have any relationship to their proficiency in English? This is one of the questions we pursued in a crosscountry comparative study with colleagues in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands (Berns, de Bot & Hasebrink, n.d.). Specifically, we investigated the presence of English in Europe and its role in the media environment of young people and the development of their communicative proficiency in English. This chapter presents data from this project. 1 A primary focus is the presentation of an attempt to develop a model in which four factors - language proficiency, socio-economic background, attitudes, and forms of contact with English - can be optimally related to explain differences found between and among the countries sampled. This is done in two main parts: The first is an overview of the study structure and descriptive findings; the second is a comparison of data from the four countries within the same statistical model and consideration of data from a separate Dutch study using the same instruments to chart changing trends in media use in recent years. Our conclusion addresses issues of diversity and difference across and within proficiency and socio-economic groups as well as cross border comparisons. Contextualization The study is contextualized within four individual, yet interrelated contemporary social and political developments: the increasing importance of intercultural communication, the increasing multilingualism and multiculturalism within and across EU member states, the role of the media in identity construction, and the role of English in media. <?page no="198"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 194 Intercultural Communication The communicative links between different countries and cultures are growing tighter and tighter. Various institutions, with the European Commission and many NGOs among them, encourage young people to take part in international exchange programs. Mobility as such is one of the aims of the European Union’s politics. As a consequence, the probability of meeting people from other countries and cultures, and therefore, of needing a common language for communication (in this case, English), is growing. With regard to these situations of interpersonal contacts, the lingua franca character of English in Europe is quite obvious: Germans use English to communicate with Spanish or French people during their vacations in Spain or France. Multilingualism and multiculturalism Several factors of social change are reflected in a trend towards increasing contacts with English, even in personal networks. European societies are facing a further increase of migration: ‘Multi-cultural society’ is the common notion for today’s situation which includes many opportunities for contact with different cultures and languages. Thus, we find multi-lingual families, multi-lingual neighborhoods, multi-lingual school classes, and so on. Media The media provide large quantities of content in English. This is particularly true for music media, that is, radio and pre-recorded or self-recorded (or downloaded) music. The vast majority of music listened to by young people in all countries involved in our study is English language music. Since music plays a crucial role in the definition of youth cultures and, as such, forms one important element in the process of young people’s identity construction, the English language is closely linked to the basic processes of defining cultural orientations and values. In so far as other media are concerned, the European picture is less homogenous; different countries and linguistic environments provide different opportunities for English contacts via the media. As a rule transnational English language media (e.g. CNN) are far behind national media in the respective native languages; plans for pan-European channels - once a hope for enthusiasts of European integration - have failed, the question of language came out as one key barrier to pan-European media. Even music channels like MTV Europe split up into different language versions in order to compete with national channels. This is a significant example for the strategy of ‘glocalization’, that is, global players adapting global content to local audiences. Thus, besides the specific case of music, popular mass media do not provide many opportunities for contact with English. <?page no="199"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 195 Cultural influences of English in the media If we take the computer and the Internet as new media, these communication options lead to a substantial change in the presence of English. Next to music media, computers were the second important media source of English in the findings of our study. As a consequence of numerous developments in the globalized new technology, online communication has become a powerful platform for a globalized use of English: ‘slang’ (jargon) that is mainly Anglo- American, international software tools with their English language help functions and handbooks, and, the main feature of the Internet, retrieval of information from anywhere in the world within seconds. These conditions are related to our exploration of the relationship between media in which English figures prominently and the various identities of European youth. The overall issue our study addressed is whether or not globalization and its linguistic dimension - that is, English - and globalization and its cultural dimension - that is, American culture - are creating a homogenous world culture in which local identities are no longer sustainable. One of our objectives was to get a more integrated and comprehensive picture of the role and status of English in Europe, as a whole, and, subsequently, to garner evidence either refuting or supporting sweeping claims made about its (primarily negative) influence across the continent. Theoretical considerations Three broad areas of research and scholarship informed the theoretical approach to the study: studies in world Englishes, media studies, and second language acquisition (SLA). A functional approach Studies in world Englishes provided a functional orientation to the role of English as a common language among Europeans, as well as for much of the rest of the world. Relevant dimensions of the spread of English in Europe were its uses as a regional language of wider communication, represented by interpersonal spheres (e.g., face to face, Internet chat rooms, email); instrumental purposes (e.g., higher education, career advancement); and innovative or creative uses (literary creativity, word play, neologisms). Equally pertinent is the presence of English in various media and the opportunities they offer for contact with English in films, TV programs, music and song lyrics, print materials (books, periodicals, newspapers), and computer media (websites, coding languages, email). <?page no="200"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 196 Media or user as agent Media studies contributed insights relating to culture transfer and creation. Of particular relevance is the role of media in cultural identity and change. Who is the agent of change: the media or the media consumer? Does media act upon you, or do you act upon media? Similarly, what is the connection between English and a European identity? Can English meet local requirements for communication for Dutch, French, and German speakers and, at the same time, serve as a means of representing one’s cultural identity? Germane to the language proficiency focus of the study are media language practices, for example, dubbing and subtitling (or both) of TV broadcasts and films. Interpersonal dimensions of language use Key areas in second language acquisition studies are interpersonal dimensions of language use which draw from the socially realistic linguistics of Firth (1957) and Halliday (1978) and also articulated in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (1962). A psycholinguistic orientation offers Swain’s (1985) notion of comprehensible input, while discussions of multilingual acquisition found in Cenoz and Jessner (2000) underscore the complexity of the European linguistic landscape. The acquisitional roles of English - as a foreign or as a second language - and the significance of these distinct roles in understanding learners’ pedagogical needs and the levels of English proficiency they achieve is laid out in studies of world Englishes by Kachru (1997) and others. In the presence of English The goal of our cross national, comparative study was an investigation of the impact of English on young peoples’ attitudes and language proficiency as users, or ‘consumers’ of English. A total of 2248 teenagers were asked about their experiences in learning and using English, attitudes toward speakers of English, and frequency of contact with English in different media and in different social contexts. The instruments used to gather data were a 50 item survey questionnaire, a vocabulary test, and self assessment measures of English proficiency - one an estimation of functional ability (e.g. writing a letter of complaint in English), and the other a rating of global skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). We also sought information about their communicative language proficiency via more and less objective measures. The participants were between the ages of 13-18 and attended schools (both bilingual and monolingual) in small town and urban Belgium, France, Germany and Netherlands. <?page no="201"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 197 Three working assumptions guided the study: different kinds of English proficiency are developed in the context of different media environments; young people selectively choose the media that then builds their media environment; and, media environment differences go along with differences in English proficiency. A general model for analysis There were four main clusters of variables: Family variables, Contact with English, Attitudes towards English, and English proficiency. The general model for analysis of variables presented in Figure 1 gives an overview of the four clusters. Figure 1: General model for analysis (mixed model) In this model, the four clusters each consist of a set of data. For instance, Contact with English is formed by four sets of data that are each in turn sets of data. The four data sets are: Contact through family and friends; contact Contact with English Education parents English parents English siblings Family Background Attitudes towards English Proficiency in English through personal network through media I through media II through use in vacations Likeability Importance Advantages Self-evaluations mean score Score vocabulary test Contact with English Education parents English parents English siblings Family Background Attitudes towards English Proficiency in English through personal network through media I through media II through use in vacations Likeability Importance Advantages Self-evaluations mean score Score vocabulary test <?page no="202"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 198 through music, film, TV (Media 1); contact through papers, magazines and talk on radio (Media 2); and contact through use in vacations. The clusters were based on a large number of items in the questionnaire that dealt with such topics as frequency of watching TV, choice of channels, types of programs watched, vacations spent in English and non-English speaking countries, among other related topics. On the basis of a factor analysis, the variables were ordered in the four sets identified above. The outcomes of the factor analyses were the basis for the clustering of variables. Although it may seem odd to have the variable “contact through talk on the radio” as part of a different cluster than “contact through TV”, the factor solution turned out to be more satisfactory this way since the radio variable in another cluster would have led to less variance explained. Findings In this section, we present findings from the larger study of relevance to our present focus on the media and proficiency relationship. We begin with results on items from the survey that addressed contact with English via media, then the self-assessment scores, and finally the outcomes of the analysis for variables. As indicated above, all the participants in the study were asked to report on the amount of time they spent listening to music in hours on a weekly basis. The results for countries/ language groups are shown in Table 1. Note that data for the Walloon are not given due to survey administration errors. Table 1: Reported duration of listening to music in hours per week, with the mean, standard deviation (s.d.) and the number of students who answered the question. Number of hours per week Mean s.d. N Netherlands 18.6 17.5 779 Netherlands (bilingual) 18.8 15.1 320 Wallonia 13.3 12.9 117 Germany 28.1 19.0 621 France 14.3 14.0 143 The differences between different countries are clear, ranging from 13.3 hours for Walloon to 28.1 hours for German participants. For the purposes of our study the number of hours of listening in itself was not very informative; therefore, we asked about the language of the music/ lyrics and the impor- <?page no="203"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 199 tance the students attach to lyrics in different languages. This information is presented in Table 2. Table 2: The language of the lyrics the students listen to and the importance they attach to the lyrics by research group in percentages and the number of students who answered the question. Subgroups Netherlands Netherlands (bilingual) Flanders Wallonia Germany France Total Language of music only or mainly national 1.0 0.9 0.5 5.9 2.4 5.0 only or mainly English 82.4 89.5 89.4 45.8 58.3 24.1 (about) equally 16.5 9.5 10.1 48.3 39.4 70.9 N 792 325 208 118 635 141 2219 Importance of lyrics in English (rather) unimportant 54.1 38.7 34.1 44.4 50.4 60.7 (rather) important 45.9 61.3 65.9 55.6 49.6 39.3 N 796 326 208 117 635 145 2227 Importance of lyrics in national language (rather) unimportant 52.5 46.2 32.2 21.2 38.3 17.4 (rather) important 47.5 53.8 67.8 78.8 61.7 82.6 N 783 325 199 118 621 144 2190 Importance of lyrics in other languages (rather) unimportant 88.2 86.3 72.4 80.7 77.8 (rather) important 11.8 13.7 27.6 19.3 22.2 N 569 271 116 451 144 1551 Observations of particular interest seen in Table 2 include how the contribution of English in the lyrics appears to differ between groups. While English is clearly dominant in the Dutch speaking groups, figures for the response “only or mainly English” are much lower in the other groups, even as low as 24.1% for the French group. These findings do not necessarily reflect what the students would prefer to listen to. It may be that the language of music <?page no="204"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 200 on offer in the media defines what the students can choose from. In France, in particular, the amount of English language music may be restricted; conversely, the amount of French language music on Dutch radio is definitely very limited. With respect to the importance of lyrics for different languages, the data show that about half of the Dutch speaking students indicate that the lyrics are important. For importance of lyrics in English, the Flemish students showed the highest scores, followed by the Dutch-bilingual group. Again, scores are lowest for the French group. In this respect there is an interesting contrast with the figures for importance of lyrics in the national language: Here the French students seem to be firmly based in the French chanson tradition in which the lyrics are the most important aspect of songs. Lyrics in other languages appear to be seen as unimportant by all groups, but, again, this may also reflect access to them. As mentioned above, we expected TV programs to be one of the main sources of English language input, in particular for students in those countries where TV programs are subtitled rather than dubbed. This is borne out by the data, displayed in Table 3, on contact with English via watching TV programs, which show that, in the Netherlands and Belgium, access to English language programs is more extensive than in Germany and France. Apparently language background and attitudes that might be associated with English are less important than access; otherwise, the Walloon students would show a pattern similar to the French students. Table 3: Contact with English through watching English TV programs and listening to radio programs by research group in percentages and the number of pupils from whom data are available. Subgroups Netherlands (N=798) Netherlands (bilingual) (N=328) Flanders (N=207) Wallonia (N=118) Germany (N=642) France (N=145) Total (=2238) Watching English TV programs 90.5 97.9 80.7 77.1 43.7 23.6 Listening to English radio programs 15.4 18.0 16.4 7.6 6.9 6.9 Table 3 also gives information about listening to English radio programs. Further analyses on the question of which channels they listen to shows that it is mainly music channels, although a small percentage of the pupils indicate they listen to the BBC every now and then. <?page no="205"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 201 The third type of contact is that made during holidays (see Table 4). There was a fairly extensive set of questions in the survey on countries visited, in general, and time spent in countries where English is spoken, in particular. Here we present only the data on the percentage of students who come into contact with English during their holidays. The figures are high for the Dutch bilingual students, but this is not surprising since it is likely that their parents try to support their English language acquisition, and that the students themselves are more keen on using English simply because they are good at it. Table 4: Contact with English during holidays by research group in percentages and the number of pupils from whom data are available. Subgroups Netherlands (N=794) Netherlands (bilingual) (N=326) Flanders (N=207) Wallonia (N=118) Germany (N=644) France (N=146) Total (=2235) Use of English during holidays 67.1 89.3 70.5 64.4 66.8 44.2 For the cluster “Attitudes towards English” there were two types of items: questions on attractiveness (or ‘liking for’) and importance of English, and a list of advantages of knowing English. The latter were rated on a 4-point scale to indicate the perceived value of the specific advantages given. Here we report only the results of the questions of attractiveness (‘like’) and importance of English. 2 Table 5: Attractiveness and importance of English as reported by the students (max.score = 4) Like Importance Subgroups Mean Mean Netherlands 3.2 3.4 Netherlands (bilingual) 3.5 3.7 Flanders 3.4 3.8 Wallonia 3.5 3.6 Germany 3.1 3.7 France 2.8 3.2 <?page no="206"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 202 These data clearly show that all groups have a positive attitude towards English, although there is somewhat more variation between groups for attractiveness than for importance. Again, the Walloon students are more like the other Belgian and Netherlands Dutch groups than the French group. On the whole, the students seem to be quite confident with respect to their level of skills in English, as shown in Table 6 and Table 7. The scores for the French students were slightly lower than for the other groups. The scores on the vocabulary test (not administered to the French group) show greater differences among groups than do the self-assessments. The Dutch speaking groups have much higher scores than the other two groups. Also, the Netherlands bilingual group outscores the other group by more than 25 points, indicating that bilingual instruction is indeed more effective than traditional teaching in the case of these learners. Table 6: Self assessment for speaking, listening, writing and reading by research group (range 1-4). Speaking Listening Writing Reading Netherlands 3.1 3.3 2.9 3.2 Netherlands (bilingual) 3.3 3.7 3.3 3.6 Flanders 2.9 3.2 2.8 3.1 Wallonia 3.3 3.1 3.5 3.7 Germany 2.9 3.2 2.9 3.2 France 2.3 2.4 2.4 2.6 Table 7: Vocabulary Test Scores (range 0-100) Subgroups Means Netherlands 62.2 Netherlands (bilingual) 85.6 Flanders 76.6 Wallonia 56.7 Germany 52.9 France - Testing the general model In the general model presented earlier in Figure 1, there are four clusters with a total of 12 sets of variables. Ideally, the model should be reduced to a smaller number of (latent) variables, namely, Contact, Family variables, Atti- <?page no="207"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 203 tudes towards English, and English Proficiency. This would result in two possible models, as shown in Figure 2: one model taking Attitudes as the dependent variable (Model I), and one taking proficiency as the dependent variable (Model II). (A third model with Contact as the dependent variable is possible, but very unlikely, since the chance of Contact varying as a function of Proficiency and Attitudes is low). Figure 2 displays the two models. Model 1 Model 2 Figure 2: Models with latent variables Unfortunately, such a reduction of the large set of variables to a smaller set of four turned out to be impossible for statistical reasons: The correlations between variables for a particular latent variable appeared to be fairly low, and some of the variables from one latent variable seemed to correlate significantly with variables from other latent variables. Therefore, the full model was tested. In addition, the model taking Proficiency as the dependent variable appeared to show the ‘best fit’, that is, best explains the relation between variables in terms of variance. Table 8 presents all relations between the total set of variables and the effects over all the groups. The model shows two types of effects: direct and indirect. An example of a direct effect would be the correlation between contact through family and friends and the scores on the vocabulary test. An example of an indirect effect would be the impact of Contact on Proficiency via Attitudes. In the table ‘Total’ refers to the sum of direct plus indirect effect between variables. As the number of cases is fairly large, correlations are significant. If we focus on Proficiency as the dependent variable, correlations between independent variables and proficiency measures are generally higher for selfassessments than for vocabulary scores. This is particularly true for the correlations between Attitudes and Proficiency. The very high correlation between Contact with English Attitudes towards English Proficiency in English Family Variables Contact with English Proficiency in English Attitudes towards English Family Variables Contact with English Attitudes towards English Proficiency in English Family Variables Contact with English Attitudes towards English Proficiency in English Family Variables Contact with English Proficiency in English Attitudes towards English Family Variables Contact with English Proficiency in English Attitudes towards English Family Variables <?page no="208"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 204 estimation of value/ attractiveness of English and self-assessments suggests that the two partly overlap conceptually: Apparently attractiveness is part of what is measured with the self-assessment instrument. Table 8: Relations between variables Family Variables Contact Proficiency R 2 Edu Par Eng Par Eng Sib Fa/ Fr Media 1 Media 2 Vac SA Voc Direct effects CONTACT Family/ friends -- .20*** .22*** Media 1 -- .09*** .13*** Media 2 -- .12*** .11*** Vacations .08** .23*** .07** PROFICIENCY Self-assessment .06* .07** .05* .17*** .16*** .09*** .11*** Vocabulary test .09*** -- -- .05* .10*** -- .08*** ATTITUDES Estimation -- -- -- .09*** .09*** -- -- .47*** .07** Importance -- -- -- .10*** .11*** -- -- .28*** -- Advantages -- -- -- .09*** .17*** .07** -- .23*** -- Total effects CONTACT Family/ friends -- .20*** .22*** .14 Media 1 -- .09*** .13*** .30 Media 2 -- .12*** .11*** .13 Vacations .08** .23*** .07** .13 PROFICIENCY Self-assessment .07** .16*** .12*** .17*** .16*** .09*** .11*** .40 Vocabulary test .10*** .04*** .03*** .05* .10*** -- .08*** .38 ATTITUDES Estimation .04*** .10*** .09*** .18*** .17*** .04*** .06*** .47*** .07** .30 Importance .02** .07*** .07*** .14*** .15*** .02*** .03*** .28*** -- .18 Advantages .02** .08*** .08*** .13*** .20*** .09*** .03*** .23*** -- .18 The model can be described by looking at the various effects as follows: <?page no="209"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 205 Family background Contact: It appears that the impact of the proficiency level of parents and siblings is far more important than the parents’ level of education. This latter variable has a major impact on use of English during holidays. Siblings’ level of English seems to have somewhat more influence on contact with English through music and films than on parents’ English proficiency. In all cases, there is a positive relation between more frequent use of English and higher level of proficiency of parents. Family background Proficiency: Proficiency of both parents and siblings appears to affect self-assessments on the functional proficiency scales. In contrast, on the vocabulary test, although the level of parents’ education plays a role as well, both effects are relatively small. Family background Attitudes: None of the three family background variables appear to influence attitudes, but there is a weak indirect relation through contact and proficiency variables. Contact Proficiency: Contact through personal networks, Media 1 (music, film, TV) and holidays has a direct effect on both selfevaluations and vocabulary scores. Media 2 (newspapers, magazines and talk on radio) has an effect on self-assessments only. Also, for the other three indicators, the effect is much stronger for self-assessments than for the vocabulary scores. Contacts through personal networks and through music and TV appear to be most influential. Contact Attitudes: The use of English during holidays appears to have no effect on attitudes. There is a clear effect of contact through personal networks and in particular through music/ TV on the attractiveness and the importance of knowing English. Contact through Media 2 affects only the extent to which the advantages of knowing English are mentioned. Proficiency Attitudes: Overall, the effect of self-assessments on attitudes is much stronger than the effect of vocabulary knowledge. Language proficiency as measured by the vocabulary test has an effect only on attractiveness of English, but here the effect of selfassessments is also stronger. All variables appear to contribute somewhat to the explanation of the variance in the proficiency scores. In total the amount of variance explained is .40 for self-assessment and .38 for the vocabulary test. This shows one single factor does not explain differences in proficiency. Rather, it is a combination of factors. The final question we posed was the extent to which the same structure of the relations between variables applies for all groups (see Table 9). To test differences between groups, the explanatory variable “Group” was included in the model with five variables for the different countries and the Dutch <?page no="210"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 206 normal group (Nn) as a reference category. It should be noted that this was a highly arbitrary choice. For example, it can be argued that the ‘optimal’ group, that is, the Dutch bilingual (Nb), would be better as a reference for the comparison between groups. Table 9: Differences between language groups Family Variables Contact Proficiency Edu Par Eng Par Eng Sib Fa/ Fr Media 1 Media 2 Vac SA Voc Contact Family/ friends -- .07*** .07*** Media 1 -- .04*** .04*** Media 2 -- .04*** .03*** Vacations .12* .22*** .06** Proficiency Self-assessment .04** .02** .02* -.01(2,4) .14*** .13*** .09*** .03*** Vocabulary test .02*** -- (6) -- -- .02* -.02 (3) -- (6) .03*** -- .01*** -- (6) Attitudes Estimation -- -- -- .13*** .13*** -- -- .66*** .21 (4) .44*** -.69 (2) -- (6) Importance -- -- -- .09*** .56***(6) .12*** -- -- .33*** -.03 (3) .62***(5) Advantages -- -- -- .07*** .13*** .05** -- .13*** .30*** (1) .56*** (2) -- 