English as a global language

South-east Asia and the South Pacific

The territories in and to the west of the South Pacific display an interesting mixture of American and British English. The main American presence emerged after the Spanish-American War of 1898, from which the USA received the island of Guam and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean) and sovereignty over the Philippines. Hawaii was annexed at that time also, after a pe¬riod of increasing US influence.

(In the 1940s, the US invasion of Japanese-held Pacific islands was followed after World War II by several areas being made the responsibility of the USA as United Nations Trust Territories. The Philippines became independent in 1946, but the influence of American English remains strong. And as this country has by far the largest population of the English- speaking states in the region (about 80 million in 2002), it makes a significant contribution to world totals.

British influence began through the voyages of English sailors at the end of the eighteenth century, notably the journeys of Captain Cook in the 1770s. The London Missionary Society sent its work¬ers to the islands ofthe South Pacific fifty years later. In South-east Asia, the development of a British colonial empire grew from the work of Stamford Raffles, an administrator in the British East India Company. Centres were established in several locations, notably Penang (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824). Within a few months, the population of Singapore had grown to over 5,000, and by the time the Federated Malay States were brought together as a Crown Colony (1867), English had come to be established throughout the region as the medium of law and ad¬ministration, and was being increasingly used in other contexts. A famous example is the English-language daily newspaper, The Straits Times, which began publication in 1845.

English inevitably and rapidly became the language of power in the British territories of South-east Asia. Hong Kong island was ceded to Britain in 1842 by the Treaty of Nanking, at the end of the first Opium War, and Kowloon was added to it in 1860; the New Territories, which form the largest part of the colony, were leased from China in 1898 for ninety-nine years. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, several territories in the region became British protectorates, the administration of some being later taken over by Australia and New Zealand. Territories with English as part oftheir heritage, which have become independent in recent decades, include American Samoa, Palau (Belau), Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, North Mariana Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

The introduction of a British educational system exposed learn-ers to a standard British English model very early on. English- medium schools began in Penang (now Malaysia's leading port) in 1816, with senior teaching staff routinely brought in from Britain. Although at the outset these schools were attended by only a tiny percentage of the population, numbers increased during the nineteenth century as waves of Chinese and Indian immigrants entered the area. English rapidly became the language of profes¬sional advancement and the chief literary language. Soon after the turn of the century, higher education through the medium of English was also introduced. The language thus became a prestige lingua franca among those who had received an English education and who had thereby entered professional society.

Despite the common colonial history of the region, a single variety of 'South-east Asian English' has not emerged. The po-litical histories of Singapore and Malaysia, especially since inde-pendence, have been too divergent for this to happen; and the sociolinguistic situations in Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea are unique.

* Singapore In the 1950s a bilingual educational system was in-troduced in Singapore, with English used as a unifying medium alongside Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. However, English re¬mained the language of government and the legal system, and retained its importance in education and the media. Its use has also been steadily increasing among the general population. In a 1975 survey, only 27 per cent of people over age forty claimed to understand English, whereas among fifteen- to twenty-year- olds, the proportion was over 87 per cent. There is also evidence of quite widespread use in family settings, and a new local vari¬ety, known as Singlish, has evolved (p. 174). The country had a population of around 4.3 million in 2002.

* Malaysia The situation is very different in Malaysia where, following independence (1957), Bahasa Malaysia was adopted as the national language, and the role of English accordingly became more restricted. Malay-medium education was intro-duced, with English an obligatory subject but increasingly being seen as ofvalue for international rather than intra-national purposes - more a foreign language than a second language.

However, the traditional prestige attached to English still exists, for many speakers. The country had a population of over 22 million in 2002.

* Hong Kong English has always had a limited use in the territory, associated with government or military administra-tion, law, business, and the media. Chinese (Cantonese) is the mother-tongue of over 98 per cent of the population (over 7 million in 2002). However, in recent years there has been a ma-jor increase in educational provision, with estimates suggesting that over a quarter of the population have some competence in English. English and Chinese have joint official status, but Chinese predominates in most speech situations, often with a great deal of language mixing. There is uncertainty surround-ing the future role of English, following the 1997 transfer of power, though patterns oflanguage use so far have shown little change.

* Papua New Guinea British sailors visited the territory as early as 1793, and Britain and Germany annexed areas in 1884. British New Guinea was transferred to Australia in 1904 as the Territory of Papua; German New Guinea was mandated to Australia in 1921. The two areas merged after World War 2, and became independent in 1975. There was a population of nearly 5 million in 2002. About half the people speak Tok Pisin, an English-based pidgin, as a second language (and some have it as a mother tongue). It has a nation-wide presence, widely seen in advertisements and the press, and heard on radio and tele¬vision. Many major works have been translated into Tok Pisin, including Shakespeare and the Bible.

