Is English a Killer Language?

Introduction

Before any attempt is made to answer whether English is a killer language, it might be useful to consider whether languages can be living entities and whether they are born to experience various emotions as those inhabiting in human beings (fear, for instance) or to commit malice aforethought against other languages. King (2006), following this appetite for language personification, suggests that linguists have an almost unavoidable feeling to use military metaphors to name things, especially when ‘‘[telling] the story of the replacement of one language by another’’ (p. 30).

He goes on offering metaphorical expressions such as ‘‘conquest’’ and ‘‘victory’’ to refer to ‘‘the case of the French of Quebec that has since the 1970s ‘regained ground’ from English in the ‘battle’ of language loyalties in eastern Canada’’ (p.30). The above example, however, does not answer the question whether English is a killer language, yet it sheds light on understanding that a ‘language killing process’ implies a confrontation between two or more languages, and in which resistance – as not to die – is put forward by the language being threatened.

However, questioning these subjects, and addressing them based on metaphorical allusions, makes us seem not to be focusing on the real problem of this one-by-another language replacement because, as Mufwene points out, ‘‘[w]e learn very little about how some languages prevail or are endangered by assigning them agencies they don’t have and by speaking about them as if they could wage wars with and kill each other’’ (2007, pp. 380-381).

Nevertheless, Mufwene (2007) suggests that ‘‘there is certainly a sense in which languages have lives’’ (p. 380), but, he claims, languages enter in disuse (and die) because of the advantages that speakers find in using other languages and not because a language kills another language (p. 381). On considering the validity of this claim, a new way to answer whether English is a killer language is by looking at the extends to which it has become or tends to become, through different means and moments, the speakers of others languages’ only way for inclusion and survival; leading then this situation to a language shift from one language to another and hence the death of the former.

In this respect, the position held by this critical analysis will support the idea that English is not, in fact, a killer language but rather the main means of use, say, through political and economic power, to establish a Nation’s own culture and ideas in another Nation with less advantageous politico-economic systems and to cause, therefore, the disuse (or death) of the language by the invaded speech community. That being said, there is great interest in discussing some of the main socio-historical aspects behind the use of English as a lingua franca.

In order to make this possible, I may start by framing the historical account with emphasis on the use of English as a linguistic medium for colonization resulting in language shift, language death and language maintenance in some colonies and affected countries, and then I will go on to comment on the current affairs concerning the use of English as a globalizing language with emphasis on what English represents nowadays and how it is faced by other countries with language policies. Finally, conclusions will reflect on the historical account and the current affairs to show how English has served as a tool for cultural, economic and political expansion.

Historical account: English and the British Empire

Britain saw an expansion of its society with the Industrial Revolution that took place in the eighteenth century and which, as suggests Bragg, had a great impact on the English language (2004, p. 238). This revolution, however, made English a dominant language, where Edwards (as cited in Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 34) states that dominant languages gained great power and status because of the fortunes held by their users in which, Edwards continues, ‘‘[t]he most common elements here have to do with military, political and economic might’’ (p. 34).

Similarly, an additional reason for this expansion had in its core a linguistic pursuit (and perhaps a linguistic revenge) considering the fact that English as a standard form of writing was subjected to objections by writers who, at the same time, questioned its adequacies by contrasting English with classical languages like Greek and Latin or more ‘fashionable’ languages like French and Italian (Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 15). For the above reasons, English sought its expansion primarily as a socio-political matter (p. 22).

The subsequent quest for economic expansion in the eye of the British Empire originated what Mesthrie et al. call a ‘language contact’, which basically translated into the spread of powerful and prestigious languages, English in this case, through conquest and colonization (2009, p. 242). Moreover, such assumptions allow us to think of English as a killer language if we consider the fact that, in what follows the conquests, the language contact between English and the languages in the newly colonized territories will result in a language shift and language death respectively for ‘‘[m]any Amerindian and Australian Aboriginal languages’’ as it is pointed out by Jambor (2007, p. 113).