1=Nn, 2=Nb, 3=Bd, 4=Bf, 5=G, 6=F For the different groups the following adaptations to the model were needed: Nn group: One adaptation. The effect of the self-assessment scores on advantages of English appeared to be stronger for this group than for the Belgian, French, and German groups. Nb group: Three adaptations. For this group no effect was found for the English proficiency level of siblings on the self-assessment scores and for the vocabulary scores on the attractiveness of English. In both cases the effect was positive for the other groups, while for the Nb group these relations seemed to be rather negative (in particular the relation between vocabulary scores and attractiveness, which is probably not significant within group Nb because of a rather high standard error). Yet, the effect of the self-assessment scores on the advantages of English appeared to be much stronger for this group than for all other groups. Bd group (Belgium - Dutch): Two adaptations. No effect was found for contact through family/ friends on the vocabulary scores and for the self-assessment scores on the importance of English. <?page no="211"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 207 Bf group (Belgium - French): Two adaptations. As for the Nb group, no effect was found for siblings’ proficiency in English on the selfassessment score. For the self-assessment scores, no effect was found on the attractiveness of English. G group (German): One adaptation. For this group, an effect which was not present in the total sample was included, namely, the effect of the vocabulary scores on importance of English. F group (French): One adaptation. For this group the effect of contact with English through family and friends on the importance of English appeared to be much stronger than for the other groups. Overall, the same model seems to work quite well for the different groups. However, there does not seem to be a real coherent picture of why the language groups differed with respect to proficiency in English. Across group differences At one point in the analyses differences between subgroups of young people were established (Figure 3). Each subgroup represents a unique ‘media environment’, a term we take from media studies to emphasize that young people have access to and make use of a variety of media in audio, video, print, and electronic form. One step in the data analysis was to look for groups of respondents with very similar within group characteristics, yet which were clearly different across groups. Due to smaller sample sizes for Belgium and France, this step was done for the (monolingual) Dutch school and German sample only. The result was four clusters of respondents, each differentiated by contacts with English; self assessment of competence in English by skill area and by ability to accomplish various communicative tasks in English; vocabulary test scores; social background; and attractiveness and estimation of the value of English. Figure 3 is a summary of findings from the cluster analysis and two national samples - German and Dutch - and four groups for each and the characteristics of these subgroups. Dutch N = 737 1. Frequent contacts with English in the family and also through music Highest proportion of girls (60%) Like English High assessment of competence in speaking and listening Can cope with complex writing tasks (poem writing, song translating) N = 172 2. English contact depends on music Largest group N = 251 <?page no="212"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 208 3. Higher frequency of contact with English in print media and computers Many contacts via listening to music Highest proportion of boys (53%) ¾ had been on vacations where they had to speak English Can take part in and understand demanding conversations N = 165 4. Low frequencies of contact with English Proficiency by both measures low Likes English less than other groups Only ½ had been on vacations where they had to speak English N = 149 German N = 593 1. High frequency of contacts with English within the family Highest proficiency results More girls (57%) Comparatively well educated parents ¾ had opportunities to use English on vacation N = 127 2. Similar to Dutch 3, but unlike D3, includes print and AV media Perform best with complex conversation Do not live in best educated families N = 141 3. Many contacts with English language music Other media not used very often Low ability to cope with everyday conversation, complex conversation and complex writing Largest group N = 217 4. Very few contacts with English Lowest scores on self assessment and EFL Vocabulary Test More boys (61%) Parents/ formal education significantly lower than other groups N = 108 (Source: Berns, de Bot & Hasebrink (n.d.) In the Presence of English: The Media and European Youth. p. 166) Figure 3: Characteristics of subgroups with different English and media environments From this summary, the following observations can be made: Identities cross national boundaries and represent media specialization and combination. Media use and English proficiency and contact are not the same for all European youth; social background, media environment, and English proficiency are closely interrelated, with socioeconomic status and accessibility of certain media relating to proficiency. Use of computers is necessarily linked to contacts with English. The personal computer is the only medium that correlates amount of use and English <?page no="213"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 209 contacts in all research groups. Watching more television, however, does not lead to more contacts with English via this medium. Contacts with English in other media are not a question of the medium itself (as with the PC) but the result of selective use of the medium. That is, highly selective use of print and computer media leads to intentional contacts with English while the everyday companionship of music leads to more incidental contacts with English. English via music (CDs, music on radio) is common among the sample groups, and when listening to music, preference for songs with English lyrics is common among the “contact via music” group. Groups specializing in only music had higher levels of proficiency (per self assessment) than expected (given other factors and variables). Based on these observations, we drew a number of conclusions. Different kinds of English proficiency are developed in the context of different media environments. At the same time, different patterns of media use are connected to different types of contact with the various kinds of English and with English proficiency. Young people selectively choose the media that they then use to create their media environment, and media specialization and combination are ways of building this environment. Differences in the media environment go along with differences in English proficiency; just as they do in the construction of their distinct media environments, young people develop specific patterns of communicative proficiency in English. Individuals are not isolated cases of media use and English proficiency, but share characteristics across national boundaries and at the same time are differentiated from other compatriot groups in the media environments they construct. The young people in our study seem to be able to manage the media offerings to suit their needs and interests in order to create an identity characterized by a particular repertoire of contexts of contact with English, and to develop a particular communicative proficiency, with neither the identity nor proficiency necessarily like the one they are expected to develop in the school setting. Out of class contact with English and the kinds of virtual, print, audio, and visual texts accessed outside of school seem to have little relationship either to classroom uses and its variety of English or to the school’s understanding of the media and linguistic worlds of these young people. This evidence suggests that the effects of contact with English language media are differentiated and nuanced; thus, it does not support claims of the media’s homogenizing effects. Conclusion The main hypothesis of our study was that the English language seems to be ‘omnipresent’ in the lives of young Europeans. Obviously, young people in Europe have contact with the English language in school. Throughout Europe, English lessons are a common phenomenon and it is a given that <?page no="214"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 210 English should be part of any level of general education. In fact, it seems to be a general trend in Europe to start lessons earlier, to offer more of them, and to follow an approach to language teaching that regards English as an international language (for cross cultural communication in general), rather than a foreign language (for interaction with native speakers of English exclusively). Nevertheless, young people do not encounter English solely during language classes at school, but have plenty of opportunities for contact with English beyond the classroom, too. The results of our study clearly emphasize this basic notion. Outside of school hours, at least three important factors contribute to the presence of English in their lives: the media, personal networks, and the intercultural communication they engage in on holidays or foreign exchange programs. The new quality of the presence of English All the factors influencing contacts with English indicate a strong trend towards an increase in the presence of English. This trend cannot be understood in quantitative terms only; there is also a qualitative change in the nature of the presence. Different opportunities for contact with English are linked with different socio-linguistic functions. With each additional opportunity to use English its functionality increases, the language develops from a rather uni-dimensional tool, for example, for taking part in international pop music or solving traditional tasks in English lessons at school, to a multidimensional means of expression and communication that is linked to the professional sphere as well as to the private sphere, to globalized mass media entertainment as well as to private communication. One consequence of this multi-optional presence of English is that different groups will create their personal language environments according to their individual needs and capacities. And different language and media environments shape different kinds of English proficiency. These differences underscore that proficiency may not best be conceptualized as a onedimensional construct. Instead, young people develop very specific and differentiated patterns of English proficiency. Intercultural differences in the presence of English Patterns of availability of English substantially differ between countries. Although the selection of countries involved in the present study was limited to four, one important difference became quite clear: that between bigger and smaller language markets. The Dutch speaking regions provide many more opportunities for contact with English than the French or German speaking regions and, as other studies have shown, more than for Italy or Spain, as well. English proficiency of the Dutch population is far higher and, thus, parents are more likely to be able to speak English; English lessons start ear- <?page no="215"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 211 lier, and more English classes are offered; there is no dubbing of English or American content in cinema or television. Consequently, Dutch children simply have far more opportunities to listen to English. As a consequence, indicators of English proficiency are generally higher in Dutch speaking regions than they are in Germany or France. This does not necessarily mean that knowing English is regarded as less important in the latter countries; at least in Germany, young people believe that speaking and understanding English will be a very important tool in particular for their professional lives. This observed dissociation between low performance and high (instrumental) interest might be interpreted as follows: Whereas in Germany English is regarded rather as a necessary professional qualification which has to be learned like other formal qualifications, young people in the Netherlands regard English rather as one means to express themselves and their cultural orientation. It has to be emphasized that there is no ‘either-or’ relation between these two functions; instead, with regard to the relative weight of these two aspects, the young people in the countries we have investigated in this study show clear differences that can be explained by the different economic, political and cultural conditions in their respective countries. The presence of English and its consequences for language teaching The omnipresence of English in the lives of young people, the diversity of functions this language has for them has substantial consequences for language teaching. As has been shown very clearly in this study, school is but one source of contact with English - and, at least for some groups, not the most important one. Also important to recognize is that non-school sources of contact do not necessarily represent the model of English presented to learners as the classroom model, one traditionally based on a British standard, although, more recently, American English has been acknowledged as a possible model too. The out of class uses young people make of English (whether by speaking or reading it and writing in or listening to it) may be related to their interests as well as whatever functions English plays in their personal lives (as an identity marker, for example). If these uses do not overlap with the school’s expectations for the particular vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, levels of formality, genres, or functional allocation of the language to be acquired, students with a different, more localized English, one that does not mesh with instructional goals, may be considered ‘poor’ learners of English simply because their performance does not measure up to the school’s uniform standard for competence in English. The sociolinguistic reality of English in the European context also plays a role in teacher pre-service and in-service education. As consumers of media and in contact with English in their own lives, English language teachers bring their experiences to the classroom. Their preferences for particular <?page no="216"?> Margie Berns and Kees de Bot 212 media or exponents of that media can influence the variety of English they speak or the variety that has higher prestige for them. Clear distinctions between English as a Foreign Language and as a Second Language have become blurred with the globalization of English. While teachers may believe that it is being taught as a foreign language, its function, as we have seen, has been and continues to be changing. Between and among Europeans, English functions as the lingua franca for many, while in their linguistic repertoire, English may be a second (or third or fourth) language for others. The presence of English and its consequences for the public sphere Within Europe, plenty of communication networks have evolved with segmented subparts of public spheres that focus on particular topics or issues, for example, scientific communities, politicians, and NGOs. It is safe to say that within these networks English clearly functions as a lingua franca, that is, most of these groups use English. Per definition, the mass media do not play a substantial role for these spheres because the respective topics are far too sophisticated. It is the Internet and the English language which provide the most appropriate form of communication for such public spheres. Within these spheres and among the users, it is likely that quite different kinds of English will evolve to serve the primary function of the respective group. On the level of individual behavior, of personal contacts with people from other European countries English likewise functions as a European means of communication. For the citizens of Europe, most parts of the population will have to acquire at least a certain level of English in order to organize their personal lives. The particular level of proficiency and the particular communicative competence in English they develop will depend on concrete needs, and, in so far as needs are different and individualized to some degree, the specific kinds of English to be observed will differ substantially. These last two points on the public sphere and the respective role of English can be interpreted as strong arguments against the well-known concern that English as a Lingua Franca could serve as a factor of Anglo-American hegemony and cultural homogenization. Rather than having such a leveling effect, English would serve, instead, as the minimal communicative condition which would allow people from different countries and cultures to develop their specific way to communicate. The result of this process might even be that British or American partners in these interactions would have the biggest problems in understanding - since the actual English being used would not be the English they know. <?page no="217"?> English Language Proficiency at the Secondary Level 213 Notes 1 The authors are indebted to Riet Evers for her contributions to the project, in particular for all her work on the analyses. 2 As indicated in various other contributions to this volume, the status of “the English language” is far from clear. In the questionnaire, the word “English” was used as a general term, without any differentiation as to variety, that is, American English, British English, of even European English. Therefore, it is not at all clear what attitudes towards English actually mean here. We do not know which variety it refers to in the students mind, as far as they differentiate among them at all, if it refers to the use the pupils themselves make of the language, or a more abstract notion related to general educational goals. References Berns, M., de Bot, K. and Hasebrink, U. (eds) (n.d.) In the Presence of English: The Media and European Youth. Manuscript in preparation. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English: A Study of its Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. and Jessner, U. (eds) (2000) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Firth, J.R. (1957) Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gnutzmann, C. (ed.) (1999) Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language. Native and Non-Native Perspectives. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Hasebrink, U., Berns, M. and Skinner, E. (1997) The English language within the media worlds of European youth. In P. Winterhoff-Spurk and T.H.A. van der Voordt (eds) New Horizons in Media Psychology (pp. 156-174). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Kachru, B.B. (1997) World Englishes 2000: Resources for research and teaching. In L.E. Smith and M.L. Forman (eds) Literary Studies East and West: World Englishes 2000 (pp. 209-251). Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press. Swain, M. (1985) Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S.M. Gass and C.G. Madden (eds) Input in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 235-253). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Vygotsky, L.S. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. <?page no="219"?> Elizabeth J. Erling Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? A Profile of Students of English at the Freie Universität Berlin Introduction The evolution of the term Global English can be attributed to the amount of academic attention that has been paid to the process of globalisation since the late 1990s. Wagner (2001) claims that the adjective global is a ‘meta-category’ which has been used to explain almost everything in contemporary life and Wilk (1998) notes that “everything today is becoming ‘Global’”. The field of applied linguistics is no exception, as can be seen in the number of publications with the label in the title, e.g. “Prospects for Global English” (Simpson, 1998), “Global English as a Challenge for Lexicography” (Fischer, 2002) and “Linguistic Identity and the Limits of Global English” (Joseph, 2004). However, the label Global English remains inadequately defined and it is often used in different, sometimes paradoxical ways. Firstly, Global English can refer to a dialect of English that is universally comprehensible, something similar to what McArthur (1987) calls World Standard English. Secondly, this label is used to describe the use of English as a Lingua Franca in certain restricted contexts, for example in the business world (cf. Simpson, 1998). Finally, it can indicate the use of English anywhere, in whatever form, by both native and non-native speakers (see Gnutzmann, 1999). The above examples clearly show that there is no consensus as to what the label Global English refers to. Therefore, this study has been designed to gain insight into Global English by examining the role of English in the lives of students of English at the Freie Universität (FU) in Berlin. This study will provide an example of a community who uses English as a global lingua franca in order to demonstrate who is the Global English speaker and to what means they put the language. 1 The FU, the language centre and this research project The FU, with its 45,000 students, is one of three major universities in Berlin. I have been teaching English in the university’s language centre since 1998 to students of North American Studies (NAS) and English Philology (EP) and this includes students intending to become teachers of English. The entry level for students is around Cambridge Proficiency level, which means that these students are generally on the whole competent language users before they start university courses. <?page no="220"?> Elizabeth J. Erling 216 This setting has been the focus of a research project which includes the results of a statistical analysis of questionnaires which were distributed to 101 students of English at the language centre in July 2001. The total number of students enrolled in degrees that require English as a module are 2,410, which means that 4% of the total population was surveyed; however, only around 200 student are enrolled in language centre courses each semester, which means that half of this population was surveyed. This questionnaire was intended to find out about students’ experiences with learning English, their exposure to the language, their preferences for varieties of English and their opinions about the role of English in Germany and Europe. An important source for the questionnaire design was a study administered by Preisler, who undertook a government assessment of the role of English in Denmark (cf. Preisler, 1999; 2003). After undertaking this quantitative analysis, I conducted five interviews with students: Alina, Beatrice, Diane, Oskar and Steffen. These names are pseudonyms and the real names of the interviewees have been protected. All interviews were conducted in English. The interview questions were designed to test hypothesised categories and to give more insight into the quantitative results I had already established. They also helped to compensate for the limitations inherent in forced choice questions in the questionnaire. I encouraged the respondents to elaborate upon their opinions and interests. Rather than sticking to a rigid format, the interviews were loosely organised, using what Schiffrin (1994) calls a ‘stepwise format’, in which the next discussion topic was based on the respondent’s previous answer. In this way, the interview resembled a conversation. I attempted to minimise my influence on the students’ opinions as much as possible, but I am aware that my interests might have had an impact on how the interviews unfolded. Realizing this, I made no attempts to be invisible. Like Schiffrin, who makes no excuses for the naturalness of her data, I have not elicited anything but narratives offered to the researcher. The benefit of conducting research in this way is that I have received highly personal accounts of students’ experiences with and feelings towards English. In addition to interviews, this study includes data collected from student essays and assignments since July 2001. In cases where students’ written work has been interesting for my research, I have asked them for permission to use it as an example in my research. All excerpts that are cited here are done so with the informed consent of the student authors. The texts are also cited verbatim, in their uncorrected original form. These excerpts are marked in this text with bullet points ( ). Questionnaire results: The population of students at the language centre The following will give insight into the population of students who make up the data source of this research. The average age of the students at the language centre is 24, but students range in age from 20-40. The majority of stu- <?page no="221"?> Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? 217 dents (85%) are between 21 and 26 years of age. Of the 101 students who filled out the questionnaire, 68% of them are female. In this study, 84% of the respondents were of German nationality and 16% of the students surveyed in the language centre are non-German. These students come from a wide range of countries, including Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Korea, Poland, Mongolia and the US. According to my results, 49 students at the language centre have NAS as one of their subjects (either major or minor), while 35 have EP. Seventeen of these students have other majors, including business and political science. A small number (3%) of students have both NAS and EP as a subject of study: these are usually students who are concentrating in the area of English linguistics. Table 1: Students’ fields of study 49% 13% 3% 35% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% NAS EP Both Other Field of study Percentage of students n=101 Experience with English Almost without exception, every student at the language centre attended Gymnasium - a type of school that prepares pupils for higher education - and has received the Abitur or its equivalent - a school qualification that is awarded after thirteen years (comparable to an A-level or high school diploma). Students at the language centre started to learn English relatively early: 13% started English by the third grade, 53% of those polled started English by the 5 th grade and 99% of them started by the seventh grade. This means that the majority of students (53%) had between 8-10 years of English before entering university. It is not only at public schools where these students were educated in English. According to the results of the survey, 16% of students have studied English at a private language institute and 20% of them hold a certificate for English proficiency (mostly TOEFL or Cambridge). <?page no="222"?> Elizabeth J. Erling 218 Table 2: Previous English Education 0 20 40 60 80 100 3rd grade 5th grade 7th grade Started by Percent of students n=101 Students’ use of English: “English is the language of my generation” Students of English at the FU are proficient in the language by the time they get to university, and for most of them, English plays an important role in their lives, both inside and outside the classroom. An illuminating example of the role of English in the typical student’s life can be seen in this excerpt from a student’s essay: I think English is playing a rather important role in my life. If you turn on the radio, most of the songs are in English. If you turn on the computer or surf on the internet, you need to understand English. At university there are a lot of exchange students from foreign countries and you communicate with them in English. I’m surrounded by English all the time. We have to admit that we adopted quite a lot of English expressions in German and therefore, without really recognising it, English plays a major role in our society. Almost everybody has learned English at school (of the younger generation) and it really became a kind of second language in Germany. The results of the questionnaire give further insight into how often and in what contexts students use English. Table 3 shows how often students use English in their daily life in Berlin. However, I also found that students go abroad regularly and use English in that context: 92% of students travel outside Germany at least once a year and 51% leave the country more than once a year. While these students are abroad, 45% claim to use English. Moreover, 97% of students have travelled to an English speaking country. Student reactions show that they often need English when travelling abroad: Spring holidays abroad, in England, Denmark and Spain require good language skills to survive and to stay in touch with new friends. English has an important role to me. Especially when I go on holidays. Even when I am not in England but in Greece, Spain and Italy. I communicate with the people I meet in English. That’s the only way to talk when they don’t speak German and I don’t speak their language. I don’t know how to survive in foreign countries without speaking English. <?page no="223"?> Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? 219 Table 3: The frequency of students’ contact with English How often do you … once a day once a week have a university lecture in English? 3% 83% read in English for pleasure? 18% 70% read newspapers or magazines in English? 5% 34% read English reference books 18% 80% watch original TV shows or movies in English? 7% 45% use the Internet in English? 27% 77% speak English at university? 12% 91% speak English in your personal life? 13% 50% write academically or professionally in English? 26% 70% write letters, emails, or other informal texts in English? 12% 51% Average 14% 65% While students clearly use English when travelling abroad, it is also interesting to note that 59% of students have stayed in an English-speaking country for over a month. Moreover, several students have stayed for an extended time in more than one English-speaking country: 37 have spent more than a month abroad in two different English-speaking countries and four students have spent more than a month abroad in three different English-speaking countries. Table 4: English-speaking countries where students have spent more than a month English-speaking countries where students have spent more than a month (60 students, 96 trips abroad) 54 20 8 6 4 4 US UK Canada Australia & New Zealand Ireland A country where English is official (e.g. Ghana, India) Some of the things that students have reported that they have undertaken during their time abroad in English-speaking countries include the following: <?page no="224"?> Elizabeth J. Erling 220 Twelve months as au pair in Boston Four months internship in New York City Six weeks as a volunteer worker in Toronto Twelve months studying/ teaching in Northern Ireland Eleven months in New Zealand as exchange student By far the most common experiences students reported were studying or working abroad in inner circle (Kachru, 1985) English-speaking environments. However, they also have had experiences (and perhaps are increasingly so) in other countries where English is an official language: 3 month volunteer work on an ecological farm in Ghana 1 year working in an English-speaking hospital in Calcutta 2 months travelling in South Africa Motivations for learning English Besides considering the various contexts in which students use English, the results of this study give insight into the motivations students have for learning English. Students’ number one reason for their interests in the language, a reason that 99% of them provided, is that it allows them to get in touch with people from other countries. Of course this includes people from native English speaking countries, but equally important is the means to keep up with the international community: Communication with people from other countries has become important to me and English is our bridge. Other important reasons for studying English is to be more employable. Almost all (97%) students expect to need English for their professional careers, for example: I want to work for an international company eventually, maybe even abroad - preferably in English, so it is very essential for me to be able to communicate with people of other nationalities as English has established itself as the language of business and economics. It may not be surprising that students of English at the FU require English for their studies. However, these students do not only need English in their fields of NAS and EP; competence in the language is required just as much (if not more) in their other subjects, such as Economics, Computer Science, Film Studies, Media Studies and Political Science. Many of these fields are highly influenced by Anglo-American academia and often the most current reading materials are only available in English. As students noted: Understanding English is almost a requirement for studying at a university no matter what subject you study. A lot of scientific essays and some lectures are written or held in English. I need English for my studies in political science. It is very interesting to read what people from America or England think about political decisions of German politicians. <?page no="225"?> Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? 221 Attitudes towards varieties of English This study was designed in part to consider students’ attitudes toward English and their means of identifying with it. Students were asked what kind of English they preferred to acquire, a native variety or a neutral, non-cultural variety. This question was designed to test out attitudes in response to the theories of Modiano (2000; 2001), Jenkins (2000) and Seidlhofer (2001; 2002) who promote proposals for a type of English that would function as the lingua franca of Europe without its learners having to adopt native speaker norms. I found that, while over half of the students were interested in acquiring a native variety, a large number (34%) expressed interest in a neutral variety. Students were then asked to explain their choices. Table 5: Preference for native variety vs. neutral variety 61% 34% 5% Native Neutral No answer n=101 For those who chose a native-like accent, the most common reason given was to pass as a native speaker of English. A primary concern of these students was not to stand out and to be accepted in a native-speaker community. Another concern was the desire not to be perceived as German, as can be seen in the following responses: You’re not recognized as foreign (or at least not right away). My personal goal is to speak English so fluently with all its special qualities one day that nobody can expose me as a German native speaker anymore. Another important reason for choosing a native variety is that it was considered more natural, authentic, original and pure. Native accents are preferable because they do not “sound artificial”. As one student noted, “Speaking a language that doesn’t belong to a certain culture/ country can’t seem to be real.” Moreover, learning a native variety of English is considered to be “learning English the right way”. For those who prefer to learn a neutral variety of English, they consider this variety to be more democratic, offering opportunities for everyone in the world to communicate on equal grounds: <?page no="226"?> Elizabeth J. Erling 222 There would be less problems understanding each other. It offers the same chances for everyone. It’s more universal. Others claim that times of globalisation require a neutral lingua franca: In a world of internationalisation and globalisation, would it make sense to learn a culturally restricted variety? There should be an international language which doesn’t depend on a special country/ tradition. Here again, students show a concern for genuineness or authenticity. In these respondents opinion, it is “more authentic for a non-native speaker not to imitate an accent”. Unlike the students in the category above, who were sometimes concerned with covering up their nationality, these respondents feel as if they cannot and do not want to escape this identity. Some even wish to incorporate this other identity into their English: I wouldn’t say that I would try to work on an accent just to show people that I’m from Germany. But I also don’t try to pretend that I’m not German. If you’re not a native speaker, you shouldn’t try to sound like one. The respondents who prefer a native-like variety of English had comprehension as a common reasons for this choice, but interestingly enough, so do the respondents who prefer a neutral variety. These students find that neutralness allows you to have a “higher potential of communication in every English-speaking part of the world”. It is also considered to be more “open” or “flexible” because “you can swap and adapt” and avoid “being put in one camp”. It was also interesting to find that some students (5%) thought that it made no difference what English they spoke as long as they spoke English. I received a few answers like “Who cares? ” or “It doesn’t matter” as long as you speak English well. Cluster Analysis After first analysing the data collected from the questionnaires, it became clear that there were certain patterns in students’ answers. In order to find out more about these patterns, I carried out an exploratory statistical technique used to sort cases into clusters (Kaufman & Rousseeuw, 1990). In order to partition the data, eight variables were chosen as the ones that best represent student attitudes towards varieties of English and highlight the contrast between British English (BE) and American English (AE). These variables were: 1. Apart from your native country, to which country do you feel most connected? 2. To which countries have you been (for longer than a month)? <?page no="227"?> Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? 223 3. If you were to name the type of English you speak, what would you call it? 4. Which model of English do you try to imitate when you speak English? 5. When you read novels or watch movies or documentaries dealing with the history and culture (or any other aspect of society in general) of an English-speaking country, which country do you prefer to read about? 6. Whom do you like best, the Americans or the British? 7. Which country would you prefer to live in, if you were forced to choose between the UK and the US? 8. What do you like best, BE or AE? The results of the analysis presented three different clusters. Once the clusters were established, I interviewed students from each of the three categories. In the end, I conducted five interviews with two students each from cluster one and three and one student from the second cluster. Results of the Ward Cluster Analysis Table 6 illustrates the results of the ward cluster analysis. Here it can be seen that the first cluster is on the whole positive, but not exceptionally so, about its choices for the American answers; likewise it is equally negative about the British answers. However, the second cluster responded more strongly in their answers: they have very positive feelings towards the UK and BE but also rather negative opinions about AE and living in the US. The lingua franca cluster, on the other hand, has no tendency concerning the variety they imitate, the country they feel most connected to or interested in. The only observable preference they have is for the British, living in Britain and hearing BE, which is shown in the last three variables. Cluster 1: The US-friendly cluster Cluster 1 (with 54 members) is composed of students who feel somehow connected to the US, perhaps because they are more likely to have visited there, although many of them have also been to the UK. They also express a preference for AE. This group is somewhat enthusiastic about the US, but the members do not strongly or exclusively tend to this (as is the case with cluster 2). Therefore, it may be appropriate to call them the US-friendly cluster. Steffen and Diane (students I interviewed) represent the US-friendly cluster. Steffen is what I would call a US enthusiast. His hobbies are everything concerning English and English-speaking countries, especially the US. After finishing school, he went to the US for six weeks to visit friends and during that time, his English improved immensely. This visit caused him to study NAS, and he now travels to the US whenever he can. He loves English and <?page no="228"?> Elizabeth J. Erling 224 takes every opportunity to use it. He watches cable in English, listens almost exclusively to American bands, writes emails to friends he made when visiting the US, and reads a lot more in English than in German. Table 6: Results of the Ward cluster analysis Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 n=54 n=13 n=34 Most connected to: US + Country visited: US + Their variety: AE + Variety imitated: AE + Ø Read about: US + Like best: the Americans + Country prefer to live: US + Variety like best: AE + Most connected to: UK ++ Ø Country visited: UK Ø + Their variety: BE ++ Variety imitated: BE ++ Ø Read about: UK + Ø Like best: the British + + Country prefer to live: UK ++ + Variety like best: BE ++ + ++ = very strong tendency of positive response + = strong tendency of positive response Ø = no tendency = strong tendency of negative response = very strong tendency of negative response Steffen even looks like an American college student in his baggy t-shirts and khaki shorts. He laughs embarrassedly when I mention this and says S: [Laughs] I feel like I’m totally despising Germany and trying to be American. I don’t know. I like American dressing style better than the German one. Because it’s different, something new, not something I’ve seen my entire life. It’s all part of me being attracted to the States. Steffen is rather extreme in his tastes and therefore may not be a typical example of someone in the US-friendly cluster. Diane is perhaps more representative. Like Steffen, she was influenced by American music and literature in her teenage years. Since finishing school, Diane has been to the US on two holidays. But Diane was annoyed by Germans (perhaps even people like Steffen) who think the US is great. So, although she did not really want to focus on Britain, she chose to study EP. Diane disagrees with some of the political affairs of the US government, but because of her personal connections with the country would never classify herself as anti-American. However, Diane’s interest and connection with English go further than an affinity with the US. As a child she spent six years in Egypt where English <?page no="229"?> Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? 225 was often the language of communication among foreigners. She also spent two years in India and Nepal, where her only language of communication was English; she even taught English lessons to Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas. Because of all this, she says she feels close to English: “If I swear or want to say something really emotional, then I express myself in English without thinking about it.” Cluster 2: The pro-British cluster Students in cluster 2 are inclined to have stronger preferences than those in cluster 1. This is a much smaller group, consisting of only 13% of the population, but they are much more homogeneous in their choices. They strongly prefer BE and use it as their model. This group’s zest for Britain is interesting, but what is equally significant is their distaste for the US. They have a strong aversion to AE. This group could therefore be called the pro-British cluster. The representative member of this group is Alina, who has retained her British accent despite studying NAS. Alina spent one school year in Brighton, which she said was a positive experience that changed her life. When she went to university, she knew she wanted to do something with English. She opted for NAS because she already knew a lot about England and she wanted something new. Alina prefers BE because she does not like “the ego or attitude behind AE” and even thinks that British sounds more cultivated and modest. What she really dislikes is Germans who speak AE. She complains about students of NAS who spent time in the US: “They think they’re great and that everything that is American is great.” She gets frustrated with uncritical, unquestioned acceptance of everything American. It is not that she is not interested in the US, she just prefers the UK. As she said, “England is just, I can’t say, it’s just that when I go there, I like it.” Cluster 3: The lingua franca cluster Cluster 3 represents a group of students who show neither noticeably American nor British tendencies. The factor that unifies this group is that they do not identify with either the UK or the US, AE or BE. This sample is made up of a significant number of the population (34%). In many cases, these students do not aim towards learning a particular native model, but rather ‘good’ English or a mixture of varieties depending on the context. This, they feel, will leave the market open to them and allow them to communicate in all English-speaking environments. They are neither particularly interested in British or American culture or history - preferring instead India, African countries, or other European countries like Italy, Sweden, or France. Their only partiality is that they prefer the British to the Americans, would prefer to live in the UK than the US and prefer BE to AE. These students thus make up the lingua franca cluster, the cluster that sees <?page no="230"?> Elizabeth J. Erling 226 English as a link to the international community or a language of the European Union. The first representative of the lingua franca cluster is Oskar, who studies NAS. As a child, he went to an American international school in Bangalore for two years. He has also spent holidays in both the US and the UK, but has not spent a significant amount of time in either country. His reason for studying NAS is that it is easy; he is good at English because of his time in India. Although he reads in English about 50% of the time, he does not use much English in his daily life - not much at university and not at all in his private life. Oskar says he has become fed up with the US since studying NAS. Like Diane and Alina, he is annoyed that there are many students who are absolutely fascinated by American culture but are not critical of it. His studies have had the opposite effect on him and he became much more critical about the US. Oskar’s model of English is what he calls “the best English possible”; his goal is to be understood, so communication is the main objective. He is not interested in having a native-like accent, as he says, “I’m not from an English-speaking country, so why should I? ” Oskar also sees English as an important language for the future of the EU. Beatrice, the other student interviewed from the lingua franca cluster, lived in Ghana until she was 12 and used English in school there. Since then, she has been living in Germany. She is now studying EP and wants to be a teacher of English in Germany. English was like another mother tongue for her before she came to Germany, but now she says her English is worse than her German. Beatrice failed the entrance exam to study English at the FU and was put into a remedial course, which surprised and upset her. When I asked why she thought she failed, she said: “My English is not like your English or like my cousins who live in London because I still have this Ghanaian English.” Beatrice chose to study BE because she thinks her English is more British, but, as she says, “There is nothing British about me.” Conclusions and pedagogical implications This study demonstrates that students of English at the FU use English in a variety of international contexts, both within and outside of academia and both at home and abroad. This means that they are regularly exposed to the diversity of English. Their experiences with English reinforce the proposal put forward by Gnutzmann (1999), in which he states that Global English is any variety of English used in lingua franca contexts. Further proof for this comes from students’ motivation to study English, which is to use it as a global language with people from around the world, native speakers and non-native speakers alike. As one student noted: In times of globalisation/ internationalism it is necessary to be able to communicate with all types of English and people. It is important to speak English to be a part of the new, international world. <?page no="231"?> Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? 227 Finally, the results of this study emphasise that various personal preferences, professional goals and political attitudes (and not the motivation to learn a certain model of English) play a part in students’ decisions of what to study. As can be seen in table 7, those who pursue NAS are not necessarily interested in the US, Americans, AE and American culture. A large number of NAS students (59%) are in the US-friendly cluster, which is not surprising considering that these students, like Steffen, are likely to have lived abroad in the US, made friends there and, through this, feel connected to the country. However, a significant number of NAS students (37%) belong to the lingua franca cluster, like Oskar, and these are students who are highly critical of the US and see their skills in English as a pragmatic link to the international community. Moreover, a small minority of NAS students (4%), like Alina, belong to the pro-British cluster. Moreover, while ten out of thirteen students in the pro-British cluster are students of EP (29%), the students of EP are scattered fairly evenly among the three different clusters. This means that those who study English Philology are a heterogeneous group and do not necessarily follow one model of English learning. A large number of EP students (40%), like Diane, focus more on the US in their studies, despite their choice for a broader course of study. Moreover, the EP students in the lingua franca cluster (31%), like Beatrice, seem to be more interested in other English-speaking cultures, like Australia and New Zealand or Ireland; furthermore, they expressed interest in the uses of English in India, Nigeria. This result implies that English studies could further widen its field of study to include postcolonial contexts and other environments where English is used as a lingua franca. Table 7: Cluster analysis broken down by course of study NAS students (n=49) EP students (n=35) Other (n=17) 1 US-friendly cluster (n=54) 59.1% (n=29) 40.0% (n=14) 64.7% (n=11) 2 Pro-British cluster (n=13) 4.1% (n=2) 28.6% (n=10) 5.9% (n=1) 3 Lingua franca cluster (n=34) 36.7% (n=18) 31.4% (n=11) 29.4% (n=5) Although the students’ uses of English are certainly global and they perceive the language as a means to get in touch with the rest of the world, students of English remain oriented towards native-speaking English cultures. The majority of them (61%) still prefer to acquire a regional version of English and still have a native model as their goal. I’ll never be able to speak like a native speaker, I think, but I’m trying to get it as close to that [a native speaker of AE] as possible. <?page no="232"?> Elizabeth J. Erling 228 However, this survey also shows that a significant number of students are not interested in using English as a language connected to the US or the UK. This reinforces Modiano’s (2001: 162) suggestion that in addition to teaching native speaker norms, language teachers need to address the needs and desires of those students (and their numbers are growing) who prefer to learn English as a tool for inter-cultural communication, and as a result seek competence through an international perspective on the language. Such students not only attempt to develop the ability to comprehend a wide range of varieties, but also strive to utilise language which has a high likelihood of being comprehensible among a broad cross-section of the peoples who comprise the English-using world. The difference in students’ responses could be related to the fact that they are imagining different contexts for their English use. Those who wanted to master a national variety of English may plan to work or live abroad in an English-speaking country and may thus feel the need to acquire the variety that is spoken there. Others, however, may presume that they will need English in a context where it is used as a lingua franca; therefore, they do not see the need to embrace an L1 variety of English. Therefore, the teaching of English at university should accommodate students’ global needs for the language - most specifically the teaching of English as an international lingua franca and as a world possession (cf. Gupta, 1999). English language education should reflect the diversity of the language and prepare learners with the co-operative skills that they require in their daily lives. This approach would include more emphasis on pragmatic fluency (House, 2002) and intercultural communicative competence (Gnutzmann, 1999). University courses in English should heighten students’ awareness to the fact that there are different varieties and that communication is about negotiation of meaning, irrespective of the variety you speak. In using English globally, speakers adjust to one another in order to communicate with one another. This flexibility and ability is just as important, if not more so, as the mastering of any native variety or prescribed forms. Courses in English should thus place more emphasis on the ability to communicate using the medium of English than on the teaching of a particular form of English. In this way, the teaching of Global English implies more of an adjustment in attitude than in standards. Note 1 I would like to thank Bent Preisler for supplying me with a copy of his questionnaire, Matthias Boenner for translating it from Danish to English and Bertil Schwotzer and Jens Vogelgesang for assisting with the analysis of the empirical data. I am also grateful to the students at the language centre who volunteered their insights and opinions for this project, especially those who participated in the interviews. Special thanks go to Tom Bartlett, Suzanne K. Hilgendorf and Maike Grau for their perceptive and helpful readings of this paper. <?page no="233"?> Who is the ‘Global English’ Speaker? 229 References Fischer, A. (2002) Global English as a challenge for lexicography. In F. Ilmberger and A. Robinson (eds) Globalisation (pp. 127-150). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Gnutzmann, C. (1999) English as a global language: Perspectives for English language teaching and for teacher education in Germany. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.), 157-169. Gnutzmann, C. (ed.) (1999) Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language: Native and Non-Native Perspectives. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Gupta, A.F. (1999) Standard Englishes, contact varieties and Singapore Englishes. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.), 59-72. House, J. (2002) Developing pragmatic competence in English as a lingua franca. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds) Lingua Franca Communication (pp. 245-268). Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Jenkins, J. (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language: New Models, New Norms, New Goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Joseph, J.E. (2004) Linguistic identity and the limits of Global English. In A. Duszak and U. Okulska (eds) Speaking from the Margins: Global English from a European Perspective (pp. 17-34). Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Kachru, B. (1985) Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk and H.G. Widdowson (eds) English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures (pp. 11-30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaufman, L. and Rousseeuw, P. (1990) Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis. New York: Wiley. McArthur, T. (1987) The English languages? English Today 11, 9-11. Modiano, M. (2000) Rethinking ELT. English Today 62 16: 2, 28-34. Modiano, M. (2001) Ideology and the ELT practitioner. