Riassunto esame Lingua inglese I, prof. Seidlhofer, libro consigliato Understanding English as a lingua franca, Seidlhofer

Example:

1. The problems that were caused by this disagreement…

2. The problems that emanated from this dispute…

3. The problems attendant on this contretemps …

Style shifting between 1 and 2. Code-switch 3. In 3 there is the use of a French word that

however exists in the Oxford English Dictionary. We can say that this word has become

naturalized as English, so even 3 is an example of style-shifting. But many people don’t know

the word so for them it is an example of code-switching. So, the distinction between code-

switching and style shifting is based on linguistic demarcation but not necessarily represents

the reality of the user’s experience.

The English language that linguists describe in grammar and dictionaries is not the actual

language that individuals use. ELF is often said to be deficient, incomplete. But all English as

used is incomplete. Bilingual and multilinguals do not know two or more languages in their

entirety but only partially, each complementing each other. It is not a matter of cumulative

collection of different codes but of knowing how to use their partial knowledge strategically and

appropriately as a composite linguistic resource.

The gap can only be closed if we take a different perspective and think not of varieties but of

variations, not of how far forms of language conform to codified norms, but how they function as

the exploitation of linguistic resources for making meaning.

‘In the discourses that one can call ‘postmodern’, there is now much more of a preoccupation

with fragmentation, contingency, marginality, transition, indeterminacy, ambivalence, and

hybridity’ (Rampton).

ELF can be characterized as hybrid, fragmented, contingent, marginal, indeterminate use of

language. So rather than excluding it from serious enquiry because it is difficult to keep it in

established conceptual frameworks, lets revise or replace these old frameworks.

4.4 ELF ‘World Englishes’, and the concept of ‘variety’.

We have seen how in ELF there is the same process of natural appropriation and adaptation

that occurs in post-colonial settings. In these settings, the process results in ‘World Englishes’

and is assigned legitimacy. In the case of ELF, legitimacy is usually withheld. Why?

Kachru points to the need to take into account new linguistic realities that he calls ‘innovations in

paradigms of creativity’. He asks for a response from linguists.

‘There are two types of response. One is to view this overwhelming linguistic phenomenon as

an age-old process of language dynamics accentuated by the complex culturally and

linguistically pluralistic contexts of language acquisition, language function, language contact,

and language creativity. This response demands questioning the earlier paradigms and asking

new questions and looking for new theoretical and methodological answers. The second

response, is to marginalize any question – theoretical, methodological and ideological – which

challenge the earlier paradigms or seek answers appropriate to new global functions of English.

(Kachru).

Kachru is talking about English in his Outer Circle but it is the same for ELF as it occurs across

all three Circles. So the same welcoming of new challenges that Kachru demands regarding

developments in the Outer Circle should now also be expected when dealing with ELF.

One way of denying legitimacy to ELF and reducing its status as ‘an overwhelming linguistic

phenomenon’ is to associate it with earlier phenomena that went under the name ‘lingua franca’

(an intermediary contact language used primarily by the Arabs and then the Turks with travellers

from Western Europe, by prisoners of war, and by the Crusaders – Kachru)

It may be that the term lingua franca triggers, for some people, an association with ‘low-level

makeshift’ language. Lingua franca is not ‘low level’. Isaac Newton’ account of gravity laws of

motion in his Principia Mathematica and Francis Bacon’s utopian novel Nova Atlantis were

written in a lingua franca. English when used as an international language can either be a lingua

franca, which is by definition low-level and makeshift or a clearly distinguishable variety. As a

variety then it’s legitimate and worthy of study.

‘We need to acknowledge that while the Three Circles model has provided us with a convenient

shorthand for labelling contexts of English worldwide, the categories that the model created

have also had the unfortunate side-effect of reifying the content of these categories and of

encouraging the notion that Englishes, regardless of circle’ (Bruthiaux).

Bruthiaux seems preoccupied with who should be ‘in’ and who should not, what should count

as a variety and what should not:

‘For a variety to emerge, local practices must surely gain norm value through recurring,

spontaneous use across a range of communicative functions as well as in emblematic domains

such as the media, artistic creation, and popular culture’ (Bruthiaux).

This insistence on ‘variety-creating conditions’ is surprising because it is a redrawing of circle

boundaries and is the opposite of what he says at the end of his paper: ‘much is to be gained by

focusing less on where the speakers of English come from and more on what they do – or don’t

do- with the language’ (Bruthiaux).

Academics have believed that recognizing ‘more varieties’ as independent entities is progress

because it values diversity. In a conference in Regensburg in 2007 there was a discussion on

the different meaning of English in Ghana and Ghanaian English . Jemima Asabea Anderson

explained that in Ghana the label ‘Ghanaian English’ is still associated with imperfect usage and

error varieties used among Ghanaians and lack codification. The view contrasted with that of

her audience in Regensburg where the label ‘Ghanaian English’ was favoured by the

sociolinguists present as expressing the claim to, and recognition of the Ghanaian English as a

legitimate and distinct national variety. What this example makes clear is that in sociolinguistics,

putting the modifier (in this case Ghanian) in front of English is generally seen as expression of

recognition of a distinct variety.

