Elizabeth J. Erling
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
The University of Edinburgh/Freie Universitat Berlin
6 September 2000
1. Introduction
One eternal ideal of humankind is the establishment of an international. global, or world language – a shared language which could be used by people of every nation to communicate with one another without economically or culturally privileging one country over others. In reality though, a language becomes an international language precisely because of its accompanying political, military, economic, and cultural power. English has become an international language not because of an utopian ideal, but by virtue of political and economic progress made by English-speaking nations in the past 200 years. Since English has spread around the world, research exploring ‘New Englishes’ – Singapore English, Indian English, and various African Englishes – has increased. Opposing research suggesting that English should be limited, standardized for global use, and simplified for international teaching purposes has also emerged. Additionally, there have been quite a few proposals to search for an alternative name that would more accurately reflect the global state of English language usage, as critics claim that the label ‘English’ fails to express the diverse usages of the language that are in effect today. Suggestions for a new label for English include:
English as an International Language (Smith), International English (Brieger), General English (Ahulu). Global English (Raley), Global (Toolan), World English (McArthur), and World Standard Spoken English (Crystal).
Ironically, due to the extensive amount of discourse surrounding the study of English and its international spread, there is no single label appropriate to describe the entity that I am attempting to discuss today. Moreover, it seems that choosing one is a political decision, as each label carries with it ideological associations. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, I am going to use the term international English for this paper. Although there is a rather broad range of depictions of the English that is used throughout the world today, nowhere in these discussions is international English clearly and concisely defined; there is no explicit indication of what it is or where it can be found: There is no conceptual agreement as to what international English represents.
This paper is an attempt to survey the rather vast range of labels, definitions, and ideologies that have been put forward over the past 25 years to characterize the global use of English. It is also an endeavour to uncover why this English-naming-mania has occurred. In short, it is a first step in establishing some sort of conceptual agreement about the international usage of English.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English#Dual_standard