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (2), 159-173. Preisler, B. (1999) Functions and forms of English in a European EFL country. In T. Bex and R. Watts (eds) Standard English: The Widening Debate (pp. 239-267). London: Routledge. Preisler, B. (2003) English in Danish and the Danes’ English. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 159, 109-126. Schiffrin, D. (1994) Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell. Seidlhofer, B. (2001) Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (2), 133-158. Seidlhofer, B. (2002) A concept of international English and related issues: From ‘real English’ to ‘realistic English’? Language Policy Division, Council of Europe, Stras- bourg: 1-30. Online document: http: / / www.coe.int/ T/ E/ Cultural_Co-operation/ education/ Languages/ Language_Policy/ Policy_development_activities/ Studies/ List.asp (June 03, 03). Simpson, D. (1998) Prospects for Global English: Back to Basic? The Yale Journal of Criticism 2 (1), 301-307. Wagner, B. (2001) Kulturelle Globalisierung: Weltkultur, Glokalität und Hybridisierung. In B. Wagner (ed.) Kulturelle Globalisierung: Zwischen Weltkultur und Kultureller Fragmentierung (pp. 9-38). Essen: Klartext. Wilk, R. (1998) Globalbabble. Online document: http: / / www.indiana.edu/ ~wanthro/ babble.htm (April 14, 03). <?page no="235"?> Ulrike Jessner Expanding Scopes and Building Bridges: Learning and Teaching English as a Third Language Introduction When Jasone Cenoz and I had the idea to edit the book which was later titled English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language (Cenoz & Jessner, 2000) the search for adequate contributions turned out to be somewhat problematic. The reasons for the difficulties were linked both to the nascent state of research on third language acquisition (henceforth TLA) and trilingualism and the fact that only very few studies had focused on the changing role of English on the European continent at the time. In the end we were lucky to find some interesting studies dealing with a variety of linguistic contexts where English is learnt and taught as a third language so that sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and pedadagogical implications could be discussed. In the meantime the interest in the globalization of English world-wide, Europe included, as well as the spectrum of consequences this process has led to in the study of English has considerably expanded. The same is true for the academic community investigating multilingualism by embracing more than two languages. This paper takes up a number of the issues raised in the book, which also formed part of the research agenda for future studies of English as a third language offered in the concluding chapter (Jessner & Cenoz, 2000). In the first part an up-to-date overview of socioand psycholinguistic aspects of research on multilingualism with a special focus on English as a third language will be provided. Special attention will be paid to holistic approaches to the phenomenon of multilingualism and their relevance for applied linguistics research. The second part will present some current developments in multilingual education by concentrating on the role of English in particular. Learning English as a third language Sociolinguistic aspects In a growing number of countries world-wide English is learnt and taught as a third language. In Europe multilingualism with English has been developing both on the societal and the individual level as a consequence of the increasing and extensive use of the English language (see e.g. Hoffmann, 2000). In this context English is increasingly used both as a medium of communica- <?page no="236"?> Ulrike Jessner 232 tion with native speakers of English and as a lingua franca for people who do not share the same language or rather languages (see e.g. Gnutzmann, 2000; James, 2000; this volume; Seidlhofer, 2001; this volume). As a consequence of this developmental process a European non-native variety of English called Euro-English or even Euro-Englishes seems to be emerging (e.g. Crystal, 1995: 113). Although English is the second language for many Europeans, there are a number of contexts where it is learnt as a third. As presented in Cenoz and Jessner (2000) linguistic ecologies in Europe where English is learnt as a third language in the bilingual population include the Basque Country, where it is learnt beside Basque and Spanish, Catalonia, where it is learnt beside Catalan and Spanish, Friesland, where it is learnt beside Frisian and Dutch, Finland, where it is learnt beside Finnish and Swedish, Romania, where it is learnt beside Romanian and Hungarian or German, Belgium where it is learnt beside French or Flemish and German. In these European countries the relationship of English with the other languages in use depends on the status of the languages in contact and their typological relatedness. Another example of a European population whose linguistic repertoire includes English as a third language are immigrants such as Turks in the Netherlands or Germany who learn the official language of their host country and also study English. The same applies for native speakers of widespread European languages such as German speakers in Italy (South Tyrol), France or Belgium, whose language is a minority language on the national level, learn English as a third language. Equally, native speakers of lesser widespread languages such as Dutch living in Belgium learn French as a second language and English as a third. Not to forget all those Europeans who learn English as a third language after their L1 and an L2 at school or as adults; for example, a Frenchman who learns Spanish and English (for other examples see Hoffmann & Ytsma, 2004). In other parts of the world English is also learnt as a third language (see Cenoz & Genesee, 1998). It represents the language of a large number of immigrants who have moved to countries where English is used as a second language such as French-speaking Canada or Israel. Or immigrants who have already learnt two languages when they establish themselves in an English-speaking country such as the United States of America, Australia or New Zealand. In South America, Central America and the French-speaking part of Canada it is the third language used at school for many children who are heritage speakers of Quechua, Guarani or Mohawk. In African countries where French is still spoken as second language English is learnt as the third (Mozambique, Angola, Mauritius) as well as by children in Kenya or Nigeria who grow up with two other languages and use it at school. In Asia, for instance, it presents a third language for many speakers in Hong Kong who <?page no="237"?> Expanding Scopes and Building Bridges 233 already speak Cantonese and Mandarin or a growing number of Japanese who learn it after Japanese and Korean. Psycholinguistic aspects The acquisition of English as third language shares many characteristics with English as second language but there are also differences between the two. In the following we will have a closer look at the research area of TLA and trilingualism which has established itself as a field in its own right over the last few years as is shown by the biennial conferences and the recently established International Journal of Multilingualism. One of the main interests of scholars working on multilingualism, in the sense of more than two languages, is to find out about the differences and similarities between second language acquisition (henceforth SLA) and TLA. The growth of global multilingualism and the increased interest of the scientific community in this linguistic phenomenon is certainly linked to the changing role of English in the world. And although there has always been some interest in the phenomenon of multilingualism (see Vildomec, 1963) over the last decade this interest has been enormously growing (e.g. Cenoz, Hufeisen & Jessner, 2000; 2001a; b; 2003; Hufeisen & Lindemann, 2000) as already mentioned in the introduction. Studies in this fairly new research area have made it clear that research on SLA and bilingualism need to be linked in order to understand the complexity and diversity of the dynamic processes involved in multilingual development. The variety of routes of acquisition (see Cenoz, 2000) contribute to the complexity as do all the personal and societal factors involved in the process and product of learning a third language which at the same time is also influenced by the experiences gained from learning a second language. An overview of the studies carried out on multilingualism makes it evident that they have, to a large extent, concentrated on crosslinguistic influence and the effects of bilingualism on third language learning. Crosslinguistic influence: Among the studies dealing with crosslinguistic influence between three languages in contact most of the investigations have concentrated on the lexicon (Cenoz, Hufeisen & Jessner, 2003). In contrast to studies on SLA and bilingualism where there are only two languages in contact or two systems influencing each other, we have to deal with the potentially mutual influence of three languages. Since in SLA we are confronted with a bidirectional relationship, in TLA we need to take the influence of L1 on L2, L1 on L3, L2 on L1, L2 on L3 and L3 on L1 into account (see Jessner, 2003). Today it is clear that crosslinguistic influence in studies on SLA is more than just the negative influence of the L1 on the L2 as it was seen in the early days of contrastive analysis, that is, there are effects of the L2 on the L1 (e.g. Cook, 2003) and effects of the contact between the two systems which go beyond individual awareness (Kellerman, 1995). <?page no="238"?> Ulrike Jessner 234 Whereas a number of researchers still regard third language learning as integrated in second language learning, a growing group of (mainly applied) linguists have started to focus on third language learning to find out about the differences between the processes involved in second and third language learning. Several factors have turned out to play an influential role in third language learning and use. These include the status of the L2, cultural similarity, typological similarity, recency of use and level of proficiency (Hammarberg, 2001). It is mainly the role of the L2 in TLA and trilingualism which commands more attention than expected. In several studies, focusing mainly on the multilingual lexicon, it has been observed that third language users relied on their L2 - and not on their L1 - in language production. A number of these TLA studies have been carried out on English as L3. One of the first studies was carried out by Ringbom (1987) who found that the bilingual (Finnish/ Swedish) students relied more on Swedish during language production in English. Also other learners, with a non-Indo- European language as their L1, tend to transfer structures and vocabulary rather from other related languages when learning English as third language. The reasons for this preference in the activation of a supporter language are dependent on typological similarity as discussed by Cenoz (2003b; c) who studied the oral production of English in bilingual (Spanish/ Basque) schoolchildren; but she also points out that typological similarity has to be isolated from other factors such as L2 status in order to find out more about the relative influence in language activation. She describes how in cases of language mixing Basque and Spanish have different roles which depend on the intentional level of the switches. The relation between the languages can also be of a psychotypological nature, however, as discussed in Wei (2003) who reports how a Chinese learner of English as L3 resorts to his second language Japanese for building lemmas. In the case of typologically close languages, transfer takes place in the use of English as a third language as, for instance, described by Bouvy (2000) in her study of the influence of both German or Dutch as L2 in French-speaking Belgian students on English. In an earlier study Chamot (1978) focuses on the influence of Spanish and French in her son’s production of English as L3. An introspective study on the lexical problem-solving behaviour of bilingual (German/ Italian) university students learning English could also show that the students relied on both Italian and German as supplier languages during academic task completion (Jessner, 1999; in press). Here is an example of a thinking episode where the subject uses two default suppliers to produce a sentence in English: <?page no="239"?> Expanding Scopes and Building Bridges 235 [...] no, not necessarily, more important than finding, founding, foundations #fondare una familia, founding a family, *gründen, than founding a family, finding, founding, foundation, foundation, *jaa, a family. (*German; #Italian) Another example of crosslinguistic influence in the oral production of English as L3 stems from Clyne’s study on trilingual codeswitching (1997: 109). Here the production is supported by L1 German and L2 Dutch: [...] sechszig (sic) oder HUN [han]/ oder honderd POLITICIANS. Both examples show that the language systems are activated in parallel and therefore do not present independent entities (see Singleton, 2003). The interdependence between the language systems in contact has also become evident in mainly educationally oriented studies where it was shown that there is transfer of academic knowledge from L2 to L1 and vice versa due to the development of a common underlying proficiency (Cummins, 1991) and/ or a common underlying conceptual base (Kecskes & Papp, 2000). This kind of transfer referred to as paradox of transfer by Herdina and Jessner (1994) should be seen in relation to the positive cognitive effects of bilingualism. Effects of bilingualism on TLA: Ever since 1962 when the Peal/ Lambert study made it evident that monolingual (English) children were outperformed by bilingual (French/ English) ones with regard to intelligence there has been growing interest in the cognitive effects of bilingualism. Whereas the researchers themselves were surprised by the outcome of their study, nowadays we know about the specific conditions - concerning the level of proficiency in both languages and the social prestige of the two languages in contact - which are necessary for additive bilingualism. An overview of the cognitive aspects which have been described as part of the advantages that the contact with two languages can produce in the speaker includes, among others, communicative flexibility and sensibility as well as metalinguistic awareness (e.g. Baker, 2001). The latter has been strongly linked with the success of bilinguals in learning a third language in a number of international studies some of which have concentrated on the learning of English as L3 (Cenoz & Valencia, 1994; Klein, 1995; Lasagabaster, 1997; Ringbom, 1987; Zobl, 1992). In a critical overview of the effects of bilingualism on further language learning, Cenoz (2003a) points out that although research on the effects of bilingualism on third language learning is characterized by a great diversity, most studies on general proficiency in the L3 indicate a positive effect of bilingualism on TLA, especially in the case of typologically close languages (see also Jessner, 2004). Holistic views of multilingual proficiency The current discussion of multilingualism is governed by holistic approaches to biand multilingualism such as those offered by Grosjean (e.g. 1985) and <?page no="240"?> Ulrike Jessner 236 Cook (e.g. 1993). Grosjean’s description of the bilingual as a competent but specific speaker-hearer is used by Cook as a basis for the development of the notion of multicompetence. He states that in comparison to a monolingual speaker the multilingual speaker has a different knowledge of the L1, of the L2, and a different kind of language awareness and language processing system. Grosjean’s and Cook’s position against viewing bilingualism as double monolingualism is taken up by Herdina and Jessner (2002). They additionally emphasize the dynamics in multilingual proficiency as a necessary prerequisite for a realistic view of multilingualism by stressing the fact that a multilingual system is in constant development and not in a steady state as proposed by (still dominant) linguistic theories. In contrast to Grosjean and Cook they define multilingualism as including bilingualism but not vice versa. Their model, which is based on dynamic systems theory, is necessarily linked to a holistic approach and stresses the emergent properties in multilingual systems. These include all those factors which contribute to a change of quality in language learning based on prior language knowledge. Multilingual proficiency is defined as being composed of the individual psycholinguistic systems, the crosslinguistic interaction between those systems and qualities such as metalinguistic awareness or an enhanced multilingual monitor which are developed due to the interdependence between developing and already developed systems involved in the language learning process of a third language. Whereas in second language learning the learner has practically no experience of how to learn to learn a language, the third language learner can profit from prior language learning knowledge by applying it to new learning conditions (see Mißler, 1999). Ideally, such a holistic concept of the multilingual learner is suggested to be focused on and applied to multilingual education. Teaching English as a third language Learning a language as a third language in the school context is not a new phenomenon and due to the increase in immigration in many countries it has become rather common. In Europe we also find multilingual schools which use several languages as languages of instruction (Baker & Prys Jones, 1998); in Canada double immersion is used as an instruction method (Genesee, 1998). In the majority of cases, however, two or three languages are studied as language subjects at school. Linked to the tendency to teach a foreign language at an earlier age and a second foreign language at the end of primary school or in secondary school, these days third language learning is not any longer necessarily linked to prestige multilingualism. In the second part of this article some current approaches to multilingual education will be presented. In particular it will concentrate on projects <?page no="241"?> Expanding Scopes and Building Bridges 237 which try to link the language subjects in the curriculum in order to raise language awareness in both teachers and students. Linking the languages As can be seen from the above discussion, the individual language systems in the multilingual mind are activated together during language production in a third language, that is prior language knowledge is activated as part of the problem-solving behaviour. However, while this seems to be part of normal behaviour in a multilingual user, in the language classroom the contact between languages or rather language subjects is still considered counterproductive. That is, language teachers try to keep knowledge of and about other languages, including the students’ L1(s), out of the classroom in order to avoid ‘confusing’ the students. This attitude goes back to the early days of contrastive analysis where the influence of the mother tongue on the second language was mainly seen as negative. Nowadays we not only know that transfer can have a facilitative role in language learning (Jessner, 2003; Kellerman, 1995; Schweers, 1996) but also that the contact with more languages can have positive consequences for cognition in general as discussed above. With regard to English language teaching Lewis (1997) has been able to illustrate how useful it is to rely on an already developed language system. In a plenary lecture on foreign language study and language awareness given at the 1998 conference of the Association of Language Awareness held in Quebec, Eric Hawkins, one of the fathers of the language awarenessmovement, refers to language learning in the classroom as language apprenticeship which is supposed to include learning to learn a language and crosslanguage comparisons (1999: 140). He particularly comments on the differences between second and first language learning by pointing out neurolinguistic evidence suggesting that L1 learning even takes place in a different part of the brain (Kim et al., 1997). Furthermore he makes a plea for the usefulness of contrastive analysis as part of language learning and teaching in the classroom and this way supports the importance of the role of the L1 in second language learning (see also James, 1998). Although language awareness, which was initially set up as a programme in order to raise language awareness in the mother tongue among students and teachers in the UK, has been found to form an essential part of modern language teaching in many European countries outside the UK (see e.g. Edmondson & House, 1998 for Germany). The development of methods concentrating on raising language awareness in the school context is rather new and it will certainly take some time to establish them in modern curricula. One of the novel concepts of language education which was developed in Graz (Austria) is called ‘Sprach- und Kulturerziehung’ (Language and Culture Education), clearly goes beyond common language learning in the classroom. It is suggested that mother tongues (of both majority and minority) with all their varieties as well as foreign languages formed integral parts of <?page no="242"?> Ulrike Jessner 238 the concept so that synergy effects could be produced as a result of the emerging metalinguistic knowledge (Huber-Kriegler, 2000). This new concept is clearly influenced by the European project called ‘Evlang’ which focuses on raising language awareness in primary school children (e.g. Candelier, 1999). Crosslinguistic approaches have been in the centre of interest in some recent projects on language awareness in multilingual education. For instance, Schmid (1993; 1995) describes how one (foreign) language can be used as a basis for the acquisition of other, related languages at tertiary level. His main concern being with the Romance languages, he analyses the learning strategies which are employed during the language learning process as (a) correspondence, that is the development of processes to relate similar forms in the related L2 and L3, (b) difference, that is the identification of contrasts between the languages, (c) congruence, that is the identification of interlingual correspondences. In a team teaching project Spöttl and Hinger (2002) simultaneously taught English and Spanish to university students. They attempt to implement research results from TLA and vocabulary acquisition in principled classroom procedure. Such an approach has turned out to be beneficial since, according to the authors, it eases cross-linguistic consultation, strengthens network building and facilitates access to knowledge of interlingual collocational nuance. As a consequence of Schmid’s work it might appear to be useful to augment contrastive approaches by teaching language learning strategies in the multilingual classroom. Spöttl (2001), for instance, could show how the teaching of strategies positively influenced the learning process of third language learners of English. From the results of various studies in different linguistic contexts it can be gathered that the number of language learning strategies is dependent on prior linguistic experience and the proficiency levels in the individual languages (see Mißler, 1999; Ó Laoire, 2001). The search for commonalities between the languages in contact has been described as a natural feature of language learning (Jessner, 1999) and with this in mind it is suggested to rather concentrate on the common features between the languages than their differences (Ringbom, 1987: 42). To find a comparative basis for some of the most commonly taught languages in a Middle European context, that is French, English, German and Latin, comparative grammars have been presented by Glinz (1994) and Müller (1999). While making a plea for the integration of prior language knowledge they also warn that in the case of some grammatical phenomena it might be advisable to distance oneself from familiar structures. The profits of building up a common basis for learning and teaching languages had already been suggested by Wandruszka already some time ago from a different perspective. In his books on both social and individual mul- <?page no="243"?> Expanding Scopes and Building Bridges 239 tilingualism (e.g. 1979; 1986; 1990) he concentrates on the European language community and the need for multilingual citizens by pointing out links between the majority languages. He shows how they relate to each other by taking a historical view and a detailed look at crosslinguistic influence, mainly at the lexical level. Consequently he proposes to teach an introductory course of Latin and Greek to all language students in order to provide them with the essential linguistic basis for learning modern European languages (see also Munske & Kirkness, 1996). As for the English language he makes it clear that it can only be understood and learnt with the necessary awareness of its etymological development. Another attempt to increase multilingualism within the European community is linked to the EuroCom (European Comprehension) project which has been developed to provide Europeans with a basis for understanding each other, at least within their own language family. Comprehension is attempted to mediate optimal inferencing techniques in typologically related languages in order to help develop at least receptive skills in the new language. The pioneering work was completed in the Romance languages as EuroComRom (Klein & Stegmann, 2000), the other programmes which are currently developed are EuroComSlav and EuroComGerm. The latter is supposed to foster understanding between languages of the Germanic language family, that is learning a third Germanic language (e.g. Dutch, Luxemburgisch) is based on German as L1 and English as L2 (for more details see www.eurocom-frankfurt.de, accessed July 15, 2004). The application of the findings of this project appears to present a desirable ingredient of classroom language teaching. The multilingual English teacher From the preceding discussion it should have become evident that one of the important aims of future multilingual education is to build bridges between the languages in the classroom and in the minds of the language students. It is clearcut that this goal can only be achieved if applied to the language teachers as well. Language awareness in the sense of linking the languages, backed up by linguistic studies of multilingualism, should ideally become part of teacher education and this implies that all language teachers should be experienced language learners. This prerequisite for language teaching should be made obligatory, even for native speakers of English who are English language teachers, since otherwise teachers are hardly able to understand their students’ linguistic and cognitive needs. Although stemming from a different research background, this idea of multilingual English teachers should be interpreted as complementary and supportive for Seidlhofer (2000) who substantiates a redefinition of the nonnative teacher of English as one of the effects of the growth of English as a Lingua Franca in the world. As one of the consequences of the conceptualization and acceptance of English as a Lingua Franca as a distinct manifestation <?page no="244"?