crystal - future english

8/11/2019 Crystal - Future English

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he Future of English

ID RYST L

norory Professor of Linguistics University of Wales angor

anecdotal introduction

me t ime ago, I was a ttending an internat ional seminar at a European universi ty.

round the table were representatives of some 20 countries. There were two

eople from the UK, two from the US, and one from Austral ia, wit h t he ot hers all

om countr ies where Engl ish was e ither a second (official ) l anguage or a foreign

anguage. The lingua franca of the meeting was English, and everyone seemed to

using the language competently - even the nat ive speakers.

We were wel l into the discussion period fol lowing apaper which had generated

l ively buzz of comment and counter-comment. Someone t hen made a tell ing

emark. There was a silence round the table, which was broken by one of the US

legates observing: That came from out in lef t f ield. There was another si lence,

nd I could see some of the delegates turning to their neighbours in a SUlTep

i tious way, as one does when one does not underst and what on earth is going on,

nd wants to check that one is not alone. But t hey were not pondering t he tell ing

mark. They were asking each other what from out in lef t fi eld meant. My neigh

ur asked me: as a nat ive speaker , he fe lt confident Iwould know. [did not know.

aseball at that time was a closed book to me - and stil l is, very l argely.

One of the braver of the delegates spoke up: out where? , he asked. It took the

S delegate bysurprise, as plainly hehad never had tha t idiom questioned before;

t he managed to explain that i twas a f igure ofspeech from basebal l, a bal l com

ng from an unusual direction, and what he had meant was that the remark was

urpri sing, unexpected. There were nods of rel ief from around the tabl e. Then

e of the UK delega tes chipped

in:

You played that with a s traight bat , he sa id.

h? , said the American. Oh, I say, t hat s not cricket , I added, parodically.

n t i t? ,asked a delegate from Asia, now totally confused.

The next few minutes of the meeting were somewhat chaotic. The original

eme was qui te forgotten, as people energet ica lly debated the meaning of cr icket

nd baseball idioms with their neighbours. Those who could added their own

ocal version of how they said things like that in their part of the world - the sports

etaphors they l ived by. Eventua lly, the cha irman cal led everyone back to order ,

nd the discussion of the paper continued. But my attention was blown, and [

pent the remainder of the session l is tening not towhat delegates were saying, but

o how they were saying it.

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH

What was immediately noti ceable was t hat the native speakers seemed

come much less colloquial. In particular, I did not sense any further u

na tional idioms. Indeed, the speakers seemed to be going out of the ir way to

them. I made a small contribution towards the end, and I remember thin

while I was doing i t - don t use any cricket terms . Afterwards, in the bar,

admi t ted todoing the same. My Bri ti sh colleague said he had consc iously av

using the word fortnight replacing itby two weeks as he had had trouble with

one before . And, as the evening wore on, people began apologis ing face ti

when they noticed themselves using a national idiom, or when somebody

used one. It became something of a game - the ki nd that l inguists love t o p

There was one nice moment, I recall, when the US, UK, and Australian

gates were all reduced to i ncoherence when t hey found that t hey had di sb

themselves from using any of the ir na tural express ions for the safe walking

at the side of a road -

pavement

(UK),

sidewalk

(US), and

footpath

(Austra

In the absence of a regionall y neutral t erm, al l they were left wi th was c

locution (such as the one just given). I also remember engine-cover

proposed as a neutral term for bonnet and hood Somebody made a j oke abo

need for a l inguis ti c United Nations. The res t i sa blur.

n interpretation

In the cold, sober light of later days, it seemed to me that what I had ob

taking place at that seminar was of some significance, as far as the future

English l anguage was concerned - and probably was taki ng place regularly

ternat ional gather ings a ll over the world. I was seeing a new kind of Engl is

born - a variety which was intended for international spoken usage, and

was thus avoiding the idiosyncrasies associated with nat ional var ie ti es of

si on. Such a variety is not yet wit h us, as a l iving entit y wi th st andardised

but i t s ti ll needs a name. Let us cal l i tEmerging World Standard Spoken

(EWSSE).