2.10 А world view

The present-day world status of English is primarily the result of two factors: the expansion of British colonial power, which peaked towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the emergence of the United States as the leading economic power of the twentieth century. It is the latter factor which continues to explain the world position of the English language today (much to the discomfi¬ture of some in Britain who find the loss of historical linguistic pre-eminence unpalatable). The USA has nearly 70 per cent of all English mother-tongue speakers in the world (excluding creole varieties). Such dominance, with its political/economic under¬pinnings, currently gives America a controlling interest in the way the language is likely to develop.

How then may we summarize this complex situation? The US linguist Braj Kachru has suggested that we think of the spread of English around the world as three concentric circles, representing different ways in which the language has been acquired and is currently used. Although not all countries fit neatly into this model, it has been widely regarded as a helpful approach.

* The inner circle refers to the traditional bases of English, where it is the primary language: it includes the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

* The outer or extended circle involves the earlier phases of the spread of English in non-native settings, where the language has become part of a country's chief institutions, and plays an important 'second language' role in a multilingual setting: it includes Singapore, India, Malawi and over fifty other territo-ries.

* The expanding or extending circle involves those nations which recognize the importance of English as an international lan-guage, though they do not have a history of colonization by members of the inner circle, nor have they given English any special administrative status. It includes China, Japan, Greece, Poland and (as the name of this circle suggests) a steadily in-creasing number of other states. In these areas, English is taught as a foreign language. (The term 'expanding' reflects its origins in the 1980s: today, with English recognized virtually every¬where, a tense change to expanded circle would better reflect the contemporary scene.)

There are some seventy-five territories in which English has held or continues to hold a special place, as a member of either the inner or the outer circles. These are given in a single alphabetical list below (Table 1), along with an estimate of the number of speakers.

The three 'circles' of English

The national population figures are estimates for 2001. L1 stands for people who have a variety of English as a first language, or mother tongue. L2 stands for people who have learned a variety of English as a second language, in addition to their mother tongue. Where I have been unable to find any relevant data, the figure for L1 or L2 is missing.

Lists of this kind contain all kinds of hidden assumptions, and they have to be carefully interpreted. In particular, we should note the following points:

* There is no single source of statistical information on language totals, so estimates have to be taken from a variety of sources. In the first instance, I used the latest editions of the UNESCO statistical yearbook, The Encyclopaedia Britannica yearbook, and Ethnologue: languages ofthe world, and whatever census data I

The category 'Other dependencies' consists of territories administered by Australia (Norfolk I., Christmas I., Cocos Is), New Zealand (Niue, Tokelau) and the UK (Anguilla, Falkland Is, Pitcairn I., Turks & Caicos Is).

could find. In a (regrettably) few cases, a sociolinguistic study of an area has provided an estimate. * Where no linguistic estimate is available, I used an indirect method, based on the percentage of a country's population over the age of twenty-five who have completed their secondary or further education - the assumption being that, in a country where the language has official status, and is taught in schools, this figure would suggest a reasonable level of attainment.

* The notion of'a variety of English' referred to above includes standard, pidgin, and creole varieties of English. That is why, in certain countries, the usage totals in the list are much higher than would be expected if only Standard English were being considered. In Nigeria, for example, large numbers (thought to be well over 40 per cent of the population) use Nigerian Pidgin English as a second language. The linguistic justification for this approach is that these varieties are, indeed, varieties of English (as opposed to, say, French), and are usually related to Standard English along a continuum. On the other hand, because the ends of this continuum may not be mutually intelligible, it could be argued that we need to keep Standard English totals separate from pidgin/creole English totals: if this view is adopted, then some 7 million L1 speakers (mainly from the Caribbean) and some 80 million L2 speakers (mainly from West Africa) should be subtracted from the grand totals. Countries where this is an issue are identified by (c) in the list.

* It is also important to recall (from chapter 1) that to have a 'special place' can mean various things. Sometimes English is an official or joint official language of a state, its status being defined by law, as in the case of India, Ireland or Canada. Some-times it may be the sole or dominant language for historical reasons (but without official status), as in the case of the USA or the UK. In a few instances, English has lost the formal sta¬tus it once had, though it still plays an important role in the community. In many cases, its standing is less certain, coex-isting with other local languages in a relationship which shifts with time and social function. But in all cases, it can be ar¬gued, the population is living in an environment in which the English language is routinely in evidence, publicly accessible in varying degrees, and part of the nation's recent or present identity.

