HOW ENGLISH BECAME THE GLOBAL LANGUAGE
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How English Became the Global Language David Northrup
HOW ENGLISH BECAME THE GLOBAL LANGUAGE Copyright David Northrup, 2013. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-30305-9 All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-137-30306-6 ISBN 978-1-137-30307-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137303073 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Northrup, David, 1941 author How English Became the Global Language / David Northrup. pages cm Includes index. 1. English language Globalization. 2. English language History. 3. English language Foreign countries. 4. English language Variation. I. Title. PE1073.N67 2013 420.9 dc23 2012038715 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: March 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents List of Figures and Tables List of Abbreviations Preface and Acknowledgments vii ix xi Chapter 1 Introduction: Disciplines, Perspectives, Debates, and Overview 1 How Different Disciplines Tell the History of English 2 An Introduction to Language History 7 Debates about Modern History 16 Overview 22 Chapter 2 The Language of the British Isles 27 Invaders 28 Modern English 33 English in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland 37 Conclusion 45 Chapter 3 The Language of North America 49 Colonial Beginnings 50 Expansion and Assimilation 57 Persistence of Other Languages and Bilingualism 63 Chapter 4 English in Imperial Asia and Africa 75 British Colonies in Asia 78 British Colonies in Africa 89 American Colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific 101
vi CONTENTS Chapter 5 Cultural Worlds 109 International Relations 110 Scientific English 114 Business English 118 Global English Literature 123 Popular Culture: Rap and Mac 129 Chapter 6 Tipping Points 137 The World Wide Web 140 Soviet Disintegration 141 China Tips Asia 144 The Global Academic Language 148 Conclusion 158 Notes 161 Bibliography 181 Index 197
Figures and Tables Figure 6.1 University students going abroad for study, 2009, by destination. 150 Tables 2.1 Borrowings from Hindi, Turkish, and Welsh 40 3.1 New vocabulary in colonial American English (excluding place-names) 50 3.2 Loanwords in nineteenth-century American English 57 4.1 Education in Nigeria and India, 1938 39 94 4.2 Annual expenditures for education in British African colonies, 1926 ( per 1000 population) 96 4.3 African countries using English officially in education 101 6.1 English-medium higher education where English is not an official language 157
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Abbreviations As is fitting in a work of world history, international abbreviations are used in dates in preference to the abbreviations AD and BC that are common in Western countries. BCE CE Before the Common Era Of the Common Era Two much used texts are cited in abbreviated form: CHEL OCEL The Cambridge History of the English Language The Oxford Companion to the English Language Other shortened terms: EIC INC MNC SPCK SWAPO UK US East India Company Indian National Congress multinational corporation Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge Southwest African Peoples Organization The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland The United States of America
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Preface and Acknowledgments History reveals itself most clearly in retrospect. Only now that English has emerged as the first global language is it possible to explain how that happened. As recounted in this book, the expansion of English occurred over two millennia, gaining ground very slowly in the British Isles, at a more rapid pace in North America, and then globally with growing speed in recent decades. Although a few farsighted souls had predicted more than two centuries ago that English would become the global language, no master plan controlled these historical events. The complex and rather improbable story had many separate strands, which this account attempts to untangle. Similarly, how I came to write that history is a long, improbable tale, which seems coherent only in retrospect. Let me mention three particular experiences that have prodded me to undertake this project. The earliest experience was in the mid 1960s when I spent two years teaching the English language (and teaching other subjects in English) in a new secondary school in rural Nigeria, shortly after the country s independence from Britain. In addition to learning about Africa and teaching English as a Second Language, I was forced to contemplate the global power dynamics involved in postcolonial relations. At a reception in the new parliament building in Lagos, the Nigerian Minister of Education (dressed in Muslim robes) had welcomed my Peace Corps group as the new missionaries. He explained that, like the Christian missionaries in the colonial period, we volunteers (and our British and Canadian counterparts) were helping to expand Nigeria s school system, but that we differed from the old missionaries who used schools to spread Christianity, in that we had no other agenda we wished to leave behind. I was disconcerted by the comparison to missionaries, which caused me
xii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS to wonder whether I might be an unsuspecting agent of American cultural imperialism. Such doubts diminished once I met fellow teachers, primarily Nigerians along with an Indian from Kerala and an Irishman. All of us would be teaching in English, the language the new government of Nigeria mandated in all schools beyond the early primary years. My doubts vanished as I got to know my students, very few of whose parents had more than a few years of formal education, and I sensed their eagerness to master a curriculum in English that would be their ticket to personal success and a vital part of Nigerian national unification. It was clear that, whatever American agendas existed, Nigerian aspirations were in control. Many years later, when a professor of African history at Boston College, I attended a conference on global English where a professor asserted that English was destroying the languages of India. The speaker was herself Indian-born, but her proposition seemed quite improbable to me on the basis my experiences in Nigeria, where the local languages seemed to suffer no loss of vitality as a result of English becoming the national language and the language of education. I resolved to investigate further. A third experience came from teaching a large course on the history of globalization. Because cultural globalization seemed to provide a more interesting narrative, I paid particular attention to that theme, though English got little attention until the last couple of lectures. Still, teaching that course forced me to expand my knowledge of changes taking place around the world in many aspects of culture. In giving thanks to those who have aided me in completing this vast and complex project, first mention should go to my students, in Nigeria, Tuskegee Institute, and Boston College. The scholars from whom I have learned so much in the course of this research deserve acknowledgment almost as high on the list. In addition, I must give credit of a different sort to Boston College for generously providing me with two sabbatical leaves so that I could conduct the research. I also want to thank the Boston College Libraries, whose excellent collections, online resources, and interlibrary loans enabled me to pursue countless arcane lines of research. As the project developed, I was accorded the opportunity to present parts of my research to academic audiences, for whose
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii valuable feedback I am most grateful. Special thanks goes to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto for inviting me to give my first presentation to the Pearson Prentice-Hall Seminar in Global History at Tufts University. I also wish to thank Laura Doyle, professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for organizing my presentation to the faculty there. Finally, I am grateful to the graduate students in the Department of History at Boston College for giving me the chance to try out my ideas on them. A couple of brave souls even agreed to read some of the manuscript. Special thanks for their comments and kind recommendations go to Professor Patrick Manning of the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Salikoko Mufwene of the University of Chicago, and my old friend John F. Thornton. My wife Nancy Northrup carefully read the entire manuscript and suggested numerous corrections and improvements. I also wish to express my appreciation to my former colleagues Alan Rogers and Kalpana R. Seshadri for their comments on individual chapters. Needless to say, the author is entirely to blame for the flaws that remain.