Language Contact and the Future of English

198 Pages·2017·1.67 MB·

by  Ian Mackenzie

Language Contact and
the Future of English
This book reflects on the future of the English language as used by native
speakers, speakers of nativized New Englishes, and users of English
as a lingua franca (ELF). The volume begins by outlining the current
position of English in the world and accounts for the differences among
native and nativized varieties and ELF usages. It offers a historical
perspective on the impact of language contact on English and discusses
whether the lexicogrammatical features of New Englishes and ELF are
shaped by imperfect learning or deliberate language change. The book
also considers the consequences of writing in a second language and
questions the extent to which non-native English-speaking academics
and researchers should be required to conform to ‘Anglo’ patterns of text
organization and ‘English Academic Discourse.’ The book then examines
the converse effect of English on other languages through bilingualism
and translation. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars
in English language, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, and language
policy.
Ian MacKenzie formerly taught translation at the University of Geneva. He
is the author of English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing and Teaching English
(2014), Paradigms of Reading: Relevance Theory and Deconstruction
(2002), and a number of English-language teaching coursebooks.
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13 Social Media Discourse, (Dis)Identifications and Diversities
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14 Care Communication
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17 Living Languages and New Approaches to Language
Revitalisation Research
Tonya N. Stebbins, Kris Eira and Vicki L. Couzens
18 Language Contact and the Future of English
Ian MacKenzie
Language Contact and
the Future of English
Ian MacKenzie
First published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 Taylor & Francis
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and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: MacKenzie, Ian, 1954– author.
Title: Language contact and the future of English / by Ian MacKenzie.
Description: New York : Routledge, [2017] | Series: Routledge studies in
sociolinguistics; 18 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017051258 | ISBN 9781138557222 (hardback :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315150758 (ebk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Languages in contact. | English language—Variation—
English-speaking countries. | English language—English-speaking
countries. | English language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers. |
Lingua francas. | Sociolinguistics.
Classification: LCC P130.5 .M23 2018 | DDC 427—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051258
ISBN: 978-1-138-55722-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-15075-8 (ebk)
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by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Preface vi
List of Abbreviations vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction: English Today 1
2 Imperfect Learning and Multicompetence 20
3 Purposeful Language Change 44
4 Will English as a Lingua Franca Impact
on Native English? 65
5 ELF and the Alternatives 88
6 Academic English, Epistemicide, and
Linguistic Relativity 102
7 Bilingualism, Translation, and Anglicization 127
8 Conclusion: Language Contact and the Future
of English 150
Bibliography 154
Index 182
Preface
As everybody knows, because journalists keep telling us, non-native (or
L2) speakers of English vastly outnumber the language’s native (or L1)
speakers. As virtually everybody knows (here we must exclude the few
applied linguists who seek to deny this), the immense majority of non-
native speakers—that is, people who did not acquire the language natu-
rally in childhood—tend to use it differently from its native speakers,
especially monolingual ones. Given the huge, and increasing, number of
L2 speakers of English, the question arises whether their usages will have
an influence on the varieties of English spoken and written as a native
language. In this book I attempt to answer that question and come up
with—spoiler alert!—a largely negative answer. Indeed in the penultimate
chapter I suggest that English may be having a greater effect on other
languages as a result of both direct and mediated contact (particularly
through translation) than other languages are having on native English
by way of second-degree language contact through non-native English, or
English used as a lingua franca (ELF). I also consider the consequences of
writing in a second language, which the majority of academic researchers
are now obliged to do, and whether this will—or should—influence the
standard forms of academic discourse in English.
This book ranges widely over theories of language acquisition and
learning, language change, language contact, bilingualism, contrastive
rhetoric, linguistic relativity, and translation. Readers hoping for an
analysis of a custom-made corpus, and such delights as ANOVAs, chi-
square tests, and left-skewed Gaussian distributions, will unfortunately
be disappointed. The same might also apply to anyone who disapproves
of introspection, speculation, and indeed opinion. But I trust that this
book will engage readers interested in the past, present, and future of
English, as well as in theories of how languages are learned and used, and
how and why they change.
Abbreviations
BLC Basic language cognition
BNC British National Corpus
CLIL Content and language integrated learning
CoCA Corpus of Contemporary American
EAD English Academic Discourse
EFL English as a foreign language
EIL English as an International Language
ELF English as a lingua franca
ELFA The English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings corpus
ELT English-language teaching
ENL English as a native language
ESL English as a second language
HLC Higher language cognition
ICE International Corpus of English
L1 First language
L2 Second language
LaRa Lingua receptiva
NNEST Non-native English-speaking teacher
NNS Non-native speaker
NS Native speaker
SAE Standard Average European
SLA Second language acquisition
SOV Subject—object—verb
SVO Subject—verb—object
TEFL Teaching English as a foreign language
TESOL Teaching English to speakers of other languages
VOICE The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English
VSO Verb—subject—object
Acknowledgements
A fairly complete plan of this book unexpectedly surfaced in my mind, as
these things do, while I was slowly cycling up a Swiss mountain, shortly
after I finished my book about English as a lingua franca (2014). I was
able to write a large part of it in New York during a sabbatical semes-
ter kindly granted by my former employer, the Faculty of Translation
and Interpreting of the University of Geneva. Yes, former employer—this
book and the following one are my odes to early retirement!
Many alterations were made to the manuscript after Kirsten Stirling
drew my attention to a lack of sundry things described in Chapter 6 as
necessary ingredients of ‘English Academic Discourse’—structure, clarity,
cohesion, transitions, and the like. Effusive thanks are in order.
Thanks are obviously also due to Routledge commissioning editor
Elysse Preposi. I am also beholden to three anonymous reviewers for
their useful suggestions. One of them even included the very generous—
and possibly exaggerated!—faux-Voltairean maxim: ‘I disapprove of
what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’
Chapter 4 includes material from ‘Will English as a Lingua Franca
Impact on Native English?,’ which appeared online in Varieng in 2015.
Chapter 5 includes material from ‘ELF and the Alternatives,’ published
in the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca in 2014. Chapter 6 includes
material from ‘Rethinking Reader and Writer Responsibility in Academic
English,’ published in the Applied Linguistics Review in 2015. These arti-
cles also benefitted, as per usual, from the comments of journal editors
and anonymous reviewers.
A key claim in Chapter 6 draws on an Internet forum reply to a ques-
tion of mine by Ernst-August Gutt. Thanks also go to Tim Parks, who
told me about the Dutch novel quoted at the beginning of Chapter 6.
Parks’s New York Review of Books blogs about translation and the
Anglicization of literature inspired the third part of Chapter 7. Vincent
Renner and Geneviève Bordet provided useful references for Chapters 6
and 7.
Acknowledgements ix
I’ll dedicate this one to Arthur Guinness, Chasselas, and Pinot noir—
and to Arsène, in remembrance of times long past. Or perhaps, as this
book is appearing in a series on sociolinguistics, to the linguist (a staunch
believer in the Language Acquisition Device and the Tooth Fairy) who
informed me that ‘you don’t have to be stupid to be a sociolinguist, but
it helps,’ and that ‘sociolinguistics is dinner table conversation.’ Bon
appétit!