The nature and significance
of English as a global
language
K E I T H DAV I D S O N
Is some kind of ‘codification’ needed for this vast complex?
THE DEMOGRAPHICS of the English language
are well known, and the following approxima-
tions are based on figures, always provisional,
projected by Crystal, Graddol, and McArthur
(as cited below). Anglophones (to use a
broader term than ‘native’ or ‘mother tongue’
speakers of English – terms which in any case
pose problems) make up some 12% of the
global population. Speakers of English in the
UK constitute about 16% of the 380 or so mil-
lion Anglophones worldwide. In the UK, some
2% of the population speaks English as a sec-
ond language, and perhaps only 15% regularly
speaks a southern British form of standard
English. Only a small minority of these have a
form of Received Pronunciation (RP) as their
normal accent, even though RP is predicated as
the basis of ‘phonics’ in initial literacy, and is
assumed to be the default accent in the second-
language teaching of British English, in the UK
and elsewhere (with however the notable
exception of North America).
Worldwide there are probably at least as
many regular speakers of English as an addi-
tional language as there are Anglophones, Eng-
lish having ‘a special place’ in seventy-five ‘ter-
ritories’ (cf. Crystal 1997:109–110) and likely
to serve in some form, for some time yet, as the
global auxiliary language. All of which has
implications for the language education of a
small part of the English-speaking world.
While some 90% of the world’s 6,000 or so
languages are currently threatened, not least
by the domination of English, the world
remains resolutely plurilingual, with most
speaking one or more forms of more than one
language. Some of this finds its way into our
48 English Today 89, Vol. 23, No. 1 (January 2007). Printed in the United Kingdom © 2007 Cambridge University Press
classrooms. Yet English 21 is still largely predi-
cated on the continuing myths of the monolin-
gual ‘native speaker’ and a single uniform
‘standard English’. The reality is rather differ-
ent. While there is remarkable homogeneity in
standard forms of English published world-
wide, Crystal (1997a,b) and McArthur (1999)
map the development of eight main, if overlap-
ping, standard(ising) varieties of regional
English:
British and Irish
American and Canadian
Australian and New Zealand
African
Caribbean
South Asian
East Asian
(With South Pacific forms variously ascribed,
and English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish ‘Eng-
lishes’ distinguished nearer home.)
It is a French writer, however, Jean-Paul
Nerrière (2004, 2005), who has recently
pointed out the practical difficulties posed by
the developing diversity of ‘English as a global
language’. His experience in global corpora-
tions – latterly as vice-president of IBM Europe
KEITH DAVIDSON is a former senior UK examining
board officer responsible for English, and a long-
time member of the Council of the UK National
Association for the Teaching of English (NATE). He
currently represents NATE on the academic
Linguistics Associations’ joint Committee for
Linguistics in Education (CLIE). He has previously
written for ET on English in education and on the
English writing system and ‘phonics’.
DOI: 10.1017/S0266078407001095
and vice-president (marketing) IBM USA –
provides anecdotal but telling evidence of the
kinds of dysfunction in international English
that can arise in conferences and meetings:
● Anglophones from different regions assum-
ing that everybody understands them, while
sometimes even misunderstanding each
other
● Anglophones making no concessions in their
own richly allusive styles and humour to
those missing the point
● Anglophones dominating discourse, oblivi-
ous of diffidence and dismay among those
for whom English is an auxiliary language,
taking consequent silence as compliance
● Anglophones themselves not really under-
standing vehicular forms of English readily
used by speakers of other languages from
disparate regions for their own inter-com-
munication.
Nerrière’s solution is a codified auxiliary lan-
guage for international communication, based
on English and called Globish – in effect a re-
working of the putative Basic English devel-
oped by C. K. Ogden in the early middle years
of the twentieth century. It is not however the
point in the present discussion. What is the
point is potential Anglophone communicative
inadequacy. Object lessons in the global econ-
omy of English include:
● the vast vocabularies of subtly differentiated
items that are daunting for speakers of other
languages. Response Anglophones should
learn how to re-phrase and amplify what
they have to say
● complex idiosyncratic forms and structures
that are equally daunting. Response Anglo-
phones should learn how to re-phrase and if
necessary simplify
● idiomatic, humorous, allusive, figurative
styles, deriving from local cultural refer-
ences and lingering dead metaphors that are
mystifying to others. Response Anglophones
should learn how to monitor their own and
others’ cultural presumptions.
‘Re-phrase’, ‘re-think’, ‘learn how to
monitor’…
A particular challenge for English in education
in the 21st century: how to equip young native
English-speaking people with open, flexible
ways of communicating in a plurilingual econ-
omy while also developing their own richly
expressive personal forms and styles. It also
THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE
ought to go without saying that access to other
languages should form part of this equipment
and their experience. It is after all the mono-
lingual ‘native’ speaker of a single variety of a
standard global language who is the most
linguistically disadvantaged of all – socially,
culturally, emotionally and intellectually.
So, English embedded in a more broadly con-
ceived language curriculum? There are prece-
dents, in particular the continuing primary and
secondary ‘language awareness’ programmes
developed in the 1980s in England under the
patronage of the Centre for Information on
Language Teaching (CILT), in London. And
there are implications for teacher training, for
linguistic expertise and for professional devel-
opment – not least that ‘English’ teachers and
‘language’ teachers should learn how to talk to
each other.
Deconstructing ‘subject’ strictures and struc-
tures (into more freely combined diploma
packages of related modules within more
broadly conceived curriculum areas) is surely
the way forward. 
Relevant organizations
NATE the National Association for the Teaching of
English
CLIE the joint Committee for Linguistics in
Education, of the British Association for Applied
Linguistics (BAAL) and the Linguistics
Association of Great Britain (LAGB)
[Keith Davidson is the NATE representative on
CLIE].
References
Crystal, David. 1997a. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of
the English Language. Cambridge: University Press.
—. 1997b. English as a global language Cambridge
University Press.
—. 2000. Language death. Cambridge University Press
—. 2001. Language and the Internet. Cambridge:
University Press.
—. 2004. The Stories of English. London: Allen Lane
Graddol, David. 1997. The Future of English? London:
British Council.
—. 1999 with Ulrike Meinhof (eds), English in a
changing world. Oxford: International Association of
Applied Linguistics.
McArthur, Tom. 1992. (editor) The Oxford Companion
to the English Language. Oxford: University Press.
—. 1998. The English Languages. Cambridge:
University Press.
—. 1999. (essay) ‘World English’ Encarta World English
Dictionary. London, Bloomsbury.
NATE. 2004. The Future of A level English. Sheffield.
Nerrière, Jean-Paul. 2004. Don’t speak English… Parlez
globish! Paris: Eyrolles.
49
Dufresne, Philippe, & Jacques Bourgon. 2005. TES. 2005. ‘Little England expects… everyone to speak
Découvrez le globish: L’anglais allégé en 26 étapes. English, or so the slump in language study suggests’,
Paris: Eyrolles. In Times Educational Supplement. London, 1 July.

