Predicting challenges to English

Language Problems & Language Planning 26:2 (2002), 129–157.

issn 0272–2690 / e-issn 1569–9889!©John Benjamins Publishing Company

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AUTHOR "Paul Bruthiaux"

TITLE "Predicting challenges to English as a global language in the 21st century"

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as a global language in the 21st century

Paul BruthiauxNational University of Singapore

The worldwide dominance of English is such that only catastrophic upheavalcould seemingly threaten it in the near future. In the longer term, an emerg-ing power (eg, China) may come to challenge American supremacy and withit the dominant position of English. However, even in the event of such arealignment, the language of that emerging power (eg, Chinese) may notsucceed in arresting the advantage English already derives from critical mass.To have any chance of global spread, a challenger would need to possessstructural characteristics — namely, minimal inflectional morphology, non-tonal phonology, and a non-logographic script — that would facilitate itsacquisition by individuals with largely utilitarian motivations. Alternatively,to evolve these characteristics, a challenger would need to be subjected tominimal standardization and be allowed the freedom to accommodate user-driven change, including indigenization. Finally, it would need to be per-ceived as a vehicle for modernizing values. While hypothetical challengers(eg, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, or Espe-ranto) all exhibit some of these characteristics, only English exhibits all ofthem at present and for the foreseeable future. For these reasons, the world-wide dominance of English is likely to survive even a hypothetical passing ofthe American Era.

Introduction

The cluster of economic, military, political, and technological factors that led tothe worldwide dominance of English as a language of wider communication iswell documented. Over a decade ago, Grabe (1988) linked this process to the

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role English plays in encoding technological information and permitting accessto that information. Grabe also argued that access to English was a prerequisite

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for any individuals or societies expecting to compete in the internationalmarketplace. During the following decade, additional contributing factors —analyzed in detail in Crystal (1997) and Graddol (1997) — came to include the

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demise of the centrally-controlled alternative to the capitalist socioeconomicmodel and the geopolitical realignment that resulted from this shift, thespectacular growth of Information Technology and especially of the Internet,and a growing perception that trade and other international exchanges werereaching hitherto una!ected regions of the globe. All of this — for better orworse — reflected an American worldview and favored its main carrier, English.

For the small minority whose professional lives — and with them, theircontinued access to prosperity and power — require that they be part ofinternational exchanges, English is key. In a rare and useful attempt at quantify-ing perceptions of language dominance in terms of number of speakers,geographic distribution, and ratio of speakers to per capita GNP, Navarro

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(1997) shows that English leaves far behind other languages of wider communi-cation (past and present) such as Dutch, German, Italian, Hindi, Japanese,Portuguese, and Russian but also more often mentioned competitors such asArabic, Chinese, French, and Spanish. Clearly, perceptions of relative strengthcan be highly unstable, and a week can be a long time in geopolitics, as theevents of September 2001 and the rapid rearrangement of alliances thatfollowed amply demonstrated. However, given the current privileged positionof English, it is reasonable to assume that it would take long-term socioeco-nomic disruption on a scale far more catastrophic than that brought about bythose attacks on symbols of US supremacy for the cluster of factors that gaverise to the dominance of English to unravel and for the role of English as aglobal language to be seriously threatened in the near future.

In this paper, I examine the likelihood of the dominant position of Englishcoming under serious challenge. This is no easy task since, as Crystal (1997)

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points out, no language has ever had so many speakers and played such a broadrange of roles, locally as well as internationally. Although some useful parallelscan be drawn between the di!usion of Latin through sizable areas of Europe asa result of the geopolitical expansion of its Roman base, this phenomenon isonly of limited relevance to the current spread of English, in part because theprocess went largely unrecorded and is therefore di"cult to trace. Moreimportantly, the di!usion of Latin and the linguistic indigenization and splitthat followed were not constrained by the standardizing forces operatingthrough modern language planning agencies, the print media, and, in anincreasingly literate world, public education. Only much later did Latin usage

Predicting challenges to English 131

come to feel the e!ect of standardization as a result of the stable nature of thereligious content it carried and the strongly centralizing tendencies of theCatholic Church. Nor is the role until relatively recently of Latin as a linguafranca in parts of the western world likely to be much of a guide because itremained the preserve of small professional elites, far removed in nature fromthe large numbers that today take part in interethnic and supranationalcommunication involving some variety of English or other.

Since no close precedent exists on which to base predictions, the linguisticseer is left to divine future trends from a combination of geopolitical trendsand the sociolinguistic characteristics of languages with global potential. Withthis in mind, I consider the possibility that change may occur gradually andthat a power may emerge later in this century to threaten American geo-political supremacy and with it the dominance of English as a global language.I argue that even in the event of such a shift in geopolitical circumstances, thedominant language associated with that emerging power would first have toarrest and then reverse the advantage English now derives from critical mass.To do this, a global challenger would need to benefit from three key factors.Firstly, it would need to possess a set of linguistic characteristics that wouldfacilitate its acquisition as a second language by individuals with largelyinstrumental motivations. Among these characteristics are minimal inflection-al morphology, non-tonal phonology, and a non-logographic script. Secondly,to have a better chance of evolving such a set of favorable characteristics if itdid not possess them already, a language with worldwide ambition would needto benefit from weak political and administrative control over form and usageand enjoy the freedom to accommodate unplanned, user-driven changeleading to both structural simplification and a degree of creolization as thelanguage adapts to local conditions in a multiplicity of sociolinguistic settings.Finally, a language competing for global prominence would have to beperceived — rightly or wrongly — as carrying the kind of sociocultural contentand economic promise likely to fire the imagination of potential users andmotivate them to undertake the task of learning the language, a challenge ofsome magnitude to most adult learners.

Because it focuses on hypothetical challengers, much of the argumentadvanced in this paper is theoretical. In practice, regardless of their socio-cultural or linguistic characteristics and despite large populations of nativespeakers, most languages that might hypothetically compete with English for aglobal role are likely to remain closely tied to a political or economic entity withlittle chance of achieving significant socioeconomic prominence beyond their

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regional base or their ethnic diaspora in the foreseeable future. The list oflanguages matching this description is a long one, and inclusion or omission isto some extent subjective and potentially controversial. Certainly, the combina-tion of sheer numbers of speakers and current socioeconomic conditionssuggests that the list might include — but by no means be limited to —languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Kiswahili, Malay, and Portuguese. For thepurpose of this discussion, however, the precise list is largely immaterial sincethe case made here is largely hypothetical and evidence is better drawn fromlanguages with a well-documented history of global reach or at least a widelyreported claim to such a status. Thus, I discuss Arabic and Spanish, twolanguages for which, despite a large and rapidly growing base of speakers and along history of supranational reach, no predictions of likely global dominancecan be made on the basis of current geopolitical trends. Also discussed exten-sively here are Japanese and German, each with a narrow local base associatedwith relative economic superpower status. Russian also receives attentionbecause, despite the recent setbacks su!ered by its geopolitical base, it longsymbolized the major competition to the ideology represented by (American)English. A perennial candidate for a global role is Esperanto, a languagedesigned precisely to play a role in supranational communication, a visionperiodically restated by its promoters (for a recent restatement of the case forEsperanto, see Tonkin 2000). Also discussed is French, because of its history as

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the erstwhile language of supranational communication among western elitesand because many lessons can be drawn from well-documented e!orts topreserve that privileged position. Finally, Chinese receives special attentionbecause recent growth in the economic profile and military assertiveness ofChina predicts that, despite the tumultuous events once again shaking parts ofthe Muslim world, it is from that country rather than from any conceivablealliance of Arabic-speaking nations that any significant challenge to Americangeopolitical dominance is likely to emerge in the 21st century.

