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The Future of Englishes

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The Future of Englishes The future of Englishes DAVID CRYSTAL Does an increasing awareness of the sheer international variety in the English language complex necessitate a new pedagogy for a new century? [The following article is a slightly adapted version Press's Canto series (1998). 'Is English Really a of a paper given to the British Council Conference Family of Languages?' was the title of an article 'Innovation and Best Practice in British ELT, at in the International Herald Tribune a few years Oxford, July 1998.] ago (Rosen, 1994). And I have no doubt that we shall soon hear all the jargon of compara- tive philology turning up in the domain of ELT THE PACE is hotting up. Reluctant as I have - daughter languages, sister languages, and the been to be swayed by the fashionable neologiz- like. The question we all have to face, of ing of recent years, my title shows capitulation. course, is how a concept of 'best practice' sur- Like many since the early 1970s I have become vives in the face of such massive and unprece- used to the steady pluralization of the noun dented innovation. This must be part of what English, in such phrases as 'new Englishes' or the present conference is intending to explore. the journal title 'World Englishes'. Associated But such explorations are likely to succeed only locutions, such as 'an English' and 'each if we are clear in our theoretical thinking about English' are also now routine. 'The English lan- what might be going on, and are clear about guages' is a phrase which has been used for the facts of language change which motivate over a decade, most recently by Tom McArthur that thinking. Both levels of clarity are in short as the title of his book for Cambridge University supply, at the moment. is the traditional criterion, and when that has Part 1: Language been applied to the case of English, there has matters hitherto been little justification for the notion of an English language family. Although there are several well-known instances of English Intelligibility and identity regional accents and dialects causing problems I begin by exploring the metaphor of 'family1 of intelligibility to people from a different a little. What could an English 'family' of dialect background, especially when encoun- languages possibly mean? The term 'family", of tered at rapid conversational speed - in Britain, course, arose with reference to such domains Cockney (London), Geordie (Newcastle), as 'Indo-European', 'Romance' and 'Slavic' - Scouse (Liverpool) and Glaswegian (Glasgow) domains where there exists a clearly identifi- are among the most commonly cited cases - able set of entities whose mutual unintelligibil- the problems largely resolve when the speaker ity would allow them to be uncontroversially slows down, or they reduce to difficulties over classified as different languages. Intelligibility isolated lexical items. This makes regional vari- 1 0 English Today 58, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 1999). Printed in the United Kingdom © 1999 Cambridge University Press Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 28 Sep 2021 at 16:23:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078400010816 eties of English no more problematic for lin- language'. A similar story can be found in any guistic theory than, say, occupational varieties part of the world where language is an emer- such as legal or scientific. It is no more illumi- gent index of socio-political identity. nating to call Cockney or Scouse 'different That is the point: if a community wishes its English languages' than it would be to call way of speaking to be considered a 'language', Legal or Scientific by such a name, and anyone and if they have the political power to support who chooses to extend the application of the their decision, who would be able to stop them term 'language' in this way finds a slippery doing so? The present-day ethos is to allow slope which eventually leads to the blurring of communities to deal with their own internal the potentially useful distinctions between policies themselves, as long as these are not 'language', Variety", and 'dialect'. perceived as being a threat to others. However, The intelligibility criterion has traditionally to promote an autonomous language policy, provided little support for an English language two criteria need to be satisfied. The first is to family (whether it will continue to do so I shall have a community with a single mind about the discuss below). But we have learned from socio- matter, and the second is to have a community linguistics in recent decades that this criterion is which has enough political-economic clout to by no means an adequate explanation for the make its decision respected by outsiders with language nomenclature of the world, as it whom it is in regular contact. When these crite- leaves out of consideration linguistic attitudes, ria are lacking, the movement is doomed. and in particular the criterion of identity. If intelligibility were the only criterion, then we would have to say that people from Norway, Ebonics Sweden and Denmark spoke a single language An illustration of a movement's failure is the - 'Scandinavian', perhaps - with several Ebonics controversy in California in 1996. This regional varieties. The socio-political history of incident received widespread publicity during these nations, of course, disallows any such December 1996, most reports sharing the con- option. Swedes speak Swedish, Norwegians tent and tone of this New York Times editorial Norwegian, and Danes Danish - or at least (as a (24 December), under the heading of 'Linguis- Dane glumly remarked to me the other day), tic Confusion': they do when they are not speaking English. Or, to take a more recent example of how language The school board in Oakland, Calif., blundered nomenclature can change (and rapidly): at the badly last week when it declared that black slang is a distinct language that warrants a beginning of the 1990s, the populations of place of respect in the classroom. The new Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia would all be policy is intended to help teach standard described as speaking varieties of Serbo-Croat- English and other subjects by building on the ian. Today, the situation has polarized, with street language actually used by many inner- Croatians considering the language they speak city children and their parents. It is also to be Croatian, and Serbs Serbian, and efforts designed to boost self-esteem for being made to maximise the regional differ- underachievers. But by labeling them linguistic ences between them. The 'Croatian variety of foreigners in their own country, the new policy will actually stigmatize African-American Serbo-Croatian' has become 'the Croatian children - while validating habits of speech that bar them from the cultural mainstream and decent jobs. DAVID CRYSTAL read English at University College London, and has held posts in linguistics at the The name Ebonics - a blend of Ebony + phon- University College of North Wales, Bangor, and at ics - was being given to the variety of English the University of Reading, where he taught for spoken by African Americans, which had previ- twenty years. He works currently as a writer, ously been called by such names as Black Ver- lecturer, and broadcaster on language and nacular English or African-American Vernacular linguistics. Among his publications are 'Listen to English. Although the intentions behind the Your Child', Who Cares About English Usage?', move were noble, it was denounced by people The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language', The Cambridge Encyclopedia', The Cambridge from across the political and ethnic spectrum, Encyclopedia of the English Language', 'English as a including such prominent individuals as Edu- Global Language', and 'Language Play' (seep.21). cation Secretary Richard W. Riley, the black civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, and THE FUTURE OF ENGLISHES 11 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 28 Sep 2021 at 16:23:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078400010816 writer Maya Angelou. Quite evidently the two [My translation: But for myself, I'd crossed a criteria above did not obtain: the US black little bit [of] Rubicon all on my own - and, community did not have a single mind about after all the years that separated my father and the matter - indeed they seemed largely to me, I started to feel a considerable amount oppose the suggestion, for such reasons as surer about my own overlooked mother were mentioned in the Times editorial - and tongue.] the people who had the political-economic How does Scots stand in relation to the two cri- clout to make the decision respected were also teria referred to above? The situation is against it. The school board withdrew its pro- unclear, because the Scots community does not posal a month later. have a single mind about the matter, nor has it had enough political-economic clout to make any decision respected by outsiders. In relation Scots to the former point, the case in favour has been By giving a distinct name, Ebonics, to what had strongly argued by the leading scholar on previously been uncontroversially recognized Scots, the late Jack Aitken. After reviewing the as a variety of English, a hidden boundary in arguments, he concluded (1985: 44): the collective unconscious seems to have been All the phenomena just recounted - the crossed. It is in fact very unusual to assign a distinctiveness of Scots, its still substantial novel name to a variety of English in this way, presence in daily speech, the fact that it was other than in the humorous literature, where once the national language, its identifiably such names as Strine (a spelling of an imagined distinct history, its adoption (some Gaels would casual Australian pronunciation of the word call it usurpation) of the nation's name, and the 'Australian') can be found.
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