Although EWSSE does not exist as an institutionalised variety, its

equivalent does - t radit ional ly cal led Standard Engl ish, but in the present

perhaps bet ter called World Standard Pri nted Engl ish (WSPE). [t is som

forgotten that what we cal l Standard Engli sh i sessential ly a wri tt en - and

ilya printed - variety of language, and moreover one which has develop

standard precisely because it guarantees mutual written intel ligibili ty, fir

indivi dual count ries, t hen internat ionall y. Tt is not difficul t to demonstr

reality ofWSPE.In preparing The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English L

(1995), I chose one day - 6 Jul y 1993 - and col lect ed as many English-lan

newspapers as Icould get hol d of from around t he world. Friends, people

Cambridge University Press (CUP) offices, academi c contacts, and oth


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PLENARY SESSIONS

em in to me - an enormous pile of newsprint. They came from first language

ntr ies, such as the UK, USA, and Austral ia ; second-language count ries , where

l anguage has some special status, such as Indi a and Singapore; and count ries

here Engl ish has no such st at us, bei ng t augh t solely as a forei gn language, such

Greece

The Athens News ,

Egypt

AIAhram ,

the Czech Republic

The Prague

Korea

The Korea Herald ,

and Japan

The Daily Yorniuri .

I then went

ough t hese papers looki ng for d ifferences in vocabulary, grammar, and any

ing else which might be considered linguistic. There was next to nothing.

l tural inf luences were obvious , of course - loca l names and persona li ti es , more

ace devoted to local sport s and pol it ics - but l inguist ical ly t here was l it tl e var i

ion. The range of grammatical constructions was virtually identical - not

rpr ising, perhaps, when we reali se that, in the whol e of the l argest reference

ammar we have for English (Quirk, et ai's

Comprehensive Grammar of the

lish Language ,

reference to the index (under American English, British

nglish, etc.) brings to light only a handful of constructions which display

gional var iation. There was much more var iation in vocabulary, of course, but

n here the overall impression was one of uni formi ty and standardisati on - and

e places where thi s uni formity was miss ing were res tr icted to cer tain sec tions of

newspaper , such as car toon cap ti ons and sport s report s. Onl y in spell ing and

nctuation were there noticeable national differences, reflecting British vs

merican points of origin - and it is a moot point nowadays whether these can

l onger be cal led 'nati onal', gi ven t he way t hese two standards have come to be

ed erratically throughout the world. They even appear in 'mixed' versions in

me countri es, such as i n Canada and Aust ralia (where there may be variati on

n between provinces/ states) and in Bri ta in (where the inf luence ofUS spe ll ing

espread) . On the whole , therefore, WSPE is the same wherever i t i sencoun

red. This is what one would expect. That is what a s tandard is for. It would not

able to ful fi l i ts role asan interna tional (writ ten) l ingua franca i f i t were r iddled

th regional idiosyncrasies.

erging World

tandard poken nglish

hat the seminar example seems to be suggesti ng is t he event ual emergence of a

oken equivalent to WSPE, in international settings where educated people

me to talk to each other and choose to use English as their (spoken) lingua

anca. It i s not surpr ising t hat such a vari et y shoul d be growing, gi ven the way in

ich Engli sh has developed asa genuine global language in the second hal f of the

t h cent ury (Cryst al , 1997). The l ingui st ic characteristi cs of thi s vari et y are

rrentl y unclear : but , a p rior i, i f it is t o succeed , there are cert ai n feat ures whi ch

must have, and which we would expect t o see emergi ng early on in it sdevel op

ent , i n the form of uncertain ti es about usage. Chief amongst t hese would be in-

THE FUTURE OF ENGLI

t el ligibi li ty diffi cult ies over nat iona l regiona l norms (as in the case of the

idi om), as peopl e usi ng Engli sh from one part of t he worl d come in to con ta