The term English as lingua franca (ELF) is now sometimes replaced by Lingua Franca English

(LFE). ‘This distinction is important since the former tends towards an understanding of a pre-

given language that is then used by different speakers, while the latter suggests that LFE

emerges from its context of use. According to Canagarajah, ‘LFE does not exist as a system out

there. It is constantly brought into being in each context of communication’. (Pennycook)

‘If languages are invented and languages and identities are socially constructed, we need to

realize that at least some language users at least some of the time, hold passionate beliefs

about the importance and significance of a particular language to their sense of ‘identity’.

(Blackledge and Creese).

To think in terms of discrete linguistic units is consistent with established folk-linguistic notions

about the close correspondence between language and communitiy. These language varietions

are tied to a shared social and cultural history, a shared physical space, a shared knowledge

and experience that makes for a sense of community – a speech community indeed. These

communities are stable places in which local culture can thrive and find expression. These

indigenized/ nativized varieties as Indian English, Nigerian English etc. are important because

they assert the right of the speakers in these ex colonies to their own Englishes independent of

the language of the former colonizers. To these speakers the suggestion that their English is

just a lingua franca, a low-level, is anathema.

‘In the colonies there was a kind of colonial homogeneity. Same texts, same educational

methods, same songs were practised in every part of the British Empire. On the other hand the

politics tend to break away from that homogenized hegemony in an attempt to recover national

shape, rhythm, and identity, the uniqueness of the precolonial – and in some cases the colonial

– inheritance. In these literatures there is an attempt to restore dignity, to re-establish the self,

and to compensate for deprivation and depersonalization (Thumboo, talking about various

Englishes emerged in Asia).

We understand then, why variation in Outer Circle English is described in terms of discrete

varieties. Such description is in effect a declaration of independence with each separate variety

representing a separate communal identity. Each is recognized as an English in its own right,

distinct from and independent of the Inner Circle language, though still bearing its prestigious

name as a guarantee of equality – hence the insistence on Englishes in the plural.

‘English has successfully worked as a language for inculcating nationalism and cultural

renaissance in South Asia, West Africa and East Africa. Through English, ethnic, linguistic,

religious and regional barriers were crossed to mobilize the educated class about the pan-

regional political, social, educational issues’. (Kachru). Kachru here describes ELF but for him

the premium is on what is culturally and linguistically distinct about each variety rather than on

commonalities that could facilitate global international/intercultural communication. The situation

in non –post-colonial contexts is different.

Where languages have not been imposed upon by colonisers but by local governments and

education systems, different sentiment prevail. We can’t generalize too much but what happens

in different parts of the world from Japan to Portugal, China to Iran etc varies but in all these

Expanding Circle settings is a fairly strong reliance on national linguacultures coupled with

efforts to participate in the ‘international community’.

In Europe the debate revolves around how to protect the minorities and celebrate the linguistic

and cultural diversities and at the same time have a common means of communication

(Siedlhofer).

The lingua franca in Europe now is English. So we get two images of lingua franca undesirable

and desirable.

To a European the term lingua franca has positive connotation also because it triggers

associations with what was the lingua franca of the past, Latin. The term itself has Latin roots.

Frank comes from Old French meaning free, lingua is Italian for language. So it means ‘free

language’. (International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society – Ammon).

An alternative theory is that it means free of connections with particular countries and ethnicities

(Vikor).

4.5 Rethinking the concept of community

Freeing of a language from particular territories and groups of people is one of the conceptual

challenges that we face in the age of globalization.

For the Oxford dictionary a community is a group of people living together in one place.

International community is a metaphorical extension. There is also the idea of sharing values

and beliefs, stability and permanence. Hymes describes a community as a ‘local unit with

common locality and primary interaction’. According to Fishman its ‘ a set of speakers of the

same native language’.

There is an interdependence between community and variety. In his ‘Dynamics model of the

evolution of postcolonial Englishes’, Schneider says ‘both settlers and the indigenous people

who share a piece of land increasingly share a common language experience’.

As opposed to the evolution of post-colonial Englishes, the evolution of English as lingua franca

has not been tied to interactions among people who share a piece of land.

ELF is the means of wider communication for conducting transactions and interactions outside

people’s primary social spaces and speech communities, for enabling ‘transcultural flows’

(Pennycook).

The concept of community can be problematic when applied to diaspora communities: groups of

people originally sharing the same ethnic, cultural spaces but have geographically been

dispersed. Diaspora is rather distribution than spred (Widdowson’s distinction).

The dispersed group retains the linguistic and cultural identity. ‘Diaspora identities are

constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference’

(Hall).

‘Language is the focal centre of our acts of identity’ (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller). Previously

varieties were dialects which had to do with primary socialization and happened within a close-

knit primary community.

In the postmodern world the metaphor of international or global community and of diaspora has

turned into an everyday reality. Countless interaction networks are independent of physical

proximity often with the participants never meeting in the flesh. Virtual communities have

become significant giving raise to a different meaning of community. ‘A new identity rises

around a sentiment of belonging that can no longer be identified with purely territorial

dimension, and finds its expressions in the creolized, mixed idioms of polyglottism’

(Jacquemont).

With the proliferation of possibilities created by electronic means and easy global mobility,

English is in a pivotal position because it is world spread. People who want to ‘get on in the

world’ need a means of communication that takes them beyond traditional community

boundaries. Wider networking needs a lingua franca.