> Ulrike Jessner 240 of English, she regards the opening up of new options for all those English teachers who constitute the majority of English teachers in the world and who can perceive themselves as competent and authoritative users of English as a Lingua Franca. Such an orientation in English language teaching towards a multilingual norm strongly recalls Grosjean’s and Cook’s criticism of viewing bilingualism as double monolingualism already mentioned above. Just as the bilingual should be envisaged as a competent but specific speaker-hearer the nonnative English teacher should be regarded as a teacher in her/ his own right. In connection with this it is also noteworthy that Cook criticizes the native speaker norm in language teaching and suggests multicompetence as a goal instead (1999). Concluding remarks This book surveys current theories of globalization by inspecting the effects of this phenomenon on the English language. This paper argues that one of the effects that globalization and mobilisation have shown on the development of English is that it should be seen in the increased use of English as a Lingua Franca which is often a third language. In order to be able to understand the complexity of multilingualism with English for an implementation into the language curriculum an interdisciplinary approach presents a necessary prerequisite, i.e., it is strongly suggested drawing the link between psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to English language teaching. In future studies of English this goal can only be achieved by testing the relevance of contemporary theories of English to find out if they match the reality of how English is being acquired, used and appropriated at present by drawing on research on TLA (see Jessner & Cenoz, in press). Yet, such a challenging project can only be realised if it is accompanied by a multilingual norm in (applied) linguistics and society. References Baker, C. and Prys Jones, S. (1998) Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Baker, C. (2001) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bouvy, C. 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Language Acquisition and Multilingualism. Festschrift für Els Oksaar zum 60. Geburtstag (pp. 223-233). Tübingen: Narr. Wandruszka, M. (1990) Die europäische Sprachengemeinschaft: Deutsch-Französisch- Englisch-Italienisch-Spanisch im Vergleich. Tübingen: Francke. Wei, L. (2003) Activation of lemmas in the multilingual mental lexicon and transfer in third language learning. In J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen and U. Jessner (eds), 57-70. Zobl, H. (1992) Prior linguistic knowledge and the conservation of the learning procedure: Grammaticality judgments of unilingual and multilingual learners. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (pp. 176-196). Amsterdam: Benjamins. <?page no="249"?> Angelika Kubanek-German Global English and Global Education Introduction In this article, it is argued that in the context of ELT, the topic of Global English should be embedded in a more general context of global education. The historical German concept of the ‘cosmopolitan citizen’ (‘Weltbürger’) is retraced before results of a textbook analysis are presented, to show if and how global issues, including the topic of English as a Global Language, are made accessible for teenagers. In the textbooks analysed in this study ‘English as a world language’ refers to English speaking developing nations. The article ends with some considerations as regards the handling of the topic in future textbooks. Retracing the historical background: the German concept of the cosmopolitan citizen and of cosmopolitan education The age of enlightenment conceptualised the utopia of a ‘cosmopolitan’ citizen, in German: ‘Weltbürger’. The political and moral layer of this concept was formulated by Immanuel Kant. In Zum ewigen Frieden (1791), an ironic title taken from the name of an inn, he referred to a world citizenship which included the right to visit whoever one pleased and do commerce with whosoever (‘universales Besuchsrecht’): the right of a stranger/ foreigner, on entering someone else’s territory, not to be treated in an hostile way, as long as he acted peacefully. The stranger, according to Kant, has no right to be treated as a guest, but indeed a right to be a visitor, because, due to the spherical shape of the earth, human beings cannot possibly disperse infinitely and therefore need to tolerate the vicinity of others. Immediately following this paragraph Kant pronounced a clear-cut criticism of imperialism (Dritter Definitivartikel zum Ewigen Frieden, Kant, 1964: 213f.). In his anthropology (2 nd edition 1800) he turned to the individual level. To be cosmopolitan presupposes openness and curiosity to learn about the outside world with one’s own eyes, up to the willingness to “transplant oneself into a foreign territory” (“sich dahin [als Weltbürger] zu verpflanzen”) (cf. Kant, 1964: 665 footnote). 1 In his contrastive description of national characters, which forms part of the anthropology, the German is attributed with the characteristics of a cosmopolitan: <?page no="250"?> Angelika Kubanek-German 246 the German is the man of all countries and climates; he emigrates easily and is not affectionately tied to his fatherland; wherever he arrives as a colonist, he tends to form a kind of civic club with his fellow-Germans, thus constituting abroad an ethnic group (“Völkchen”) due to unity of language and partly of religion. […] The German, more than men of any other nations, takes to learning foreign languages […] he has no national pride nor ties to his home country (“Heimat”) - he shows the characteristics of the cosmopolitan (Kant, 1964: 667-669). Some 30 years later, in the literary period of classicism, Goethe in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (2 nd version, 1829) described the ‘Weltbürger’ in the following way: “He lives his civic life at home, but has internalised the virtues of civility/ bourgeoisie (‘Bürgertum’) to such an extent that he can take them with him all over the world.” The cosmopolitan, as Goethe has it, is autonomous, elevated above his epoch, he might live anywhere in the whole wide world. He is not nationalistic: his home is where he is useful. Goethe took up in literature the concept as it was outlined by Kant. There is no indication that the cosmopolitan imposes his mother tongue onto the people he will be surrounded by. Rather, he is willing to learn and speak several languages. Such a cosmopolitan person would most likely be from the upper middle class and would have learned foreign languages in school and privately as a child. But he would study the languages of his new home and be willing to develop Humboldt’s new cultural perspective (“neue Weltansicht”) while learning. He would be willing and able to communicate abroad, using the language of the local elite, English as the language of trade, French, or another appropriate new language. From the beginning, and over time, the concept of the cosmopolitan was controversial. Four points of criticism seem valid and useful in the context of this article. a) As early as 1790, there was a derogatory term: “Kosmopolitenbande” (“gang of cosmopolitans”). It is used in the novel Andreas Hartknopf. Eine Allegorie by the Braunschweig/ Berlin writer and philosopher Karl Philipp Moritz. The scene where the term occurs parodies the then famous progressive education school ‘Philanthropinum’ at Dessau near Berlin - a school which offered immersion in foreign languages as early as at the primary level as one of its innovative features. Of the proselyte caricatured in the novel it is said that “the individual meant nothing to him, whereas he claimed to feel like embracing tenderly the whole of mankind” (Moritz, 1981: 242f.). Moritz’ criticism, then, refers to the vague emotionality and the lack of concern for what is necessary for educational improvement here and now. b) A second, right wing criticism arose as a consequence of the Napoleonic wars when national education was fostered. Cosmopolitan and national ideas were seen as opposites, and as a reflex, there occurred a downvaluing of foreign language learning, especially of French, but also of other languages heard in the street, like the Polish and Italian spoken by the <?page no="251"?> Global English and Global Education 247 immigrant labourers who came to work in the Ruhrgebiet steel factories. The positively charged meaning of cosmopolitan education changed, it became a term of insult or pity. The children of the upper classes who were raised in several languages and followed their families to different residences abroad were called ‘chameleons’ and their minds were likened to a body without a spine. It was said that they had lost their identity, plurilingualism and travelling being some of the causes (cf. Kubanek- German, 2001: chapter 11). c) A third line of historical argumentation can be traced in the works of the eminent writer and philosopher Schleiermacher, who proposed a theory of understanding. He wrote in his lectures on education (1826) that the prime task of the time should be to provide better education for the masses within a given political territory, and this meant reading and writing in the mother tongue first. The ideas about travelling, and learning other languages were to be considered elitist (cf. Kubanek-German, 2001: 134). d) The fourth argument is a hermeneutic one. Even though this line of thought dates back to Montaigne’s sceptical comments about the limits of understanding for other cultures it attracts attention among educationalists exponentially with the increase of ethnic diversity in society to which the emergence of intercultural education is a response - a field in a permanent state of tension between optimism and scepticism. As it is not the purpose of this article to retrace intercultural education as a discipline, reference is made only to one author who pinpoints the critical aspects: the philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels (2000) points out how, for intercultural learning, difference and incomprehensibility need to be the keywords. Chasing after an “intercultural Esperanto” is pointless, globalness would create “normal man” with normal, standard ideas in his normal and standardised culture. Everything that is provocative in the stranger/ the foreigner, would be lost. Differences would be smoothed out through communication (“abgeschliffen”). Each culture is special, it is more than one culture among others and more than an amalgamation of universal rules. Annihilating this “added value” leads to a one-sided colonisation of the other or a levelling of differences. Interculturality is an in-between sphere with a specific intermediary character which cannot be submitted to universal laws. It is a no-man’s land, a border territory (cf. Waldenfels, 2000: 245f.). In foreign language education this sceptical position has been outlined since the 1990s by Hans Hunfeld (1997, 2004), who coined the catchphrase of the “double normalcy of the foreigner” and drew up the outlines of a curriculum based on a hermeneutic theory of understanding and misunderstandings in communcation in the foreign language classroom. <?page no="252"?> Angelika Kubanek-German 248 Global English and global education in ELT textbooks The willingness to live elsewhere on the globe, the open-mindedness towards the new culture: is it at all possible to create an awareness for the positive content of the concept of cosmopolitan man in teenagers? One would imagine that the foreign language classroom could be a suitable place, the textbooks as the main source of teaching content being the media of transportation of the idea. Therefore, a corpus of textbooks was analysed. The analysis focussed on the representation of Third World countries and the didactic approaches found in the respective passages because it was assumed that both positive and critical aspects of treating the topic would appear especially clearly. With particularly the first and the fourth argument in mind (the danger in the vague goodwill, and the prerequisite for any true intercultural encounter to see the raw, strange and unique instead of assuming global similarity), the perspective now shifts from ideas to practice. How have world issues and the topic of English world-wide been handled in German ELT textbooks designed for learners in compulsory education (11-16 years old)? Are the authors, in their representations of the other who lives in English speaking developing nations or uses English as his non-native language, trying to avoid vague goodwill? Are they giving the protagonists of local culture room to voice their positions? How do they handle the transits across time, space and culture between the protagonists in the textbooks and the juvenile reader of these texts in secondary education? Textbooks from 1945-1985 A representative sample of textbooks was analysed by the author of this article for an early monograph (Kubanek, 1987), and is reconsidered here in a meta-analysis. Since textbooks, due to their conservative nature, tend to maintain topic areas over decades, the main findings are still relevant and some of the categories of analysis were used to check current textbooks. In Germany, 10/ 11 years was the starting age for English learners at grammar and middle schools after 1945, and from the late 60s also at secondary modern schools. Usually English was learned as the first and obligatory foreign language until the age of 16. The analysis covered reading texts, exercises and illustrations. The caveat, whether looking at older or currently used textbooks is that the presence of the topics alone gives no clue as to whether and how intensively the topics were taken up. The primary purpose of a textbook is to help learn the language. Depending on how the teacher uses the textbook - to build up declarative knowledge and stimulate discussion or rather as a filing cabinet of exercises about language structures and speech intentions, he or she will exploit or skip content matter. However, both the sheer mass of textbooks sold and their longevity make a certain impact likely even today, when, due to the emergence of the Internet, project orientation in di- <?page no="253"?> Global English and Global Education 249 dactics and the learning by exposure-factor the influence of the textbook on learners’ emerging images of the other is hardly quantifiable. The statistical data analysis of the corpus from 1945-85 showed that the highest coverage of Third World and global education topics occured in one of the first books published (in 1968) for the new secondary modern school audience, an issue for 14/ 15-year-olds. This is noteworthy: global education, the Third World, the role of British imperialism were more present quantitatively in a book for the less gifted learners than in a book for grammar schools. A reconstruction of the authors’ intention traced the following motives: English had just been introduced as a subject into the secondary modern school due to the democratisation efforts of the left-wing government and educationalists. In this situation of fundamental societal change textbook authors created new content instead of simply slightly modernising already existing canonical topics. The qualitative analysis proved that the newest textbooks in that corpus, i.e. the ones published in the 80s, generally dealt with both global education and Global English. The simplest approach in all textbooks was a cartographic one: all books had a world map designating the English speaking countries. The quality criterion applied in the study, was, however, if and how authentic texts written by Third World authors (both fictional and factual) were integrated. Global education and Global English topics occurred in the following types of texts: 1. didactic texts (stories about ficticious characters) 2. short information texts Example: a list of some modern African writers in English. There was no question for the learners nor any explanation concerning the reasons for using English as the poetic medium 3. explicit sections on the English language world-wide Example: tables ranking languages by number of speakers, texts in pidgin English, maps of the world, bilingualism, a question like: Why have decolonized states retained English? It can be deduced from the corpus that the textbook authors themselves supported global education and took an ambiguous stance as regards the role of Global English. What can be stated critically is that the topic was approached in a very abstract way. Textbooks present secondary reality, they are estranged from current learner reality. It can be argued that the situation and the intended message remain remote from learner experience even if they are wrapped around autobiographical snippets or uttered by the textbook’s anchor figures. It is necessary to measure out the distance between the German learner and the represented speaker of Global English in slow and careful classroom discourse, allowing plenty of room for learners’ questions and their own experience wherever comparisons can be drawn. <?page no="254"?> Angelika Kubanek-German 250 Giving the topic a voice: the speakers in textbooks The world of Global English and global issues are presented to the learner in texts. These texts speak. The voices of the textbook writers are hidden to the students because the mechanisms of reader guidance through the selection of topics and phrasing of exercises are not obvious to them. As in fiction, authorial comment occurs in the textbooks. An example of the universal, vague humanitarian approach mentioned in the section on the concept of cosmopolitan education is contained in a text on Global English: “What [men] hope and fear is much the same all over the world. The family of man speaks with the same tongue” (Kubanek, 1987: 261). Types of global protagonists in textbooks of the 1980s Western protagonists Example Development engineer German engineers building a road in Iran (book for 14-year-olds at secondary modern school) Researcher Scottish ethnologist among Indian tribe in Latin America Historical figures/ persons commenting on history 1982: A retired colonial officer looking back to the 20s. “[The other berth on the train to Bombay was occupied by an Indian.] I am sorry to say that by that time I had become affected by the mentality of the ruling class in India and I said […] ‘I want to have the gentleman ejected’. He spoke absolutely perfect English and he could have taught me a great deal about India. It is one of the incidents of my life of which I am most ashamed.” The eyewitness approach, (autobiographical approach) is used. The comment is put into the mouth of a British speaker, not of the German textbook writer. Racist Incidents about slavery, or about Apartheid are reported. The empathy is directed towards the victims. Representatives of public opinion Controversial discussions by fictitious journalists Tourist Students, families, British children visiting their family in a developing nation Altruist “A girl from Bradford wants to teach in a developing country” as title of a learner text. The outsider Existential homelessness, not being rooted in a specific culture, occurs sometimes. Here: a white person confronted with aborigines, is presented as insecure. <?page no="255"?> Global English and Global Education 251 Apart from such comments, the protagonists as they appear in the textbook material can be classified according to the roles attributed to them. This list is put together based on textbooks published in the 1980s, and was checked against more recent textbooks. Protagonists from the Third World Examples The poor and hungry “The nearest town that had not been flooded was crowded with refugees […]” “If children in the industrialized parts of the Western world know anything about hungry children in South East Asia, Africa and Latin America, they have learnt it from TV reports.” Teenagers from developing countries Comment: the teenagers voices might have been obtained - in the pre-Internet days - during a visit of the textbook author, they might be adapted, personalised factual texts, or they might be fictitious, stating the textbook team’s attitude. Short autobiographical snippets. This approach has been used since the 1980s: Kenyatta (aged 14) Kenya: “The boy at school will be a manager and have a big car. The boy at home will just become a thief and a robber. If you don’t know English they will say that you are a useless man and they won’t do what you tell them.” Zaidee Ray: “[A]s there are so many different languages in India, it is important to learn English. You can’t get a good job if you don’t speak English fluently.” George: “Black people have to be good at English if we are going to change the policy of apartheid.” Political figures (existing politicians or speakers pronouncing a political opinion) In some cases, reference is made to political events (Nigerian civil war; or a university student in Paris discusses political change with his fellow students). Letters from children living in a developing country Comment: efforts to increase the degree of authenticity. A boy from St. Vincent, “Derek” describes his home, in a text reproduced in the form of a handwritten letter, the text is authentic, the photo is added, the letter was re-written by a British child. Sources were private material or the British press. Fictionalised immigration experience Textbooks typically present immigrant families from Pakistan or India with a child the age of the German learner. The family history is hinted at. Fictional writers from developing countries The genres found in the corpus were fables, poems (e.g. by a Columbian US immigrant married to a Chinese: “Can I create an expression of my soul? ”) and extracts from Chinua Achebe’s novel: Things fall apart. To sum up: In the textbooks of the 1980s there is no glorification of British imperialism or English as a perfect world language. Critical cultural studies <?page no="256"?> Angelika Kubanek-German 252 seem to have influenced the choices made by the textbook authors. There were no incidents of protagonists from the learners’ culture - i.e. Germany - using their English. The change from the earlier textbooks to those from the 1980s lies in the fact that reports from the perspective of a Third World country are included in the later textbook generation. A change of attitude towards the learners occurred as the textbook authors assumed that younger learners could and should be confronted with such authentic material. The problem lies in the fragmentary nature of such short extracts which cannot possibly make vivid the geographical and mental space they refer to. The hermeneutic question remains whether, even if authentic voices are included who state their opinion about English in their country, such protagonists and their realities can be imagined and brought to life by German teenage learners who are so remote from such experience. English as a world language The textbook authors’ attitude towards Global English can be summarised as follows: first, there is the universal, vague humanitarian approach. It is condensed in the following authorial statement, part of which was quoted above: “Here in this book are people from all over the world speaking English, but what they do and say, what they feel and think, what they work and play at, is much the same in any language. The family of man speaks with the same tongue” (Kubanek, 1987: 261). Next, there is the ambiguous political point of view as revealed in the following authorial comment in a didactic text written in English: A fictitious Englishman explains: “Indians can be understood better than the Scottish. [...] We the imperialists brought the language. [...] Some people think that the Anglo-Saxon nations use English as a weapon with which to dominate the world. But of course this is nonsense” (Kubanek, 1987: 262). Third, the German learner is shown the pragmatic necessity to learn English by being confronted with teenagers in developing countries explaining why English is important for them. Fourth, there is the wish to provide factual information. Rankings of widely and less used languages are given, often a pidgin variety is presented in a text. The phenomenon of bilingualism appears. Maps show the spread of English. Some explicit comments on English as a dominating language occur. Fifth, the inversion strategy is used. A visitor from a Third World country who came to Germany is introduced. This text makes use of the method of cultural contrasting. The visitor, a ficticious boy from Benin starts out by giving some information about his traditional culture, and then continues: When I was six years old I went to primary school in Uzebu. […] During the first two years all the teaching was done in Edo […]. But from the beginning of the 3 rd year the language of instruction was English. Of course we knew some English we had learned from the older ones, but it was a sort of Pidgin English, a mixture of <?page no="257"?> Global English and Global Education 253 English, our native language Edo, and words from a lot of other Nigerian languages (textbook excerpt taken from Kubanek, 1987: 264). Sixth, there is the British teenager travelling to a Third World country: A British boy is visiting The Gambia, and makes contact with a local 14-yearold: Malick: Bonjour… Peter: Oh! Er…mmm - I’m afraid I don’t speak French. Malick: Oh, that’s OK. Er…I speak English. You see, I am Gambian. Are you English? Peter: Yes. There was no German teenage protagonist in the corpus visiting a country outside Europe and using his English. Approaches in textbooks currently in use (1997-2004) Two series by publishers well positioned in the German market may serve to describe current approaches. From among the complete series, the issues for middle school (Realschule) were selected because they represent a middle path between the more demanding books for grammar schools and the simpler material in secondary modern school. Bayswater (vol. 1-5) was developed by German EFL methodologists who strongly advocated a project and experience oriented approach, the series partly incorporates material designed for Dutch schools. English G 2000 is a modernised version of a longseller of the publishing house of Cornelsen. Generally speaking, learner orientation in the sense of trying to explain grammar and to present learning strategies have been a pre-occupation for the authors of both series. The traditional didactic principle of the expanding circles is followed: the United States are presented after GB in vol. 4, whereas the concluding vol. 5 presents political and moral controversies (Ireland, environmental education, career discussions, job applications) and the far off lands (Australia, India). Also, the topic of identity and sense of belonging is addressed. In the first volume, textbook teenagers are usually shown to have international friends, and in the introduction there are passages about how many English words the learner already knows. Another strategy in the textbooks, which was, however, already used in previous textbook generations, is the classmate from Pakistani or Indian immigrant background as one of the anchor figures. In Bayswater, vol. 3, for example, there is Kerim, whose parents came from India. One lesson text (p. 18) describes how he goes shopping with Rosemary, “a new girl”, whose father is an international banker, and Kerim learns that she has been to a lot of countries. In the same volume there is a comic strip version of Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday: “Robinson taught Man Friday how to speak English”. One of the follow up questions is: “Have you ever been lonely, homesick? ” (p. 55). <?page no="258"?> Angelika Kubanek-German 254 A whole page (see figure 1) is devoted to cultural identity: “What is home? Where is home? ” Figure 1: What is home? Where is home? In the same book, there is factual information about Global English. This appears once integrated into a report about the BBC world service, with an extramural task to tune in to the station and note and tell what one has understood (p. 88-89), and again later when different Englishes in Great Britain and English as a world language are referred to (p. 102). The series English G 2000 provides the following result. The first volume starts out with notes on English in Germany, the anchor figures in a multicultural class and some photos from around the world with English road signs. Volume 2 focuses on the European dimension, it uses the cartografic approach. Volume 3 focuses on a British multicultural school. The children are drawn, not photographed. As a project, a visit of an imaginary British school partnership class is to be prepared. A whole unit is devoted to a story of multicultural friendship. The textbook family of Mr and Mrs Patel is introduced with the parents still speaking in Urdu. The learners read the story of a suc- <?page no="259"?