Global potential and critical mass

A proposition running through writings on the worldwide spread of English(for example, Grabe 1988, Swales 1993) holds that languages of wider commu-

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nication prosper or wither according to the amount of information theycontain. Thus Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek, Arabic, Latin, French, and German allserved — and in some cases, continue to serve — as depositories of privileged

Predicting challenges to English 133

information — be it religious, legal, or technological — and as vehicles for thetransmission and expansion of that information. Today, for a growing numberof users, English functions as depository and transmitter of information relatednot only to science and technology but also, like its predecessors, to broadereconomic and cultural exchanges.

Clearly, English is not the only language currently fulfilling this kind of role.Following de Swaan (1998), languages can be seen as forming part of a global

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system consisting of several major constellations, each with its own set of locallanguages related to one central language, namely, the one spoken by the mostmultilinguals within the constellation. Some ten or twelve constellations can bereadily identified. Some map fairly closely onto national borders and those ofimmediate neighbors (eg, Russian or German). Some, such as French orPortuguese, link an erstwhile colonial power and its former dependenciesdespite territorial separation, while others connect a dominant group in a large,socially complex country with other linguistic groups within the country andwith a widely scattered diaspora (eg, Hindi or Chinese).

One of the less often mentioned languages operating in this fashion is Urdu,a language for which Aziz (1996) makes a plea, arguing that it should be taught

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in South Africa as a language of cross-cultural communication, to strengthenlinks between that country and the Indian sub-continent, and to foster mutualtolerance and understanding. Other languages of this type are Malay — in bothits Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia varieties — and Bengali, both spokenby more speakers than German or Japanese, yet rarely mentioned in thiscontext, presumably because of the relatively minor geopolitical roles played bythe nations with which they are associated. Within each constellation, thecommunicative potential of the dominant language is a factor of its prevalenceas a mother tongue and its spread among multilinguals. This is an advantageoussituation that the elites in charge of their respective sphere of influence areunlikely to relinquish, especially since maintaining this advantage becomeseasier as nations grow wealthier.

The analysis proposed by de Swaan can be applied to the international reachof English in that the language now undeniably occupies the central positionwithin this linguistic cosmology, increasingly connecting speakers of otherdominant languages whenever communication is required across rather thanwithin constellations. Thus, while English competes with Hindi in India andwith Spanish and French in North America, it is now essentially withoutcompetitor at the global level, except perhaps in international organizationssuch as the United Nations or the European Union that continue to reflect

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earlier geopolitical realities. By now, it is likely that the dominant position ofEnglish has become a self-reinforcing process. English is growing in suprana-tional reach not only in direct relation to the amount of information it containsbut also because the more people choose to learn it in one part of the world, themore attractive it becomes in other communities, exponentially. Thus, as deSwaan suggests, English may have entered the stage of a self-expanding globallingua franca, connecting all supranational languages in the global constellationin a network of communicative interdependence. At some point, de Swaansuggests, English might become the only second language being learned.

As suggested above, a key ingredient in the process of self-expansion iscritical mass, the point at which sheer number of speakers, their wide geograph-ic distribution, and their sociopolitical and economic power makes it too costlyfor a competitor to enter the fray. As in all monopolistic situations, lack ofcompetition blunts incentives and inertia becomes a dominant characteristic ofparticipants in the monopoly, be they providers or consumers. These circum-stances probably already apply to speakers of English as their first language, whomay see no benefit in making the e!ort to learn a second language. But it mayincreasingly apply to potential users of languages of international communica-tion, who may see no reason to challenge the dominant global language sincethey typically have few emotional ties with that or any other supranationallanguage. In her study of attitudes toward English among international gradu-ate students on a US campus, Munro (1996) found that her subjects saw English

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as playing an essentially instrumental role in their plans. Subjects were some-what passive in their acceptance of their future role as ambassadors for Englishand lacked incentives to support competitors to a language that had servedthem well and could be expected to underpin their career plans. To thesehomebound graduate students — the future policy shapers and predictors ofcultural direction in increasingly outward-oriented nations — critical massappears to have already ruled out any serious thought that there could even bea competitor for English as a global language.

Global potential and linguistic structure

While the critical mass increasingly favoring English alters the dynamicsobtaining across linguistic constellations and raises the bar for potentialchallengers, a number of linguistic factors also allow predictions to be maderegarding their eventual success. In principle, all languages have the potential to

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fulfill any communicative role. In practice, languages are shaped to some extentby their context of use. Like all natural organisms, languages consist of a set ofcharacteristics evolving slowly over time, partly randomly and partly in re-sponse to changes in the communicative needs of their speakers as theserearrange themselves geographically and socially. For example, the inflectionalcomplexity of languages such as Icelandic or Finnish is clearly no impedimentto the learning of these languages by young children born among a stablepopulation, and thus is under no pressure from within to change in thedirection of greater morphological simplicity. However, in the (highly unlikely)event of geopolitical circumstances turning such a language into a contender fora global role, it would surely come under pressure from without to simplify orsee current and potential users favor better adapted — that is, easier to master— competitors.

To be sure, modern languages do not evolve entirely as a result of uncon-trollable environmental forces. Just as modern humans have gradually gaineda su"cient degree of control over their circumstances for reproductive successto no longer be determined by adaptive reactions to raw environmental forces,modern societies have devised institutional tools that allow them to generateand steer change in both language form and language use, with some success asregards writing conventions though generally far less in other areas. Moreover,there is no denying that English owes its current dominant position in large partto historical and geopolitical forces, not primarily linguistic ones. However, itcan be argued that the metamorphosis of English from a regional to global rolewas facilitated by the fact that the language had already undergone a process oflinguistic change, leaving it with a set of linguistic characteristics that madesubsequent adaptive change less traumatic. By this token, a challenger for therole of dominant global language would have to either possess a set of linguisticcharacteristics that would make the transition to that role less structurallydisruptive or be allowed to evolve one thanks to minimal interference frominstitutional standardizing forces.

