Esquire Awards (sort of...)

[Thomas Colin]

Thank for this very interesting post. Should have read it before 
(somewhat)losing my temper. I guess one has to be a non-English-speaker in 
the US to understand. What better example of the pervasiveness of language, 
from my tiny experience of plurilingualism to planetary powergames?
Case closed?
T.



>In the last twenty years or so we have learned a great deal
>about language, languages in contact and the impact such
>contact has on culture.  The future importance of English
>may not be in abolishing other languages or in preserving
>its current structure for spoken purposes among native
>speakers, but in serving as the "lingua franca" of the "New
>World Order." But it is very difficult to predict what will
>happen.
>
>It's always interesting to look back 50 years or so:
>
>  I. A. Richards (W.W. Norton: New York, 1950) translation,
>Iliad:
>
>  "The chief general interest of the Iliad is that we can
>find in it the ancestors to very important things which are
>still characteristic of European or 'Western' culture....The
>Iliad is in the most eminent degree world literature.
>English is at present [1950] the nearest thing there has yet
>been to a world literature. I have let regard for those
>whose only access to the Iliad will be through the English
>they have learned as a second language weigh fairly heavily
>in my choices....The Iliad, if it is made linguistically
>accessible, concerns all who need to understand the culture
>of which it is -- along with the Bible and Plato-- a
>principal source. Understanding a culture, in this sense, is
>no theoretical matter. It is understanding the behavior and
>attitude of those who live by the culture....The public
>which needs to understand the Western culture contains, for
>every present English speaker, five or six people who know
>no English as yet. A considerable proportion of these are
>fated (cataclysms apart) to learn to read some English
>before the century ends."
>
>Yes, I chose I.A. Richards to add a little irony and humor
>to a discussion that can easily forget to respect the living
>and the dead. Nothing is more demeaning to language, culture
>and scholarship, than dragging the bodies of defeated heroes
>from  "post" this or that high horses not "privileged."
>
>The other day Mr. Greenspan testified in Washington. He
>noted that the economic boom has left many behind. "How do
>we solve this problem," a congressperson from Washington
>state asked the old man. "Education," he said, and something
>like, "people need to be trained, educated, and they need to
>learn and improve their english. The gap between those that
>have a HS diploma and those that don't is growing, the gap
>between college educated and those with HS diplomas is
>growing, the gap between L1 and L2 speaker of english is
>growing. So while the questions of language and culture are
>very complex, for most people it comes down to economics.
>
>   1.Virtually every UN meeting conducted without translation
>takes place in  English. This is particularly true of UN
>work in
>telecommunications standards and practices.
>
>   2.The world's scientific and technical community is
>becoming increasingly English, with a rapid rise in
>English-based scientific and
>technical neologisms which roll into other languages without
>alteration.
>
>   3.Computers and networks are gradually shifting human
>communications to written
>     form even for conversation. Written language comes
>without local accent, and
>     enables, for example, Japanese speakers of English to
>communicate  with German
>     speakers of English when they are barely intelligible to
>each other in person.
>
>   4.English is a highly structured and hierarchical language
>with a very  small symbol
>     base and well-understood (if open-ended and complex)
>syntax, meaning that
>     English can not only be parsed with computers, but it
>can to an  increasing
>     extent be processed and manipulated with computers. It
>is hard to imagine
>     any other language with similar computer elegance
>replacing English because of
>     some large political or cultural shift in power. If the
>West gives way, it will be to the East, with ideographic
>languages that computers are not so adapted to.  Indeed, it
>is more likely that if the East overcomes the West, it  will
>be through appropriation of English rather than replacement.
>
>   5.As a result of the above, the world's financial
>community, representing  the largest  single world-wide
>market, operates increasingly in English. As  the atomic
>bomb has likely rendered the future fall of empires to rest
>on  economic rather than
>military terms, we can expect that the falling of empires
>will also be conducted in English.

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com