those using Engli sh from another . Because most regional dialec t differentia

a matter of vocabulary, this is the domain where usage problems will b

immedi at el y and not iceabl y encount ered. (l use vocabulary t o include id

course - and use as y ch ief example of tr ansl at lanti c di fficul ty the pro

faced when, on my first visit to the USA, and arriving in a hotel restaur

breakfast one morning, I asked for eggs . I was asked: How do you li

eggs? Unused to thi s quest ion, I s tammered cooked . The unflappable re

which listed 'once over easy', 'sunny side up', and several other altern

brought me into contact with the lexicon of an unfamiliar culinary wo

probl em remains: when last i n New York, the t erminology, as wel l as the s

sandwi ch construct ion , is sti ll beyond me.) Next, in th is EWSSE, wi ll b

ences in grammar - as I have said, insofar as national variations exist at

the domain of pronunciation will provide a third kind of close enco

a lready observable in the 'mid-at lantic' accents which emerge when people

ing different regional forms of English accommodate to each other, o

unique amalgam of ex-European accents which currently characteris

corri dors of power i n t he European Union.

nglish as a

global language

This i s an exci ti ng time, for l inguist observers o f the worl d scene. No l ang

ever had such global exposure as Engl ish has, so t here are no precedent s

is curren t ly t aki ng p lace. We do no t know what happens to a language wh

comes a genuinel y world language - recogn ised as a prest ige language in

tries, and used in aggregate by more people (especially as a second o

language) for more purposes than any other language. Let us pause for am

and refl ect on t he stati st ics (bearing in mind that st at isti cs on world lang

are notoriously approximate). The number of people who use English

language must curren tly be abouqoo mil li on - more accurately, between

450 million. The chief reason for the uncertainty is whether creole an

varieties derived from English should be included in the total: if you

t hese t o be 'varieti es of Engl ish', then

y u

will include them, and you w

towards the higher total ; cont ra riwise, i fyou consider that they are, in so

separate languages now, you may wish to exclude them, and you will th

t owards t he lower to tal. It should also be not ed, in passi ng t hat , of these

l ion peopl e, abou t 230 mil li on of t hem l ive i n the USA - well over half . 5

live in the UK-very much a minority dialect of world English now

But the issue of British versus American English begins to seem v

when we consider the next total - the number of people who speak En


3/6

PLENARY SESSIONS

cond or foreign language. Here the figures are even more difficult to be sure

bout, for the obvious reason that fluency is a continuum, and we have to decide

ow much competence in English somebody needs before being allowed to join

e community of wor ld English users . A cri terion of nat ive-speaker-l ike f luency

uld clear ly produce a re la tively small f igure; including every beginner would

roduce a relatively large one - such as the British Council estimate that, at the

rn of the century, about a billion (thousand million) people will be learning

glish, somewhere or o ther. That f igure cannot be ignored - the people are , after '

l l, learning English, as opposed to some other language - but plainly it needs to

interpreted cautiously. The commonest est imates Isee these days hover around

00-400 million for second-language users, and around 500-700 million for

oreign language users . That makes 1200-1500 as a grand total , which is about a

arter of the world' s populat ion, and far larger than the cumulat ive total for ( the

ght languages which comprise) Chinese.

This isnot the place to rev iew the reasons for the remarkable spread ofEnglish .

have gone into these in my

nglish as a Global Language

(1997), so there is no

oint in repeating them here - other than to remind you that wea re t alking about

ifferent forms of power. Languages spread, not because of any intrins ic struc

ral character is tics - inherent not ions of logic or beauty or simplic ity, or the l ike

but for one reason only: the power of the people who use them. You c an see this

t the very outset of the global English period. At the end of the 16th century,

nglish people t ravel ling abroad would refl ect on which l anguages would be of

ost use to them. Latin, Itali an, F rench, and Dutch were among those list ed - but

glish, never. Our English tongue, says Richard Mulcaster in 1582, is of small

each - it stretcheth no further than this island of ours - nay, not there over all.

here must have been only about 5 million speake rs of Engl ish then. And there

as no reason for anybody abroad to pay much attention to what was written in

nglish. But, ironically, Mulcaster made his remarks in the same year that an

spiring actor married a Stratford girl called Anne Hathaway, and just before

ale igh sent the f ir st ofh is three expedi tions toAmer ica (1584) .Within a genera

on, the sta tus of English would have fundamental ly changed . Within a century,

he British Empire would be a real ity. And in additi on to this milita ry, colonial

ppl ication of power, we then find three othe r appl ications: in the ]8th century, a

echnological, industrial power (the Industrial Revolution, where we must

emember that over half of the pioneers were working through the medium of

ngli sh); in the 19th century, economic power, with the USA eventually taking

ver the world lead from Britain; and final ly, cultural power, with the USA again

redominant in the present century, asis evident in such domains asadvert is ing,

roadcasting , the cinema and the Internet .