The degree of complexity of this set of linguistic characteristics mattersbecause learners of both first and second languages are attentive to a number ofcompeting linguistic cues in their search for form-meaning connections and intheir attempt to discover patterns in the input. Among these cues are morpho-logical inflection, tonality, and word order. While identifying and decodingeach of these cues presents a special kind of di"culty, facing all of them at oncein a hypothetical new language would present learners with an insurmountablecognitive challenge and make that language unlearnable. In practice, unlike

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young children, most learners of languages of supranational communicationtend to be motivated by instrumental objectives. To be sure, there is evidencethat second languages — including one with relatively complex inflectionalmorphology such as Spanish — can be learned to a high level of accuracy evenby older learners (Schultz and Elliott 2000). For the majority, however, a late

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start militates against the learning of complex linguistic structure to anythingapproaching nativelike standard (for recent evidence, see de Keyser 2000). It is

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true that the complex inflectional morphology of French did not preventlanguage learning success among pre-revolutionary Russian aristocrats, forexample. However, the majority of modern users of languages of supranationalcommunication do not share the social and educational privileges that madethis kind of proficiency possible among a small elite with ample time and leisureto learn the finer details of a second language, just as earlier elites succeeded —more or less — in mastering the finer points of Latin.

Thus, all other things being equal, it can be predicted that learners ofsecond languages — and especially adult learners — will favor a linguisticcompromise o!ering maximal communicative benefit in return for minimallearning investment to the extent that any complexity beyond the scope of thatinvestment will be ignored if subsequently encountered. In this sense, thestructure of any potential language of supranational communication comesunder the same pressure that leads to the morphosyntactic minimalismcharacteristic of pidgins. Indeed, McArthur (1996) predicts that the remaining

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inflectional irregularities of English are likely to be ironed out as the languagegrows in global significance. McArthur even recommends that the process behastened, especially in print, through deliberate language policy. In a similarvein, Jenkins (2000) o!ers some guidelines on a pronunciation of English that

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could be taught across cultures and first language backgrounds with broadmutual intelligibility as the primary objective. In this, both McArthur andJenkins echo numerous earlier proposals for the rationalization of the language,several of which are reviewed in Yano (2001).

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How, then, does the competition — both hypothetical and probable —stack up against English in this respect? In this sense at least, paucity of inflec-tional markings gives Chinese an advantage for a future global role for thelanguage. Japanese, meanwhile, does encode tense and marks semantic relation-ships with a range of a"xes and, although there is no reliable means of calculat-ing inflectional complexity, it is probably roughly in the same range of inflec-tional complexity as English, whose residual inflectional morphology leadsmany second language learners to comment favorably about its relative ease of

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learning, at least initially. By contrast, the complex inflectional morphology ofSpanish and French presents learners with a substantial challenge. In Spanish,a verb such as escríbir (write) has no fewer than 48 possible inflections invarious combinations of person, number, tense, and a!ect, whereas theequivalent English verb has just five forms. Similarly, many learners of Spanishor French adjectives have to contend with four possible forms that reflectgender and number as well as an inherent (prenominal) versus non-inherent(postnominal) distinction. In contrast, English adjectives come with noinflectional markings and normally modify nouns in prenominal position only.Arabic, German, and Russian, for their part, add a range of case markings to thechallenge of encoding meaning in nouns and adjectives (and in the case ofGerman, articles too). Admittedly, some of these markings — including severalof the 48 forms of a common Spanish verb — belong to literary registers andare not likely to be of concern to most users of these languages for purposes ofsupranational communication. Yet, for the learner aiming for a modicum ofaccuracy, the di!erence in the magnitude of the learning task is striking.

In theory, this should leave Esperanto with little competition given the caretaken by its creators to regularize its form to an extent unattainable by naturallanguages. However, two di"culties immediately arise. Firstly, were thelanguage to spread and indigenize in a variety of settings, the price of greaterdi!usion would most likely be loss of uniformity and a gradual increase inmorphological variation. Secondly, the worldwide adoption of Esperanto ismade unlikely by its strongly European nature. To speakers of non-Europeanlanguages who constitute a substantial proportion of its potential customerbase, the language looks remarkably similar to the obvious and economicallymore attractive alternative, namely English. To these potential users, not havingto master the mildly irritating inflectional irregularities of English would bemeager compensation for being shut out — at least initially — of existing globalnetworks. The likely outcome is that these potential users will prefer a Europeanlanguage with which they are already familiar (English) over a quasi-Europeanlanguage with which they are not (Esperanto).

A second linguistic factor likely to a!ect the supranational potential ofspecific languages is phonology, and in particular the issue of tonality. Althoughthe acquisition of a tonal language obviously presents no insurmountableproblems for first language learners, it is reportedly very di"cult when tackledby learners in adulthood. This leaves all the hypothetical challengers to Englishunder consideration here evenly matched except for Chinese since it relies ontonal di!erences to create semantic contrasts. Although auditory training can

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be e!ective in the identification and retention of Chinese tones by adultlearners (Wang et al. 1999), tone perception and production is especially

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di"cult for these learners (Liow and Poon 1998). As in all cases of language-in-

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contact accommodation, the likely consequence is a degree of structuralsimplification, namely, some tone loss in the international variety of Chinesethat would evolve as a result of the global spread of the language and its use byan increasing number of non-native speakers, a scenario supported by evidencefrom a range of African and Asian tonal languages (Salmons 1990). Since

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coping with tonality would require additional training relative to non-tonalcompetitors and strain the limited resources of potential learners, tonalityappears to constitute something of a handicap for Chinese as a potentiallanguage of international communication.

Global potential and writing systems

An additional factor likely to influence the chances of hypothetical challengersto English as a global language is the writing system favored by each language.Clearly, a challenger would have to meet the needs of large numbers of literateusers under pressure to communicate at a distance and with relatively limitedresources to devote to learning the language. This raises the question of thesuitability of a primarily logographic writing system such as the one used byChinese and, with adaptations, Japanese.

Although the Chinese script can be said to be primarily logographic, it also— and contrary to widespread misperceptions — incorporates a phonemicelement (DeFrancis 1989). It is primarily logographic in that key semantic

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components (known as “radicals”) stand for meaning without the intermediarystep of representing the phonology encoding that meaning and despite the factthat very few symbol-meaning relationships can be said to be iconic. However,Chinese script also incorporates a phonemic element in that radicals aretypically combined with characters that stand for words with similar pronuncia-tion but no semantic connection. Constraints apply to possible combinationsof radicals and phonemic components, their location in relation to each other,and stroke direction for both. In addition, and also contrary to popular belief,progress in acquiring the system is not achieved by rote but through a growingunderstanding of the rules underlying the system. While children aged six arenormally competent at handling the key semantic radicals, three more years ofstudy are required for competence in the use of phonological components ofthe script (Chan and Nunes 1998).

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Predicting challenges to English 139

All of these factors in addition to the number of combinations that need tobe mastered explain why the system is widely regarded as comparativelydi"cult to learn — though relatively easy to decipher once learned — and whylearning and teaching a script of this type to a standard permitting communica-tion across a wide range of subjects and registers constitutes an onerous task,both cognitively and educationally (Chen 1994). Moreover, the fact that the

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system is only partially phonemic largely rules out self-access through readingas a major route to language learning — at least in the early stages — and makesthe acquisition of lexis heavily dependent on teachers and other native ornativelike speakers. Although as Chen (1994) argues, computers are increasing-

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ly accommodating of logographic writing, the future generalization of speechrecognition technologies is unlikely to facilitate the decoding of the logographiccomponent of the script even if it reduces encoding di"culties. Overall,learning this type of script is not a task that instrumentally driven users of alanguage of international communication are likely to take up readily if a lessresource-hungry alternative exists.

