Globalisation and the spread of English in the modern world

Globalisation and the spread of English in the modern world
Globalization and the global spread of English: Concepts and implications for teacher education.Globalization can be defined as the “intensificationof worldwide social rela-tions which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens 1990: 64). Considering this increasing relationship between localities, and between local happenings and global forces, there are two main reasons why studies of lan-guage are important to understandings of globalization. First, ties between people and places lead to stronger language contact, and increase the neces-sity for common languages of communication – i.e., lingua francas (Hammill and Diniz de Figueiredo 2013). Second, ideas we have about language(s) reflect ideas we have about ourselves and about the world (Seargeant 2009; Woolard and Shieffelin 1994), and thus examinations of language help our attempts to understand society and the ways we act upon our contexts (Blommaert 2010). This being the case, the global spread of English (henceforth, GSE) has received particular attention in applied linguistics, given the fact that the language functions as a worldwide lingua franca (Crystal 2003; Mufwene 2010), and that its global spread can be conceived as a metaphor of a globalized world (Seargeant 2009). The comprehension that the status of English as a global language is tied to the concept of globalization itself means that studies of GSE may benefit from different theoretical perspectives that explain what globalization is and how it happens. In this chapter, I review eight theories of globalization surveyed by sociologists Darren O’Byrne and Alexander Hensby (O’Byrne and Hensby 2011), and explain how they connect with models of GSE in applied linguistics.

It has been common sense, even among English language teachers, that English is the language of globalization. This notion usually comes together with the idea that this status happened naturally, with no account to historical, political and cultural events. As a result, both globalization and the English language are seen as contemporary phenomena that simply meet the demands of our times. A third element comes into play here as well: new information and communication tech-nologies. Just like English, they are usually seen as intrinsic to globalization.This commonsensical view was detected in at least two research projects, both carried out by myself. The first one involved teachers from Belo Horizonte, who were interviewed in 2002, and the second one took place in Sergipe in 2011. It seems that the way that teachers see the status of English worldwide has not changed significantly in the past few years, which makes the case for question-ing language teacher education in Brazil as regards English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). The scenario, in fact, points to a situation where teachers should not rely on stability, but rather be prepared for the uncertain and the unexpected (Zacchi 2015b).ELF can be seen as a global project (Mignolo 2003) and is connected with transcultural flows of communication. It can no longer be said that English is defined by a few and selected varieties. Instead, there are distinct varieties, referred to by Pennycook (2007) as global Englishes, which are appropriated by local subjects and adapted to specific contexts. Therefore, when we think of English as the language of globalization, we also have to take into account a contextualized teaching, in connection with a language that is appropriated by teachers and students locally. In that case, we might have the following questions in mind: what English? what globalization?This chapter will draw on a few concepts related to the global spread of ELF, especially: global Englishes (Pennycook 2007), English as a hegemonic language (Zacchi 2003, 2006), cosmopolitanism and transnational literacies (Brydon 2011; Rizvi 2009; Zacchi 2014, 2015a)

The new status of English in the world is a consequence of the linguistic changes that have accompanied profound transformations in the society since the end of the Cold War (Crystal 2003). Among these transformations, the globalization process, the rise of technology and the development of the Internet have been the main factors for the spread of English, which is today spoken more and more by “non-native” speakers. Consequently, nowadays, the predominant situations of communication in English happen not in monolingual contexts but in bilingual or multilingual ones all over the world. Schütz (2014) argues that the necessity of speaking a foreign language nowa-days is vital and, in the future generations, monolingualism will be a threat as illiteracy has been since the second half of the 19th century. Learning another language has had an increasingly important role in the history of mankind and people who cannot speak an additional language may be considered illiterate in the future. In this context, English is being recognized as the foreign language of greatest importance and has been integrated to education both in school educa-tion and private courses all over the world, as shown by Crystal (2003: 5):English is now the language most widely taught as a foreign language – in over 100 coun-tries, such as China, Russia, Germany, Spain, Egypt and Brazil – and in most of these countries it is emerging as a chief foreign language to be encountered in schools, often dis-placing another language in the process. This internationalization of English may have serious implications for language teaching. Many authors have claimed that English language teaching should be adapted to the transformations in the nature of English now widely spoken by non-natives, so that people can learn it and use it more efficiently.