> Global English and Global Education 255 cessful actress of Indian parentage (see figure 2), and the class practises mediating competence (for tourists in Germany). BARBARA When did your parents come to England, Meera? 15 MEERA They came in 1960, from Delhi, the capital of India. BARBARA Did they speak English when they arrived? MEERA Oh, yes. They spoke English well. 20 My first language was English. I had to learn Punjabi when I was a bit older. BARBARA Punjabi? MEERA Yes. Their first language was 25 Punjabi. All my family in India speak Punjabi. BARBARA You were born in England, but you still have family in India. Have you ever been to India? 30 MEERA Yes, lots of times. BARBARA When was your first visit? MEERA When I was four years old. BARBARA Can you remember that first trip? MEERA Oh, yes! 35 I remember the heat and the noise. And I remember that we spent most of the time outside. It was so exciting - cold, grey England and then that! 40 BARBARA And the language? MEERA Punjabi! I couldn’t speak a word at that time, but it was fine. My cousins spoke Punjabi, I spoke English and ... well, we 45 understood each other - kids always do! Figure 2: Textbook excerpt The material in figures 1 and 2 was selected because it mirrors current tendencies in German discussion on intercultural issues in ELT. One is the fact that topics remain stable across textbook generations, multicultural Britain being one of them. Therefore immigrants’ stories are stock texts. However, whereas the table above showed that the topic was taken up in didactic texts we now find authentic stories, and they appear as stories of success. Rather than having the learner mentally travel to India, some information about India is integrated into the story of immigrants in Britain - one might wonder <?page no="260"?> Angelika Kubanek-German 256 if this strategy reduces or doubles the degree of foreignness of the cultural content? The other tendency is to confront the learner with the issue of identity, as the first illustration shows. The attempt is made, by direct questions, to make the learner consider the concept of transience, travelling, even interculturality in the sense Waldenfels advocates. Some notes for a framework As the analyses showed, German textbooks cover a large variety of aspects in the context of Global English and global education. At the same time, standardisation processes are observable: there are traditions concerning the preferred geographical regions and types of protagonists. For future work, it is suggested that both authors who analyse textbooks and textbook writers themselves consider the following factors and dimensions: a. Background disciplines: Area studies, Intercultural education, Linguistics ,Visual culture studies b. Empirical documentation: Topics, Space, Protagonists c. Reconstruction of the concepts of otherness and interculturality with categories taken from literary studies or ethnography (cf. Hall, 1997; Rösch, 2000; Waldenfels, 2000) d. Empirical documentation of classroom discourse occurring while learners deal with the topics e. Learners’ prior knowledge and attitudes (cf. Kubanek-German, 2003) Of the aspects mentioned above, it seems that the dimension of space would require special consideration, as is contains several sub-dimensions. The space allotted to the topic (quantitative aspect) It is possible to simply count the length and size of articles, exercises, illustrations as an indication of relevance. The fictional space (setting) of the textbook stories Personalisation, biographical and narrative approach are used in textbooks to motivate learners. The borderlines of the world inhabited by the protagonists can be retraced. Where do the anchor figures live? How is the respective location described? What are the protagonists experiencing, talking about? The geographical space (regions) covered Where is English spoken? Are English-speaking countries presented, or also regions/ cities where English is spoken as a medium of communication? <?page no="261"?> Global English and Global Education 257 Dynamics: the protagonists’ movements across territories A factual text like a rank list of English speakers can be classified as static. If, on the other hand, the life stories of the anchor figures or of authentic persons are told, cf. the text about the contemporary British-Indian writer (see illustration 2) there are flashbacks to the parents’ original culture, or reference to travels which might be followed by reflections on biculturality. Such texts may be classified as dynamic. Expected imaginative movements of learners The learners might simply proceed through the texts and exercises about Global English, regarding them like any other teaching matter, made to teach grammar or increase vocabulary. However, if time on task is given to imagine the situations described, to enter a dialogue with the protagonists, to possibly act out scenes, the space might become less abstract, even though, from a hermeneutic perspective, empathy with the speakers is not possible. The real territory: the known world of the learners It is useful to find out about the learners’ prior knowledge. It is quite easy, for example to ask the class to write down individually the countries they have visited, or to create a large map as a collective work. Even if most children travel little, there still is quite some experience to be brought forward in class. If beginners are not able to use English, the respective lesson could be one in the mother tongue or done in team-teaching of the mother-tongue and the foreign language teacher. Also, “linguistic landscapes” of a class could be created 2 . During this type of work, the learners’ ideas and attitudes about countries, languages and alterity will emerge (for some background reading cf. Kremers & Frijters, 2002). Conclusion If the positive connotations of the utopian ‘Weltbürger’ are deemed worthy of consideration, and if there is a true attempt to turn the topics of Global English and global education into a tangible experience even in the secondary reality of the classroom, two aspects seem relevant for future didactic planning: 1. More consideration ought to be given to the dimension of space. 2. Time should be set aside for an extensive classroom dialogue, giving learners the chance to report on prior experience and imagine and discuss the settings and issues the textbooks present. However, instead of puzzling together Global English topics themselves from a variety of fragmentary sources, the authors might present to the learners the worlds of teenage immigrants as depicted in contemporary novels by Anglo-Indian, Anglo- African, Carribean, etc. writers - for who making imaginary worlds come alive is both profession and talent (cf. Freese, 2002; Rösch, 2000). <?page no="262"?> Angelika Kubanek-German 258 Notes 1 If not indicated otherwise all translations are my own. 2 Both procedures were used in the “Dresden Study” (2003), conducted by the author 2000-2002/ 04 about the emerging language and cultural competence in English, French, Czech and Polish of 150 grade 3 and 4 learners in Saxony. Available from author: Summary report (in German) and pragmatic competence test transcripts and results (again in German) in the CHILDES database. References Edelhoff, C. (ed.) (2000) Bayswater. Textbook 3. Frankfurt: Diesterweg. Freese, P. (2002) The chances and limits of ‘Intercultural Understanding’ in the advanced EFL-classroom. In P. Freese (ed.) Teaching America. Selected essays (pp. 11- 31). München: Langenscheidt. von Goethe, J.W. (1989) Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. 2. Fassung. In: G. Neumann and H.-G. Drewitz (eds) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Sämtliche Werke. Band 10 (pp. 261- 774). Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag (first published 1829). Günther, H. (ed.) (1981) Karl Philipp Moritz - Werke. Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Insel. Hall, S. (ed.) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage. Hunfeld, H. (1997) Zur Normalität des Fremden. Voraussetzungen eines Lehrplans für interkulturelles Lernen. Life: Material für interkulturelles Lernen, Teil 1.1.1. München: BMW AG. Hunfeld, H. (2004) Fremdheit als Lernimpuls: Skeptische Hermeneutik - Normalität des Fremden - Fremdsprache Literatur. Meran/ Klagenfurt: alpha beta/ Drava. Kant, I. (1964) Der Charakter des Volkes. In Anthropologie in pragmatischer Absicht, 2. verb. Auflage 1800. In W. Weischedel (ed.) Werke, Band 6: Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik (pp. 658-671). Frankfurt: Insel. Kremers, N. and Frijters, S. (2002) Teaching models for intercultural education. In A. del Canto, R. Cleminson, Á.J. Gordo Lopez and A. Muñoz Sedano (eds) La Educación intercultural/ Intercultural Education (pp. 291-301). Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid. Kubanek, A. (1987) Dritte Welt im Englischlehrbuch der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Aspekte der Darstellung und Vermittlung. Regensburg: Pustet. Kubanek-German, A. (2001) Kindgemäßer Fremdsprachenunterricht. Band 1. Ideengeschichte. Münster: Waxmann. Kubanek-German, A. (2003) Frühes Intensiviertes Fremdsprachenlernen. Abschlussbericht der Wissenschaftlichen Begleitung eines Modellprojekts des Sächsischen Kultusministeriums (’Dresden Study’, internal report). Braunschweig/ Dresden. Moritz, K.P. (1981) Andreas Hartknopf. Eine Allegorie. In: H. Günther (ed.) Werke. Band 1 (pp. 401-470). Frankfurt: Insel. Rösch, H. (2000) Globalisierung in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur und ihrer Didaktik. DIE - Informationen zur Deutschdidaktik, 24 (4), 18-35. Waldenfels, B. (2000) Zwischen den Kulturen. Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache 26, 245-261. Weniger, E. (ed.) (1966) Friedrich Schleiermacher - Pädagogische Schriften. Düsseldorf: Küpper (first published 1826). <?page no="263"?> Section 5 Teacher Education In section 5 the objectives are to develop an intercultural and pedagogical framework for the education and training of future English language teachers with regard to the use of English as a global (and national) language. The section reports on a research project involving future teachers of English in Germany and includes a critical review of other research activities on nonnative English teachers. In her study, Maike Grau investigates first-year students training to become teachers in German schools and focuses on their awareness of English as a Global Language. The results show that the majority of the students do not favour near-nativeness as a general objective for teaching in secondary schools but rather international intelligibility. However, when it comes to selected features of pronunciation and grammar, an American or British native speaker standard is the preferred option. Numerous comments express concerns with the English language classroom and problems which occur when standards and norms are blurred. At the same time the students’ comments show an awareness of the diversity in standards. In his review, George Braine selects six studies on non-native speaker (NNS) English teachers, most of which have not yet been published. He detects differences in the self-perception of NNS teachers and NS teachers in terms of language proficiency and teaching behaviour. Students are tolerant of the differences, even of NNS teachers’ accents, and become more supportive the longer they are taught by NNS teachers. However, many students seem to have no clear concept of NS and NNS. Braine concludes that NNS teachers must be made aware that English is no longer a unitary language and that students must be made aware that international English has no owners. In fact, it is their language, too. <?page no="265"?> Maike Grau English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? Introduction: English as an International Language and ELT The global spread of the English language has led to an increasing variety of its use in terms of contexts, purposes, and interactants (see Crystal, 1997; Graddol, 1997). In the eyes of many ELT experts, this development, and specifically the growing importance of lingua franca communication should be mirrored in curricula, materials, and English language classrooms around the world (see, for example, Crystal, 2001; Gnutzmann, 1999; Seidlhofer, 2001). Texts and tasks should no longer exclusively refer to native speaker contexts, but also to situations where English is used as a lingua franca. For learners who are not explicitly learning English in order to communicate in native speaker contexts, native speaker norms and the native speaker as a model have been criticized (e.g. Kramsch, 1998; Widdowson, 1994). While research into the nature of lingua franca situations is still relatively young and does not claim to be directly transferable to the EFL classroom, a number of interesting results have already been published (see, for example, Knapp & Meierkord, 2002; House, 2002: 246ff. for a summary of research findings). In The Phonology of English as an International Language, Jennifer Jenkins (2000) analyses empirical data from conversations between nonnative speakers of English from different L1 backgrounds. On this basis she introduces a Lingua Franca Core (LFC), emphasising phonological features that are crucial for learners who predominantly use English in international contexts. Phonological areas which appeared to have less relevance for intelligibility are excluded from the LFC, especially if they are hard to learn for many learners of English, such as the interdental fricatives / ð/ and / / . Since her data showed that neither of the substitutions / f/ and / v/ , / t/ and / d/ , / s/ and / z/ were a problem for mutual understanding 1 , “[t]he LFC does not stipulate what should replace / ð/ and / / but merely excludes them as not being necessary to safeguard EIL [English as an International Language] phonological intelligibility” (p. 138). 2 Authors whose suggestions for changes in ELT are conceptual in nature rather than based on empirical research include Burger (2000) and Alptekin (2002). In their call for a radical rethinking of present practices in the field of ELT, both start with the need for people to use English as a working language in a global economy with its transnational companies and joint ventures, as well as in the fields of politics, arts and science, and in the media. As <?page no="266"?> Maike Grau 262 a result, unlike learners of other foreign languages, learners of English tend to show only very little interest in the culture of English-speaking countries. 3 The traditional approach of communicative language learning, which “considers target language-based communicative competence to be essential in order for foreign language learners to participate fully in the foreign language culture”, no longer holds under these circumstances (Alptekin, 2002: 58). An alternative model should take into account the communicative contexts in which most will be using English today, which often are not nativespeaker settings. As a consequence, in his suggestions for suitable ELT materials and activities Alptekin aims at the learners’ global and local communicative needs, while “[d]iscourse displaying exclusive native speaker use should be kept to a minimum, as it is chiefly irrelevant for many learners in terms of potential use in authentic settings” (ibid. 63). Considering the growing number of voices that express uneasiness with the way English is taught around the world, questions about the implementation of the proposed changes are increasingly relevant. As some of the experts realise, the learners with their needs and expectations should be central to curriculum planning and materials design. Radical changes will therefore only be possible if learners in different teaching and learning contexts and with their specific needs, attitudes and motivations are taken seriously. This is even more the case with classroom teachers. Crucial to implementing any changes is a consideration of their beliefs and practices, their willingness or reluctance to act as “agents of change” (Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 1999: 426), adapting methods and approaches to adjust to the status of English as an International Language. Clearly, research into classroom practice and into practitioners’ views is needed to provide a realistic picture of the opinions of ELT experts both in practice and in theory. The aim of this paper is to report on a study that was conducted among students in a teacher training course at the University of Giessen, Germany. Against the background of their experience as students of English in German secondary schools, but also with a view to their future role as teachers themselves, they comment on aspects of the current debate on English as an International Language. To provide a context for this study, other papers dealing with the role of teachers in the changing focus of English teaching will be briefly reviewed. Teachers’ views on shifting norms in ELT Ivor Timmis (2002) is one of the first to report on “a classroom view” of English as an International Language, carrying out a survey among teachers and students in over 45 countries. His study revealed that, compared to the relatively traditional attitudes among the students surveyed, “[t]eachers seem to be moving away from native-speaker norms faster than students are” (ibid.: 248). However, this judgement does not seem to hold true for the group of <?page no="267"?> English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? 263 German secondary school teachers interviewed by Decke-Cornill (2002). Her data suggest that, while a lingua franca approach on the whole is seen as a threat to traditional English teaching with its clear orientation towards native-speaker norms and focus on accuracy, there seem to be different tendencies influenced by the teachers’ educational background and the type of school at which they teach. Teachers with a university degree in English were mostly likely to reject the idea of a lingua franca programme on the grounds that it would mean a step down from their present approach that combines language, literature, and culture. While the results of this case-study are certainly not generalisable, they at least partly reflect the way teacher education in Germany is structured: “At present, that education remains very much embedded in the philological realm of British and American studies, both culturally and linguistically, with a literary canon that mirrors the ‘Great Tradition’” (ibid.: 69). A similar teacher education concept in Austria is the context of Seidlhofer and Widdowson’s study (2003), in which prospective teachers were challenged to think about their future profession in the light of the role of English as a Lingua Franca. Among the varied and partly emotional reactions the university students expressed in writing was the questioning of their own language-learning experience at secondary school and their teacher education course at university, which they described as being very closely modelled on native speaker norms. Whereas the students in Seidlhofer and Widdowson’s study were already in their third or fourth year at university, most of the students in the following report were in their first year. Having only just entered university, their memories of studying English as a compulsory subject in secondary school are still fresh. In the following, I will first briefly comment on the context and methodology of the study and will then present some of the data. The analysis will centre around the questions asked at the outset: What inside view can we get from respondents who are at the threshold between high school and university and preparing to return to the classroom as teachers? What can their answers tell us about their knowledge and awareness of English as an International Language? If the global dimension of English is to be included in teacher education, it is essential to find out what students know about the issues, if they are interesting and relevant for them as future teachers of English, and what they think about the possible consequences for ELT. The study The study was carried out in three parallel courses designed primarily for first year students of English at the University of Giessen, Germany, throughout the winter semester 2002/ 3 (October-February). While all of the 231 students who took part in the study are students in the department of English, their course profiles are different in terms of their other subject(s) <?page no="268"?> Maike Grau 264 and the school type they will eventually teach in, varying between primary, lower or upper secondary school, or adult education. As an integral part of the course “Introduction to ELT”, which is held entirely in English, the survey and the follow-up discussion were in English, although comments were permitted in German. The data collection took place in two parts: Part one was a questionnaire, which the students filled out in their first session of the course. Part two was a follow-up discussion in the last week of the semester, based on the results of the survey. The questionnaire consisted of questions about the way English teaching in Germany should deal with the international status of the English language concerning teachers, the language model, pronunciation, grammar, and content. The ten questions contained either a provocative statement that the respondents had to agree or disagree with, or several suggestions from which they had to choose the one they most agreed with. Each of the questions had a third option for expressing uncertainty. Underneath each of the questions there was an optional ‘comment’ section, which the respondents frequently used for giving reasons for their choice, for varying the wording in the option they chose, or for expressing frustration over the provocative either-or of the given options, indicating that both options were really what they would like to have chosen. Almost all of the questions were taken from publications on the issue of English as an International Language, but worded in fairly colloquial language, excluding technical terms as much as possible. The items were chosen because, at the time the questionnaire was designed, they seemed to be the most concrete suggestions which had the desired potential for provoking discussion. As will be shown in the following, the questions were indeed provocative, as they seem to put into question some of the most central elements of traditional English teaching in secondary schools. The study served the double purpose of data-gathering and awarenessraising by both eliciting information about students’ opinions and providing a context in which the topic could be discussed in the course. Given the integration of the study into the course itself, and especially the fact that the three parallel discussions at the end of the semester were chaired by different teachers, the data cannot be generalisable. Nonetheless, the survey results, which were on the whole supported and supplemented by the arguments put forward in the follow-up discussions, highlight tendencies which can be valuable as a basis for further research. While the survey and the discussion centred around several topics and included ten questions, I will only present a selection of the survey in this paper. The first 4 question concerned the kind of English that should be taught in schools. The second one dealt with the language input in written and spoken texts, whereas questions three, four and five focused on aspects of language production, namely pronunciation and grammar. <?page no="269"?> English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? 265 Question 1: Variety/ varieties of English Which variety should be taught in German schools? The following options were given; the numbers indicate the percentage of students who chose each answer: A. Mainly American English B. Mainly British English C. Both D. Others E. No preference 6% 24% 65% 0% 5% The responses to this question seem to reflect most of the students’ experiences in learning English at secondary school, starting out with British English, before being introduced to American English. Similarly, aspects of life in the UK are mainly dealt with in textbooks of the first three years, the USA being introduced at a later stage. 5 This emphasis on British English for the study of English is also shown in some of the respondents’ comments to support their choice of option B: it’s better to speak ‘classical’ English than American English because it’s the ‘native English’ [BrE] the younger students are, the more British English should be taught it’s clearer [BrE] - It’s easier for Germans to imitate it [BrE]. 6 The following quote represents the minority of students who thought that the main focus should be on American English: - American English is just more important, ‘cause you need it more often. Whereas this student expresses a personal opinion, another student tries to base his claims on ‘facts’: - The American continent is the biggest one and most people speak English, so it’s the most important language. This comment was taken up and modified in the follow-up-discussion by a student with a more solid geographical knowledge: - The biggest continent is Asia, and the language spoken by most people on the American continent is Spanish! Throughout the data there was clear evidence that the issue of varieties is still very much related to the prestige value assigned by a cultural majority or a even particular group: “I hate the American chewing gum accent”, vs. “British English sounds gay”, or “Perhaps in India native speakers are needed (as teachers) because Indian accent is very terrible”. All of these comments show that even students of English and prospective teachers of this language are <?page no="270"?> Maike Grau 266 not free of stereotypes regarding language varieties, especially the sound that is associated with them. The item presented in the following is also related to the question of which English is relevant for German teenagers, but it addresses the language presented in teaching materials, i.e. the language students are exposed to in oral and written texts. 7 Another difference from the previously presented item is that the idea of ‘non-native varieties’ is explicitly mentioned. Question 2: Which language should be presented in teaching materials? Please indicate which statement you find most appropriate: A. Teaching materials (books and audio tapes) should include as many authentic native speaker dialogues as possible. Students need models of real English. 50% B. Teaching materials (books and audio tapes) should include as many different English accents as possible, including dialogues between speakers of countries such as Italy or Japan who use English as an International Language. Students need to understand both native speakers and non-native speakers of English. 46% C. No preference 4% Despite the provocative wording of A, referring to “real English”, 50% of the respondents thought it most important to introduce students to native speaker models. To support their choice of option A, students expressed concern in their comments about the ‘purity’ of input in English language classes: suggestion B would confuse the pupils to avoid that the kids speak with a strange accent first of all it is important to understand native speakers. Comments from the slightly smaller group of students who thought that students should be exposed to both native and non-native varieties of English generally pointed out the great variety of accents world-wide, such as: - In an English-speaking world you need to understand many people with different accents. The following two items relate to the topic of pronunciation: the first to the general concept of ‘accented intelligibility’, and the second to the pronunciation of ‘th’ in particular. <?page no="271"?> English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? 267 Question 3: Pronunciation What should be the objective in German schools concerning pronunciation in English? Which of the following statements do you most agree with? A. The objective should be near-nativeness. There should be no foreign accent. 