Most likely, that alternative will be a script based primarily on the represen-tation of phonemic segments. Although this alternative could in principle beeither alphabetic or syllabic depending on the phonotactic structure of thelanguage in question, the range of hypothetical languages of supranationalcommunication under consideration here rules out the syllabic option unlessJapanese were to abandon the primarily logographic kanji script and relyentirely on one of its two kana syllabaries. This would leave Esperanto with aclear lead given its close match between pronunciation and script characteristicof all artificial languages. Meanwhile, English, French, German, and Spanishwould be evenly matched, though German and Spanish do have the advantageof a script that has remained closer to pronunciation over the centuries, at leastas regards the standard variety of these languages. Although a global role forRussian and Arabic may be somewhat hampered by their association withscripts shared by few other languages, the alphabetic nature of these scriptswould not in principle be a major obstacle. In contrast, the long history ofe!orts to advocate the romanization of Chinese writing suggests that thelimitations of logographic writing are well understood by Chinese scholars andpolicy-makers. Arguments in favor of such a switch have included a reducedcognitive and educational burden for Chinese speaking children, the fastergeneralization of literacy in poorer parts of China (Chen 1996), and the boost

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that this would give to Chinese participation in worldwide communication andexchanges (Feng and Yin 2000). Yet, change in the direction of romanizing

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Chinese writing is unlikely because of factors that are essentially sociopoliticalrather than linguistic. Among the factors listed by Chen (1994, 1996) are the

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role played by the Chinese script as a cultural link among the Chinese diasporairrespective of dialect, the di"culty of imposing the Beijing standard on whicha romanized script would presumably be based in regions where that variety ofChinese is poorly understood or even perceived as alien, and likely resistance insome parts — and especially in Taiwan — to any kind of language reformorchestrated from Beijing. As a result, continued reliance on a primarilylogographic script is likely to limit the chances of Chinese as currently writtenacceding to a global role even in the likely event of a massive expansion ofChina’s geopolitical clout in the coming decades.

Global potential and standardization

A related factor likely to a!ect the potential of hypothetical languages ofsupranational communication is their degree of exposure to standardizingforces. Ideologically unwelcome though the notion might seem to many, theidea of promoting a standard across varieties of a language does have somesupporters. In theory at least, supranational standards guarantee a degree ofegalitarianism among all speakers of an international variety (Kibbee 1993). In

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the context of English, Bamgbose (1998) argues, non-native communities of

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speakers are at risk of even greater disadvantage in that the very absence ofstandardization for new Englishes risks encouraging these varieties to continuelooking to established varieties for exonormative standards Yet, howeverdesirable a degree of standardization may be in some circumstances, it can beargued that the internationalization of English has been facilitated by theaccidental combination of two favorable factors. Not only is English largelyfree of the kinds of inflectional complexities that would strain the resources ofinstrumentally motivated potential users and rapidly come under pressure forspontaneous simplification in a supranational context. In addition, furthersimplification of those inflectional quirks that did survive the transition fromOld through Middle to Modern English is unlikely to be resisted because of therelative weakness of standardizing forces within as well as across varieties ofthe language.

Today, the dominant view of English as a global language emphasizes therange of its varieties operating as an interconnected system, each variety closelyrelated to a relatively stable core and infinitely adaptable in its own localized

Predicting challenges to English 141

setting. In the words of Nadkarni (1992:328), “the function of a world language

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is to foster an international or global consciousness without suppressingdiversity in its manifestations.” Bex (1993) argues that the notion of Standard

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English is more a social myth than a recognizable variety and that the Englishteaching curriculum should incorporate elements of regional varieties as well assupranational features of the language. Hyde (1998) makes the case for the

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formal adoption of post-colonial models of English and for the incorporationof the objective of intercultural competence in the language teaching curricu-lum. Similarly, Pakir (1999) argues that as English becomes an increasingly

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globalized resource, it must bend to the changing identities of its many usersand if necessary distance itself from Anglo-Saxon cultural assumptions,especially in the context of language teaching. Chisanga and Kamwangamalu(1997) and McArthur (1999), among others, put the issue in terms of the

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ownership of the language by its current users as opposed to its originators,regardless of geographic location. Bamgbose (1998) notes that, if an interna-

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tional standard were to emerge, it would never be identical to any specificvariety because all the interconnected varieties would, in varying degrees, havecontributed to it.

This relativistic view of the nature and desirability of standards — reviewedin some detail in Davies (1999) — flows directly from a long tradition of

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English laissez-faire in matters of language and of a history of half-heartedattempts at controlling the language from the center. Despite well-articulatedarguments, plans to set up a language academy on the Italian or French modelnever succeeded in attracting much more than the attention of polemicists suchas Jonathan Swift. In mid-18th-century England, no less an authority thanSamuel Johnson willingly recognized in the preface to his dictionary that“exuberance of signification” in language could never be fully chronicled, letalone controlled, and conceded that he saw no point in supporting e!orts by hisown social class to control — or, as they saw it, uplift — the linguistic practicesof the “laborious and mercantile part of the people.” In a sense, the moresuccessful attempts at standardization a!ected the outer reaches of the growingEnglish-speaking world. This is evident, for example, in the grammars anddictionaries that set out to codify a Scottish standard for lexis and syntax basedon the speech of local clerics, academics, and lawyers (Jones 1993) and in

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Webster’s largely successful crusade for spelling reform in America motivatedat least as much by nationalistic fervor as by purposes of linguistic rationalization.

Resistance to supranational standardization is also a factor of the peculiargeographic distribution of English born of the growing geopolitical reach of

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speakers of the language. What started as limited maritime trade and thewestward migration of a few thousand people from a small island o! WesternEurope resulted in a language now distributed among a number of powercenters, each with its own sociocultural characteristics and its own set ofregional and global interconnections. While the present-day dominance of theNorth American variety is undeniable, history as well as a literary canon thatcontinues to command worldwide attention is likely to give the British varietylasting influence. Despite its narrower range, the Australian variety is unlikelyto be challenged within its own regional sphere of influence. Much the same istrue of India because of its large population, the power it wields regionally, andthe fact that the variety serves to tie the component parts of India to each otherand the whole to neighbors that share a common colonial history. As a result,it is now unimaginable that one of these varieties — even the American variety— would come to command so much more sociolinguistic clout than any of theothers that it could — deliberately or accidentally — exert su"cient gravita-tional force as to reduce related varieties to minor variants of itself. Thisdivision into several relatively equal, or at least culturally autonomous and self-confident poles, and the resulting multi-core distribution of modern English arelikely to continue making the language resistant to standardization.

Among the hypothetical challengers to English as a global language re-viewed here, the picture is somewhat more complex. Considered independentlyof other factors, the wide distribution of Arabic across national borders shouldin principle make that language at least as impervious to standardization asEnglish. This should ensure that no single variety dominates and that thelanguage is permitted to adapt to local environments while maintainingsu"cient unity to function as a language of international communication.However, this potential for adaptation is reduced by the close association of thelanguage with a religious message that does not lend itself readily to relativisticinterpretations. As a result, the potential for Arabic to adapt to local settings,especially in its written — hence most easily standardized — form and to takeon a global role must be regarded as limited, even if other geopolitical factorswere favorable.