English as lingua franca is a language of secondary socialization a means to conduct

transactions outside one’s primary social space and speech community. Instead of varieties in

the sense of dialects as used in the primary communities, ELF uses different registers. Dialect is

a variety with reference to the user, register is a variety with reference to use. Many young

people communicate happily in chat rooms populated by interactants from all over the world and

say that the communities they are part of there are as real to them as their classroom ones. An

Austrian ‘gamer’ who has stopped talking to his family because he never leaves his computer,

got married in cyberspace and invited other 30,000 gamers to his wedding. How’s that for a

strong sense of community?

At a time when many of us spend time communicating with people via emails and Skype more

than in direct conversations with partecipants in the same physical space, the old notion of

community based on frequent local, non-mediated contact among people living in close

proximity cannot be upheld anymore. In contrast with local speech communities, these global

communities can be referred to as , with a common communicative purpose (Swales). We also

have communities of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet), people who come together around

mutual engagement in an endeavour.

For Wenger the community of practice is defined by a process of social learning with:

1. mutual engagement in sharing practices

2. taking part in some negotiated enterprise

3. making use of member’s shared repertoire.

This repertoire consists of linguistic and other resources which are the agreed result of internal

negotiations which can also be used for international/intercultural communication (Seidlhofer).

Communities of practice (CofP) might not have the same native language. So, alongside local

speech communities sharing a dialect, we see the emerging of global discourse communities, or

communities of practice, or other groupings sharing their particular modes of communication ,

with English being the most widely used code. This development has a momentum of its own,

and is happening at a pace that gives us little time to adjust our conceptual categories. But we

must adjust them. That is what Kachru refers to.

What we see in ELF is the process of language dynamics whereby the language is adapted and

altered to suit the changed circumstances of its use. The appropriation of the language as

lingua franca focuses attention not on what is proper English in reference to standard or native-

speaker norms, but what is appropriate English for new and different communicative and

communal purposes.

4.6 Rethinking the concept of competence

Chomski defined competence as ‘ the linguistic knowledge of an ideal speaker-listener in a

completely homogeneous speech community, who knows his language perfectly’.

Critics have pointed out that there is no such thing as a homogeneous speech community.

Chomsky doesn’t say that there exists a homogeneous speech community: it simply suits his

purpose to think of communities as if they were homogeneous, just sociolinguists as Trudgill

thinks of varieties as if they were discrete.

Hymes argues that Chomski concept of competence needs to be revised to take in account

what people know of their language beyond the formal rules of its grammar. There are he says,

four kinds of judgement that somebody competent in language is capable of making, and only

one of these concerns what is grammatically possible.

The other three judgements are:

Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation

available;

Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in

relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated;

Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing

entails. (Hymes)

The question is, how does one judge the relative possibility, feasibility, appropriateness, and

attestedness of some linguistic expression? Relative to what? Clearly such judgements can be

only made in reference to some established norm or other. Hymes has a norm in mind.

‘There is an important sense in which a normal member of a community has knowledge with

respect to all these aspects of the communicative systems available to him’.

But speakers of a language are notoriously unreliable in their judgement as to whether an

expression ‘in their language’ is possible (i.e. grammatically correct or not) or, given the

immense variety of contexts in which the language can be used, whether and to what degree it

is appropriate.

This ‘normal’ member of a community is in effect Chomsky’s ideal speaker-listener in a

completely homogeneous speech community, who knows his language perfectly, or who at

least knows what is normal and normally used in the language.

As Hymes implied, these judgements have to be made by native-speaking communities and

what is appropriate, for example, must be in relation to their context of use. But we can

uncouple these aspects from these primary social-native speaking communities and relate them

to other kinds of community – community of practice, for example, which cut across the

native/non-native distinctions and where different judgements are likely to be made about what

is feasible, appropriate etc.

4.7 Conclusion

English has spread because it has been appropriated to serve the social and communicative

needs and purposes of communities of users beyond those residing within the Inner and Outer

Circle. And as the language has been appropriated, so it has been adapted, since the norms of

use that to use Achebe’s words ‘suit the surroundings’ of these Circles are no longer

appropriate.

The emergence of ELF as a global phenomenon is a linguistic development without

precedence, and one therefore, that calls for a reconsideration of established concepts and

assumptions, especially those that relate to variety, community and competence.

It may be convenient to think of languages or varieties as self contained and stable entities for

the purpose of linguistic analysis, and this way of thinking may indeed correspond with how the

language users themselves conceives of ‘their’ language as something that defines their

particular community.

But the concept of community itself as a relatively self-enclosed network of social interaction

calls for radical revision in the contemporary world of in creased mobility and the unbounded

extension of interaction over the internet.

What it means to be communicatively competent in English can no longer be described with

reference to norms of linguistic knowledge and behaviour that are relevant only to particular

native-speaker communities.

Conformity to these norms is either necessary nor sufficient to meet the international demands

for the effective use of English as a lingua franca. What is unprecedented and new about ELF

is the extent of its use as both the cause and the consequence of the unprecedented and new

socio-economic, political, and technological developments in the world that go under the name

of globalization. But the kind of linguistic adaptation that it represents is not unprecedented and

new at all, but, on the contrary, is a striking example of what Kachru called ‘An age-old process

of language dynamics’.

How ELF actually exemplifies this process will be the concern of the next two chapters.

5 The dynamics of ELF usage

‘I shall call the whole, consisting of language and actions into which it is woven, the ‘language-

game’. One learns the game by watching how others play. But we say that it is played according

to such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules off from the practice of the

game – like a natural law governing the play. But how does the observer distinguish in this case

between player’ mistakes and correct play?’

(Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical investigations)

5.1 Variety and variation: state and process

Like any other language, English is a dynamic process and naturally varies and changes as it

spreads into different domains of use and communities of users.

The spread of English is unlike that of any other language but the process is not unusual.

As we have seen, ELF is often characterized negatively in terms of its non –conformity to the

established norms of grammar (and perhaps lexis) that are said to define the standard version.

ELF non conformities are too irregular, not systematic enough to make for varies status. They

are seen as deficiencies, errors. But ELF is measured against an undetermined norm based on

variety, community, competence which are elusive. They are arbitrary constructs designed for

convenience and some people use them to dismiss ELF as deviant. They are arbitrary because

they represent a dynamic process as a fixed state of affairs. But language is not fixed but

continually in flux, always variable.

So we are interested in seeing not so much ELF as a variation but how ELF users exploit the

resources of the language to communicate.

In short, how do the dynamics of ELF, or any lingua franca, work?

There are in Outer Circle English norms of three different types, code norm, feature norm, and

behavioural norm. ‘Of these three norm types the one frequently appealed to is the feature

norm, and this is largely because nativization is often narrowly constructed as predominantly

linguistic. The fact however is that linguistic nativization is only one of the processes of

indigenizing a non –native variety of English. Equally important are pragmatic and creative

nativization both of which fall largely within the scope of behavioural norms’. (Bamgbose)

Accomplished ELF speakers who know on the basis of their experience that they can rely on

their ‘ways of speaking’ (Hymes) for fulfilling whatever communicative needs they have, are

likely to develop both a sense that the language is theirs to use and a good capability to

accommodate to their interlocutors.

‘Creating nativization’ emphasizes the active and shaping role of the speaker. Pennycook

observes that performativity ‘provides a way of thinking about relationships between language

and identity that emphasizes the productive force of language in constituting identity rather than

identity being a pregiven construct that is reflected in language use’ . We must take the

‘vernacular voices of the popular seriously’. ‘We must consider languages from an anti-

foundationalist perspective, whereby language use is an act of identity which calls that language

into being’ (Pennycook)..

It seems that Pennycook conceives creativity and conformity as in conflict, ‘pulls’ in opposite

directions that are to be avoided. I don’t think they can be avoided because they are

conceptually interdependent – you cannot have one without the other. So the issue here is how

they are conciled in actual performance. As far as ELF is concerned, the crucial question is

what aspects of English, what norms or rules of the language, are exploited as a performative

resource.

5.2 Performativity and creativity in ELF

In the hundreds of ELF speech events in various domains that we have closely observed in the

VOICE project over recent years there is a real sense of speakers performing their own ELF,

shaping both the language and their identities in the process. Empirical ELD studies gradually

becoming available show how speakers assert their multilingual identities and their joint

ownership of the lingua franca they are using – and shaping and developing them in the

process. We see people how they use the language to negotiate meanings with each other in

communicative context and on line interactions. This could be called languaging which is ‘an

endless social process of orienting and reorienting ourselves to the environment’ (Becker).

Languaging is ‘employing whatever linguistic feature is at disposal to achieve the communicate

aims, and is a ‘full, embodied and engaged interaction with the world’.

‘Languagers are people who engage with the world-in-action, who move in the world in a way

that allows the risk of stepping out of one’s habitual ways of speaking and attempt to develop

different, more relational ways of interacting with the people and phenomena that one

encounters in everyday life. ‘Languagers’ use the ways in which they perceive the world to

develop new disposition for poetic action in another language and they are engaged in

developing these dispositions so that they become habitual, durable, Languaging then is and

act of dwelling’. (Phipps).

ELF quite unselfconsciously can push the frontiers of Standard English, they are fully involved in

interactions, they are focused on the interactional and transactional purposes and on

interlocutors as people rather than on the linguistic code itself. They ‘act upon and sometimes

against norms and standards’ (Jorgensen), they ‘develop new dispositions for poetic action’.

(Phipps).

When people choose to communicate via a lingua franca and settle for the means of

communication that excludes as few of the participants as possible (Van Parijs), they are

usually conscious of having to make a certain effort to ensure mutual intelligibility and

communicative efficiency. There is thus a premium on maximising pragmatic clarity (Kecskes).

Clarity can be enhanced by giving importance to certain elements, redundancy , explicitly,

regular patterns, word classes and semantic relations, repetition, paraphrase, synonyms.

‘Successful ELF communication relies on adaptive accommodation skills along with

appreciation and acceptance of diversity’ (Cogo).

Ex: Repetition. You have to move, you have to move out totally, you have to the your things out

of your room. The speaker wants to make sure that his message come across. This is self-

repetition, paraphrasing. There is also other- repetition. Speaker 2 will echo what speaker 1

said.

(See page 100

7

Designing English as an International language

‘One of the unanticipated achievements of the twenty-first century was the rapid diffusion of

Basic English as the lingua franca of the world and the even more rapid modification, expansion

and spread of English in its wake…

No deliberate attempt was made to establish it as the world language . It had many natural

advantages over its chief competitors, Spanish, French, Russian, German and Italian. It was

simpler, subtler, more flexible and already more widely spoken, but it was certainly the more

flexible and already more widely spoken but it was certainly the use of Basic English which gave

it its final victory over these rivals’

(H.G.Wells: The Shape of Things to Come)

7.1 Linguistic description and prescription

I have been drawing on the data of occurring usage mainly in the VOICE corpus, to show how

ELF functions as natural phenomenon, one that exemplifies the dynamic processes of variation

and adaptability that constitute the vitality of any living language. I have given empirical

description of how linguistic forms are actually used in ELF interactions.