* Finally, we should bear in mind that the notion of a 'special place', as reflected in this list, is one which relates entirely to his¬torical and political factors. This has led some linguists to argue that such a list presents a picture of the present-day world which does not wholly reflect sociolinguistic reality. In particular, it is suggested, the distinction between 'second language' (L2) and 'foreign language' use has less contemporary relevance than it formerly had. There is much more use of English nowadays in some countries of the expanding circle, where it is 'only' a foreign language (as in Scandinavia and The Netherlands), than in some of the outer circle where it has traditionally held a special place. Also, to make a language official may not mean very much, in real terms. For example, English is probably rep¬resented in Rwanda and Burundi in very comparable ways, but Rwanda is in the list (and Burundi is not) only because the for¬mer has (in 1996) made a political decision to give the language special status. What the consequences are for the future use of English in that country remains to be seen. In the meantime, it should not be forgotten that there are several countries, not rep¬resented in the Table, which are making a much more important contribution to the notion of English as a global language than is reflected by any geo-historical picture (see chapters 3 and 4).

In reflecting on these totals, we should not underestimate the significance ofthe overall population figure, as it indicates the total number of people who are in theory routinely exposed to English in a country. The grand total of2,236 million in 2002 is well over a third of the world's population. But of course, only a proportion of these people actually have some command of English.

The total of 329 million represents a conservative estimate of those who have learned English as a first language (L1). The total would be increased if we knew the L1 figures for every country - especially in such areas as West Africa, where it is not known how many use a variety of English as a first language. Some refer-ence books (such as World almanac and Ethnologue) seem to take a more inclusive stance, in this respect, citing as many as 450 million as a grand total at present. The main variable, however, is whether the various English-derived pidgins and creoles should be included under the L1 heading. If they are, a further 80 million must be added to the 329 million total - and it is this total of (ap-proximately) 400 million which is the most commonly cited L1 total in the early 2000s.

The total of 430 million represents an estimate of those who have learned English as a second language (L2); but it does not give the whole picture. For many countries, no estimates are available. And in others (notably India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Malaysia, Philippines and Tanzania, which had a combined total of over 1,462 million people in 2002), even a small percentage increase in the number of speakers thought to have a reasonable (rather than a fluent) command of English would considerably expand the L2 grand total. It is, in any case, now well ahead of the L1 total, whether or not pidgins and creoles are included.

No account has been taken in this list of the third category of English language learners referred to above: the members of the expanding circle, who have learned English as a foreign lan-guage. Here too, estimates for the total number of these speakers vary enormously because, as with second-language speakers, ev-erything depends on just how great a command of English is con-sidered acceptable to count as a 'speaker of English'. A criterion of native-speaker-like fluency would clearly produce a relatively small figure; including every beginner would produce a relatively large one. A widely circulated British Council estimate - more in-formed than most, as it was based on reports of numbers attending courses and taking examinations, as well as on market intelligence provided by its English 2000 project - has referred to a billion (i.e. thousand million) people engaged in learning English. That figure needs to be interpreted cautiously, because it includes all learners, from beginners to advanced. If we take, as a criterion, a medium level ofconversational competence in handling domestic subject-matter, then we might expect some three-quarters of this total to be counted as 'speakers of English as a foreign language' - say, 750 million. However, there need to be only small variations in percentage estimations in the more populous countries to pro¬duce a large effect on the figures. No-one knows the proficiency realities in China, for example.

Faced with such notable variations, in which people with par-ticular political agendas can argue for English being stronger or weaker, a cautious temperament will use averages of the most recent estimates, and these produce a grand total of c. 1,500 million speakers from all sources - approximately 750 million first- and second-language speakers, and an equivalent number of speakers of English as a foreign language. This figure permits a convenient summary, given that world population passed the 6 billion mark during late 1999. It suggests that approximately one in four of the world's population are now capable of communi-cating to a useful level in English.

Two comments must immediately be made about this or any similar conclusion. First, if one quarter of the world's population are able to use English, then three-quarters are not. Nor do we have to travel far into the hinterland of a country - away from the tourist spots, airports, hotels and restaurants - to encounter this reality. Populist claims about the universal spread of English thus need to be kept firmly in perspective. Second, there is evidently a major shift taking place in the centre of gravity of the language. From a time (in the 1960s) when the majority of speakers were thought to be first-language speakers, we now have a situation where there are more people speaking it as a second language, and many more speaking it as a foreign language. If we combine these two latter groups, the ratio ofnative to non-native is around 1:3. Moreover, the population growth in areas where English is a second language is about 2.5 times that in areas where it is a first language (see Table 2), so that this differential is steadily increasing.

3. The future of global English

After a while, any account of the social history of English, such as the one recounted in chapters 3 and 4, starts to repeat itself. Under each heading, the narrative identifies a major domain of modern society, puts it in a historical perspective, then discusses the extent to which it now uses or depends upon English. The overwhelming impression, after such an exercise, must be that the language is alive and well, and that its global future is assured.