For its part, Spanish has a long and well-documented history of attempts atstandardization through the publication of grammars and dictionaries thatoften aimed to resist the alleged superiority of French norms (Cuevas 1999).

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Today, attitudes to the international role of Spanish and to internal variationare said by Lombraña (2000) to be more utilitarian and relaxed than French

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ones, no doubt owing to the early weakening of Spanish imperial power and the

Predicting challenges to English 143

resulting independence from Spain of relatively isolated nations, as well as tocontact within many of these nations with a range of indigenous languages.Although the Spanish Academy has a fearsome history of watching overlanguage standards as far as its reach will allow, the huge demographic imbal-ance between Spain and the Spanish-speaking Americas means that anystandardization in Spanish today is more likely to come semi-haphazardly fromUS-based TV networks broadcasting to the entire continent than from anancient European planning agency. Indeed, according to Sánchez (1992), only

<LINK "bru-r45">

Spain currently appears active in the area of the o"cially sanctioned, top-downstandardization of Spanish. Thus, geopolitical and economic considerationsapart, a combination of the multi-core distribution of modern Spanish, therelative ine!ectiveness of centrally-directed standardization, and weak resis-tance to indigenization give Spanish an advantage in these hypothetical globallanguage stakes.

Several of the other potential competitors under consideration here are tiedto a single culture that is massively dominant within a single nation with only anincreasingly detached diaspora to support it internationally. Two languages ofthis type are Japanese and German, both closely associated with countries thatfor historical reasons remain reluctant to assert themselves culturally or political-ly. Certainly, unlike English, neither has experienced the kind of linguistic orcultural schism triggered by a former dependency going its own way whileretaining the language of the former colonial power. Although Japanese func-tioned as a supranational language for only a brief period in Taiwan and to someextent in Korea and China, no new nation has risen or looks likely to rise fromwithin the Japanese-speaking fold to threaten the unquestioned standardizingtendencies of the center. This puts Japanese at a disadvantage as regards itssuitability as a potential language of wider communication.

As for German, a degree of ambivalence toward standardization can be seenin the failure of recent attempts by the German authorities to enact spellingreform. From the start, this e!ort ran into fierce debate and even legal action,reflecting the fact that 75% of the population opposed the reform, which waseventually abandoned unilaterally by leading newspapers (Hutchinson 1999).

<LINK "bru-r23">

In the sense that institutional standardizing forces thus appear relatively weak,the language seems relatively well adapted to the unavoidable pressure formorphological simplification that would inevitably follow its hypotheticalinternational spread. Whether the same newspaper editors that successfullyresisted spelling reform would be wiling to sanction such simplification isdebatable. Somewhat more internationalized is Russian, with its history of pre-

144 Paul Bruthiaux

revolutionary and Soviet-era imperialism and of close control — includinglinguistic control — over the a!airs of its immediate neighbors (Russia’s “near-abroad”). Yet, Russia has an unremarkable record of linguistic spread despitehaving recently wielded considerable geopolitical power as far afield as inAngola, Cuba, or Vietnam. Moreover, no Russian-speaking nation has everemerged or looks likely to emerge to challenge the standardizing power of theRussian heartland.

For its part, China has so far managed to keep its core domain territoriallyintact thanks in part to a pragmatic approach to regional variation. This isillustrated in the relative tolerance of substantially di!erent sociopolitical normsin recently repossessed Hong Kong and Macau, a model that would likely befollowed in the event of Taiwan somehow coming under mainland control. Tobe sure, sizable portions of the country speak versions of Chinese that by manymeasures could be described as distinct languages were it not for the demandsof political expediency. This factor, along with the role played by primarilylogographic writing among an increasingly literate population, leads to theconvenient fiction that Chinese constitutes a single language and that allteaching in China — except that of indigenous languages — takes place in thepreferred Mandarin standard. Meanwhile, issues of standardization a!ectmainly the treatment of linguistic imports — especially in the field of tech-nology — and continuing discussions of the issue of romanization (Chen 1994,

<LINK "bru-r7">

1996). Clearly, despite major variation within China as well as across China anda widely dispersed Chinese diaspora, and despite increasingly overt Taiwaneseattempts at establishing a degree of communal identity and linguistic autonomy(Tse 2000), no threat is currently visible to the o"cial dominance of standard

<LINK "bru-r50">

Mandarin. On the surface, there is no doubt where authority in matters of theChinese language is meant to reside. However, given the fact that standardiza-tion is in part cosmetic, Chinese does have the potential to adapt to multiplesettings successfully were China to accede to global power status.

French, meanwhile, has a long history of deliberate standardization thatparallels the centralizing policies of successive regimes and governments and thepromotion of a linguistic standard on the basis of its allegedly superior naturein terms of clarity and rationality (Lodge 1991). Over the past two centuries

<LINK "bru-r31">

especially, the imposition of standard French constituted a key strategy for theelimination of social, political, and religious ideologies regarded as reactionaryand for the promotion of revolutionary concepts such as egalitarianism (Kibbee

<LINK "bru-r28">

1993). This long-standing concern with implementing political ideals andobjectives through language policy explains modern French concerns about

Predicting challenges to English 145

perceived threats to national unity and a preoccupation with linguistic purity(Ager 1999, Heller 1999, Safran 1999). Today, this acceptance of a key role for

<LINK "bru-r1"><LINK "bru-r20"><LINK "bru-r43">

the institutions of the state in defining and safeguarding cultural values alongwith their linguistic embodiment leads many influential French commentatorsto regard the ability of English to absorb input from many sources as commer-cially motivated and therefore suspect (see, for example, Gambier 1993 and

<LINK "bru-r16">

Pêcheur 1998). In addition, French has long been inextricably tied to a histori-cally, politically, economically, and culturally dominant territorial core. Withother French-speaking or partially French-speaking communities either locatedin economically or politically dependent countries (mostly in Africa) orconstituting linguistic minorities within larger countries (Canada, Belgium,Switzerland), this unbalanced geographic distribution serves the centralizingtendencies of the core and makes it less likely that the language will be allowedthe freedom to develop organically into an ever-adaptable tool of globalcommunication.

Nor is Esperanto likely to fare any better, on this measure at least. On theone hand, its lack of formal association with any national base should give it anadvantage. However, this quintessentially planned and maximally simplifiedlanguage would require constant intervention on the part of its promoters andguardians because, as its communicative and geographical range expands, theforces that shape all languages in use are bound to take its current structuralconfiguration in unpredictable directions to the point where variation willbegin to develop in parts of the system. In addition, the predicted increase incommunicative and geographical range of the language would lead to unavoid-able diversification of its lexical inventory, a process that must either threatenthe much-vaunted regularity of the language if unplanned or hinder adaptationto local conditions if planned. From this standpoint at least, Esperanto seemsill-suited to the supranational role which its creators envisaged.