Not everyone is content to allow natural linguistic processes to take their course and some

people feel obliged to intervene and arrest and direct their development in one way or another.

There may be good reasons for intervention: natural processes can often be improved on. Let’s

consider the prescriptions of how English should be used. ELF is not a set of reduced forms that

can be used for rudimentary communication like ‘Globish’ which is an example of linguistic

engineering of language planning, the most recent attempt to create a more elementary version

of English.

7.2 Language Planning and linguistic intervention

The general field of language planning covers different areas like status planning that assigns

different languages or language varieties to certain domains of use so that they effectively

complement each other. In Chapter 4 we saw the co-existence of English with other languages

in a composite repertories of linguistic resources. This coexistence is possible if English is

dissociated from its status as language of its native speakers and reconceived as a lingua

franca. My argument in this book is that an understanding of ELF depends on the recognition of

its independent status as a legitimate use of language in its own right but also of its inter-

dependent statuts as complementary component in a plurilingual repertoire. Only when its

statuts is this first sense is recognized can there be any realistic possibility of planning its status

in the second.

A second kind of intervention via language planning is corpus planning. Whereas status

planning deals with languages as they exist in their current form, corpus planning has to do with

making changes in the formal properties of the languages themselves, often involving lexical

and/or grammatical elaboration to make them measure up to a changed status. In the case of

ELF it is the change of status, its role as an international means of communication that brings

about the linguistic changes. These are not planned. They occur naturally as a consequence of

communicative adaptation. There might be an increasing explicitness and redundancy and

repetition but usually it reduces the complexity of the language.

So as any other language, the forms of ELF derive from the functions they have evolved to

serve.

Corpus planning intervenes to make the language better and more effective.

‘Whether linguistic modification is planned and deliberately imposed or naturally occurs as an

adaptive process, it has a direct bearing on a third aspect of language planning referred to as

acquisition planning (Ferguson). This is to be prescribed for learning and teaching, with the

planning and design, in other words, of the language subject. This is a kind of educational and

pedagogic planning.

Corpus planning proposals to reform English go back a long way. Thomas Sprat in 1667 printed

The History of the Royal Society of London. The royal Society was established in the mid-17h

century for the purpose of the ‘improving of Natural Knowledge’. In that period there was a lot of

eloquence, ‘luxury and redundancy of speech, a vicious abundance of phrase, trick of

metaphors, volubility of tongue that make so great a noise in the world’ (Sprat).

Members of the Royal Society took corrective action against this.

‘They have rigorously put into execution the only remedy against extravagance, a constant

resolution to reject all amplifications, digressions, swellings of style to return back to a primitive

purity, and shortness, when men delivered so many things, almost in an equal number of words.

They have exacted from their members a close, natural way of speaking, positive expressions,

clear senses, a native easiness. Bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they

can. ‘ (Sprat).

This belief in the need to protect the language from abuse carries over to the next century. It is

expressed in Jonathan Swift’s pamphlet entitled A proposal for correcting, improving and

ascertaining the English tongue, written in 1712. He proposed the setting up of a Society whose

members would control the language.

‘Besides the Grammar where we are allowed to be defective, we see many gross improprierities

which are authorized by practice and grown familiar. These must be discarded. We will find

many words which should be thrown out of the language; others should be corrected and many

that are considered antiquated restored on account of their energy and sound’ (Swift).

th

In the 20 Century we find others. For example George Orwell. In his essay Politics and the

English Language, he writes: ‘Most people recognize that we need to fight against bad English’.

Orwell too makes a plea for a plain language that would convey the meaning better and is

morally superior in that it lends itself to express better ‘The truth’. He adds ‘Elaborate verbiage

non only results in an increase in slovenliness and vagueness but also in swindles and

perversions’.

The reform Spat is arguing for is meant to modify the language to make it better suited for a

particular domain of use – the domain of scientific enquiry of the Royal Society. The ‘improving’

of the language is seen as a necessary requirement for the ‘Improving of Natural Knowledge’.

Sprats proposals resemble more recent corpus planning prescriptions that have been proposed

to regulate how English is used in certain domains. It’s not that English is ‘going bad’ but that in

certain domains it has to be simplified. These domains are the ones where there is a

transactional exchange of information, where the ideational function takes precedence over the

interpersonal.

A typical example is the Seaspeak, the English for international maritime use, or the language

of traffic control. These specify a restricted set of expressions for the carrying out of operational

procedures, versions of existing usage adapted to as and as precise as possible to make them

functionally appropriate for their use. Clearly for this purpose any variation is arrested for a fixed

formula.

7.3 The prescription of an international language

The strategy of ELF users is to exploit the resources inherent in the virtual language by focusing

on features of maximal functional value and discarding those that are surplus to their

communicative requirements. They focus on what is essential in the language and project their

non-ENL identities. Many worry that once the control of native-speaker norms is relaxed the

language will disintegrate and become unintelligible. Here then a corpus planning could be

made for prescribing adaptations to stabilize and regulate the language to suit its status as an

international means of communication.

