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Abstract
This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative universality. It does so primarily by way of the analysis of discourses on the global hegemony of English in five American-owned prestige press publications—the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. It also draws parallels between broader contemporary and historical examples of what the author defines as a discourse of universal progress on English. This discourse frames the hegemony of English as a simple and largely unproblematic fact of the global order while celebrating its allegedly intrinsic progressive tendencies and capabilities. Among these are English's superiority as a purveyor of “objective” reality, its ability to facilitate individual and collective (economic) success, its capacity to advance the production and exchange of knowledge and information, and its status as a bestower of universal (global) voice and unity. The author challenges some of the assumptions that underlie this discourse, contending that, at the highest levels of abstraction, the discourse of universal progress strips English and language of their rootedness in culture and various forms of social identity and struggle.
Notes
1. Stempel (Citation1961) established the category prestige press in a study of newspaper coverage of the 1960 presidential election. He placed 15 newspapers in this category, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The International Herald Tribune was not among these, but it is owned and published by The New York Times Company.
2. Universal progress was one of four primary discourses through which the global rise of English was told in the texts examined. The other discourses were populism, triumphalism, and linguistic conflict and competition. For more on these discourses see Demont-Heinrich (Citation2006).
3. Drawing from Kachru's (Citation1992) inner/outer/expanding circles model of English in the global context, I place the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand at the core of the global linguistic order.
4. The WSJ reader demographics cited here are from 2003. The URL listed in my references pointed to these 2003 figures which are no longer available on the Web. However, The WSJ (n.d.) reader demographics for 2007 are available at http://advertising.wsj.com/audience/index.html.
5. The NYT reader demographics cited here are from 2003. The URL listed in my references pointed to these 2003 figures, which are no longer available on the Web. However, The NYT (n.d.) reader demographics for 2005 are available at http://www.nytimes.whsites.net/mediakit/newspaper/audience/index.php.
6. The Post reader demographics cited here are from 2003. The URL listed in my references pointed to these 2003 figures, which are no longer available on the Web. However, The Post (n.d.) reader demographics for 2007 are available at http://www.washingtonpostads.com/adsite/why/market/page1286.html.
7. The IHT reader demographics cited here are from 2003. The URL listed in my references pointed to these 2003 figures, which are no longer available on the Web. However, IHT (n.d.) reader demographics for 2006 are available at http://www.ihtinfo.com/pdfs/a_a_IHTReaderProfile.pdf.
8. Phillipson (Citation1992) notes that even seemingly “neutral” discourses on English often “glorify” it by constructing implicit dualisms such as English = language of wider communication vs. “other” languages = languages of narrower communication.
9. Marshall and Gonzalez (Citation1990) offer an in-depth empirical deconstruction of reductive and widespread claims that monolingualism = unity, and multilingualism = disunity.
10. Only headlines in which English was clearly, though on occasion indirectly (usually by way of implicit opposition), referenced were included and analyzed. Headlines for letters to the editor were not analyzed. In the case of newspapers with relatively few total texts, the L.A. Times (21 texts) and The WSJ (21), I included all headlines matching these criteria. In the case of the IHT (89), The NYT (94), and The Post (50), I included in the general potential headline analysis data set, all headlines from those articles matching the above criteria and which were published in 1992, 1995, 1998, and 2001, respectively.