With the European linguistic colonization, in the case of North America, many tribal languages along with their strategies were affected by a hostile control of interaction involving trade and political negotiation which, after all, led the Tribes ‘‘to develop means of communication – with non-Indian outsiders as well as with other Tribes’’ (Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 259). What is more, this adoption of new means of communication was aimed at achieving the purpose of the colonialist English users, at whom the language serves as a muscle, to control great commodities like wealth, dominance and learning which others (the colonized) will see as necessary for their own aspirations (Edward as cited in Mesthrie et al., 2009, p.34).

In consequence, in a context where speakers face the imposition of a new language, the emergence of ‘language maintenance’ seems evident and its only purpose is that of maintaining the use of a threatened language while competing with a more powerful language. Also, the opposite term argues Mesthrie et al., is ‘language shift’, replaces one language by another as a means of communication and socialization within a community (2009, p. 245).

An example tracing the beginnings of language shift is carried out by Bedwyr Jones (as cited in Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 250) who emphasized the case of the Welsh language, in the fifteenth century, as it experienced a shift towards an upper ruling class and became more anglicized as it developed on the social, economic and political sphere of London. On the one hand, this communal language shift as suggests Mufwene (2007) ‘‘occurs gradually and most often insidiously, being noticed only after the process is quite advanced or complete’’ (p. 378).

On the other hand, Mufwene argues that a language shift to language death occurs when speakers of a threatened language cease to use their language for the sake of profiting, whether agreeing it or not, from the use of the imposed dominant language which, by the time, will create a form of ‘‘atrophy’’ (leading to a language death) because of the lack of competence in a language and its users’ incapacity to transmit it to their children (2007, p. 378). However, language shifts not always resulted in language death but in the creation of new dialects or ‘Pidgins’ by successful speech communities. This will be discussed below with some examples after a concept of the speech community and lingua franca are presented.

Speech community, following a Labovian analysis, draws on in-common attitudes and values of the speakers of one community in regards to the language forms and language use (Saville-Troike as cited in Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 36). Another concept to be considered along with the speech community is that of ‘lingua franca’. A term that, like House (2003) claims, has an original meaning in describing a language of commerce with negative attitudes to individual variations (p. 557).

In a similar vein, and using Malinowski’s studies on tribal life, Van Horn proposes that ‘‘[g]ive and take in commerce is critical to survival, success, and enrichment, and for many, English plays an increasing role in it’’ (2006, p. 620). Basically, we can infer from these assumptions, that the English introduction by conquest and colonization meant the implementation of a lingua franca with economic, political and cultural expansion pursuits.

Although the introduction of English as a lingua franca proved successful in the eradication of minority languages in North America and Australia, it also was certain that some speech communities in, say, Papua New Guinea and Nigeria proved successful in resisting a total shift into the death of their local languages by the evolution of pidgins. In the case of Papua New Guinea, Mühlh?usler studies the use of the Tok Pisin language after World War II as a competitor against English by suggesting that ‘‘[this] illustrates the principle that languages tend to lag behind social and technical innovations in times of revolutionary changes’’ (1984, p. 457).

For example, Mühlh?usler continues by emphasizing the fact that an absence in language planning results in a strong borrowing of one language from another, notably in this case of the Tok Pisin borrowing from English vocabulary introduced later on in the House of Assembly in 1968, e.g., eleksan ‘election’, komisin ‘commission’, mosin ‘motion’, privilij ‘privilege’, spika ‘speaker’ (1984, p. 457). In addition, he concludes by adding that the ‘‘[s]tabilization of a pidgin language is the result of the development of socially accepted language norms’’ (p. 444).

In the case of Nigeria, ‘‘notably a vast territory with over 400 independent groups speaking a variety of often mutually unintelligible languages, English was a primordial tool in the process of colonization’’, argue Mesthrie et al. (2009, p. 338). Another aspect is brought in by Bisong (1995) who questions the fact that although English has not yet been successful in replacing any indigenous languages within the country, it still positions itself as the official language in Nigeria (pp. 122-131).

As we analyze the above-mentioned examples, it can somewhat be argued that the English language has, without a doubt, served as a tool to spread what Robert Phillipson has called ‘linguistic imperialism’ (Bisong, 1985, p. 122). However, no matter how certain English may sound to be a killer language, it is, in fact, the way it has been used, namely during the British conquests and colonization, what has made it a killer language.