Globish was created to improve communication. It’s a list of 1,500 English words, which the

inventor J.P.Nerrière identified as the most commonly occurring among non native users of the

language. These users claim ownership of the language for their own purposes and get by

effectively without conforming to native speaker norms.

The most recent publication on globish is ‘Globish The World Over’ (Nerriere and Hon),

translated into several languages. But we must understand that Globish is not the globalized

use of English as lingua franca the world over but a reduced version of the language that is

recommended should be used the world over. In the words of its inventor ‘It is designed for

trivial efficiency, always, everywhere, with everyone’.

According to the website in the section ‘Talk the talk’, the Globish gives these instructions:

Use only words in Globish glossary

Keep sentences short

Repeat yourself

Avoid metaphors and colourful expressions

Avoid negative questions

Avoid all humour

Avoid acronyms

Use gesture and visual aids

The glossary has many international words, like piano telephone and university. Globish is in

essence a restricted language. Seaspeak however was designed to meet specific purposes.

Globish is for universal use in all domains and kinds of unpredictable contexts ‘always,

everywhere, with everyone’.

There have been other proposals for regulating English and designing it to make to make it

more effective as a means of international communication – proposals that are based on an

explicit rationale and that deserve to be taken seriously. We will now consider these two corpus

planning proposals.

7.4 Nuclear English

This proposal comes from Quirk in a paper entitled ‘International communication and the

concept of Nuclear English’. The name might suggest a new model for English. Quirk gives

his ideas about the ways in which native English might be modified to make it easier to learn as

a foreign language and easier to use as an international language. He does not propose a

completely reformed system but examples of preferred forms already existing in English. He

proposes that when meaning may be expressed in different structural ways, we should choose

the simpler. For example non restrictive relative clauses might be replaced with adverbial

clauses, as in:

I expressed my sympathy to the captain, who had been reprimanded.

I expressed my sympathy to the captain because he had been reprimanded.

Ditransitive constructions might be replaced with the corresponding prepositional alternative:

We offered the girl a drink.

We offered a drink to the girl.

As Quirk points out, problems arise with modal verbs since the same forms encode different

meanings. The expression He may come may signal epistemic meaning (‘It is possible that he

will come’) or deontic meaning (‘It is permitted for him to come’).

He proposes a possible way to resolve the ambiguity.

‘We would retain the full range of modalities but restrict their expression to carefully prescribed

and maximally explicit paraphrases, banning the use of the normal modal verbs altogether. In

requiring paraphrase, we would be insisting on a speaker’s clarifying his own intention in

advance, while yet expressing himself without departure from fully acceptable forms of ordinary

English.

Paraphrases like ‘It is possible that this is not true’, ‘It is not possible that this is true’ present the

means not only of separating modality from preposition but of stipulating such features as the

scope of negation, frequently obscured in ordinary language’.

Quirk’s English would then be a sub-set of ‘fully acceptable forms of ordinary English’ selected

for their clarity and explicitness and greater communicative efficiency. But acceptability here has

to do with conformity to encoded standard language and not to the conventions of usage. By

‘ordinary language’ Quirk does not mean the ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ English of usage. He specifies

his English would be quite inauthentic in respect to the ‘ordinary’ language fo the native-

speakers.

‘The ‘solution’ never goes beyond the rules of ordinary acceptable English, nor has the

proposed solution any bearing upon the frequency of occurrence in ordinary English. If anything

the most frequent items (like the modal auxiliaries) are to be excluded from Nuclear English

since they are the most polysemous’.

So Nuclear English is entirely conformed to the rules of the standard code, but entirely

extraordinary in its contravention of the conventions of usage.

7.5 Basic English

Quirk refers to the drastic constraints that NE would impose on its users. Even more drastic are

the constraints imposed by another proposal: Basic English. Its originator, the Cambridge

philosopher and logician C. K. Ogden, was like Quirk, motivated by the awareness of the need

for an effective means of international understanding, especially after the First World War.

Basic English (basic for short) is a bit like Globish, but Ogden had more than ‘triavial efficiency’

in mind. In his words, Basic was to be ‘an International Auxiliary Language, a second language

for all who do not already speak English’.

Basic has 850 abstract units of meaning identified and categorized. 600 are nouns denoting

‘things’, 400 are ‘general’ and 200 ‘pictured’, the latter being susceptible to specific visual

representation (for example apple, dog), the former not (fruit, animal). 150 words are adjectives

denoting ‘qualities’, 100 of which are said again to be ‘general’ (male, fat) and 50 ‘opposites’

(female, thin). The remaining 100 words are so called ‘operation’ and are various kind of

‘function’ words – adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions. There is also a brief set of rules to

combine these elements.

These 850 words have been ‘scientifically selected’. Ogden says it took 10 years.

He studied semantics with Richards and with him pubblicated The meaning of Meaning (Ogden

and Richards 1923).

