Global English, so English for All?

Abstract

Since the end of the Second World War, English has developed into a global language of communication which is used in international institutions, transnational corporations, international centres of finance, international business, hospitality and services industries, and in global academia. It is taught as a foreign language to millions of learners in classrooms across the world, and is more generally used as a lingua franca and means of intercultural communication between speakers of different first languages in global as well as local contexts. English has reached this position due to the rise to global dominance of the world economies of first Britain and then the United States in the modern world-system. This is an economic and geopolitical system which dates from the sixteenth century and which Britain initially came to dominate from the mid-eighteenth century to be followed by the United States in the early twentieth century. The consequence of the global spread of English within the modern world-system has been the development of a pluricentric world of multiple Englishes and realizations of English. Applied linguistics and ELT scholars engaging with these diverse Englishes have referred to them, amongst other things, as world Englishes, ELF, translingualism, translanguaging and superdiversity. The scholarly debates have in turn given rise to controversies about the continued relevance of standard ‘inner circle’ models of English and the kinds of English that should be taught, with implications for English language teacher training, teacher classroom practice, and language policy. In a world of diverse Englishes and realizations of English, it seems useful to overview what is occurring in applied linguistics in order that teachers of English in diverse world contexts may decide how they wish to respond to these developments