The future of English

That, in a very tiny nutshel l, is the his tory of English as a world language. It s

ge sts that the prospects for English, and its rel ationships with other languages,

David Graddol has pointed out in h is Bri tish Council survey,

The uture of ng

(1998), are tot ally bound up with world economic and demographic trends . A

one of these trends isa l ready very significant . Analysis of the popula tion grow

of the countries involved indicate s that (on average) count ri es where Engl is

used as a second language are growing at approximately three times the rat

those countries where i t isa mother- tongue. For example , even though only 3

4 of the people of India are fluent in Engli sh, with a popula tion fas t approa

ing a bil lion and a growth rate of 1.9 per annum, there will soon be more pe

speaking English in India than there are in England . And certainly, the wor ld

for second-language speakers will soon pass - it may have done so already -

world total for f ir st -language speakers. What this means, in short , i s that Eng

has gone well beyond the stage where i t c an be said to be'owned' by anyone -

which many people (especia lly those in the UK), recal ling their nat ional past,

unpala table. Even 230mil lion Americans compr ise only about a six th of the w

language total.

No language has ever been spoken by so many people in so many coun

before. No language of such socio-his torica l pres tige has ever had its mo

tongue speakers so sign if ican tly outnumbered. There are therefore no preced

to guide us about the likely outcomes . And there are precious fewfacts . We ha

be on our toes - and that means all of us, academics, consultants, journal

teachers ... We are at a cruci al obse rvational s tage in English linguis tic hi

and al lwecan do to cope with the riot ofli nguist ic speculat ion is f all back on

estab lished theory to guide our pract ice. Specula tion? You wil l have seen the

l ines. Wil l the English language f ragment into mutually unintel ligible langu

as it spreads around the world? Will English kill off other languages? Wi

teaching models survive?

To begin answering these ques tions it i s essent ial to adopt an appropri

general perspective. And chief among these is the need to broaden our

abou t the funct ions of language. The ' referent ia l' function iscertainly impo

at a global level, because it underpins the notion of s tandard. As tandard gu

tees mutual intelligibility. That is what it is for. But there is another fun

which, although it is always with us, has been brought into the centre

att ent ion by the issue of world Engl ish, and that i s i dentity. Indeed, on any s

relati ve importance, whe re importance is judged in terms of what people a

pared to do, ident ity emerges asl igh t-years ahead of intel ligibi li ty . People

usually go on hunger-str ike, take par t in pro test marches, invade par liame

buildings, and kil l themselves for intel ligibi li ty - though there is the occ


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PLENARY SESSIONS

famous excepti on, such as the publi c shredd ing of government forms in Parli a

ment Square by the Plain English Campaign in 1979. But people do all of these

t hi ng s f or i de nt it y - t o p re ser ve t he ir l an gu ag e, w he th er co ll ect iv el y o r i nd iv id u

ally , i n the face of a perceiv ed th reat . Th e Universal Decl aration of Lin guisti c

Ri ght s, formulated at B arcelon a in 1996, and currentl y the focus of a g reat deal of

i nternat ional at tenti on, i s devot ed to t his matt er. An d a concern for id ent ity has

fuell ed many of t he t rends we not ice i n t he use of Engli sh , as i t increases it s global

ngu ge nd n tion l identity

hief among t hese trends i s t he g rowth of new nati onal standards - t he so-call ed

n ew E ng li sh es i n s uc h c ou nt ri es as I nd ia, Si ng ap or e, a nd G han a - w ho se ro is

p re ser ve n at io na l i den ti ty . T hes e h av e n ow b een we ll d is cu ss ed M acA rt hu r,