But linguistic history shows us repeatedly that it is wise to be cautious, when making predictions about the future of a language. If, in the Middle Ages, you had dared to predict the death of Latin as the language of education, people would have laughed in your face - as they would, in the eighteenth century, if you had suggested that any language other than French could be a future norm of polite society. A week may be a long time in politics; but a century is a short time in linguistics.

In speculating about the future of English as a world language, therefore, we need to pay careful attention to indications which seem to go against the general trend. And we need to ask, in broad terms: What kinds of development could impede the future growth of English? It will then be possible to arrive at a balanced conclusion.

Several possibilities can be envisaged. A significant change in the balance of power - whether political, economic, technological or cultural (p. 10) - could affect the standing of other languages so that they become increasingly attractive, and begin to take over functions currently assumed by English. Political factors might make groups of people within a country, or even whole countries or groups of countries, antagonistic to English. Pressures arising out of the need to express community identity might disrupt the ability of English to function as a global language. Here, the chief scenario envisaged is one where the language fragments into mu-tually unintelligible varieties, in much the way that vulgar Latin did a millennium ago. This chapter deals with the issues raised by these possibilities.

3.1 The rejection of English

We begin with the situation where the people of a country feel so antagonistic or ambivalent about English that they reject the option to give English a privileged status, either as an official lan-guage or as a foreign language. If several countries were to begin thinking in this way, there could in due course be a pendulum swing which would render the claim of global status less credi¬ble. The chief reasons for such antipathy were briefly discussed in chapter 1, when we began our inquiry into the general nature of a global language. We may apply this reasoning now, in relation to the particular case of English.

It is inevitable that, in a post-colonial era, there should be a strong reaction against continuing to use the language of the former colonial power, and in favour ofpromoting the indigenous languages. As the then president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, said in 1974, 'The basis of any independent government is a national language, and we can no longer continue aping our former colo-nizers.' Gandhi, writing in 1908, puts the point more emotively:

To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them ... Is it not a painful thing that, if I want to go to a court of justice, I must employ the English language as a medium; that, when I became a Barrister, I may not speak my mother-tongue, and that someone else should have to translate to me from my own language? Is this not absolutely absurd? Is it not a sign of slavery?

The Kenyan author, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who chose to reject English as the medium of expression for his work in favour of Gikuyu and Kiswahili, is equally forceful in his book Decolonising the mind:

I am lamenting a neo-colonial situation which has meant the European bourgeoisie once again stealing our talents and geniuses as they have stolen our economies. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Europe stole art treasures from Africa to decorate their houses and museums; in the twentieth century Europe is stealing the treasures of the mind to enrich their languages and cultures. Africa needs back its economy, its politics, its culture, its languages and all its patriotic writers.

The arguments are all to do with identity, and with language as the most immediate and universal symbol of that identity. People have a natural wish to use their own mother-tongue, to see it survive and grow, and they do not take kindly when the language of another culture is imposed on them. Despite the ac¬knowledged values which the language of that culture can bring, the fact remains that English has an unhappy colonial resonance in the minds of many, and a history where local languages could easily be treated with contempt. Here is another extract from Decolonising the mind, in which Ngugi wa Thiong'o remembers his schooldays:3

English became the language of my formal education. In Kenya, English became more than a language: it was the language, and all the others had to bow before it in deference.

Thus one of the most humiliating experiences was to be caught speaking Gikuyu in the vicinity of the school. The culprit was given corporal punishment - three to five strokes of the cane on bare buttocks - or was made to carry a metal plate around the neck with inscriptions such as

I AM STUPID or I AM A DONKEY.

It is not difficult to see how antagonism to English can grow, with such memories. Equally, it is easy to see how ambivalence can grow. Many writers in the countries ofthe outer circle see themselves as facing a dilemma: if they write in English, their work will have the chance of reaching a worldwide audi¬ence; but to write in English may mean sacrificing their cultural identity. The dilemma can be partially resolved.

On the whole, the former colonies of the British Empire have stayed with English (see the list at the end of chapter 2), but there are some famous instances of distancing or rejection. In Tanzania, English was jointly official with Swahili until 1967 (thereafter, Swahili became the sole national language); in Malaysia, the National Language Act of 1967 disestablished English as a joint official language, giving sole status to Malay. On the other hand, English has begun to increase its prestige in several countries which were formerly part of other empires, and where it has no unpalatable colonial associations. In 1996, for example, Algeria (a former French colony) opted to make English its chief foreign language in schools, replacing French. And it is interesting to note that, in the excited debates surrounding the proposed creation of the state of Padania in Northern Italy, also in 1996, some seces-sionists were citing English as a more acceptable candidate for a lingua franca than standard Italian.