33% B. The objective should be international intelligibility. As long as other speakers of English (native or non-native) can understand you without any problems, it does not matter if they can tell by your accent that you are German (or other nationality). 65% C. No preference. 2% This question is set at a general level and introduces the juxtaposition of the concept of international intelligibility 8 and near-nativeness as learning/ teaching aims. In this question, referring to language production, a majority of 65% opted for B, i.e. for a pronunciation training that takes into account an international context. This attitude may be the result of an international consciousness, which claims the right to speak English with an accent, as expressed in the following two comments: - We don’t have to sound like Oxford people, we have to develop our own style. As long as it is understood, it is all good. - The preference shouldn’t be a ‘native English’. English as a language spoken worldwide should have difference in between itself, because people come together from different countries. The awareness of an accent can however also cause frustration over the missed chance to speak in a less marked way, which is shown by this comment: - It would be great if I were able to get rid of my accent (it’s very strong). Probably I’ll never achieve this aim, but every student should be given the chance to try and speak without major accent. That’s why they should be taught near-nativeness. Another student challenged the concept of intelligibility underlying option B by offering an alternative version of how best to avoid misunderstandings: - By teaching near-nativeness, you get the best result and command understanding in a discussion. There are not so many misunderstandings. It is interesting to note that option B challenged quite a few students’ notions of learning English. In fact, more comments are aimed at expressing indigna- <?page no="272"?> Maike Grau 268 tion over this statement than consent with either of the two statements. Just to name two that explicitly contradicted option B: - You should try to have no foreign accent. - It’s important that people with another nationality don’t recognize that you’re German…! The ambiguity between an ideal and a realistic aim was also commented on by a number of students, as the following two quotes show: - (option A) Still: It wouldn’t matter if you had a certain accent - it’s just an ideal. - […] as a non-native speaker it is impossible to speak without any accent. The following two questions no longer refer to an ideal or to a general approach but rather focus on concrete items that have been mentioned as possible candidates to be left out of the curriculum when teaching according to a Lingua Franca Core. Question four focuses on the phonemes / ð/ and / / , and question five on the use of ‘would’ in conditional clauses. Question 4: / ð/ and / / Phonetic problems of learners should not be emphasised in the English language classroom if they are not a problem for understanding. Everyone will understand a speaker with a ‘th-problem’ who uses ‘s’ or ‘d’ in ‘thank you’. A. I agree 22% B. I don’t agree 59% C. Unsure 19% It is interesting to note that the general acceptance of accented intelligibility expressed in the previous question is taken back in this concrete example. Certainly, most students had enough exposure to ‘th-drills’ in their time at school and are aware of the fact that the correct pronunciation of ‘th’ is indeed a challenge for speakers of German. The rejection of the proposal by a majority of respondents is therefore not surprising. This item received numerous comments that included a wide variety of arguments and was clearly among the most controversial issues in the follow-up discussion. The following comments represent certain arguments that repeatedly came up in the survey and the follow-up discussion. Some of the reactions were purely emotional in expressing their disapproval: - It sounds terrible and it sounds like: you want to but you can’t. <?page no="273"?> English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? 269 Other students mentioned the relationship between accent, identity and acceptability. In this case the speaker does not want to be recognised as an ‘outsider’ because of an obvious deviation from the native speaker pronunciation: - He or she is understandable with this problem, but he/ she would surely be recognised by native speakers and that is what I (personally) don’t prefer. A number of students express concern with the (native speaker) norm of the language or rather the consequences of not following the norm, the loss of standards: - When you speak a language you should try to speak like a native speaker. - Otherwise, English will become a completely different language. The last question presented here resembles question 5 in that it presents a concrete example of what a concentration on some sort of Lingua Franca Core - in this case in the area of grammar - could look like. It has a similarly provocative potential because it represents a feature that is recognised as a specifically problematic area for Germans due to interference from L1. Question 5: ‘would’ Grammatical mistakes that do not cause problems of understanding should not be emphasised in class (e.g. ‘would’ in conditional clauses). A. I agree 10% B. I don’t agree 82% C. Unsure 8% The result shows a plain rejection of the proposal; it is much more definite than in question 4. This could be a result of the notion of grammar as being more teachable than pronunciation, whereas a number of students admitted that in reality many Germans do not achieve a near-native pronunciation of / ð/ and / / . The arguments are, however, similar to those presented in the previous item: Most comments show concern about the norm or are outraged because of this ‘heretic’ claim: - If you teach English, teach it right. - We should learn how to write and speak proper English and not some kind of ‘degenerated’ form. One student sees the problem from the perspective of tests: - The example which is given is a common problem for German kids. It has to be emphasised because it is grammatically wrong and can cost points in tests (for example). <?page no="274"?> Maike Grau 270 As in the case of pronunciation, students are concerned about the impression they give when talking to native speakers, thereby not considering the context of the survey, English as an International Language: - If you talk to a native speaker and make too many mistakes, he gets the impression that you are unintelligent. This argument is contradicted by another student, who brings in experience with spoken grammar, an obviously different standard from the grammar that is predominantly taught in textbooks: - I have been to Britain and most of the English don’t care about grammatical mistakes - e.g. they don’t care about ‘some’ or ‘any’. Finally, pedagogical considerations are expressed. This could be seen as a counterargument from a different perspective that has more to do with ways of providing corrective feedback than with norms: - Too much criticism might cause the students not to talk English in class anymore. Conclusion The students’ eagerness to express their opinions in extended written comments as well as in oral contributions, indicate their considerable interest in the study. Although the items were found to be controversial, the issues raised in the study in general seemed to be relevant for them as future teachers. The fact that they were involved in current issues in the field of ELT, where there are obviously many open questions, may have contributed to their great willingness to take part in the study. The results suggest a general openness towards the position that the role of English as an International Language should have an impact in school. On a general level, a considerable number of students are in favour of introducing learners to a variety of Englishes, although British English and American English are still considered to be a sound basis for learners. The overall majority of students agree on the priority of intelligibility as a pronunciation aim in the classroom. On a more concrete level, however, two proposals concerning specific examples of ‘typical errors’ in the fields of pronunciation and grammar that do not seem to have major relevance in an international context are rejected by a majority of respondents. Given the respondents’ experience with English, these results do not come as a great surprise. In fact, one could claim that the students with their varied experiences that they bring into the course are international users of English themselves. Their experiences with English outside the classroom thus represent the context of English in its variety of uses and contexts that is the basis for the issues discussed in the survey. Apart from visits to Englishspeaking countries, the students report 9 that they use English in personal <?page no="275"?> English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? 271 contacts at home (friends from Africa) and abroad (friends in Sweden), with the media, in school visits (exchange with Norway, ‘Model European Council’), and in work-related contexts (international community in Spain, giving skiing lessons in English). These responses reflect a general tendency among young Europeans (see Berns & de Bot, this volume). At the same time, most of the participants in the study have come directly from secondary school. They are thus experts on the English language classroom in a predominantly traditional school system. Although the results do not give evidence as to how much the students’ in-class experience vs. their out-of-class experience influenced their attitudes, both clearly played a part. Some of the comments show the students’ awareness of a diversity of standards and norms in the use of English ‘in the real world’. At the same time, other comments express concern with the English language classroom and problems that might be inherent in an absence of clear standards and norms, which means that these students are imagining themselves in their future roles as teachers. To support this line of argument, it is interesting to note that many of the arguments brought forward by the students in the survey resemble the ones reported by Decke-Cornill (2002: 62ff.) in her interviews with English teachers in Germany. This can be an indicator of a tradition that is handed on from one generation of teachers to the others through the so-called “apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 1975: 61ff.). As shown by research on teacher learning, it is mainly through experiencing years of classroom teaching as students that prospective teachers acquire their ideas and concepts of learning and teaching (see Schocker-v. Ditfurth, 2001: 62ff.). Teacher education, then, has to be based on a reflection of these deep-rooted convictions. I would argue that the changes in the use of English as an International Language make the case for a reflective approach even stronger, because they are creating a situation that the present generation of teachers could not be prepared for in their teacher education courses. English as an International Language does not mean a complete reversal of present teaching programmes, but rather an additional focus. It will depend on the learner group and on the general institutional context how much of a focus on English as a Lingua Franca should be included in each curriculum. The addition of the international dimension of the English language will, however, mean that English teachers will have to be qualified in terms of their linguistic and teaching skills, attitudes, and their cultural knowledge (see Gnutzmann, 2001: 104 for a competence profile of EFL/ ELF teachers; see Crystal, 2001: 59ff.). This means that teacher education needs to adjust to these changing needs to include current debates in the field. The students and prospective teachers need to be qualified to make competent and informed choices of topics, methods, and materials that correspond to their learners’ needs. This is even more important as many students have not experienced the global dimension in their own English language classroom, as one student comments on the discussion of English as an International Language in her course portfolio: <?page no="276"?> Maike Grau 272 This session was so important because prospective teachers need to get an international perspective on English. When I went to school this did not play an important role in English language teaching. Except for one teacher who had lived and worked in Australia for a number of years who offered a project on ‘Australia’ once in a project week, input from other English speaking countries such as Australia or New Zealand was very little […]. Considering the fact that the role of the English language in the world and its growing importance as a lingua franca in many professional and personal contexts is even mentioned in current editions of curricula (see, for example, HKM, 2003 10 ), it is high time for teacher education to take this topic on board. Prospective teachers not only need to have a clear idea of how English is developing in the world, but they need to be able to apply this knowledge in their daily teaching practice. Only then can they guide their learners towards a flexible and appropriate use of the English language in a variety of contexts and situations across the world. Notes 1 Especially regarding speakers of German, it is interesting to note that Jenkins (2000: 138) reports on a case in her data where the repeated use of / z/ as a substitute provoked irritation. This example shows that acceptability and intelligibility are important in EIL communication, but to a lesser degree than in EFL (cf. ibid. pp. 160ff.). 2 This phenomenon has also been mentioned by other authors, see Crystal (2001: 57): “Would you place good euros on the long-term survival of interdental fricatives in standard English, in a world where there will be five times as many English speakers for whom th is a pain as those for whom it is a blessing? ” 3 Burger (2000: 9) refers here to a survey conducted among participants in foreign language courses in German adult education institutions (VHS). Other studies show that motivation of learners in secondary school is also at least in part instrumental (see Riemer, 2003). With the introduction of English teaching in primary school in Germany, this also holds for young learners or rather the educational authorities who made English the dominant foreign language in primary schools throughout Germany. I would still argue that school should be considered as an educational setting in its own right that should not be equated with commercial language schools or courses in institutions for adult education. Many papers dealing with EIL fail to make a distinction according to the specific educational settings and their objectives. 4 The questions used in this paper are referred to in a numerical order which does not correspond to the way they were arranged in the original questionnaire. 5 See, for example, the curriculum of the German state of Hessen for secondary school (Gymnasium) (HKM, 2003), in which the first three years of learning English are focused on Britain, before moving on to the USA in the fourth year and to topics on a European and a global level in the final years of Gymnasium. 6 The students’ comments were copied from the original questionnaires without any alterations. 7 Option B is an adapted version of Alptekin’s (2002: 63) criterion No. 5 for “a new pedagogic model…to accommodate the case of English as a means of international and intercultural communication”. <?page no="277"?> English as a Global Language - What do Future Teachers have to Say? 273 8 I use “intelligibility“ here as a general concept and as an opposite to “near-nativeness“, although I am aware of the inherent problems in the term, e.g. the role of the listener (see Field, 2003). 9 The data are from two questions in the “personal data“ section of the questionnaire, referring to visits to English-speaking countries, and to experience with communication in English outside an English-speaking country respectively. 10 “Englisch hat sich von einer Weltsprache unter anderen zu der vorherrschenden Weltsprache, zur lingua franca des beginnenden 21. Jahrhunderts entwickelt. Englisch ist in vielen Ländern Muttersprache, in zahlreichen Ländern zumindest eine der Amtssprachen, in den meisten Ländern die vorwiegend unterrichtete erste Fremdsprache“ (HKM, 2003: 2). [English has developed from just one world language among many into the leading world language, i.e. into the lingua franca of the newly emerging 21st century. English is the mother tongue in many countries, at least one of the official languages in numerous countries, and the most frequently taught first foreign language in the majority of countries“ (my translation, M.G.)]. References Alptekin, C. (2002) Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT. ELT Journal 56 (1), 57-64. Berns, M. and de Bot, K. (this volume) English language proficiency at the secondary level: a comparative study of four European countries. Brutt-Griffler, J. and Samimi, K. 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(eds) (2002) Lingua Franca Communication. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Kramsch, C. (1998) The privilege of the intercultural speaker. In M. Byram and M. Fleming (eds) Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective. Approaches through Drama and Ethnography (pp. 16-31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lortie, D. (1975) Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Riemer, C. (2003) „Englisch war für mich nur ein Teil meines Stundenplans“ - Motivation zum Englischlernen in Zeiten der Globalisierung. In N. Baumgarten, C. Böttger, M. Motz and J. Probst (eds) Übersetzen, Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Spracherwerb und Sprachvermittlung - das Leben mit mehreren Sprachen. Festschrift für Juliane House zum 60. Geburtstag. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht [Online], 8 (2/ 3), 72-96. Online document: http: / / www.spz.tudarmstadt.de/ projekt_ejournal/ jg-08-2-3/ docs/ Riemer.pdf (January 5, 05). Schocker-v. Ditfurth, M. (2001) Forschendes Lernen in der fremdsprachlichen Lehrerbildung. Tübingen: Narr. Seidlhofer, B. (2001) Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (2), 133-158. Seidlhofer, B. and Widdowson, H. (2003) House work and student work: A study in cross-cultural understanding. In N. Baumgarten, C. Böttger, M. Motz and J. Probst (eds) Übersetzen, Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Spracherwerb und Sprachvermittlung - das Leben mit mehreren Sprachen. Festschrift für Juliane House zum 60. Geburtstag. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht [Online], 8 (2/ 3), 1-13. Online document: http: / / www.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/ projekt_ejournal/ jg-08-2-3/ docs/ Seidlhofer_Widdowson.pdf (January 5, 05). Timmis, I. (2002) Native-speaker norms and International English: a classroom view. ELT Journal 56 (3), 240-249. Widdowson, H.G. (1994) The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly 28 (2), 377-389. <?page no="279"?> George Braine A Critical Review of the Research on Non-Native Speaker English Teachers Introduction Historical evidence suggests that English was probably being taught as a second or foreign language as far back as the 15 th century. William Caxton, who introduced the printing press to England, may have been the first to produce ‘course material’ for learners of English. His 1483 book was titled Right good lernyng for to lerne shortly frenssh and englyss. Although we have no evidence as to when English was first taught by non-native speakers of the language, we may safely assume that the rapid spread of English in the Elizabethan Era would have spawned a parallel growth in English language teaching, and enterprising non-native speakers may have been quick to assume the role of teachers. The spread of English world-wide has been enormously advantageous to some countries. Take the USA as an example. Currently, more than 586,000 international students are enrolled in US colleges and universities, contributing about $12 billion to the US economy annually (Institute of International Education, 2003). The presence of these students in the US is an indirect result of the spread of English world-wide; most chose to study in the US not only because of its high academic standards, but also because they could study in English, a language they were already familiar with in their home countries. Although non-native speaker (NNS) students have always been welcomed as potential sources of income, NNS teachers of English did not receive much acceptance in English-speaking countries until recently. The hundreds of graduate programs in applied linguistics and TESOL in these countries attract students from all over the world, many of them NNS. Most return home upon graduation while others may seek employment as English teachers in the country of their study, in order to gain experience in their chosen profession before returning home or to settle permanently. But, as I have pointed out elsewhere (see Braine, 2000), these NNS English teachers were merely considered a byproduct of the graduate programs, not worthy of being hired to teach English to ESL students let alone to native speakers. Ironically, this discrimination sometimes extended to their home countries as well - especially Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan - where the unwritten rule in the case of English teaching positions appeared to be “No non-native speakers need apply.” <?page no="280"?> George Braine 276 As Phillipson (1992) pointed out in his groundbreaking volume, Linguistic Imperialism, the superiority of the native speaker - what Phillipson termed the “native speaker fallacy” - could be traced back to the Commonwealth Conference on the Teaching of English as a Second Language, held in Makarere, Uganda, in 1961. One of the key tenets of the conference was that “the ideal teacher of English is a native speaker” (p. 185). The superior status thus accorded to native speakers of a language was bolstered by Chomsky’s (1965) notions of the term native speaker in relation to competence in a language. The end result was the second-class status awarded to teachers who were NNS of the language they taught. Not surprisingly, research on the selfperceptions of non-native speaker (NNS) English teachers, or the way they are perceived by their students, is a fairly recent phenomenon. This may be due to the sensitive nature of these issues because, as discussed earlier, NNS teachers were generally regarded as unequal in competence and performance to NS teachers of English, and issues relating to NNS teachers may have also been politically incorrect to be studied and discussed openly. Despite the early work of Medgyes (1992; 1994), it took nearly a decade for more research to emerge on the issues relating to NNS English teachers. In fact, there has been a surge of such studies recently, partly as a result of the establishment of the Non-Native English Speakers’ Caucus in the TESOL organization in 1999 (see Braine, 1999, or go to http: / / nnest.moussu.net/ (accessed July 21, 2004) for more information on the Caucus). At the TESOL 2003 conference in Baltimore, USA, more than 40 presentations included the acronym NNS in their titles, and most of these presentations were made by NNS English teachers themselves. This not only indicates that NNS English teachers appear to have a powerful new voice through the Caucus, but also that they are no longer reluctant to openly acknowledge themselves as NNS speakers. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the recent studies on NNS English teachers. One characteristic of these studies is that they have been conducted mainly by NNS researchers. Another is that only a few have covered students’ attitudes and preferences - probably the most crucial factor in the study of NNS teachers. A third characteristic is that these studies have been conducted in both ESL and EFL contexts. Because most of these studies were conducted for the purpose of Masters’ theses or doctoral dissertations, most are yet to be published. This paper will describe the objectives, methodologies, and findings of the following studies: Samimy & Brutt-Griffler (1999), Inbar (2001), Moussu (2002), Liang (2002), Cheung (2002), and Mahboob (2003). Based on their objectives, the studies have been classified into two categories: selfperceptions of NNS teachers and students’ perceptions of NNS teachers. Although every effort has been made to examine all recent studies on NNS English teachers, some may have not been included for the obvious reason that many theses and dissertations are difficult to access because they remain unpublished. <?page no="281"?> A Critical Review of the Research on Non-Native Speaker English Teachers 277 Self-Perceptions of NNS English Teachers No review of research into NNS English teachers could begin without reference to Peter Medgyes, himself a non-native speaker, who appears to be the first to have brought the issues concerning NNS English teachers to the open. His two articles in the ELT Journal titled “The schizophrenic teacher” (1983) and “Native or non-native: who’s worth more? ” (1992), were also the forerunners of his groundbreaking book The Non-native Teacher (first published by Macmillan in 1994 and reissued by Hueber in 1999), in which Medgyes mixed research with his own experience as a NNS English teacher and firsthand observations of other NNS teachers, and boldly discussed previously untouched topics that would be considered controversial even today: “natives and non-natives in opposite trenches”, “the dark side of being a nonnative”, “and who’s worth more: the native or the non-native”. Medgyes also advanced four hypotheses based on his assumption that NS and NNS English teachers are “two different species” (p. 25). The hypotheses were that the NS and NNS teachers differ in terms of (1) language proficiency, and (2) teaching practice (behavior), that (3) most of the differences teaching practice can be attributed to the discrepancy in language proficiency, and that (4) both types of teachers can be equally good teachers on their own terms. The first study that will be discussed, Samimy and Brutt-Griffler (1999), was influenced by Medgyes’ approach. Samimy and Brutt-Griffler surveyed and interviewed 17 NNS graduate students who were either pursuing a MA or Ph.D. in TESOL at a university in the United States. Their students, referred to as a “rather sophisticated group of nonnative speakers of English” (p. 134) by the researchers, were from Korea, Japan, Turkey, Surinam, China, Togo, Burkina Faso, and Russia. In addition to using a questionnaire to collect quantitative data, Samimy and Brutt-Griffler also gathered qualitative data through classroom discussions, in-depth interviews, and analysis of autobiographical writings of the subjects. The aims of the study were to determine how these graduate students perceived themselves as professionals in the field of English language teaching, if they thought there were differences in the teaching behaviors of NS and NNS, what these differences were, and if they felt handicapped as NNS English teachers. Responding to the questionnaire, more than two thirds of the subjects admitted that their difficulties with the language affected their teaching from “a little” to “very much”. Nearly 90% of the subjects perceived a difference between NS and NNS teachers of English. They identified the former group as being informal, fluent, accurate, using different techniques, methods, and approaches, being flexible, using conversational English, knowing subtleties of the language, using authentic English, providing positive feedback to students, and having communication (not exam preparation) as the goals of their teaching. NNS English teachers were perceived as relying on textbooks, applying differences between the first and second languages, using the first language as a medium of instruction, being aware of negative transfer and psychological aspects of <?page no="282"?