Unraveling the Global Dominance of English: A Lingua Franca in Question
Paragraph 1
English is so familiar to its mother-tongue speakers, who form a vast community largely speaking nothing else that it hardly seems a distinct language at all. Since it is also well known to be used all round the world, the natural tendency is to take it for granted, to expect that it will be available and accepted as a default means of expression for whatever might need saying. Hence the irate tourist's despairing shout of 'Don't you speak English?' when this expectation is disappointed. It's nothing fancy to know English; indeed (as Cicero once said of Latin) it is not so much creditable to know it as it is a disgrace not to. There is a sense that speaking English is the least one can do, and for its native speakers to learn another language is to give themselves airs.
Paragraph 2
However, monolingualism poses a problem. Goethe once wisely remarked, 'He who is not acquainted with foreign languages has no knowledge of his own.' But the success of English since Goethe's time has driven out much of the opportunity for such prior acquaintances, and the kind of orientation in time and space that they could give. In practical terms, the English-reading world, as represented by its publishers, seems to presume that there is no other world, as evidenced by the fact that translations into English make up, every year, just 2–3 per cent of the world's translated texts, a rate that has halved in the last three years. Note that this disregard for other languages' cultures is not mutual: as the source language, English consistently represents the lion's share of all translations published.
Paragraph 3
Unlike any other language in our era, anyone who wants to participate directly in business beyond the nation will have to use English or come to terms with it. This status may be accepted by its speakers smugly, as if it reflected some attractive values that have powered its advance, or it may engender concern stemming from two quite opposite fears, either that its acceptance has not gone far enough – even in their home country not all residents might speak it – or that its advance is relentless and may in time drive out the use of all other languages, together (implicitly) with the cultural values and knowledge that they convey. Whatever the reaction, it is hard to lay aside emotion and simply reflect. How can we be decentred from our anglophone assumptions? How to get a disinterested sense of the particular profile of English as a global lingua franca when we know it so well and have none other with which to compare it? At the outset, we are still trapped in an English-speaking bubble: we know that, like no other language, in the modern world it seems to be everywhere, but we lack independent tools to take its measure. Could there have been a world like the present but without English? How is English to be rated in its solitary glory as the world's lingua franca? Can we conceive a future where the world as we know it might go on without English? If not, does that mean it is impossible or just unforeseeable?
Paragraph 4
We are not talking about logical possibilities and necessities here. After all, English is a human language, outwardly simple and originally quite humble. Nonetheless, the striking extremity of its progress so far tends to undercut any forebodings of future limits and brings to mind cosmic analyses, or analogies. 'The limits of my language signify the limits of my world,' wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1921 (in German – though with a parallel English translation).