Global potential and modernization

Except in cases where a language of wider communication is imposed onsubjugated peoples in a manner involving active repression of local alternatives,a major factor in the globalization of a language is its appeal as a modernizingand liberating force. First-time users and especially those making the switchfrom an existing language of wider communication to a competitor (eg, Russianto English in Central and Eastern Europe) need to regard — for whatever

146 Paul Bruthiaux

reasons, rightly or wrongly — their current options as in some way deficient. Inaddition to calculations of numbers of potential speakers with whom to interactin each potential language, this choice is to some extent determined by relative-ly intangible, perhaps even emotional factors. As Petzold and Berns (2000)

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show in the case of Hungary, along with the rapid political and economicchange that accompanied the waning of Russian influence in the country in the1990s came a sudden rush of interest in English as an international languageand an abrupt switch from Russian to English as the dominant second languagein the country’s schools. Yet, more than mere commercial relations must havebeen involved in this process as German was — at least in principle — a viablealternative since an older German-speaking population survived and Germanyquickly replaced the former Soviet Union as Hungary’s dominant tradingpartner and soon established itself as the country’s principal source of tourismincome.

In post-Soviet Hungary as in many other societies, an additional factor wasthe fact that English was seen as both symbolizing and making availableliberating values. Prabhu (1994) argues that English has come to embody the

<LINK "bru-r42">

dominant knowledge paradigm of the time. In a rapidly changing world, accessto knowledge is no longer a luxury enjoyed by a tiny leisured class sitting at theapex of a feudal society. Today, it is a major predictor of which members of asociety are likely to see tangible improvement in their standard of living andwhich are likely to stay poor. Admittedly, knowledge comes in many forms andis carried by many linguistic vehicles. However, if knowledge is likely to lead tobeneficial change, it must be — as Prabhu puts it — of the “learning” and“thinking” as opposed to the “doing” type. In developing societies especially,such thinking and learning is likely to lead to an interest in what might betermed “big ideas” such as democratic participation and civil rights and to aturn of mind favoring inquiry, criticism, and skepticism.

Much as Latin linked the intellectual community of medieval Europe,English now connects policy-makers, business leaders, academics, and otherprofessionals who share a set of values and practices largely congruent with thatidentified by Prabhu. To some, this value transplant is to be welcome becauseit is relatively neutral. That is, it allows users — especially in former colonialsettings such as India, South Africa, or Nigeria, for example — to bypasstraditional structures and emotionally charged ethnic attachments, indigenizingin the process both values and the language that carries them (for an examplefrom an East African setting, see Kanyoro 1991). Critics such as Pennycook

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(1998) and Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1999) warn that, unless chal-

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Predicting challenges to English 147

lenged, this process of linguistic and cultural import will mislead the poorerimporting nations into relying on a value system with little local relevance andserving only the covert interests of the wealthier exporting nations.

In practice, however, it is important to recall that the import of values andof the languages that encode them can just as often be the consequence — asopposed to the root cause — of major changes in local mindsets and develop-mental objectives. For example, when the Chinese leadership decided in 1986that the market route to economic development was likely to yield greaterrewards than the earlier centrally-planned experiment, it committed itself —unwittingly, no doubt — to importing notions that had not been part of earlierarrangements governing business or public administration. Among these arecorporate governance, conflict of interest, transparency, and disclosure, all ofwhich are essential to the successful conduct of large-scale business, especiallyin a globalized context. Similarly, change in the political mindset undergone bysocieties such as Taiwan or South Korea in the 1990s brought with it a discourseof public debate and notions of challenge to a hierarchical order that could onlybe described initially as foreign. Especially after translation into the localvernacular and much conceptual tweaking to suit local conditions, the languagethat now encodes these notions is clearly not value-free. The test of English orany other international conveyor of modernizing and liberating notions is notthat it introduces values regarded as foreign and therefore either good or bad insome abstract sense. It is whether these values help to bring about beneficialchange in the form of generalized wealth creation benefiting most in a lesshierarchical society. Interest in these values is no pro-western fad. They appealbecause they are seen as helping to understand the relative economic success ofwestern societies, where they were first given a chance. For as long as thesevalues are regarded as preferable to traditional, home-grown ones and for aslong as they are strongly associated with English-speaking cultures, any chal-lenge to English as a vehicle for these values is unlikely to succeed.

What, then, of the possible competitors to this dominant position forEnglish with regard to modernizing and liberating values? According topromoters of Esperanto such as Tonkin (2000), one of its principal virtues is

<LINK "bru-r49">

precisely that it is a powerful symbol of the human linguistic heritage and henceof universal human values. In this sense, it is argued, Esperanto can become akey vehicle for the promotion of ideologies and practices that unite rather thandivide humans in ways that languages associated with nation states cannot hopeto do because of the baggage of confrontational relations that they all carry invarying degrees. In the long term, however, it is inconceivable that a spreading

148 Paul Bruthiaux

Esperanto could long remain free of cultural associations as these wouldinevitably be grafted onto the language by the various locations and communi-ties in which it gained in influence. In the shorter term, moreover, its very lackof cultural baggage is likely to reduce its appeal among those potential userswho may be looking to acquire a degree of cultural inspiration from anotherlanguage, not simply a solution to their immediate communicative needs.

Though undeniably a much-respected language of wider communicationin fields that include the creative arts, Arabic remains strongly associated withIslam, a religion that structures the existence of its followers in clear-cut termsthrough an especially inelastic set of tenets. In addition, the transmission of thistime-honored religious and societal knowledge tends to take place throughrote-learning encoded in Arabic, a foreign language for large numbers offollowers of Islam in Central Asia, Iran, the Indian sub-continent, sub-SaharanAfrica, or Indonesia. There, reliance on repetition of a poorly-understoodlanguage may have the e!ect of associating that language with knowledge thatis remote and therefore not amenable to questioning. Intentionally or other-wise, this may discourage the development of a culture of exegesis, criticism,and skepticism, the very values singled out by Prabhu as most likely to recom-mend a language as a vehicle for modernization and liberation.

In principle, the potential of Japanese as a international language su!ersfrom few if any of the cultural restrictions described above. In fact, throughoutthe 1980s, Japan was regarded as the primary source of all things new andbeautiful in three areas: electronic technology, business practices, and consumerfads. In the more prosperous parts of the world at least, few lives have beenuntouched by some Japanese invention or concept, from the fax or the walk-man on the consumer side to Just-In-Time Delivery or Zero-Defect Manufac-turing in the business world and manga strip cartoons or Pokémon on thecultural side. Yet, despite deliberate governmental policy to promote theteaching of Japanese as a second language (Hirataka 1992), the language does

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not appear to have progressed far beyond the level of a school subject or to havemade significant inroads as a tool for regional, let alone worldwide communica-tion. To be sure, history helps to explain the long-lasting reluctance of Japaneseauthorities to promote their culture and that of Asian neighbors to welcome it.More recently, Japan’s anemic economic performance and looming problemsover a rapidly aging population makes the country an unlikely role model forsocieties in search of a vibrant paradigm. For Japanese to become a seriouscontender for a role as world language, Japanese influence would have to touchminds with a “big idea,” not just incentives to add gadgetry to living rooms and

Predicting challenges to English 149

dashboards or to swap overpriced cards on school playgrounds. There areprecious few signs that this may be happen in the foreseeable future.

