THE LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM OF NEOLIBERAL EMPIRE¹

¹The article builds on a keynote lecture at the conference ‘Dialogue under occupation. The Discourse of Enactment, Transaction, Reaction, and Resolution,’ November 7–10, 2006, convened at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, by Dr. Larry Berlin. I am very grateful to Peter Ives, John Richardson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Sohail Karmani for insightful comments on a draft, and to Richard C. Smith for invaluable historical research.

Abstract

The article explores the transition from the linguistic imperialism of the colonial and postcolonial ages to the increasingly dominant role of English as a neoimperial language. It analyzes ‘global’ English as a key dimension of the U.S. empire. U.S. expansionism is a fundamental principle of the foreign policy of the United States that can be traced back over two centuries. Linguistic imperialism and neoimperialism are exemplified at the micro and macro levels, and some key defining traits explored, as are cultural and institutional links between the United Kingdom and the United States, and the role of foundations in promoting ‘world’ English. Whereas many parts of the world have experienced a longstanding engagement with English, the use of English in continental Europe has expanded markedly in recent years, as a result of many strands of globalization and European integration. Some ongoing tensions in language policy in Europe, and symptoms of complicity in accepting linguistic hegemony, are explored. Valid analysis of the role of language in corporate-driven globalization requires theory-building that situates discourses and cultural politics in the material realities of neoimperial market pressures. A plea is made for more active language policy formation to strengthen ongoing efforts to maintain linguistic diversity worldwide.

¹The article builds on a keynote lecture at the conference ‘Dialogue under occupation. The Discourse of Enactment, Transaction, Reaction, and Resolution,’ November 7–10, 2006, convened at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, by Dr. Larry Berlin. I am very grateful to Peter Ives, John Richardson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Sohail Karmani for insightful comments on a draft, and to Richard C. Smith for invaluable historical research.

Notes

¹The article builds on a keynote lecture at the conference ‘Dialogue under occupation. The Discourse of Enactment, Transaction, Reaction, and Resolution,’ November 7–10, 2006, convened at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, by Dr. Larry Berlin. I am very grateful to Peter Ives, John Richardson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Sohail Karmani for insightful comments on a draft, and to Richard C. Smith for invaluable historical research.

²Cited in Graddol, Swann, and Leith (eds.), 1996, pp. 93–94. See also Phillipson, 2003, pp. 30–31.

³Cited in Bailey 1992, p. 103.

⁴Cited in The Observer, 24.9.1995.

⁵Data in ‘Report of the English Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review,’ Executive Summary, Singapore 2006 (19 pp.)

⁶ The Guardian Weekly, Learning English Supplement, 16.02.2007, citing Henry Chu in the Los Angeles Times.

⁷See Templer, 2004.

⁸The Institute of Education is a graduate college of the University of London. It has been involved in teacher training since its creation in 1902. Teachers College dates from 1892 and has been attached to Columbia University since 1898.

⁹The latest form of simplified English is globish, which claims to be based on experience in the commercial world, seems to be commercially driven, and is being marketed in the ‘global’ press, http://www.jpn-globish.com/.

¹⁰See Williams 1961, pp. 239–246, analysing Richards' key role in literary criticism in Britain and the United States from 1920–1960. Williams approves of the requirement of the close reading of texts (New Criticism), but is critical of what he sees as a naïve faith in literary criticism being a preparation for the wider world (while demonstrating ‘servility to the literary establishment’) and politically unaware (which Williams phrases as innocence of process and innocence of company). This is especially worrying (to a committed Marxist) when Richards asserts that his approach to communication can solve ‘global problems,’ since essentially his programme remains one for Aesthetic Man. The equally powerful influence on literary criticism in the same period was F. R. Leavis, also at the University of Cambridge. Both scholars had a massive influence on British cultural life and education. Williams (1961, pp. 246–257) sees Leavis' approach as potentially constituting a training in democracy and direct judgement, whereas in fact it led ‘at worst to a pseudo-aristocratic authoritarianism, at best to a habitual scepticism which has shown itself very intolerant of any contemporary social commitment.’ Both scholars have contributed to the anti-intellectualism of British higher education and public life, and to generations of ‘educated’ Britons who saw themselves as apolitical. This was a fertile breeding ground for the profession of English teaching worldwide to see itself as apolitical while convinced that they could contribute to the solution of problems of ‘global communication.’ See also the references to Richards in Collini, 2006.

