ENGLISH IN GLOBAL CONTEXT

NAME : TESALONIKA SAGITA JUWITA MANTIK

NIM : 20091102007
CLASS : A

Why a global language?

Of course English is a global language, they would say. Whenever you enter a
hotel or restaurant in a foreign city, they will understand English, and there will
be an English menu. But English is news. The language continues to make news
daily in many countries.
These are fascinating questions to explore, whether your first language is
English or not. We are all sensitive to the way other people use 'our' language.
Indeed, if there is one predictable consequence of a language becoming a global
language, it is that nobody owns it any more.
What is a global language?
Firstly, a language can be made the official language of a country, to be used as
a medium of communication in such domains as government, the law courts, the
media, and the educational system. To get on in these societies, it is essential to
master the official language as early in life as possible. Secondly, a language
can be made a priority in a country's foreignlanguage teaching, even though this
language has no official status. It becomes the language which children are most
likely to be taught when they arrive in school and the one most available to
adults who for whatever reason never learned it, or learned it badly, in their
early educational years.
In reflecting on these observations, it is important to note that there are several
ways in which a language can be official. Distinctions such as those between
'first', 'second' and foreign language status are useful, but we must be careful not
to give them a simplistic interpretation. In particular, it is important to avoid
interpreting the distinction between second' and foreign language use as a
difference in fluency or ability. There are now many such cases around the
world, and they raise a question over the contribution that these babies will one
day make to the language, once they grow up to be important people, for their
intuitions about English will inevitably be different from those of traditional
native speakers.These points add to the complexity of the present day world
English situation, but they do not alter the fundamental point.
What makes a global language?
Why a language becomes a global language has little to do with the number of
people who speak it.
There is the closest of links between language dominance and
economic, technological, and cultural power, too, and this relationship will
become increasingly clear as the history of English is told. This point may seem
obvious, but it needs to be made at the outset, because over the years many
popular and misleading beliefs have grown up about why a language should
become internationally successful. It is quite common to hear people claim that
a language is paragon, on account of its perceived aesthetic qualities, clarity of
expression, literary power, or religious standing Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic
and French are among those which at various times have been lauded in such
terms, and English is no exception. And there have been comments made about
other structural aspects, too, such as the absence in English grammar of a
system of coding social class differences, which can make the language appear
more 'democratic' to those who speak a language that does express an intricate
system of class relationships. But these supposed traits of appeal are
incidental, and need to be weighed against linguistic features which would seem
to be internationally much less desirable notably, in the case of English, the
accumulated irregularities of its spelling system.
Why do we need a global language?
Sometimes an indigenous language emerges as lingua franca- usually the
language of the most powerful ethnic group in the area, as in the case of
Mandarin Chinese. The other groups then learn this language with varying
success, and thus become to some degree bilingual. But most often, a language
is accepted from outside the community, such as English or French because of
the political, economic, or religious influence of a foreign power. Many lingua
francas extend over quite small domains between a few ethnic groups in one
part of a single country, or linking the trading populations of just a few
countries, as in the West African case.
The prospect that a lingua franca might be needed for the whole world is
something which has emerged strongly only in the twentieth century, and since
the 1950s in particular. The chief international forum for political
communication the United Nations- dates only from 1945.
What are the danger of a global language?
Perhaps those who have such a language at their disposal and especially those
who have it as a mother-tongue will be more able to think and work quickly in
it, and to manipulate it to their own advantage at the expense of those who do
not have it, thus maintaining in a linguistic guise the chasm between rich and
poor.
Perhaps the presence of a global language will make people lazy about learning
other languages, or reduce their opportunities to do so.
American tourist who travels the world assuming that everyone speaks.
Any discussion of an emerging global language has to be seen in the political
context of global governance as a whole.
Could anything stop a global language?
They could not see how the global neighborhood, the global community, which
they acknowledged had come into being, could function effectively without a
world language. This state of affairs can already be seen, to a limited extent, on
the Internet, where some firms are now offering a basic translation service
between certain language pairs. A sender types in a message in language X, and
a version of it appears on the receiver's screen in language Y. By the time
automatic translation matures as a popular communicative medium, that
position will very likely have become impregnable It will be very interesting to
see what happens then whether the presence of a global language will eliminate
the demand for world translation services, or whether the economics of
automatic translation will so undercut the cost of global language learning that
the latter will become otiose.