English as Lingua Franca, or ELF, seems a straightforward concept: in today’s
globalized society, speakers of all varieties of languages elect to use English as a means
of communication, regardless of their native tongues. The origins of ELF lie in the era of
aggressive British and American imperialism, when English was forced on much of the
world as a language of governance. At that time, native speakers held considerable power
over non-native speakers; “proper” English was a marker of civilization as defined by the
colonizer and entrance into positions of power depended on mastering it (frequently at the
expense of one’s native language). Given the ubiquity of English as the modern lingua franca
and its imperialistic past as something of a bully language, it can come as a bit of a shock to
shift one’s linguistic paradigm back a few centuries to the English Renaissance, when English
was struggling to prove itself to the more prestigious French, Italian, and then-lingua franca,
Latin. In England, various scholars tried to enhance their mother language’s reputation, largely
by making it more like Latin in its vocabulary and syntax. But these attempts were always in
tension with a nationalism that asserted that English was fine just the way it was and should
be recognized for its own merits as a language of the common people, not of scholars. One
man who skillfully navigated these two opposing forces and largely succeeded in reconciling
them was John Milton, one of England’s greatest poets and propagandists. His career was
equal parts building up the English language, defending the English people, and encouraging
both to match and then surpass the linguistic might of the Continent. Through his political
prose and his poetry, both in English and Latin, Milton sought to prove that England could
deftly wield language to assert its dominance in political, religious, and (the highest laurels
for Milton) literary spheres