Similarly to the above assumption, Jambor states that:

[A]t least, in the past, English was a ‘killer’ language and an ‘imperialist’ language

beyond any reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, it could be argued that it was actually

the former British Army that is responsible for its previous colonial imperialist

practices and not the language per se. (2007, p. 113).

Equally important, this dichotomist distinction between English the killer language and English the means through which language death is produced draws on a present lack of discreteness in the study of languages as real states (Milroy & Milroy, 1997, p. 63). In the same way, any attempt to understand language requires a further interest in the social and historical context surrounding it (Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 40).

In what concerns the social context and its relation to language, any society requires being classified in terms of its complexity and organization as well as the way it interacts with other societies (Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 33). Following Marxism, a society is a compound of a ‘superstructure’ (social relations of production) that involves the political, legal and educational institutions which do not correlate with the ‘base’ (forces of production) but are shaped by it (p. 30). Also, this struggling relationship between individuals denotes a class differentiation which, even before Marx, seemed to be highly emphasized by the colonialist powers, especially the British Empire.

On the other hand, John Edwards (as cited in Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 34), suggests that a society is built on ‘infrastructural factors’ (e.g., military, political, economic) and ‘ideological factors’ (e.g, cultural cloud). Furthermore, in the ideological factor more in general and the cultural cloud more, in particular, is where a dominant language through a powerful society will, as Edward argues, ‘‘establish literature, a tradition of grammatical study of the language, and the high status of the language and its speakers’’ (as cited in Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 34).

In what follows, culture and community come to play an important role in the everyday definition of societies. Ronowicz & Yallup suggest that:

[Culture] includes the spiritual aspect of a society, embracing its ideological, artistic and religious trends. It may also be understood as a picture of everyday life, including everyday activities and entertainment, clothing, fashions, living conditions, family and social relations, customs, beliefs, morality, acceptable pattern of behavior and rituals. (2007, p. 23).

As the above aspects have demonstrated, understanding culture as a compound of different elements serves to analyze what aspects of life to be considered when using a language for communication and when choosing a new language over another. This comes to be more evident at the time and as the world evolves at different levels, and where languages such as English, will continue to serve as a means for expansion on the part of the most powerful countries in a coming globalized world. Thus in the next section, trying to answer whether English is a killer language will be considered on the basis of a globalized world.

Current affairs: American English and Globalisation

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States saw itself emerging as a superpower with a global and cultural presence, and hence making American English the dominant world variety (Graddol, 1998, p. 7). As Bailey and G?rlach point out, ‘’[b]y 1975, English was the sole official language of twenty-one nations, and in sixteen more it is the co-official language of government, education, broadcasting, and publication’’ (1984, p. vii). This, therefore, translates into a new process of cultural, economic and political integration with a continuum of the English expansion.

As the current affairs of the time will show, terminology like 'battles’, ‘victories’ and ‘conquest’ may no longer be the result of a Nation invading another Nation through physical means in order to spread and established a dominant culture as in the case of English with the British Empire. Conversely, English and its future battles, victories, and conquests will all be closely tied to globalization (Pennycook, 2007, p. 5) as new forms of long-distance communications like media will take place (Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 243).

In what concerns the spread of English as a lingua franca and its pretentious world language status pursuit, Braj Kachru draws on the term ‘World Englishes’ as a way to put together all the Englishes in the globe and, by following a Gramscian Hegemony Theory, divide them into three spheres: namely ‘Inner Circle’, ‘Outer Circle’ and ‘Expanding Circle’ (Kachru as cited in Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 304).

In figure 1 below, an illustration of the three circles and the countries forming them is shown. Although the three-circle model refers to a specific moment of time, i.e., a bipolar world (USA-USSR), they nevertheless prove to be relevant in nowadays analyses of the English language and its relation with other languages.

The model above gives an idea of the importance of English in communities where the language is the native-speaking one, the official one or the most-used one as in the case of the UK and the USA where English is the native and official language and cases such as China, Japan and the former USSR where English is not the official language but plays an important role in its expansion. In the same vein, Kachru assigns roles to each circle as follows: Inner Circle is norm providing, Outer Circle is norm developing and Expanding Circle is norm dependent (as cited is Mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 305).