Given the recent catastrophic dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russianwould appear to be an even more unlikely candidate for the role of globallanguage. In particular, the ideology that sustained the communist experimentand inspired many post-colonial minds in the developing world appears to bebeyond redemption. With vanishing interest in that ideology went any chanceRussian may have had of uniting nations around a “big idea” perceived asliberating. Yet, closer to home, Russian continues to wield influence throughenduring economic ties with its immediate neighbors and the presence in thesenations of substantial Russian-speaking minorities. In the Baltic states, forexample, the role of Russian as a language of wider communication is likely tosurvive a gradual pull toward English as these nations gradually side with theEuropean Union and especially Scandinavia. Despite signs reported by Laitin

<LINK "bru-r29">

(1996) that English is beginning to play a role as a lingua franca betweenEstonian and Russian speakers within Estonia, Russian is also likely to continuelinking the Baltic states among themselves and to Russia itself (Ozolins 1994).

<LINK "bru-r37">

In some Central Asian former Soviet Republics such as Uzbekistan, a switchfrom the Cyrillic to the Latin script may well succeed in increasing interculturaldistance (Schlyter 1998). In others, such as Kyrgyzstan, post-independence

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language laws favoring local languages have been softened to accommodate thefact that Russian continues to denote the relative liberalism of urban communi-ties and to o!er a readily available route to wider communication and advance-ment beyond the traditional Islamic structures and values of rural communities(Wright 1999). For the foreseeable future, however, any role for Russian in

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influencing lives and minds will be restricted by territorial proximity to parts ofEastern Europe and Central Asia. While post-Soviet Russia itself is busygrappling with novel societal practices and values, Russian can be expected tohave little hold over minds further afield because it remains associated with adiscredited ideological and social experiment.

Despite obvious advantages noted by Lombraña (2000) — such as a huge,

<LINK "bru-r32">

relatively homogeneous, and expanding market in North and South America —and the growing respect and influence earned in Europe by a modernizedSpain, there is little reason to expect Spanish to extend its range far beyond theAmericas. In large part, this is due to the lack of a clear association between thelanguage and a distinct ideology of the type that would inspire individuals andnations in search of an alternative route to modernization, perhaps even acounterweight to US cultural leverage. For as long as Latin American societies

150 Paul Bruthiaux

are busy trying to catch up economically within the dominant North Americanparadigm, Spanish is not likely — on grounds of ideological appeal at least —to confirm Lombraña’s claim that it is poised to gain in worldwide influence.

Much like Spanish, albeit operating over a smaller area, German is a largelylocalized language of wider communication. Like Spanish-speaking countriesalso, Germany operates within the western ideological paradigm and itslanguage does not appear to o!er significant intellectual alternatives to seekersof new approaches to intellectual or societal problems. Moreover, and unlikethat of Spanish, the German linguistic hinterland is small and does not appearto be growing. As Coulmas (1990) shows, the prestige of German rose sharply

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in the eighteenth century as the language became associated with the moderniz-ing values of the Enlightenment before going into a steady decline throughoutthe 20th century, owing in large part to the negative connotations of thecountry’s expansionist adventures. A decade ago, Coulmas noted that evenGerman businesses and scientists were disloyal to their native language andmore likely to abandon it if an alternative presented itself, usually in the formof English. Ammon (1995) also concedes that German has now lost its intellec-

<LINK "bru-r2">

tual status as the international language of science. Hilgendorf (1996) confirms

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that the German scientific community is increasingly publishing first or solelyin English, if necessary coining any required new terminology in English, notGerman. Hilgendorf also lists a number of motivations for the growing appealof English to German speakers, including perceptions of precision and brevityas well as modernization. Recent years have witnessed growing economic andpolitical ties between Germany and Central and Eastern Europe, a sharp boostgiven to German self-confidence by reunification, and a new willingness amongGerman politicians to exhibit greater assertiveness. Yet, any supranational rolefor German will be limited geographically, and ideological appeal is not likely tobe a significant contributor to that role.

Turning to Chinese, Goh (1999) is surely right when he asserts that the

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likely emergence of China as an economic and military superpower will lead tothe growth of Chinese as a language of international communication in thecoming decades. Already a lingua franca among the educated and business-oriented Chinese diaspora, Chinese can only expand as more individuals,businesses, and governmental organizations come into contact with Chinathrough increased trade. However, it is di"cult at present to see what theideological appeal of Chinese might be. It is conceivable that in the distantfuture, a newly wealthy and self-confident China might be in a position toappropriate the modernizing values it is currently learning to its advantage and

Predicting challenges to English 151

to o!er them to less fortunate nations repackaged through Chinese. However,this scenario is speculative in the extreme. No “big idea” originating in Chineseculture and transmitted through Chinese appears ready to take hold of imagina-tions worldwide, and any growth in the global reach of Chinese will for the timebeing remain largely utilitarian in motivation, and therefore limited.

Big ideas are cultural artifacts that France, of all nations, does not like to beseen without. As Kibbee (1993) argues, France has traditionally defined itself on

<LINK "bru-r28">

a shared culture, with the French language as the depository and collectivememory of what unites the nation. As 18th century France came to be seen asa source of exciting ideas about novel relationships between deity and human-kind as well as between government and the governed, French became a majorvehicle for these stirring concepts. This factor must have contributed greatly toits dominance as a language of international communication in Europe andbeyond, albeit among the leisured rather than the trading classes. Today,straight-faced reference continues to be made in France to the country’s“civilizing mission,” a concept that recalls perceptions of a British “white man’sburden” or an American “manifest destiny” but without any of the overtones ofpost-imperial embarrassment both now carry. To many French intellectuals andpolicy-makers, French continues to be a vehicle for the promotion of universalvalues and for marginalized nations, especially in Africa, a chance to find a voice(Gambier 1993). To be sure, the earlier sense that these alleged benefits could

<LINK "bru-r16">

only be enjoyed if speakers were willing to merge into the French culturalmonolith is showing signs of weakening (Heller 1999, Safran 1999). Specifically,

<LINK "bru-r20"><LINK "bru-r43">

Pêcheur (1998) argues that French can only fulfill its role as internationalpromoter of economic, social, cultural, and educational values if speakers andpolicy-makers are willing to accommodate a changed world, renounce theirearlier opposition to cultural pluralism, embrace decentralization, and adopt amore relativist view of culture.

Yet, there is in writings on French perceptions of itself and of English asglobal languages (see, for example, Gambier 1993 and Pêcheur 1998) an anti-

<LINK "bru-r16">

American undercurrent that is essentially defensive, as seen in its frequentreliance on the military metaphors of “siege” and “resistance.” One weakness inthis position is that given the expenditure of time, energy, and funds involvedin learning an additional language, potential users of French as a secondlanguage would need to be convinced that they stand to be richly compensatedfor partially or totally shutting themselves out of English-speaking networks.Moreover, the set of values conveyed by French is essentially western and thusnot su"ciently di!erent from the American version without benefit of

152 Paul Bruthiaux

substantial spin. Even more problematic is the fact that it is not clear whyFrench-led cultural universalism should be preferable to the American-ledalternative or why resistance to cultural and linguistic imperialism should beconducted in French rather than in the many local vernaculars under allegedthreat. Given this ambiguity, the promotion of French as the language of an“anti-destiny” is unlikely to win the hearts of many recruits, on ideologicalgrounds at least.