There are also economic arguments which might persuade a country to reduce its investment in the English language. A coun-try might see its economic future as operating more on a regional than a global level, and thus devote extra resources to foster¬ing a local lingua franca. The Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America could throw their weight behind Spanish, for example, or the countries of North Africa behind Arabic. Hindi, Russian, and German are other examples of languages which have a traditional presence within a number of geographically adjacent countries. The immediate benefits of using a language already well estab-lished in the locality could outweigh, in their mind, the longer- term benefits of introducing English. They might want no part in a global economic village, or dismiss the possibility as a pipe-dream. The current debate on the merits and demerits of European economic union suggests that the benefits are not always clear.

The need for intelligibility and the need for identity often pull people - and countries - in opposing directions. The former mo-tivates the learning of an international language, with English the first choice in most cases; the latter motivates the promotion of ethnic language and culture. Conflict is the common consequence when either position is promoted insensitively. There are ways of avoiding such conflict, of course, notably in the promotion of bilingual or multilingual policies, which enable people both 'to have their cake and eat it'. But bilingual policies are expensive to resource, in both time and money, and they require a climate of cooperation which for historical reasons often does not exist.

Any decision to reject English has important consequences for the identity of a nation, and it can cause emotional ripples (both sympathetic and antagonistic) around the English-speaking world; but there have been very few such rejections of English to date, and the populations in the countries which have done so are sufficiently small that even in total there has been no noticeable impact on the status of the English language as a whole. There is, however, one country where, on grounds of population-size alone, a major change in the sociolinguistic situation could turn ripples into waves. That is the USA.

3.2 Contrasting attitudes: the US situation

Given that the USA has come to be the dominant element in so many of the domains identified in earlier chapters, the future status of English must be bound up to some extent with the fu¬ture of that country. So much of the power which has fuelled the growth of the English language during the twentieth century has stemmed from America. We have already noted that the coun¬try contains nearly four times as many mother-tongue speakers of English as any other nation. It has been more involved with in-ternational developments in twentieth-century technology than any other nation. It is in control of the new industrial (that is, electronic) revolution. And it exercises a greater influence on the way English is developing worldwide than does any other regional variety - often, of course, to the discomfiture of people in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, who regularly express worries in their national presses about the onslaught of 'Americanisms'.

As we have seen in chapter 1, there is the closest of links be-tween language and power. If anything were to disestablish the military or economic power of the USA, there would be inevitable consequences for the global status of the language. The millions of people learning English in order to have access to this power would begin to look elsewhere, and (assuming the new political magnet used a language other than English) they would quickly acquire new language loyalties. It is unlikely that a corresponding loss of power in any other country would have such a serious ef-fect. Even if, for example, the entire English-speaking population of Canada decided to switch to French, or the entire English- speaking population ofSouth Africa opted to speak Afrikaans, the implications for English as a world language would be minor. As can be seen from the listing in chapter 2, relatively small numbers of people would be involved.

No one has suggested that the power of the USA is seriously at risk from external forces, as we begin the new millennium; the International Institute for Strategic Studies (in The military balance 1996-7) reports that the USA still has by far the most powerful conventional armed forces in the world and is the largest arms producer. But during the 1990s increasing attention came to be focused on a domestic debate in which, according to one set of arguments, there are internal forces threatening the country's future unity. As we have seen in chapter 2 (p. 36), some analysts consider the English language to have been an important factor in maintaining mutual intelligibility and American unity in the face of the immigration explosion which more than tripled the US population after 1900. For those who take this view, the contemporary movement among some immigrant populations to maintain their original cultural identity through safeguarding their mother tongues is - given the large numbers involved - a matter of some consequence. What has emerged is a conflict between the demands of intelligibility and identity (of the kind outlined in chapter 1), and one outcome has been the 'official English' movement. Although the various arguments are in many ways unique to the USA, given the large numbers of people and languages involved, and relating as they do to the rights of in-dividuals as enshrined in the US Constitution, they need to be carefully noted by people in other countries, for ethnic minority and immigrant populations - and thus the competing pressures of identity preservation vs. assimilation - are everywhere. Although there is no official-language movement in Britain, for example, it is not impossible to imagine an analogous situation developing there, as well as in Australia, where immigration trends in recent years have been especially dramatic, and where in the 1990s the country's attitude towards Asian immigrants emerged again as a political issue. A summary of the main issues is therefore of some relevance, in a book dealing with the future of global English.