SNIPPET 2

The language of business

From Keith Davidson
Chirac quits summit over use of English
(headline: Guardian Weekly, 31 Mar–6 Apr 06)
After walking out of an EU summit because a French business leader
committed the grave offence of speaking in English, President Jacques
Chirac pledged to fight the spread of the English language world-wide.
‘We fight for our language,’ President Chirac said of the French
walkout last week when Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, the French head of
the European employers’ group Unice, addressed the summit in ‘the
language of business’. Mr Chirac, who led three senior ministers out of
the talks, added: ‘I was profoundly shocked to see a Frenchman
express himself [in English] at the table.’
The walkout provided a vivid illustration of French sensitivity about
the decline of the language which used to dominate the EU. English
has overtaken French in Brussels after the arrival of Sweden and
Finland in 1995 and the ‘big bang’ expansion of the EU to eastern
Europe in 2004. With the internet fast turning English into the world’s
first language, Mr Chirac insisted that he would promote French,
which is spoken as a mother tongue by 100 million people, a relatively
small number.
‘You cannot base a future world on just one language, just one
culture,’ he said.
But this kind of alarm and indignation does not stop the French
having fun at the expense of English. The following items come from
two hairdressing salons in the Paris suburbs:

TECHNIC HAIR This of course is from technique as in both French

and English, with compounds in techni- or techno- (as for example
technicien, technocrate in French and technician, technocrat in
English). The game here is a pseudo-French *technicaire, exploiting
the chime with hair – given that /h/ is not a French phoneme – and
(for the knowing) the further chime with care in the final syllable. The
message is ‘hair-care technique’.

IMAGIN ’HAIR Given that lack of the /h/ phoneme in French, the
chime here is imaginaire (‘imaginary’), but that’s hardly the point, and
the supposedly intrusive apostrophe (pace Lynne Truss) is the clue.
The French have the notion of ‘aspirated’ initial h for what were
originally Germanic (Frankish/Norman) words. The phonemic effect
is the hiatus (loss of ‘liaison’) to mark the onset of the following item,
marked here by the apostrophe to suggest the English imagine hair. A
further chime might be with imaging (modelling, styling) hair. The
overall message is ‘imaginative hair styling’.

French games with English: why should Chirac complain?

50 ENGLISH TODAY 89 January 2007