In what follows, we see a global integration of nations into one system that benefits a few ones (the Inner Circle, for instance) in what respects the use of English as a means of expansion. On the other hand, one may ask whether this integration is totally global or just attains itself to certain regions in the world. For instance, it is noticed that there are not any South American countries in Kachru’s circles; however, Kanavillil Rajagopalan suggests that the whole South America is part of the Expanding Circle in what concerns the status of the English language (2006, p. 147).

Rajagopalan goes on by offering us a very important and historical reason for the South America case and its English future dominance where he quotes that:

In 1904, US President Theodore Roosevelt unveiled what is referred to as ‘’the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe doctrine’’, which claimed in no uncertain terms that ‘’the region was uniquely part of the U.S. sphere of influence’’ […] In the 1950s, when the Cold War between the US and the then-rival superpower USSR kept the world on tenterhooks, US President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice-President Richard Nixon put forward the so-called ''domino theory'', according to which the moment the first country is given a geographical region fell into the hands of the communists the rest would follow suit in quick succession. (2006, p. 148).

The above reasons present us with a scenario where political, economic and ideological aspects venture in the conquest of other countries through diplomacy. If we were to analyse what the Monroe Doctrine has made of South America in the last hundred years then it would come clear to see a vast majority of countries with an American-way-of -life tendency at different socio-cultural levels; from music to fashion and so forth.

Similarly, Schneider argues that such exposure on the part of the American society obeys to their media and music industries, ‘‘with Hollywood movies being shown and American TV series being air’’ in all the continents (2006, p. 67). And, this is the reason why most of the research on world Englishes in the media focuses on new discourses, i.e., television, radio, news broadcasts and so forth (Martin, 2006 p. 583).

As it has been shown, the expansion of English as a globalizing language goes along with the means used for archiving global dominance. Music, for instance, plays an important role in the propagation of ideas and ideologies; this includes fashion, religion, politics, sexual attitudes, etc., which are put in vogue by singers to their audiences.

An interesting example comes with Pennycook (2007) who analyses the relationship between Hip Hop music and Malaysian culture where she questions the concerning crossing between the local culture and the assimilated one (p. 1).

Also, she continues on by asking whether this crossing among cultures suggests ‘‘the gradual death of the rich heritage of Malaysian song and dance as American culture sweeps across the region, led by MTV [Music Television], music channels, iPods, clothing and fashion’’ (Pennycook, 2007, p. 1). To sum up, she considers that there ‘‘are good reasons to question such visions of culture and linguistic imperialism’’ as to see how ‘‘the English language and American ‘popular’ culture are homogenizing the world as they are thrust on to local populations’’ (Pennycook, 2007, p. 97).

In this respect, Honna (2006) points out that as Asian cultures grow in the continent, the reliance of an in-common language for cultural communication is likely to increase, unsurprisingly being English the language targeted (p. 126). However, intercultural communication is not only a case of Asian countries but of European ones as well. Sweden, for example, has proved to be a Nation of multiculturalism where research on world Englishes has taken place.

Martin (2006) for instance, suggests that the way the English language is received by the speakers may depend on factors such as age. According to him, ‘’several studies [in Sweden] suggest that, though the influence of American films, television programs, and pop music, American English is becoming increasingly attractive […] to certain media consumers’’ (p. 589).

A study concerning English music influence in Sweden was carried out by Mob?rg (as cited in Martin, 2006, p. 589) who made questionnaires with listening samples of British and American lyrics and gave them to 760 students asking whether they prefer one or another variety of English. The results showed that young Swedish audiences preferred American English and also preferred English rock lyrics over Swedish (p. 589).

One of the reasons why this preference for American English in Europe comes so evident with the fact to have, since its inception in 1988, a MTV Europe (Music Television channel) airing American music and programs seven days a week, ‘’to around 36 million homes in 26 countries (Roe & Cammaer as cited in Martin, 2006, p. 592).