Why, in a country where over 95 per cent of the population speak English, should there be a movement to make English of-ficial? People do not start making a case for a language to be made official until they feel they need to; and the circumstances in which they need to are usually very clear. As already mentioned (p. 84), the typical scenario is one where a language has come to be threatened by the emergence of a more dominant language. It may take a long time for people who speak the threatened lan-guage to respond: in the case of Welsh, the reversal of several hundred years of English domination has begun to show real re-sults only recently, starting with the Welsh Language Act of 1967. Similar movements can be seen in Ireland, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Quebec. Inevitably, in such cases, there is a secondary reac-tion, with English-users finding themselves - often for the first time - on the defensive (in relation to such matters as job appli-cations, where bilingualism may be advantageous), and insisting that the status of English be guaranteed. But in a country where the language is already so dominant, and its position for so long taken for granted, why should the question of its official status arise at all?

Before going into the reasons, it should be mentioned that the positions for and against 'official English' have been argued with varying amounts of moderation and extremism, and that sev¬eral views are possible on each side. On the pro-official side, no fewer than three bills came before the House of Representatives in January-February 1995, all sponsored by Republicans (but with varying amounts of inter-party support), expressing different at-titudes and recommendations about the use and status of other languages. The most moderate of these (HR 123, sponsored by Representative Bill Emerson), outlined below, saw itself partly as a means of empowering immigrants by giving them greater opportunities to acquire English. Considerably more radical was HR 739, sponsored by Representative Toby Roth, which allowed for fewer exceptions in the official use of other languages, and re-pealed the 1965 Act providing for bilingual education and bilin-gual ballots. More restrictive still was HR 1005, sponsored by Representative Pete King, which allowed for even fewer excep-tions in the use of other languages. The latter two proposals made little political progress; but HR 123 received the support of US English, the country's leading organization campaigning for official English, and it was this bill which eventually went to a vote, in August 1996, being passed by the House of Represen-tatives (under the name of the Bill Emerson English Language Empowerment Act) by 259 to 169. However, pressure of time in a presidential election year did not allow the bill to reach the Senate, and it remains to be seen how the issue will fare in future Congresses.

This summary of the main clauses of the Emerson bill is based on the bill as presented to the House on 4 January 1995. It does not include any amendments introduced at the committee stage in July 1996 or thereafter.

(1) the United States is comprised ofindividuals and groups from diverse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds;

(2) the United States has benefited and continues to benefit from this rich diversity;

(3) throughout the history of the Nation, the common thread binding those of differing backgrounds has been a common language;

(4) in order to preserve unity in diversity, and to prevent division along linguistic lines, the United States should maintain a language common to all people;

(5) English has historically been the common language and the lan¬guage of opportunity in the United States;

(6) the purpose of this Act is to help immigrants better assimilate and take full advantage of economic and occupational opportunities in the United States;

(7) by learning the English language, immigrants will be empowered with the language skills and literacy necessary to become responsi¬ble citizens and productive workers in the United States;

(8) the use of a single common language in the conduct of the Gov¬ernment's official business will promote efficiency and fairness to all people;

(9) English should be recognized in law as the language of official business of the Government; and

(10) any monetary savings derived from the enactment of this Act should be used for the teaching of the non-English speaking immigrants the English language.

In a series of further clauses, it was made clear that 'official busi-ness' meant 'those governmental actions, documents, or policies which are enforceable with the full weight and authority of the Government' - this would include all public records, legislation, regulations, hearings, official ceremonies, and public meetings. The bill allowed the use of languages other than English in such cases as public health and safety services, the teaching of foreign languages, policies necessary for international relations and trade, and actions that protect the rights of people involved in judi¬cial proceedings. Private businesses were not affected. The bill also stated that it was not its purpose 'to discriminate against or restrict the rights of any individual' or 'to discourage or pre¬vent the use of languages other than English in any nonofficial capacity'.

There are also several positions on the anti-official side, though here it is not so easy to make generalizations. To begin with, there are many cultural perspectives, as we would expect from a population which includes, on the one hand, a major Hispanic group of over 28 millions (according to the 2000 census) and, on the other, a range of ethnic groups some of whose members number only a few thousand. Over 18 million claimed to speak a language other than English or Spanish in the home, in that census, with over 300 languages involved. Also, there is no single authoritative source of statement to refer to, but many organiza-tions, each of which has its own political agenda. The observations below, accordingly, will not necessarily be endorsed by everyone who opposes official English legislation. They are paraphrases of views expressed in various policy statements, alternative pro¬posals, and press articles or letters. But the points can be used in aggregate to spell out the case for opposition.

A wide range of arguments is used by each side in support of its case.