Conclusion: A prediction for English as a global language

I have argued that geopolitical factors such as economic or military power arenot su"cient to explain, let alone predict, the relative strength of languages ofsupranational communication. Clearly, critical mass is crucial and goes a longway toward making the current position of English as a language of globalcommunication seemingly unassailable. It is also true that if this position is tobe challenged in the twenty-first century, the most likely source of that chal-lenge is likely to result — despite periodic bursts of Islamic assertiveness —from the rise of China as a world power in economic, military, and politicalterms. However, any challenge to the dominance of English as a global languagewill need to be based on more than a favorable set of geopolitical circumstances.In particular, I have suggested that complex inflectional morphology, tonalphonology, and a primarily logographic script would limit the chances of achallenging language to expand its global role. A global language is boundsooner or later to be used in large part by speakers who know it as a secondlanguage only and use it for a variety of purposes in a range of settings. As it ispulled in di!erent directions depending on degree of exposure to local languag-es and cultures in each setting, its linguistic characteristics are likely to besteered in the direction of greater inflectional simplification under pressurefrom instrumentally motivated users. This implies that to assume a global role,a language must be amenable to unplanned, user-driven adaptation, a processunlikely to succeed in settings with a strong tradition of centralized languageplanning and control, especially if power over language form and language useis concentrated in a single dominant culture.

To sum up, while increased geopolitical power is a factor that may wellfavor China — and hence Chinese — in the not too distant future, the criticalmass accrued to English may well prevent radical change in current powerrelations between world languages. In addition, any hypothetical challenge to

Predicting challenges to English 153

English as a global language would need to be facilitated by a cluster of linguis-tic factors including minimal inflectional morphology, non-tonal phonology,and a non-logographic script. Were these key linguistic features not to be foundin a language with nascent global ambition, adaptation in that direction underspontaneous pressure in a supranational context would have to meet with weakinstitutional resistance, a process that would be facilitated by a preference forskepticism toward the benefits of central language planning, which in turnwould be aided by a multi-core geographic distribution among several self-confident cultural centers. Finally, a hypothetical challenger would have to beperceived as carrying a sociocultural message capable of firing the imaginationsof potential users and of motivating them throughout the learning e!ort.

Taking a number of well-documented languages as examples, I havepresented a review of some of the key characteristics that a hypotheticalchallenger to English as a global language would have to possess — or evolve —to have any chance of success. From this hypothetical perspective, all of thepotential challengers discussed here — Arabic, Chinese, Esperanto, German,Japanese, Russian, and Spanish — exhibit several of these characteristics whileonly English exhibits them all, at present and for the foreseeable future.Meanwhile, current trends suggest that American power may undergo a degreeof relative adjustment as a result of the growing importance of China as a worldpower. On the basis of the arguments presented in this discussion, it is predict-ed that even geopolitical realignment on this scale will not be su"cient todisplace English as the dominant global language in the 21st century.

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Résumé

Prédire les défis à l’anglais comme langue universelle au 21ème siècle

La dominance globale de l’anglais est telle que seuls des changements catastrophiquespourraient la menacer à court terme. A long terme, il est possible qu’une puissance émer-gente (par exemple, la Chine) arrive à défier la suprémacie Américaine et avec elle la positiondominante de l’anglais. Cependant, même dans le cas d’un tel réalignement, la langue decette puissance émergente (par exemple, le chinois) n’est pas certaine de mettre fin auxavantages que la masse critique donne à l’anglais. Pour avoir une chance de succès global,une langue concurrente devrait posséder des caractéristiques structurelles — morphologieinflectionelle minimale, phonologie non-tonale, et une écriture non-logographique — quifaciliterait son acquisition par des individus motivés par des preoccupations surtoututilitariennes. Alternativement, afin de permettre à ces caractéristiques d’évoluer, une langueconcurrente aurait besoin de bénéficier d’une standardisation minimale et avoir la libertéd’incorporer les changements causés par les utilisateurs, y compris l’indigénisation.Finalement, cette langue concurrente aurait besoin d’être perçue comme un véhicule pourdes valeurs de modernisation. Bien que des concurrents possibles (par exemple, le chinois,le français, l’allemand, l’espagnol, le japonais, le russe, l’arabe, ou l’espéranto) contiennenttous certaines de ces caractéristiques, seul l’anglais les contient toutes à present et pourl’avenir prévisible. Pour ces raisons, la dominance globale de l’anglais devrait survivre mêmeune fin hypothétique de l’ère Américaine.

Predicting challenges to English 157

Resumo

Antauvidi defiojn al la angla kiel universala lingvo en la 21-a jarcento

La tutmonda dominado de la angla estas tia, ke sajne nur katastrofa renverso povus minacigin en la tuja estonteco. Lau pli longa perspektivo, kreskanta potenco (ekz. Cinio) eble aperospor defii la usonan superecon kaj sekve la pozicion de la angla. Tamen, ec se okazus tiareorientigo, la lingvo de tiu kreskanta potenco (ekz. la cina) ne nepre sukcesus haltigi laavantagon, kiun la angla jam cerpas el sia decida maso. Por entute havi sancon je tut-mondigo, defianto devus posedi strukturajn karakterizojn — nome minimuman fleksianmorfologion, netonan fonologion, kaj nelogografan skribon — kiuj faciligus la akiron alindividuoj kun plejparte pure praktikaj motivoj. Alternative, por evoluigi tiajn karakterizojn,defianto devus submetigi al minimuma normigo kaj havi sufican liberon por akcepti sangojntruditajn de la uzantoj, inkluzive de indigenigo. Fine, oni devus rigardi gin kiel perilon demodernigo de valoroj. Kvankam hipotezaj defiantoj (ekz. la cina, franca, germana, hispana,japana, rusa, araba, au Esperanto) ciuj montras kelkajn tiujn karakterizojn, nur la anglamontras ciujn en la nuna tempo kaj la antauvidebla estonteco. Pro ciuj tiuj kauzoj, latutmonda dominado de la angla antauvideble transvivos ec la hipotezan forpason de laUsona Erao.

Author’s address

Department of English Language & LiteratureNational University of SingaporeSingapore 117570

ellpb@nus.edu.sg

About the author

Paul Bruthiaux (PhD, Linguistics, University of Southern California) teaches sociolinguistics,discourse analysis, and language acquisition at the National University of Singapore. He haswritten on language policy and language education in TESOL Quarterly, Journal of Multilin-gual & Multicultural Development, Journal of Asian-Pacific Communication, and LanguageProblems & Language Planning. His other work in applied linguistics has appeared inLanguage & Communication, English Today, and Applied Linguistics.

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