998), t hough sti ll o nly superficially described, and I wil l not go int o them here,

ther than to draw attention to the recency with which this phenomenon has

merged. Recal l t hat in 19 56 t here were o nly 80 members of t he Uni ted Nat ions;

ow there are over 180. Most of the new members are the result of the indepen

ence movements which date from the 1960s. With new found independence

omes an urge to manifest your identity in the eyes of the world. And the most

onvenient way of manifesting this identity is through the medium of the lan

uage you u se. Many of the new cou ntri es, such as Ghana and Nigeria, found that

ey had no alternative but to continue using English - the alternative was to

k e a n i mp os si bl e ch oi ce b et wee n t he ma ny co mp et in g l oc al e th ni c l an gu ag es

e r 4 00 , i n t he c as e o f Ni ger ia. H ow ev er , we ca n al so a pp rec ia te t hei r v iew t ha t t o

nti nue wi th Engli sh wou ld be, in the eyes of many , an u naccept abl e l ink wi th

e coloni al past . How could t his dilemma be resolved? The answer was to con

nue wi th Engl ish, b ut t o shap e it t o meet their o wn ends - addi ng local v ocab u

ry, focussing on local cultural variations, developing fresh standards of

onunciat ion . It i s n ot dif ficu lt to qu ick ly accumulate several t housand local

x ica l i tem s, i n co un tr ie s w hi ch h av e a w i de r an ge o fl oca l f au na an d f lo ra, d iv er se

n ic cu st oms , a nd r eg ul ar d ai ly co nt ac ts w it h d if fer en t l an gu ag es . A nd I me an

c umul at e - several regiona l dic ti onary proje ct s were l aunc he d soon a ft er i nde

n den ce, as p ar t o f t hi s ex pr ess io n o f n ew i de nt it y. An d t he em er gi ng l it er at ur es

the C ommonwealt h count ries - the novels from vari ous parts of West Africa,

poetry from the countries of the Caribbean - illustrate how quickly new

t it ie s c an e me rge. The t erm New Engli shes refle ct s t he se i de nt it ie s.

Th e n ew v ar ie ti es at tr act ed e no rm ou s d eb at e i n t he 1 97 0S an d 1 98 0s . T he q ues

n of which kind of English to write in - or even, whether to write in English at

- w as a r ea l p ro bl em f ac in g ma ny cr eat iv e au th or s. B ut t he se d ay s, w it h t he f ir st

n er at io n o f p os t - co lo ni al d ev el op men t b eh in d u s, t he i ss ue s ar e s et tl in g d ow n,

T HE FUTURE OF ENG LIS

and repeatedly one encounters the view nowadays that it is not a ne

eit her/ or choi ce. It is not a mat ter of havi ng t o choose between int ell igi bil

identi ty, bu t of al lowin g t he coexi stence o f bot h int el li gibi lit y and i dent it

a happy lan guage-using i ndiv idual o r communi ty), bot h dimensio ns ar

tial: we need to be able to talk to others outside our community, and to

stand them, if we wish to trade with them, and have access to their goo

services; at t he same ti me, we need t o be ab le t o demon st rat e, thr ough our

t hat we are not the same as th em. There is no i nevi table confl ict, b ecause

funct ions of languag e respond to different needs. There is uni ty and dive

t he same ti me. But the demands do appear to be cont radi ct ory, and when

d o see them as co ntradict ory, or are not sensi ti ve to the needs of all th e li

communities with whom they live, there is always trouble, in the form

moni ous debates abo ut st andards i n th e schoo l curriculum or in soci ety

wi despread anxiety abo ut the sur vival of a local lan guage or dial ect, and

extreme cases - languag e marches, ri otin g, and deaths. Wise lan guage p

can av oid th e co ntradiction , and reduce t he t ensio n - even t hough thi s i

t unat el y rare) eli mi nat e i t: it i s possi ble t o have you r li nguisti c cak e and

c an b e se en i n su ch c ou nt ri es a s S wi tzer lan d an d F in la nd , w he re p ol ici es

t iv e mu lt il in gu al is m r eco gn is e t he s tr en gt hs o f i nd iv id ual l an gu ag es , an d

ferent purposes for which t hey are used , and real suppo rt i s g iven t o dev

bilingual ways of life. More appropriate, in the present discussion, wou

t al k abou t bidi alect ism - and th is too can be sensit ively promot ed. Howev

itive approaches are often not easy to implement: they are bedevilled

plications arising out of individual national histories, whereby the

aspirations of minority groups come into conflict with national gove

p ol ic ie s. A b il in gu al o r b id ia le ct al p ol ic y ca n al so b e ex tr em el y e xp en si ve.

the only way in which the otherwise competing demands of intelligibil

i de nt it y c an be rec onci le d.

