Who owns English? Whose standards?
English is the most commonly spoken international language at over 1.1 billion speakers. It has been estimated that of all the English speakers of the world, non-native speakers (NNS) outnumber native speakers (NS) by more than 4 to 1.
This means that English is being used more by NNS than NS, and raises the question … who actually owns English?
The question of ownership is important because it relates to standards. And yet native speaker English is often taught in Efl (English as a foreign Language) countries and native English standards are set as the ultimate goals – often uncritically.
Countries like Taiwan, for example, aim to improve English education by increasing the number of native speaking English teachers, from initiatives in the early 2000s to the current Bilingual nation 2030 policy. However, for efficient learning and motivated learning, we need to simplify English standards and make it more inclusive. We need to reconceive English as English as a Lingua Franca.
What is English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)?
Setting NS standards as the goal for learning in the schools of non-English speaking countries is neither realistic nor desirable.
NS standards are not desirable because Efl learners should not become NS, but forge their own linguistic and cultural identity through Efl – whether they be Taiwanese or Swedish or Algerian ELF speakers. Uncritical adoption of NS standards are at worst a form of linguistic imperialism and outdated colonialism. For English to truly become a Lingua Franca, content (intelligibility and intelligence) is the priority and different form (accent) can be a celebrated marker of identity.
NS standards are not realistic because they are not reachable given the time and motivation restraints of Efl learners. Thanks to the internet, Efl environments have access to a massive amount of English learning resources and input … but the reality is that there is little motivation for the vast majority of learners to get the amount of input necessary for advanced level foreign language proficiency. The only “need” for Efl learning is for passing school courses. This external motivation is almost always counterproductive because it makes English first and foremost an abstract course that requires painful studying of huge amounts of vocabulary (more than 4500 words for senior high in Taiwan) and abstract grammar rules.
At the very least, educators and learners should update language learning goals to learning English as a Lingua Franca, or ELF. In fact, the term Efl should be replaced with ELF for two reasons:
1. “ELF” reminds people that it is the official international language, and
2. “ELF” is inclusive and divests English from geographical sites like America or Britain.
ELF vs Efl
For most forms of international communication, such as for business, travel, shopping, eating, and social media, speakers tend to use simple, non-jargonized forms of English by default. Well, perhaps not all speakers. Many NS tend NOT to do this because they don’t realize how idiomatic (local phrases) their own language is. Even worse, they may take an arrogant NS attitude and blame misunderstanding on the NNS lack of proficiency.
This bias can set up an imbalanced power relationship that often puts the NNS in a disadvantaged position. This is really not fair since they are the ones who struggled to learn and use a foreign language. However, this power imbalance is reinforced with the current global dominance of pop culture in music, movies and TV from English speaking countries like the US and UK. In more professional situations, like in politics, business and research, English speaking countries still dominate.
Ironically, Efl education systems often reinforce this bias. Even though Efl education sets up different benchmarks for language use, like learning more vocabulary for receptive skills (listening and reading) and less for active skills (writing and speaking), it is unfortunate that many instructors and students still blur this boundary under the false assumption that demonstrating complicated grammar and uncommon vocabulary on writing tests, for example, is a mark of proficiency. The results are typically awkward and stilted prose that is filled with misused vocabulary and unnecessarily complicated grammar forms.
Showing off in Efl writing or speaking goes against the two main purposes of language: to build relationships and communicate a message efficiently.
The two Purposes of language
From the perspective of evolution, language evolved for social reasons: to help build relationships and community bonds for large tribes and societies. Early hominids understood there is safety in numbers. When they started farming around 12000 years ago, their societies grew bigger and more differentiated which in turn demanded more communication. Even today, much of our communication has a social function, like “how are you”, “thank you”, “nice hair cut”, “why did the chicken cross the road?”, and “see the game last night?”.
The other main — but more obvious — purpose of language is to exchange information. When we ask a shop clerk about a product, we do not usually do so to create a relationship but instead to get the information to help us do something, like decide whether or not to buy the product.
Effective communication therefore aims to build relationships and efficiently spread ideas and information. With this in mind, there are two points that should guide both language learning and language use for productive use in speaking, and especially writing.
First, good writing should serve thinking. It should express a clear message with supported ideas. If the writing is unnecessarily complicated and has grammar and vocabulary mistakes due to “showing off”, the reader has to spend more time on understanding the language. That is, the language gets in the way of the expressed ideas. Celebrated pop culture and science journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his Writing MasterClassTM shared his own principle for writing:
“Your first goal is to be pure and simple, to write at an 8th grade level, but with ideas that are super sophisticated.”
From this principle, we can understand that complicated ideas should not require complicated language. And conversely, complicated language cannot make simple ideas sophisticated. The test of clear thinking is to break down sophisticated ideas into smaller parts and use simple language to express them.
Second, good writing should serve the reader. How much effort does the reader need to understand the ideas? If the language slows the reader down to understand your message, you have failed as a proficient writer. All effective writing — or speaking for that matter — needs to consider the audience, what she already knows and what she needs to know to successfully understand the message.
Context determines standards for language
Although these two principles are described in terms of effective English writing (and also speaking), they interact with and depend greatly on communicative context – the who, what, where, how, when and why of the communicative event. This is where ELF will have differing standards for what is considered successful and effective communication. The standards will vary for the English used to check into a hotel in Japan, write an email to a Russian business contact, comment on a Facebook post, compose an English CV for an international sales position, or submit a research paper to an academic journal.
A more detailed description of what language proficiency looks like in ELF contexts is the subject of the next part of this blog, next week.
