The Development of English as International Language: A Theory of World Language

Abstract

English has grown into an international language in a double sense, with both an increasing number of users and international varieties. As yet, however, there is no comprehensive explanatory framework for the sociohistorical development of English as an International Language (EIL). This study addresses itself to that task by integrating the hitherto separate areas of study of language change and language spread in a unified approach, language spread and change. The world language theory framework developed here puts forward a sociolinguistic perspective on the development of EIL, connecting the spread of English in the second and foreign language contexts over the last two centuries and accounts for language evolution, the development of international varieties of English, via second language acquisition processes. Employing a historical-structural approach, the study first examines the sociohistorical context in which English spread, identifying the crucial determinants of that spread within two interconnected processes. The first of these, the imperial spread that accompanied colonial rule in Africa and Asia, is shown to have operated within carefully prescribed boundaries which limited access to English, referred to in the study as the containment policy. A facet of socioeconomic development within colonialism, this imperial side of the development of EIL is ultimately subsumed under the second process, the evolution of the world econocultural system. Within this economic and cultural world context, world language develops, characterized by its multilingual context and bilingual speakers, and initiating language change via the process of world language divergence and world language convergence. With these two processes, the unity and the diversity found in world Englishes in the postcolonial context is explained. Toward this end, the concept of social second language acquisitionthe acquisition of a second language by populationsis developed as a theory of the indigenization of English in Asian and African contexts. At the same time, the world econocultural system maintains the unity of the language. The study concludes with the implications of the sociolinguistics of language spread and change for English language teaching, developing the construct of cross-cultural pedagogy.