Crystal (1997) indicates English is an international language. There is about a quarter of world’s population is already fluent or competent in English. However, as English spreads, the culture and values, which are embedded in English, may also become widely spread all over the world. Pennycook (1994) suggests that English, like all languages, contains cultures and values, so is never neutral. The cultural politics of English, has been transferred through cultural propaganda, development aid and global business, as well as, either consciously or unconsciously, through English language teaching practices. Moreover, Phillipson (1992) suggests that through linguistic imperialism, English threatens the languages of none English speaking countries and influences their cultural identities. In South Korea, English has spread since the Second World War, because of the development aid and military protection of the U.S., so that today it has significant status in the country. However, with the spread of English, western culture and values have also been transferred to South Korean and has influenced on the local culture and values. Therefore, South Koreans need to rethink the cultural political impacts of English, and hold a critical attitude towards English linguistic imperialism.
Pennycook (1994) indicates the spread of English always influenced by the western economic and politics. In South Korea, English has become widely spread because of the development aid and the military protection of the U.S. After the Second World War, the U.S. has provided many educational supports and economics aid to South Korea to help the country’s development. With these development aids of the U.S., English has become widely used in many different areas...
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The author, Bill Bryson, briefly introduces and describes the history of English. In this book, The Mother Tongue, Bryson uses an interesting way and scholarly manner to guide readers through the various linguistic and social movements in the English language, the center of the world language as well as the export of manufactured goods. He gives different kinds of instances by comparing with various languages to present how the language merged together of interacting.
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The statistics of those not speaking English could lead to the idea that English is diminishing in certain sections of the United States. An example of this is shown in the article “Why the U.S. Needs an Official Languag...
According to one article, over the past two decades, countries in the world have become more and more interdependent, and new technologies have erased many existing borders. As boundaries between countries are dissolved, foreign language instruction has become more necessary than ever for linking with the rest of the world and for producing an enlightened citizenship able to function in today’s ever-shrinking world. (Morris, http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/759) For the people who are learning any other languages, before start to study, it is obviously important that knowing differences between two languages, their own language and others. The purpose of this article is to explore differences between Korean and English. And then, it will be
United States is a nation accommodating multi-ethnic groups of almost 500000 Americans. Since 1960s, America has received an increasing number of newcomers and immigrants from all over the world. However, language communication has somehow become a latent problem, whether in economical, political, or social aspects. Although English has been the common language of America for over two hundred years, it has never become the official language. Therefore, question like "Does America need an official language?" has been raised and argued in recent decades. Both sides hold very strong arguments on this controversial issue. In the articles "English Should Be Official" by Bradley S. O' Leary and "Language Cements Nationhood" by Ron Saunders, two authors uphold to make English the nation's official language, while the articles "English Shouldn't Be Official" by Victor Kamber, and "Does America Need an "Official" Language" by Tuben G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes are opposed to this resolution. The different attitude toward common language, money, and communication are the major arguments discussed in these four articles.
English has always been a unofficial preferred language in the United States. Historically it has never been a, “monolinguistic country” (Driscoll 1). Over the years United States has experienced a lot of cultural diversity even though it, "has not appreciated l...
This book is pieced together in two different efforts, one which is to understand the latter history of the post-1945 era with its political liberalization and rapid industrialization period, while at the same time centering its entire text on the question of Korean nationalism and the struggle against the countless foreign invasions Korea had to face. The purpose of this book was composed to provide detailed treatment of how modern Korea has developed with the converged efforts of top eastern and western scholars who wanted to construct a fair overview of Korea's complicated history. Also, the writers wanted to create an updated version of Korea's history by covering the contemporary arena up to the 1990's. The ...
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Historically, there has always been a powerful connection between a country’s military expansion and the spread of its language.Infact, English has no intrinsic linguistic quality which other languages lack. All human languages have the same basic intrinsic linguistic competence to generate grammatically acceptable utterances. Therefore, if English is considered as the power language then linguistic imperialism is surely at work. Robert Phillipson (1992) has clarified that ‘the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages
Language planning policies in Singapore have often been characterised by the ‘desire to achieve a balance between the national pride of linguistic ownership and the need for international intelligibility’ (Khoo 1993: 67). This is evident, for instance, in the state’s current move to promote the use of Standard English (particularly the variety known as Standard Singaporean English, or SSE) and to discourage that variety known as Colloquial Singapore English (CSE, or Singlish as it is popularly known), although in this case, the state’s ‘desire to achieve a balance’ between intelligibility and identity appears to be one involving conflict rather than compromise – one in which these two principles (embodied by SSE and CSE respectively) appear to be opposing linguistic forces, and in which the former appears to be espoused and the latter (at least in the case of CSE, though not that of the ethnic ‘mother tongues’) denigrated. This essay will study whether (and if so, why) these two principles are truly opposed to each other, as seemingly implied by both the David Crystal quotation and the English language policy in Singapore, and in what way the application of these principles may result (as stated in the Crystal quotation) in the ‘pulling apart’ of people and countries, especially in the sense of socio-economic inequality and marginalisation on both international and intra-national levels; and all these will in turn be related to the present-day situation in Singapore.
The spread of English where it used as a foreign and/or a second language may be compromised if it is replaced by another language such as Chinese or Spanish. For example, if China continues to gradually dominate the world economically, politically and technologically, its language could replace English as the major foreign language taught and learnt in various countries’ education systems because they b...
The English language arose from the early Anglo Saxon inhabitants in ancient England and spread to Scotland and other European countries via the British Empire and later to the United States through colonial political and economical influences. It later dispersed to other parts of the world through these same influences to become one of the leading languages of the world. It has over the years developed by adopting different dialects to create a language, which is the standard lingual Franca in many countries. The rapid growth of the English language and its adoption by different cultures across the globe is sufficient ground to make it the global language.
Since the establishment of the British Empire, the spread of English language has been experienced in many parts of the globe. The success can be attributed significantly to the colonization activities that the empire had embarked on. They would train the indigenous community English language as they suppressed the local dialect. This massive spread is termed as lingual imperialism (Osterhammel 2005, pp. 14). The English language has become the first and second language of many nations across the world, and this makes it an international language. The native’s proportion to the non-native who speaks English cannot be compared with nations in the isle of Britain and far are speaking the language .considering that more than 70%
Over the years English inarguably has reached a status of a global language and commonly is characterized as a lingua franca. It has become the language that is spoken by millions of people all over the world; as the mother tongue, as the language used for international communication and as the language learned in the millions of schools.