‘There is a lot of theory behind Basic and Basic could no more do what it does than an airplane

could fly the Pacific without the theoretical engineering behind its design’ (Richards). In ‘The

background and Origins of Basic English’ (1950) in the journal English Language Teaching,

Catford explains how Ogden drew on Jeremy Bentham’s distinction between ‘real’ entities and

‘fictitious’ entities, whereby ‘every fictitious entity has some relation to some real entity, and

cannot otherwise be understood than in so far as that relation is perceived’. (Ogden quoted in

Catford). Catford’s example for illustrating the distinction is ‘the belief that in talking of such

things as freedom and redness we are referring to independent entities not in space or time,

instead of simply free actions and red things’. Bentham’s distinction was crucial for Ogden’s

work on definition on getting at the ‘central, pivotal or key meaning’ of each word (Richards)

It would seem to have been Bentham’s thinking, then, that informed the ‘theoretical

engineering? That resulted in Basic. As Ogden explained:

‘How is Basic able to get so far with only 850 words? The reason may be given in the simplest

language. The greater part of words used in science and for everyday talk are what may be

called shorthand for other words. That is to say they are taking the lace of other words which

are clearly, in some sense, nearer the facts.

The greater part of the things we generally seem to talk about are what may be named fictions:

and for these again there are other words in common use which get nearer to fact…

The most important group of ‘shorthand’ words in European language is made up of what are

fictions; ‘credulous’ and ‘courteous’ say something about our feelings in addition to their

straightforward sense’. (Ogden 1930).

It was the power of definition which made it possible to say essentially everything with a very

limited vocabulary.

‘In our study we came to the theory and practice of definition. In comparing definitions – be it a

rabbit or a concept or a quality – some words kept coming back. Define them and you could

define anything. This suggests that there might be some limited sets of words in terms of which

the meaning of all other words might be stated. I fo, than a very limited language – limited in its

vocabulary but comprehensive in tits scope would be possible’. (Richards)

In Basic the word lists constitute a defining vocabulary. If a lexical item can be decomposed

into semantic features which are lexicalized in a word, then there is no place for it in Basic.

Example puppy and bitch can be dispensed because they can be replaced with young puppy

and female dog. Ascend and descend can be replaced by go up and go down. Basic is a

language stripped down to its conceptual essentials: ‘It is an English in which 850 words do all

the work of 20,000, and has been formed by taking out everything which is not necessary to the

sense. Disembark for example, is broken up into get off a ship. I am able takes place of I can;

shape is covered by the more general word form; and difficulty by hard.

By putting together the names of simple operations – such as get, give, come, go, put, take –

with the words for directions like in, over, through and the rest, two or three thousand complex

ideas, like insert which becomes put in, are made part of the learner’s story. (Ogden)

Ogden and Quirk use the same procedure to simplify modality: the replacement of existing

expressions with ’carefully prescribed and maximally explicit paraphrases’.

Ogden and Quirks proposals are conservative in that they do not involve ‘going beyond the

rules of ordinary acceptable English’. The Basic allows the using of un- words (to express

negatives like unprobable – but it is better to avoid the un if the result is a non standard

formation. In this case it is better to use not (not frequent instead of unfrequent). But how do we

know if we should use not or un-? And why should we use un- only for 50 adjectives and not

the 150 adjectives listed under Qualities?

If we can have unhealthy why not unfat? Ogden insists that his Basic is ‘sufficient for ordinary

communication in idiomatic English’ (Ogden)

Ogden like Quirk can only conceive an international language as a reformed version of a

national language and this is explicit in the name Basic English which not only is a descriptive

label (it is basic, necessary, essential English) but also an acronym: British American Scientific

International Commercial.

So Basic is an international English, national property of the British and the Americans. This

supports the view that the use of English is hegemonic.

Ogden says that Basic English ‘has been formed by taking out everything which is not

necessary to the sense’ eliminating words ‘unnecessarily coloured by some form of feeling’.

There is another project called Newspeak designed by Orwell in 1984. it applies Ogden’s

principle.

One of the Newspeak researchers, Symes, says: ‘We’re destroying words –scores of them,

hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. It’s a beautiful thing

the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there

are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also

the antonyms. After all what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some

other word? A word contains it’s opposite in itself. Take ‘good’ for instance. It you have a word

like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better,

because it’s the exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again if you want a stronger version of

good what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and

‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you

want something stronger still. Of course we use these forms already, but in the final version of

Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be

covered by only six words – in reality only one word’.

In Newspeak there are no opposites, only the systematic use of un-, and no ‘vague useless

words’ like excellent and splendid, words that are, as Ogden puts it, ‘unnecessarily coloured by

some form of feeling’. Of course Newspeak is a fictional reduction ad absurdum,

Basic was not designed to capture the nuances of literary style. ‘It cannot retain the charm and

completeness of a native language. It lacks the satisfying quality of an intimate and exclusive

possession. …Despite its awkwardness, its colourless vocabulary, it can yet convey many

meanings. It cannot give flood to the human soul, but it can provide a bridge to human thought’.

(Routh)

Basic cannot be used for eloquence or expression of an intimate experience. Ogden’s aim is to

get rid of the influence of feelings. It’s ok for transactions –maritime manoeuvres, air traffic

control, call centre routines and in other domains where the expression of conceptual meaning

is prioritized and there is natural synergy between form and function.

An interesting example is the book Twentieth Century Houses, written by McGrath and

published in 1934. It is considered a successful, elegant work written entirely in Basic in order to

make it more accessible to an international readership.

7.6 Basic English and ELF

We saw that ELF users create new words by making use of morphological rules without regard

to norms of regulative convention. Users could use Basic rules creatively in the same way.

Being Basic an artificial construct, unlike any occurring language, it has no dynamism or vitality

of its own but this is not to say that it could not develop a dynamism in use. What Ogden does is

increase the artificiality of Basic by setting limits on its vitality.

