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Globalization since the 1940s - Language: Global English

5 important questions on Globalization since the 1940s - Language: Global English

What does the spread of language show?

The spread of language had always been both a barometer and a facilitator of wider exchange. Language spread reflected the military and economic power of the linguistic source, and sometimes larger cultural prestige as well.

Name examples of spreading languages that widened exchange.

- The extensive use of Greek in the eastern Mediterranean, well beyond the native Greek-speaking population, was a key example in the classical and post-classical periods.
- Arabic, fueled by the rise of Islam and Arab-led trade, probably came closest to a status of world language, during the postclassical period and beyond.
- During the colonial and imperialist eras, both Spanish and French spread widely, along with English.

What fueled the global spread of English in the decades after World War II?

- Earlier British imperial status and now the global surge of the United States explained why English was the global candidate.
- But it was the growth of new levels of interchange - the needs of a new phase of globalization - that explained why a common language was increasingly required for businessmen, athletes, scholars, and others.
- And the spread of English in turn became a major factor in enhancing other aspects of globalization, completing the framework that decisively emerged in the late twentieth century.

Name examples where English was found as common language.

- International pilots almost inevitably needed a common language to communicate with airport control systems around the world, unless they visited a single language area alone.
- Advancing technologies, like computers, inevitably generated new words, and while these could be translated it was hard to resist the commonalities English provided.
- The increasing globalization of science, with researchers exchanging across borders, and the growing reliance on international conferences to exchange knowledge, again promoted a single common tongue, and by the early twenty-first century 66 percent of all scientists in the world spoke English.

Which drawbacks were there because of the globalization of English?

- There were drawbacks, including worries about traditional cultural integrity and resentments over the prime position of a single language.
- Native English speakers became increasingly lazy about learning other tongues, which might hinder more sophisticated globalization in the long run.
- People who learned English as a second language might become more reluctant to learn a third: why bother, when "everyone" speaks English.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Globalization in World History | 9780367279868 | Peter N Stearns

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