These are important issues for anyone interested in language, at any

address; an d cert ai nly an y curri cul um sh ould give it s st udents t he op portu

do so. The i ssues are i mport ant b ecause everyone is affect ed by them. No-

avoid being part of t he current ofli nguist ic chan ge or - to extend the met

can avoid bathing in the sea of linguistic variety. Nor can anyone esc

variations of attitude which people express in reaction to what is happen

some t ry to swim against t he curren t, whi le others bli thely l et it carry them

E ver yo ne, at so me t ime o r o th er , w il l h av e t hei r u sag e ch al len ge d b y s o meo

w het her i t b e a p ar en t, t eac her , p eer -g ro up me mb er , n ei gh bo ur , ed it or , c o

or boss. The contexts might be local, national, or global. To cope w

challenges, or to respond to them coherently, people need confidence

cOl1fidence comes from knowledge, an awareness of what is happen

l an gu ag e a nd wh at t he i ss ues a re. A l in gu is ti cal ly i nf or med cu rr ic ul um ,

in mother-tongue teaching or in foreign-language teaching, can prov


5/6

PLENARY SESSIONS

foundat ion Onwhich such confidence can be buil t, because i tgives people ins ight

into principles \vhich can make sense of the multifaceted and potel:Jtial ly confus

ing linguistic world which surrounds them.

And

so

to take one of the questions regularly asked: will the English-language

fragment? The history of language suggests that fragmentatioo is a regular

phenomel lOn (as in the well-known case of Lati n); but the hi story .of l anguage i s

no l onger a guide. Today, we live in the proverbial gl obal village, where we have

immediate access to other languages , and to variet ies of Engl ish, in ;Nays that have

come to be avai lable but recently; and t hi s is having a radical effect . A Brit ish

Counci l Col league told me recently that he had jus t come back fwn11ndia where

he had seen a group of people in an out-of-the-way village clustering around a

t elevisi on set, where t hey were hearing CNN News beamed dowt l via sat ellit e.

None of these People, he felt, would have heard any kind of EngliSh before - at

least, not in any regular way - other than the Indian variety of English used by

their school-teacher. With a whole range of fresh audit ory models becoming

rout inely avai lable, i t i seasy to see how the type of Engl ish spoken in India could

move in fresh directions. And satell ite communi cation being,

by

definition,

gl obal, it is e asy to see how a system of natural checks and balances - also well

attested in the hi story of language - could emerge in the case of world English.

The pull i rnpos~d by the need for identi ty, which has been making Iodian Engli sh

increasingly dissimilar from British English, will be balanced bya pull imposed by

the need for intelligibility, on a world scale, which will make Iodian English

increasingly sil1lilar - to CNN, at least And this could happen anywhere.

~i~~~i~tic

Iiversity

And how does balance manifest itself in community terms? This is where the

not ion ofmul ti lingual ism comes into play. I t i s an axiom of contemporary socio

l inguistically informed language planning that the only way to reduce the tension

between language comm unities isto recognise the importa nce of l inguistic diver

s ity, and place ])1ult il ingual ism at the centre of language pol icy and planning. In

the case of Engli sh, as I have said, we should be talking about mt .l lt idialect ism

rather than I11Ul ti lingual ism, but the i ssue i s the same: joint respect for the two

principles, intel ligibili ty and identity. And this iswhat my baseball aoecdote at the

beginning of 111ypaper was intended to illustrate. The EWSSE scenario suggests

that, duri ng the 21st cent ury, peopl e with an i nt ernat ional presence who speak

English as a fi rst language will find themsel ves adding a third variety to t hei r

repertoire. Many people already have two. They speak a national forl11alvariety, or

dialect J speak British/US/Australian ... English ) as well as an intra-national

informal variety, which is often regionally biased ( I speak the colloquial English

of Liverpool, Glasgow, Boston, New Orleans ... ). Those who are bidialectal in this


way slip into each of these variet ies without thinking about i t. In future, th

ball example suggests, they will become tridialectal, with the international

offeri ng them a further option of an English in which national usages hav

replaced by regional ly neutral forms - to be used, of course, only when ci

stances are right .

