Global Lingua Franca

“It won’t be long before the whole world will speak English and as a result national identities and cultures will be lost.”

At the turn of the century, the world population is faced with tensions arising from pressures of globalization what with language. This rapidly-growing phenomenon of English as the Global Lingua Franca causes anxiety over its consequence on national identities. While many have argued that language is inextricably linked with identity and in order to save identities, languages must first be saved from the hegemony of English, some countries such as Singapore embraces English as a home language. It’s impossible to avoid the usage of English; the fact that 80 per cent of the world 's electronically stored information is

The status of English as an International language is the result of the British colonial expansion during the last two centuries in North America, Oceania,West Africa, South Asia, and South America. Ngugi Wa Thong, a Kenyan writer explains that during colonisation,publishing houses were controlled by the missionaries and stories were carefully selected to ensure that children did not question their colonised condition and indoctrinate them to see their native language as inferior. As a result, Language was made into “ a mechanism that separated children from their own history because their own heritage were shared only at home, relying on orature in their textbook history in the colonizer’s language.” Since English was made a dominant language, African orature was affected greatly, having been expressed in a foreign language to reflect African experience. This, however, is not the case for India. India has had English co-existed together with thousands of its local languages. For over hundred years, English was seen as the “language of administration and social elite”. It is a first language for many well-educated Indians and a second language for those who speak more than one language in India. English is used among Indians as a link language, a tie that helps binding the many segments of Indian society

As said by Dr Wenying Jiang, a specialist in Applied Linguistics, “One cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture.” In her paper, Dr Jiang expressed her understanding of language and culture through a metaphor; language as flesh and culture as blood come together to form a living organism. It’s questionable how exactly could this be applied to countries that were once colonised and had their national languages adjusted such as Singapore. For example, a conversation in English between non-native speakers of English using a local variety of English can become more of an authentic text than a conversation between native speakers. This means that the English they use does not need to reflect any “Anglo” cultural values; instead, the cultural values of the people who uses English as a regional variety of English become