* The political argument: for Pro-official supporters see in the emergence of major immigrant groups, and the support for im-migrant language programmes, the seeds of separatism, and the eventual dissolution of the unity which is reflected in the very name of the United States and its motto (Epluribus unum, 'One out of many'). They look fearfully at the language-inspired sepa-ratist movement in nearby Quebec, which came close to success in 1995, and draw attention to the emergence of incendiary sepa-ratist attitudes such as are expressed by the Chicano Movement of Aztlan (MECha) or by the University of California student pub-lication, Voz Fronteriza ('Voice of the frontier'), where writers envisage large tracts of the US south-west as one day returning to Hispanic (Mexicano) control. The term 'official Spanish' is in-creasingly encountered, in this connection. The fact that there is a linguistic dimension to the conflicts which destroyed former Yugoslavia is also sometimes cited as an example of the dangers lurking beneath the surface of a multilingual community: Speaker ofthe House Newt Gingrich, for example, participating in the de-bate on the Emerson bill, was one influential voice which referred to the perils of US 'Balkanization'.

From this point of view, English is viewed, according to one pro-official columnist in 1995, as a social adhesive - as a linguistic glue which guarantees political unity. According to another, the language has been the basis of social stability in the USA, and any threat to this stabilizing influence would lead to the growth of 'countries within a country' - linguistic ghettos which would discourage contact between groups and slow down the process of socialization. Attention is drawn to the size of the possible rift, especially in relation to the use of Spanish, with the US Census Bureau predicting more Hispanics than African-Americans in the USA by the year 2010, and a Hispanic population of over 80 million by 2050.

* The political argument: against Anti-official supporters main-tain that an official English bill is unnecessary - that the fears have been wildly exaggerated, there is no risk of disunity, and no dan-ger of Babel. They argue that most immigrants are assimilating nicely - certainly by the second generation - and that the natural course of events will eventually produce a new social balance, with¬out any need for legislation. There is no more need to make En¬glish official now, it is suggested, than there was at the time ofthe Revolution, when Dutch and German were for awhile spoken by substantial numbers. The natural urge that people have to succeed will provide the required motivation for the learning of English. A common observation, they point out, is that first-generation immigrant parents actually find it harder to persuade their chil¬dren to learn their language of origin than to learn English. It is felt that English could not possibly be in danger, in any case, when over 95 per cent of the population speak it 'well' or 'very well'. It is the other languages which are actually in danger.

Many accordingly hold the view that the official English bill is an unwarranted federal intrusion into self-expression, violat¬ing cultural pluralism, and - insofar as it is perceived as a policy intended to limit and control minorities - increasing the chances that communities would divide along ethnic lines. Even if English were made official, the argument continues, the use of a common language does not guarantee ethnic harmony. A community can be torn apart on racial, religious, political, or other grounds, even when both sides are united by a single language (see p. 16). There are evidently bigger issues in the world than linguistic ones, and this is reflected in some of the descriptors used by those most vio-lently opposed to the 'official English' proposals, such as 'elitist', 'racist', 'anti-immigrant' and 'anti-Hispanic'.

* The socio-economic argument: for Pro-official supporters main-tain that, at a time when there is considerable competition for limited funds, an expensive multilingual support policy is unde-sirable. It is not as if there is just a single alternative language which is in need of protection (as in the case of Canada): there are well over 300 languages to be taken into account. They point out that no country could afford a language policy which tried to give of¬ficial protection to so many languages. The Canadian situation, dealing with just two languages, cost that country nearly $7,000 million dollars in the decade from 1980 to 1990. The USA, with ten times the population, and many more languages, would have to find some multiple of that total each year, depending on how many languages were selected for support.

The problem of selection is thought to be particularly serious. Pro-official supporters draw attention to the difficulty of saying that a language can receive official recognition only after it reaches a certain point of growth. If 5 million were chosen as the cut-off point, for example, it would be inevitable that people who spoke languages which were just a little short of that figure would claim that the division was unfair. Some commentators therefore argue that no principled selection is possible, and that the country is in an all-or-none situation. If'all': any foreign-language groups with a tiny number of speakers would be able to claim official support - but the country would soon go bankrupt, if it adopted such a policy. The only alternative, this line of argument concludes, is to support 'none' - other than the language of the vast majority, English.

It is also argued that the provision of alternative language ser-vices (such as the option of taking a driving test in a range of dif-ferent languages) is highly wasteful of resources, because they are so little used. One of the main themes of the leading pro-English organization in the USA, US English, is to draw attention to cases of this kind. For example, it cites the fact that in 1994 the Internal Revenue Service distributed half a million forms and instruction booklets in Spanish, but only 718 were returned. It expresses concern about the cost of a language policy in which, for in¬stance, in 2002 California was offering licence exams to drivers in thirty-three different languages. It concludes that a better return for money would come from spending it elsewhere: in improving the English-language abilities of immigrants to the USA. There is an important issue of empowerment here: pro-official supporters argue that educational programmes in the immigrant's mother tongue are no real help, because they eliminate the incentive for immigrants to learn English, and this keeps them in low-paid jobs. Official status, it is asserted, would help to safeguard English as the language of opportunity. There would also be enormous sav¬ings in efficiency, both at national and local levels, it is suggested, if everyone had the competence and confidence to rely on English as their medium of communication in official contexts. This would also ensure that everyone would understand road signs, safety reg¬ulations at work, medicinal instructions, environmental hazard warnings, and the like. If it is possible for someone to have such a poor knowledge of English that they have to take a driving exam in another language, the argument concludes, it is improbable that they will be able to cope with the English-language demands placed upon them by the multiplicity of road-side instructions.

