THE EXPANSION OF ENGLISH TO BECOME A LINGUA FRANCA

3353 THE EXPANSION OF ENGLISH TO BECOME A LINGUA FRANCA Võ Huỳnh Tiến, Bùi Khánh Duy, Đào Hoàng Anh Thư, Nguyễn Thị Thu Trang, Trịnh Thành Luân Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại học Công nghệ TP Hồ Chí Minh.

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THE EXPANSION OF ENGLISH TO BECOME

A LINGUA FRANCA

Võ Huỳnh Tiến, Bùi Khánh Duy, Đào Hoàng Anh Thư, Nguyễn Thị Thu Trang,

Trịnh Thành Luân*

Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại học Công nghệ TP Hồ Chí Minh (HUTECH)

Supervisor’s name: MA Vu Xuan Quang ABSTRACT

The term English as a lingua franca (ELF) has become the subject of considerable debate nowadays What emerges from much of the discussion, however, is that there seems to be an excellent problem of uncertainty

as to what, precisely, ELF eventually is, and how it relates to the much more firmly established field of world English as known as WE Therefore, this study begins with an explanation of our own interpretation of WL and ELF It starts with focusing primarily on ELF First, we are considering the meaning of the term “English

as a Lingua franca” that will help the reader more understand English We then highlight the expansion of English to become WE which may bring much crucial information for people who are interested in learning English Finally, we carefully take a look at English as lingua franca nowadays This study ends on an optimistic note which demonstrates how first-hand experience of ELF communication seems to be raising their awareness

of its communicative effectiveness

Key words: communicative effectiveness; lingua franca; world English;

I INTRODUCTION

Recently, the “English as a lingua franca” as known as ELF term has emerged as a method of referring to contact in English between speakers with different first language Crystal (2003) show that because the roughly only one out of every four users of English on the earth is a native speaker of the language Most ELF interactions participate among ‘non-native’ speakers of English Firth (1996: 240) mentions that although this does not preclude the participation of English native speakers in ELF interaction, what is distinctive about ELF

is that, in most situations, it is a ‘contact language’ between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the option foreign language of communication

To define in this way, ELF is part of the more general phenomenon of ‘English as an international language’ (EIL) or ‘World English’, for comprehensive overviews, see Jenkins (2003), MC Arthur (1998), Melchers & Shaw (2003) ELF, along with ‘English as a global language in Crystal (2003); Gnutzmann (1999), ‘English as

a world language in Mair (2003) and ‘World English’ in Brutt-Griffler (2002) have for some time been used as

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general cover terms and conditions for uses of English spanning Inner Circle, Out Circle, and expanding Circle contexts in Kachru (1992) The traditional meaning of EIL, comprises uses of English within and across Kachru’s ‘Circle’, for international as well as international connection Nevertheless, House (1999) and Seihofer (2001) say that when English is selected as the means of communication among people from different first language backgrounds, through lingua-culture boundaries, the preferred term ‘English as a lingua franca’

is used

1 What is lingual franca?

A language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different

A lingua franca, also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language or dialect systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages

Lingua franca have developed around the world throughout human history, sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called "trade languages" facilitated trade), but also for cultural, religious, diplomatic, and administrative convenience, and as a means of exchanging information between scientists and other scholars of different nationalities The term is taken from the medieval Mediterranean Lingua Franca, an Italian-based pidgin language used especially by traders in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th centuries A world language – a language spoken internationally and by many people – is a language that may function as a global lingua franca

2 The expansion of English

The researchers’ attention has been caught by globalized English’s emergence, triumph, and dominance in the international regions and sparked arguments among them in recent years “It was only in the mid-twentieth century that scholars of the language began constructing models to describe the place of English in the world”

“If the diasporic locations of the language and the colonial expansion of the empire of the British are related, the “global English'' notion and the English language’s expansion as a lingua franca phenomenon, is more excellent contextualized” with which English expanded inland and use “Within the next hundred years, the English were to acquire such far-flung colonies as Bermuda, Jamaica, the Bahamas, British Honduras, the Leeward Islands, Barnados, the Mosquito Coast, Canada, the American colonies, India, St Helena, Gambia, and the Gold Coast'' An expansion as “the glorious period of the British Raj, that the sun never set on the Empire, and now never sets on the English language”, creating another phase of shift and development of the language culturally and linguistically diversified contexts Besides, “these distinctly different contexts of

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linguistic ecology opened up, theoretically and methodologically, challenging research areas in language contact and convergence and multilingual interactions”

First dispersal: English is transported to the 'new world'

The first diaspora involved relatively large-scale migrations of mother-tongue English speakers from England, Scotland and Ireland predominantly to North America and the Caribbean, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand Over time, their own English dialects developed into modern American, Canadian, West Indian, South African, Australian, and New Zealand English In contrast to the English of Great Britain, the varieties spoken

in modern North America and Caribbean, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand have been modified in response to the changed and changing sociolinguistic contexts of the migrants, for example being in contact within digenous Native American, Khoisan and Bantu, Aboriginal or Maori populations in the colonies

Second dispersal: English is transported to Asia and Africa

The second diaspora was the result of the colonization of Asia and Africa, which led to the development of 'World English', the second-language varieties of English In colonial Africa, the history of English is distinct between West and East Africa English in West Africa began with trade particularly the slave trade English soon gained official status in what are today Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, and some

of the pidgin and creoles which developed from English contact, including Krio (Sierra Leone) and Cameroon Pidgin, have large numbers of speakers now

As for East Africa, extensive British settlements were established in what are now Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, where English became a crucial language of the government, education and the law From the early 1960s, the six countries achieved independence in succession; but English remained the official language and had large numbers of second language speakers in Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi (along with Chewa)

II CONCLUSION

Jenkin (2005) and Lowenberg (2002) calls for new approaches to the assessment of ELF have thus far come from those outside the professional language checking field unfamiliar with the constraints and requirements

of language testing We have alluded to this in the discussion of issues of measurement on this Higgins (2003) mentions that these approaches express the stronger on politics than applied linguistic realities and appear to

be a push by claimants from outer and expanding circles for ownership of English, or perhaps a plea for official recognition of their legitimacy as English speakers and acknowledgment of validity of their intra and cross-nationally negotiated language identities Although such claims are to be applauded for their attempts at getting

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distributive justice, they carry within them a paradox which we have previously adumbrated in reviewing issues for possible norms for ELF

References

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2 Firth, A 1996 ‘The discursive accomplishment of normality On “lingua franca” English and conversation analysis’ Journal of Pragmatics 26: 237–59

3 Gnutzmann, C (ed.) 1999 Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language Tu¨bingen: Stauffenburg

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5 House, J 1999 ‘Misunderstanding in intercultural communication: interactions in English as a lingua franca and the myth of mutual intelligibility’ in C Gnutzmann (ed.) pp 73 –89

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