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English: a lingua franca or an Anglo-American Frankenstein?
Robert Phillipson
Copenhagen Business School
12:00-1:30 pm
Monday, November 6
On Wisconsin Room, Red Gym
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Abstract:
Language policy is acquiring increasing importance in an age of intensive political and cultural change due to globalisation and regional integration. Most education systems in Europe aim at trilingual competence by the end of schooling, as advocated by the Council of Europe, and the European Union (EU). The advance of English in a range of key domains, commerce, finance, research and higher education, the media, and popular culture means that contemporary English no longer fits into the traditional mould of a 'foreign' language. Most schoolchildren appreciate the need to learn the language, but the degree of success varies in different countries. Exposure to English outside school is a significant factor. The requirement of competence in English for higher education and for employment is leading some countries to aim at 'parallel competence' in Danish/Swedish/... and English.
The dominance of English in many forms of international activity, its use in EU member states due to the erosion of national borders by technology and changes in communication, and the hierarchy of languages that exists de facto in EU institutions and EU-funded activities may, however, be serving to strengthen English at the expense of other languages. English can be seen as a corporate-driven Frankenstein even threatening well-established languages.
Labelling English as a 'lingua franca' is misleading if the term obscures the work that English performs nationally and internationally. Likewise, talk of domain loss in continental European languages sounds innocuous enough but what is at stake should rather be seen as linguistic capital accumulation by dispossession. While it is a truism that no language is intrinsically good or evil, the challenge for language policies is to promote multilingual competencies with additive English and critically aware citizens.
This lecture is free and open to the public.
Sponsors:
University Lectures Committee, Deptartment of Curriculum and Instruction, Language Institute, Division of International Studies, Department of French and Italian; Department of English, Department of Educational Policy Studies, School of Education International Education Committee, Global Studies, Center for European Studies, School of Business and CIBER.
For more information, contact Professor Francois Tochon. |