I feel it happening to me. At home, I speak my personal brand of Welsh/L

pudlian-infl uenced English. At a nat ional conference I drop the local

Liverpudl ian expressions, and adopt an accent more in the di rec tion ofRP.

an international conference, such as this one, I go a stage further, and d

many of my national Briti shisms as Ican - especi ally the colloqui alisms - w

sense might pose problems of intel ligibi li ty . Even the accent changes . This

foreigner-speak - a conscious simplifying or talking-down. It isa new vari

complex as any other vari ety I know, but geared towards a different aud

And, as I sai d at the outset, i t does not exi st in st able form as yet. I am consci

it growing within me. But it takes a long time for a new set of norms to b

internalised. It requires feedback from others,of the conversational kind, an

l ittle of this has yet happened to me. I have probably used several Bri tishis

t his talk today without intending to. But I do know that the variet y in which

given this talk is di fferent from the corresponding variety I would be usi ng

I giving it to a predominantly native English speaking audience. I sen

constraints.

The future of

EmergingWorld

Standard Spoken nglis

What becomes especial ly interest ing, of course, i s to speculate about the w

EWSSE wi ll deve lop. I t wi ll undoubtedly adopt fresh forms of lexical expre

as national regionalisms come to be avoided. Some of these wi ll come fro

nature of the interact ive context i tsel f: I am told that there i sa growing dist

t echnical and slang vocabulary in Engl ish in the corr idors of the European

muni ty these days - words and phrases which only the diplomats and bureau

use when going about their business. Huge numbers of terms begin wi

prefix

Euro

for example. In that microcosm, we see the members of an

nat ional , mult il ingual communi ty changing a l ingua franca to sui t them

And because i t i sa microcosm, wi th re lat ively smal l numbers of people inv

the changes are t aki ng place quit e qui ckl y. It could t ake a hundred years f

happen on a world scale, though once the Internet comes to be voice- intera

(within the next 25 years, I suspect) that could change. Even pronunciatio

affected. I have heard a conversation where the linguistic accommoda

between the multinational participants was so great that everyone ado

range of phonological modif icat ions - such as ar ti culat ing final consonants

fully, and speaking in a more syllable-timed way. Even - and thi s is t he poin


6/6

PLENARY SESSIONS

British participants picked up these speaking patterns. I have heard myself do it

many times - slipping into the syllable-timed speech being used by everyone else.

Indeed, given that varieties of syllable-timed speech is the norm for most lan

guages in the world, and has emerged through language contact in so many

varieties of second-language English (such as the Caribbean, South Africa, India),

it may well be that WSSE, at the end of the next century, will be a syllable-timed

variety of English. That would certainly save us all a great deal of time worrying

about patterns of word stress

That is enough speculation for one talk. I hope the principles which fuelled the

speculation are clear. There is always a tension between unity and diversity, and

the only way it can be resolved is by understanding the processes which foster

both. A developed concept of language function is critical, and within this, an

appreciation of the complementary notions of intelligibility and identity.

eferences

Crystal, David (1995). TheCambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language Cambridge.

Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, David

(1997).

English as a Global Language Cambridge. Cambridge University

Press.

Graddol, David

(1998).

TheFuture of English London.The BritishCouncil.

MacArthur,Tom

(1998).

TheEnglish Languages Cambridge. Cambridge UniversityPress.

Quirk,R.,Greenbaum, 5., Leech,G.and svartvik, . (1985). Comprehensive Grammarof

the English Language London. Longman.

ote

Asthose who attended DavidCrystal s talk at the congress inBathwillknow,itwas not based

on awritten text, but was delivered withgreat fluency and spontaneity without a single note.

This paper is adapted from a talk given earlier in the same year to the TEsOLArabiaConfer

ence. The content and ideas expressed are, however, very similar to those we heard in Bath

inApril

1998.

crystal - future english

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