As the above reasons are portrayed, it would be helpful to see whether or not countries in the periphery, and threatened by an increasing English expansion, are taking language policies effectively as a way to protect their languages. To put an example, some countries like China, France and the Provincial Government of Quebec in Canada have been legislating against the expansion of English into the domains occupied by their native languages as to counter the ‘’increasingly persuasive forces of English Language Imperialism’’ (Jambor, 2007, p. 117).

In the case of Quebec more specifically, a successful language policy was implemented by the Provincial Government as to support the French language and give it an equal political and economic status as that of English in Canada which translated into requiring the use of French for business within the region and also giving it access to national affairs (Mesthrie et al., 2009, pp. 378.379). However, it is not always the case of French to succeed against English when considering the case of Louisiana in the US where inefficient language policies have not helped the French language to be more than a vernacular dialect (pp. 378-379).

An important question is raised by Mesthrie et al., concerning the French policies to protect the endangered language and whether the situations in which these policies have applied are similar to the situation of other languages that have been reduced to the status of symbolic languages as in the case of Breton and French in Louisiana (2009, pp. 378-379).

In the case of China, Honna suggests, ‘’[t]he establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 brought forth a chain of drastic changes in many domains of life’’ (2006, p. 115) which subsequently translated in the regulation of the English language in the local domains (p.115). In both the case of China and French Quebec, language policies played an important role in maintaining the local languages, with all their cultural implications, alive.

However, there are those like House (2003) who prefers to look at the other side of the problem and claim that ‘’the project on the introduction of English as a medium of instruction in German universities has shown that in tertiary education […] there are no signs (yet) of a threat to a native language and to multilingualism’’ (p.574).

No matter the case, the English language has always been characterized in the domains of Linguistic Imperialism in nowadays affairs, it would then be helpful to look at this term in more detail to gain more insight. For instance, Robert Phillipson (as cited in Bisong, 1995, p. 122) argues that in Linguistic Imperialism there are ‘core English-speaking’ countries (Kachru’s Inner Circle) and ‘periphery-English countries’ (Kachru’s Expanding Circle) where the former group dominates the latter group; suggesting this, however, that the English language has benefited from the policies arranged by the core countries and finally it has been the reason why English replaces the main languages in the periphery.

That being said, the Phillipson core-periphery relationship demonstrates how English has played the role of lingua franca in a globalized world, serving as the means of economic, political and cultural propagation of the United States and causing, at the same time, language shifts and language deaths in many speech communities around the world and more notably in those countries where language policies are not applied effectively.

Christiansen (2006) suggests that ‘’[l]anguage policy issues are especially important with regards to education, as multilingual education could be viewed as a democratic tool safeguarding active citizen participation in an intergovernmental forum such as the EU [European Union]’’ (p. 21). In the same way, and in the same long-term, a good language policy alternative would be one that could make use of a language like Esperanto as a lingua franca and make it work internally throughout the European institutions (p.21).

This linguistic project, however, deserves more attention as it could be imitated by other regions in regards to consolidate and preserve multiculturalism internationally, i.e., without English acting as an imperialist language that threatens the existence of other languages.

Conclusion

Drawing on what has been discussed in this critical analysis and on what the different authors in academia have suggested, there are different ways to look at English as a killer language. However, the position held on this critical analysis supports the idea that English is not a killer language but rather a tool, a linguistic means through which powers in different accounts of history have made used of to achieve resources, territories, and population as in the case of the British Empire, and to gain access to other cultures with the sole purpose of expanding ideologies as in the case of the United States as a superpower.

English has proved to be a powerful language because of the successful accounts that the nations holding it have experienced across the time. In the same fashion, English has been a vehicle for political, economic and cultural expansion in the international scenario. This situation calls for the creation of language policies as suggested by House (2003).

However, and to show how important sociolinguistics is in this respect, any language policy aiming at arresting English: the killer language, will prove to be unsuccessful for they will be considering English as a living entity, one capable to breathe and to experience emotions like hatred. On the other hand, I suggest that any future language policy should work together with political, economic and cultural policies since what we are not looking at is English as a living entity but at English as the tool, the means by which countries like the United States and the United Kingdom expand their ideologies and cause other languages to shift and to die.

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