¹¹Medieval Christianity was European: Everyman probably has Flemish origins in 1495, and exists in many adaptations, e.g., by Hugo von Hoffmanstahl.

¹²After selectively presenting evidence from a range of contexts, Spolsky concludes that the causal factor in the expansion of English was imperialism rather than linguistic imperialism (2004, p. 85). Drawing on work by Fishman and de Swaan, he concludes that the global pre-eminence of English is due to ‘the changing nature of the world’ (a curiously amorphous catch-all term that is detached from causal influences), English being widespread, and because ‘the remaining superpower used it unselfconsciously. English was there to be grabbed as the most valuable hyper-collective goods … available for international communication’ (ibid., p. 88). Spolsky's ‘unselfconsciously’ reads like a re-run of the ‘benevolence’ that Richards ascribes to the Anglo-Americans. It is equally false to focus on ‘international’ communication as though it somehow exists in detachment from what happens nationally, whether as a first or second language.

¹³It is false to suggest that my work on linguistic imperialism represents a conspiracy theory (Spolsky, 2004), a position I explicitly reject (Phillipson, 1992, p. 63; Phillipson, 2007). A conspiracy accusation entails an allegation of an unsophisticated, simplistic explanation for historical events. The charge tends to be simply a put-down, a diversion, ‘the standard invalidating predicate to block tracking of strategic decisions’ (McMurtry, 2002, p. 17).

¹⁴See Appendix ‘The principles of Newspeak’ in Nineteen eighty-four, George Orwell, 1949.

¹⁵The Journal of the English-Speaking Union, Year One Number 1, January 1991, www.esu.org.

¹⁶Bennett's first thanks go to Baroness Thatcher, evidently an eminent representative of Anglosphere thinking. He cites the quip that NATO was a ‘device for keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.’ (ibid., p. 237).

¹⁷Information from Eskil Svane, president of the Esperanto Friends of Rotary organisation in France.

¹⁸A plane carrying hydrogen bombs crash-landed in 1986, causing serious contamination to those sent from Denmark to ‘clean up,’ with mortal medical consequences which have only recently come to light.

¹⁹Information from Niels Bjerre Hansen, head of American Studies at Copenhagen Business School.

²⁰A New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism was published by the Commission on 22.11.2005 (www.ec.europa.eu/education). The follow-up report by the Committee on Culture and Education (23.10.2006, A6-0372/2006) of the European Parliament (www.europarl.europa.eu) recommended many measures to strengthen language policy and minority languages, virtually all of which were rejected by the Parliament.

²¹Cited in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 26, 2002. See Phillipson, 2003.

²²See my comprehensive review of the book in Language policy 2006/5, pp. 227–232.

²³The pilot studies of English in relation to Nordic languages are summarized, in Swedish, in Höglin, 2002, with a somewhat imprecise summary in English.

²⁴I am grateful to Mart Rannut for this suggestion, at a conference in Lithuania in 2006.

²⁵‘One plausible interpretation of globalization and its effects is indeed that it is a form of dominance brought about by a kind of imperialism, albeit a different kind of postmodern imperialism, no longer characterized only by military victory or nation-state political power. The agents of imperialism, and therefore many globalization processes, are no longer only armies and national governments, but multinational companies, transnational cultural and leisure organizations, global media corporations, or international political elites. This may entail a different, more subtle form of imposition and dominance, but nonetheless seems to me to be a kind of imperialism in a postcolonial world, a 21st century form of hegemony.’ (Mar-Molinero, 2006, p. 14).