> George Braine 278 learning, being sensitive to the needs of students, being more efficient, knowing the students’ background, and having exam preparation as the goal of their teaching. However, they did not consider the NS teachers superior to their NNS counterparts. The second recent study of the self-perceptions of NNS English teachers was conducted by Ofra Inbar at Tel Aviv University in Israel, in one of the first studies at doctoral-level on NNS’ issues. Inbar’s (2001) study, conducted in two phases, set out to investigate why some teachers in Israel perceived themselves as NS of English, and the effects of the native versus non-native distinction on the pedagogical perceptions of the teachers. In the second phase of the study, which is more relevant to the topic of this paper, Inbar specifically sought to discover if there were differences in perceptions between teachers who claim to be NS of English and those who do not, with regard to the following factors: differences between NS and NNS English teachers; the teaching and status of the English language; English teaching in Israel; and English teaching and assessment methods. Further, Inbar also sought to determine the effect of personal and professional background variables on the pedagogical perceptions of the teachers regarding the above issues. In the first phase, data was gathered through a self-report questionnaire distributed to 102 English teachers in Israel. In the second phase, self-report questionnaires were distributed to 264 English teachers (93 NS and 171 NNS) followed by semi-structured interviews with nine teachers. Results from the first phase indicated that the teachers’ native speaker identity could be explained by nine variables, two of which could best predict this identity: having spoken English from the age of 0 to 6, and others’ perception of them as native speakers of English. Results from the second phase of the study indicated that differences between NS and NNS teachers could be detected only in some categories, mainly the superiority of the NS teachers (as espoused by the NS teachers themselves), the degree of confidence in teaching specific language areas, and in student-teacher relations. No differences were found in perception categories relating to teaching and assessment practices, defining students’ knowledge of English, the status of the English language, and goals of teaching English. In fact, perception differences in these areas arose not from the teachers’ status as NS or NNS but from personal and professional variables such as country of birth, length of residence in the country, school level, and perceived type of school. NNS teachers reported having better relations with students and feeling more confident in using the L1 to facilitate teaching. Interviews with nine teachers confirmed the results from the self-reports. <?page no="283"?> A Critical Review of the Research on Non-Native Speaker English Teachers 279 Students’ Perceptions of NNS English Teachers The research described so far has focused on the self-perceptions of NNS English teachers. Research on students’ perceptions of these teachers, as crucial as the self-perceptions if not greater, has a more recent history. One of the first studies in this area was by Lucie Moussu in 2002, conducted at Brigham Young University in Utah. Moussu’s research questions were fourfold: (1) What feelings and expectations did the students have at first when taught by NNS English teachers, and why? (2) What other variables (such as gender, age, first language, etc.) influence the students’ perceptions of their NNS teachers at the beginning of the semester? (3) How do the variables of time and exposure to NNS teachers influence the students’ perceptions of their teachers? Moussu’s subjects were four NNS English teachers from Japan, Argentina, Ecuador, and Switzerland, and 84 ESL students above the age of 17, both males and females, from 21 different countries. All the students were enrolled in an intensive English program attached to a US university. The students responded to two questionnaires, one given the first day of class the second given fourteen weeks later on the last day of class. Over the 14-week semester, three separate sets of interviews were also conducted with six students. Analysis of the data shows that from the beginning of the semester, the students had positive attitudes towards their NNS teachers. For instance, 68% of the students said that they could learn English just as well from a nonnative speaker as from a native speaker, and 79% expressed admiration and respect for their non-native speaker teachers, and as many as 84% of the students expected their class with such a teacher to be a positive experience. The Korean and Chinese students expressed negative feelings toward their NNS teachers more frequently than other students. Time and exposure to the teachers only made their opinions more positive by the end of the semester. For instance, to the question “Would you encourage a friend to take a class with this non-native English-speaking teacher? ” only 56% of the students had answered “yes” at the beginning of the semester. By the end of the semester, 76% had answered “yes” to the same question. Kristy Liang’s research (2002) at California State University, Los Angeles, also investigated students’ attitudes towards NNS English teachers. Specifically, the study was designed to investigate 20 ESL students’ attitudes towards six ESL teachers’ accents and the features of these teachers’ speech that contribute to the students’ preference for teachers. Five of the teachers were NNS from different language backgrounds and the other was a NS. The students listened to brief audio recordings delivered by the six NNS English teachers and rated and ranked the teachers’ accents according to a scale of preference. Data was collected through questionnaires which included information on the students’ background, their beliefs about teaching, and their ranking and preferences. The results showed that, although the students rated pronunciation/ accent in the ESL teachers’ speech as very <?page no="284"?> George Braine 280 important, pronunciation/ accent did not affect the students’ attitudes toward their last NNS English teachers in their countries. In fact, the students held generally positive attitudes toward the teachers in their home countries, and believed that pronunciation/ accent was not as relevant as it appeared in the first place. Further, personal and professional features as derived from the teachers’ speech, such as “being interesting”, “being prepared”, “being qualified”, and “being professional”, played a role in the students’ preference for teachers. In conclusion, Liang (2002) suggests that, instead of focusing on ESL teachers’ ethnic and language background, the discussion on NNS English teachers should focus on their level of professionalism. So far, what has been missing is an investigation of both teachers and students in a single study, and Paulina Cheung (2002) filled this need with her research conducted in Hong Kong. Cheung’s objectives were to determine the attitudes of the university students in Hong Kong towards NS and NNS teachers of English, the strengths and weaknesses of these teachers from the perspective of students, and the capability of these teachers in motivating the students to learn English. She also attempted to determine if there was any discrimination against NNS English teachers in Hong Kong. Cheung triangulated her data collection with the use of questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations, and post-classroom interviews. The questionnaire was distributed to 420 randomly selected undergraduates from a variety of majors at seven universities in Hong Kong. Most of the students (98%) were Cantonese or Putonghua speakers, and 99% of them had learned English either in Hong Kong or China. Ten students from three universities were also interviewed. In an unusual approach, Cheung also sought the opinions of twenty-two university English teachers, ranging from head of a department to instructor at six universities. The majority of these teachers were expatriates with about 60% being NS of English. Nearly 90% had been resident in Hong Kong for more than 6 years. The results showed that both students and teachers saw NS and NNS teachers having their respective strengths. A high proficiency in English, ability to use English functionally, and the awareness of the cultures of English speaking countries were the strengths observed in NS teachers. In the case of NNS teachers, the ability to empathize with students as fellow second language learners, a shared cultural background, and the emphasis they placed on grammar were seen as their strengths. As for teacher competency, both students and teachers stated that teachers should be well-informed about the English language, able to make learning relevant and fun, good at motivating students, able to encourage independent learning and thinking, sensitive and responsive to students’ needs, and able to respect students as individuals with their own aspirations. Not all students and teachers were of the opinion that there was discrimination against NNS English teachers in Hong Kong. The only doctoral research into students’ perceptions was just completed by Ahmar Mahboob (2003) at the Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. Mahboob’s study was conducted in two phases. First, using a questionnaire, <?page no="285"?> A Critical Review of the Research on Non-Native Speaker English Teachers 281 he examined the hiring practices of the administrators of 118 college-level adult English language programs, the demographics of the English teachers in these programs, and the demographics of the students enrolled in the programs. Mahboob found that the number of NNS teachers teaching ESL in the United States is low (only 7.9% of the teachers employed at these programs), and that this low figure is disproportionate to the high number of NNS graduate students enrolled in MA TESOL and similar teacher-education programs. Mahboob attributes the low figure to the preference given by most (59.8%) program administrators to “native English speakers” in hiring practices. The second phase of Mahboob’s study is more relevant to this paper because it examined students’ perceptions of NNS teachers. Instead of using questionnaires to survey the students, Mahboob used the novel and more insightful “discourse-analytic” technique, asking 32 students enrolled in an intensive English program to provide written responses to a cue that solicited their opinions on NS and NNS language teachers. The student essays were coded individually by four readers who in turn classified the students’ comments according to linguistic factors (oral skills, literacy skills, grammar, vocabulary, culture), teaching styles (ability to answer questions, teaching methodology), and personal factors (experience as an ESL learner, hard work, affect). The analysis of these comments showed that both NS and NNS teachers received positive and negative comments. In the case of NS teachers, the majority of positive comments related to oral skills, with vocabulary and culture also being viewed positively. Negative comments on NS teachers related to grammar, experience as an ESL learner, ability to answer questions, and methodology. In the case of NNS teachers, experience as an ESL learner earned the highest number of positive comments, followed by grammar, affect, oral skills, methodology, hard work, vocabulary, culture, ability to answer questions, and literacy skills. NNS teachers received negative comments with regard to oral skills and culture. Conclusion The most obvious factor to emerge from the above description of research is that issues relating to NNS English teachers have now become a legitimate area of research. As noted at the beginning of this paper, despite the work of Medgyes in the early 1990s, studies on these issues began to be published in the United States only a decade later. The gap may be due to the fact that Medgyes’ research was published in a journal which is not widely read in the US, and that his book The Non-Native Teacher was also published only in the UK and was difficult to obtain in the US till it was reprinted by another publisher recently. As mentioned earlier, the study of NNS English teachers is a global phenomenon. The research itself has been conducted in Asia (Hong Kong and <?page no="286"?> George Braine 282 Israel), Europe (Hungary and Spain), and North America (USA). The English teachers who have been the subjects of the research have come from no less than 20 countries world-wide, including Africa and South America. In the future, researchers from more countries will be drawn to such studies, and English teachers from more countries will become research subjects. It will be a healthy trend. An unmistakable characteristic of the studies described in this paper is that they have all been conducted by NNS. This, no doubt, is an indication of the empowerment of these researchers, who are no longer hesitant to acknowledge themselves as NNS and venture into previously uncharted territory. On the other hand, research by NNS on issues that are critical to themselves may cast a shadow of doubt on the validity and reliability of the data. It must be pointed out that most of these researchers had not removed themselves, as they should have, from the data gathering process. Instead, some had designed and distributed the questionnaires, conducted interviews, and analyzed the data by themselves. When a NNS, often a novice researcher, asks a NS sensitive questions regarding NNS issues, the responses could be open to question. So, what does the research reveal? The research on self-perceptions of NNS teachers, spanning over a decade, indicate that teachers from more than 20 nationalities and even more L1 backgrounds acknowledge that differences exist between themselves and NS teachers in terms of language proficiency and teaching behavior. Keeping in mind that these are not absolute categories, NS teachers are generally seen as informal; fluent; accurate; using different techniques, methods, and approaches; flexible; using conversational English; knowing subtleties of the language; using authentic English, providing positive feedback to students, and emphasizing communication. NNS teachers admit that they rely on textbooks, apply their knowledge of the differences between the L1 and the L2, use the L1 as the medium of instruction, are aware of negative transfer and the psychological aspects of learning, are sensitive to the needs of students, know the students’ background, and have exam preparation as the aims of teaching. Generally, they have better relations with students. Some NNS teachers also affirm that their (lower) proficiency in English exerts an adverse effect on their teaching. As far as students are concerned, they see NS teachers using English functionally and being more aware of the cultures of English speaking countries. they appear to be largely tolerant of the differences between their NS and NNS teachers, even of the latter’s accents. In fact, evidence suggests that students become more tolerant and supportive of NNS teachers the longer they are taught by these teachers. In the case of students’ perceptions, one factor deserves careful attention in future research. That is, how do students define NS and NNS? Anecdotal evidence suggests that, from some students’ viewpoint, all Caucasians (including Finns, Germans, Russians, and Swedes, for instance) are NS of English. Other students, especially Asian-Americans, may not consider Ameri- <?page no="287"?> A Critical Review of the Research on Non-Native Speaker English Teachers 283 can-born Asians to be native speakers of English simply because they are not Caucasian. Hence, when pilot testing questionnaires for use in survey research, or when planning interviews, researchers should ensure that their student informants have a reasonable understanding of the terms NS and NNS. One important factor that emerges from the research is the need for more education, for both non-native speaker teachers and their students. Nonnative teachers must be made aware that English is no longer a unitary language, that there are so called Englishes, each with its own identity and recognition in social, economic, and national contexts. As long as they are mutually intelligible, these Englishes will continue to coexist and thrive. If they decline to the level of Pidgins, as they have in some contexts, they will no longer be accepted beyond these narrow national borders and contexts. As far as students are concerned, they too must be made aware that English has no owners, that it is their language, not merely a version to be studied from textbooks but a vigorous and thriving mode a communication at their service. The local variety, taught by local teachers, is as good as any variety taught by expatriate teachers. The relative merits of NS and NNS English teachers have been extensively discussed by, among others, Davies (1991), Widdowson (1994), Boyle (1997), Cook (1999). As the power of the English language spreads, more and more English teachers will be needed, and the majority of these teachers will be NNS. They will vastly outnumber their NS counterparts simply because the vast majority English users are NNS. The supply of NS English teachers, especially those willing to teach under difficult conditions for a meager salary, is limited. Especially in foreign language contexts, the teaching of English may become the exclusive domain of NNS in time to come. References Boyle, J. (1997) Imperialism and the English language in Hong Kong. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 18, 91-104. Braine, G. (1999) Nonnative Educators in English Language Teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Braine, G. (2000) Nonnative speakers and invisible barriers in ELT. TESOL Newsletter Feb/ March, 14. Cheung, Y.L. (2002) The attitude of university students in Hong Kong towards native and nonnative teachers of English. Unpublished M.Phil. thesis, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cook, V. (1999) Going beyond the native speakers in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 33, 185-210. Davies, A. (1991) The Native Speaker in Applied Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Inbar, O. (2001) Native and nonnative English teachers: Investigation of the construct and perceptions. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University, Israel. <?page no="288"?> George Braine 284 Institute of International Education (2003) Open Doors Online. http: / / opendoors.iienetwork.org/ (December 6, 2003) Liang, K. (2002) English as a second language (ESL) students’ attitudes towards Nonnative English-speaking teachers’ accentedness. Unpublished M.A. thesis. California State University, Los Angeles. Mahboob, A. (2003) Status of nonnative English speaking teachers in the United States. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Medgyes, P. (1992) Native or non-native: Who’s worth more? ELT Journal 46, 340-349. Medgyes, P. (1994) The Non-Native Teacher. London: Macmillan. Moussu, L. (2002) English as a second language students’ reactions to nonnative English speaking teachers. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, Utah, USA. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Samimy, K. and Brutt-Griffler, J. (1999) To be a native or nonnative speaker: perceptions of “nonnative” students in a graduate TESOL program. In G. Braine (ed.) Nonnative Educators in English Language Teaching (pp. 127-144). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Widdowson, H. (1994) The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly 28, 377-389. <?page no="289"?> Author Biographies Svenja Adolphs is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research interests are in corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and professional communication and she has published widely in these areas. Recent books include Introducing Electronic Text Analysis (Routledge, 2006) and Corpus and Context: Investigating pragmatic functions in spoken discourse (Benjamins, 2008). She is currently working on a multi-modal corpus of spoken discourse (funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council). Margie Berns is Professor of English as a Second Language at Purdue University (USA). Her major research interests are in World Englishes, English language pedagogy, and communicative language teaching. Kees de Bot is Chair of Applied Linguistics at the University of Groningen. His main research interests are language policy, psycholinguistic aspects of multilingualism, language attrition and the application of dynamic systems theory in second language acquisition. George Braine teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the founding chair of the TESOL organization’s Caucus for Non-Native English Teachers. He has been the coeditor of the Asian Journal of English Language Teaching and President of the Hong Kong Association for Applied Linguistics. Janina Brutt-Griffler is Associate Professor of Foreign Language Acquisition and Director of Polish Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is the author of World English: A Study of Its Development and co-editor of Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy and English and Ethnicity. Her work has focused on the history of English, language policy, second language acquisition, and authorship among bilingual writers. She is associate editor of the International Journal of Applied Linguistics. Ulrich Busse is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Halle (Saale), Germany. He has published a book and a three-volume dictionary on the influence of English on present-day German vocabulary and also a monograph on the use of second person pronouns in the Shakespeare Corpus. His main research interests are language contact, lexicology/ lexicography and historical pragmatics. Currently he is working on English usage guides and with Prof. Axel Hübler from Jena on a project entitled “From the Meta-communicative Lexicon to Historical Pragmatics”. <?page no="290"?> 286 Janet Enever is a member of the Research Institute for the Study of European Transformations at London Metropolitan University, where she leads a European Commission funded longitudinal comparative study of early foreign language learning in primary schools across seven European countries (ELLiE). As a senior lecturer in the Dept Humanities, Arts & Languages she also leads the MA in Primary ELT: Policy and Practice. Elizabeth J. Erling is a lecturer of English Language Teaching at the Open University, UK, and previously worked in the Language Centre of the Freie Universität Berlin. She is interested in the politics of the spread of English, especially in Europe, and the effects of globalisation on language teaching. She is currently undertaking research into the factors involved in the successful development of academic literacy and designing discipline-specific language courses. Claus Gnutzmann is Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics in the English Department of the University of Braunschweig. He has previously held similar posts at the University of Paderborn and the University of Hanover; he was educated at the Universities of Kiel, Stuttgart, University College London and the City University of New York. His main research interests include linguistic and pedagogical grammar, contrastive linguistics and error analysis, special languages (ESP), as well as the globalisation of English and its classroom applications. Maike Grau is Assistant Professor (Wissenschaftliche Assistentin) of Teaching English as a Foreign Language/ Educational Linguistics at the University of Gießen, Germany. In her research she focuses on areas that combine language learning in the classroom with out-of-school learning. She has published several papers on intercultural encounter projects and student exchanges, and is currently involved in a research project on English as an international language. Frauke Intemann is Assistant Professor (Wissenschaftliche Assistentin) of English Language and Applied Linguistics in the English Department at the University of Braunschweig. Her research interests include e-learning, especially the use of new media in the foreign language classroom and communication theory, as well as the globalisation of English. She has published on elearning, on English as a lingua franca, and co-produced CD-ROMs and a website for students of linguistics. Allan James is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria), where he also coordinates the interdisciplinary group on multilingualism in the Faculty of Humanities. He teaches phonetics and phonology, child language, pidgins and creoles and multilingualism and has published widely in phonological acquisition, discourse pragmatics and latterly on the (socio-) linguistics of international English(es). <?page no="291"?> Author Biographies 287 Jennifer Jenkins is Professor of English Language at the University of Southampton. She has researched English as a Lingua Franca for twenty years and published extensively on the subject, including two books, The Phonology of English as an International Language (Oxford University Press, 2000) and English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2007). She is also the author of a university course book, World Englishes (Routledge, 2003), and Reviews Editor of International Journal of Applied Linguistics. Ulrike Jessner is Associate Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Innsbruck. She has mainly published books and articles on psychoand sociolinguistic aspects in the fields of biand multilingualism (e.g. A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism, 2002 with P. Herdina and Linguistic awareness in multilinguals, 2006). She is also the editor of The International Journal of Multilingualism. Angelika Kubanek is Professor of English Language Education at the University of Braunschweig. She has published widely in the field of primary foreign language teaching and intercultural teaching and is expert for the European Commission and the Council of Europe. Her current research focuses on language and culture learning of children diagnostic competence and innovative concepts in teacher training. She was co-author of the key study on early language learning for the European Commission. Christiane Meierkord is editor of The Sociolinguistics of Lingua Franca Communication and co-editor of Lingua Franca Communication and Rethinking Sequentiality. Her research interests include variational linguistics, sociolinguistics, syntax interfaces, discourse and conversation analysis, and second language acquisition. She currently researches products and processes of linguistic identity construction on the African continent. Christiane Meierkord has taught English Linguistics at the Universities of Erfurt and Münster and will teach at the University of Stockholm in the future. Barbara Seidlhofer is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Vienna. Her teaching and research focus on corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics, in particular in their application to language teacher education. She is the founding director of the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), which aims to provide a basis for the linguistic description of English as a Lingua Franca - which is also the theme of her forthcoming book Understanding English as a Lingua Franca (Oxford University Press). Mahendra Verma has taught Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics at the University of York, UK. He has published articles and books in the areas of biand multilingualism, ethnic minority languages and ESL, language contact, language shift and language endangerment. Among them are Working with Bilingual Children; Adult ESOL Learners in Britain, and Sociolinguistics, Language and Society. He is currently working on a project on images of English in an age of globalisation. <?page no="292"?>