Vitality is one of the four attributes of language that Stewart, in an influential paper, identifies as

relevant to the definition of general language types. The other attributes are standardization,

autonomy, and historicity.

In Stewart’s typology, an artificial language like Basic has the attributes of autonomy and

standardization, but lacks historicity and vitality, as compared like for example with a classical

language like Latin, which has all three attributes except vitality.

Stewarts four attributes are helpful to understand the nature of ELF and how it differs from

Basic.

Basic as a new coding system has standardization, autonomy, because even if derived from an

exiting language, it si independent of it, except that its autonomy is a little compromised by the

requirement that it should conform to normal English usage. It obviously lacks historicity and

vitality. But these two features can be acquired once the new coding system is put onto

operation and naturalized by use. It is possible for an artificial language to be vitalized as it is for

a classical language to be re-vitalized like modern Hebrew. Basic as an artificial construct is not

vital but has to be made vital. Vitality is a function of use. Its in the matter of vitality that ELF

differs from Basic (and from artificial auxiliary languages such as Esperanto and Globish).

It is the actual vitality of ELF, as evidenced from its widespread and continuing use, that makes

it autonomous, separate from native-speaker English.

The vitality of ELF has to do with the way formal linguistic properties are made to function and

are adapted to serve communicative purposes. With ELF its formal properties are a reflex of

communicative functions, but with Basic the formal properties are defined in advance and how

they might function and get vitalized is a matter of speculation.

One speculation is provided by the quotation at the head of the chapter. This comes from a

novel by H.G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, which is a projection of future world history

supposedly written by a Dr Philip Raven from 1929 to 2106.

Basic English is presented has having achieved vitality having become the lingua franca by the

st

21 century. This is seen as catalyst for the subsequent ‘modification, expansion and spread of

English. This English prevails modified in ways beyond the prescription of Basic. The two parts

of the quotation at the head of the chapter are connected by this passage:

‘The English most of us speak and write today (2106) is a very different tongue from the English

of Shakespeare, Addison, Bunyan or Shaw; it has shed the last traces of archaic elaborations

as a subjunctive mood; it has simplified its spelling, standardized its pronunciation, adopted

many foreign locutions, and naturalized and assimilated thousand of foreign words’ (Wells: The

Shape of Things to Come).

Away from fantasy and back to the present, we know that Basic did not get adopted as Wells

imagined and ELF has spread without any help. But some modifications that Wells imagined like

the shedding of archaic elaborations and adoption of foreign locutions, has occurred naturally.

7.7 Conclusion

It is inappropriate to insist that standard ENL should enjoy privileged status as an international

means of communication.

ELF assumes that status quite naturally as a function of its unplanned development.

In this chapter I have also considered another aspect of language planning: so called corpus

planning, an alternative to the maintenance of the status of the standard ENL and to the

acceptance of naturally occurring ELF.

Because such corpus planning interventions, from Basic to Globish, prescribe alternative

versions of the language that claim to be better for international use, we have seen how these

prescriptions relate to the way English is actually used.

Hence they are relevant to understanding ELF.

I have paid particular attention to Basic English because it is the most detailed prescription.

I believe that rather than modify a code, or reconstruct one, and then seek to give it vitality by

persuading people to use it, it is preferable to find out and describe how people actually exploit

the potential of an existing language.

8

ELF and English Language Teaching

‘Setting objectives for learners to achieve must take account of the way language has been

appropriated internationally as a means of communication, and that this should lead us to think

again about defining such objectives in reference to native-speaker norms. I have suggested

that rather than seeking to specify goals in terms of projected needs, which for most part are

highly unpredictable, it would be preferable, and more practicable, to focus on the development

of a more general capability which would serve as an investment for subsequent learning’.

(H.G. WIDDOWSON: Defining Issues in English Language Teaching)

8.1 Prescriptions for use and learning

The prescriptions described in the last chapter were for use, exercises in corpus planning

concerned with making English more effective as a means of international communication. We

turn now to prescriptions for learning, the acquisition planning.

In designing English as a subject, prescriptive decisions have to be made about which features

of the language are to be selected and how they are to be presented. This book examines what

bearing ELF has on making these pedagogic decisions.

Acquisition planning for English (syllabus design and teaching methodology) has a long history.

Ideas about what is the best teaching methodology have varied. Structural language teaching

(STL) is superseded by Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), itself then mutating in recent

years into Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Language and Content Integrated

Learning (CLIL).

It is important to note that Basic was conceived not only as a means of communication but also

basis for further learning. Basic was thought of not only as an exercise in corpus planning but in

acquisition planning as well. The idea was that once you got your meaning across you could

use it as an ‘exploratory instrument’ for extending your communication. Unfortunately getting

meaning across in Basic resulted in an abnormal English that had no naturalness (like Quirk’s

Nuclear English).

In opposition to Ogden, we find Harold Palmer and Michael West, committed to pedagogic

prescriptions based on frequent words in ‘natural’ English.

West and Swenson criticize Basic too (Chapter 7). They say that instead of odd periphrastic

combinations that can be confusing it is better to use simple words frequently used.

Example

West: The priest thanked the ladies for their help in making the party so successful.

Ogden: The servant of the church said it was very kind of the women of good birth to help him

in making the meeting of friends come off so well.

The question arises as to whether the language for learning should be ‘natural’ .