* The socio-economic argument: against Anti-official supporters doubt whether government time and money would really be saved, given the cost and complexity of introducing the new law. In particular, they question whether the legislation could possibly be enforced, and point to the difficulties of giving a precise definition to the notion of'official', in relation to language, and of making a clear and consistent distinction between 'public' and 'private' discourse. For example, would a march in support of some minority issue be a public or private event, and would it be permitted to carry banners in languages other than English? The fear is that the public domain will gradually erode the private one, ultimately threatening freedom of speech. Especially in a country where there is a great readiness to use the courts to solve disputes, the new law would, it is felt, cause greater complications than it would solve, and would probably be more expensive to implement and maintain. It might actually end up being honoured more in the breach than in the observance, with the legislation proving inadequate to cope with the realities of a highly complex and dynamic social situation. An important complication is that any new layer of federal control would also have to be implemented alongside the individual laws enacted by several states (twenty- seven by 2002), which already display a great deal of variation.

The 'all-or-nothing' view of language support is also hotly con-tested, using the following line of reasoning. There may indeed be no principled way of drawing a line between one group of lan-guages and another, but it does not follow from this that nothing should be done to help those who speak the more widely used languages, where relatively large numbers of people would bene¬fit from receiving a modicum of support in their mother tongue. The fields of health and safety, such as those cited above, pro¬vide a good example of areas where much more could be done than is available at present. Some commentators have drawn at¬tention to the different situation in other countries which have high immigrant populations. In Germany, for example, phar-maceutical companies have to provide instruction labels in five Gastarbeiter (immigrant 'guest-worker') languages: Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, and Greek. They are not re¬quired to carry such labels in the several other languages currently found in Germany, such as Russian and Polish. In this view, to in-troduce a policy banning all such labels on the grounds that some languages cannot be represented is felt to be absurd. It is thought to be common sense to provide safety instructions on medicine bottles in as many languages as is practicable, to minimize the risk to as many people as possible. It is not feasible to help everyone who has difficulty with English, but it is not acceptable to con¬clude from this that the government should therefore help none of them.

Even though the moderate official-English position maintains that it has no intention of harming ethnic identity or the natural growth of languages other than English, anti-official supporters claim that the withdrawal of resources and the fresh focus on English is bound to harm the provision of services in these lan-guages, even in areas which are supposed to be protected, such as health care and law enforcement. It is also thought likely that interest in foreign-language learning will further diminish, and this is felt to be an unfortunate development at a time when the climate in international business competitiveness and political diplomacy is one where foreign-language ability is increasingly seen as advantageous.

* Educational issues Several other kinds of argument are used in the debate - in particular, to do with educational theory and prac-tice. For example, the pro-official position is concerned that many students in bilingual education programmes are being taught by teachers whose own level of English is of a low quality, thus in-culcating an inadequate command of the language, and a 'ghetto dialect' that will mark the speakers as socially inferior. They point to the shortage of adequately trained teachers, and to the many problems in assigning students to the right kind of programme for the right length of time, and claim that bilingual programmes are not as efficient as English-immersion programmes in fostering the transition to mainstream English classes. Anti-official supporters stress the value of bilingualism as part of a child's learning expe-rience, observing that immigrant children are more likely to do well in learning a second language if their own language is val¬ued by the society in which they find themselves. They stress the potential for success of bilingual education programmes, arguing that the best predictor of achievement in English for immigrant children by age eighteen is the amount of time spent in bilingual classrooms. If there are inadequacies in the educational system, it is suggested, these are due to the failure of government to provide enough financial support for learning resources, educa¬tional facilities, and teacher training, and to the fact that bilingual programmes are available to only about 25 per cent of students with limited English proficiency. The 'official English' bill, it is pointed out, does virtually nothing to enable fluency in English to be universally achieved - other than simply stating that it must be. To evaluate the arguments on both sides would require a detailed consideration of such matters as teaching methods, re¬search procedures, and assessment goals, and is too complex an area to be given summary treatment in the present book. But it is important to appreciate that a great deal of time has been, and continues to be, devoted to this issue.