英语论文网

iences are concerned about
the consequences globally of ecological imperialism, reduced biodiversity, dwindling
resources, and the death of species (Crosby, 1986; Groombridge, 1992), it would
seem to us that language professionals have a special responsibility to address the
linguistic and cultural dimensions of diversity (Maffi, 1996; Maffi, Skutnabb-Kangas
and Andrianarivo, in press), including solid descriptive work (for an example, see
Hallamaa, in press) and the causal factors working on language ecologies, both
global and local. We would also need to assess in what ways the ÂtriumphÊ of English
and other major dominant languages is linked to the predicted demise of, or threat
towards, 90 per cent of the world's languages within a century (Krauss, 1992, 1995;
Posey, 1997;World Commission on Culture and Development, 1995).
The privileged position of English has been established, through processes of
linguistic hierarchisation, in a world that is manifestly and monstrously skewed in
favour of a minority of haves and a vast majority of have-nots. Current figures
from the United Nations (the Human Development Index) report that 1.3 billion of
our fellow human beings do not have enough to eat, and an increasing proportion
of the world's children in countries in both North and South grow up in abject
conditions. Inequalities are on the increase: the 225 richest individuals in the world
control assets which correspond to more than the earnings of 45 per cent of the
world's population. The proportion of the global gross national product of the
richest 20 per cent of the world's population increased from 60 to 86 per cent in
the 38-year period between 1960-98, while the proportion of the poorest 20 per
21
cent went down from 2.3 to 1.4 per cent (UNDP, 1998).
We are urgently in need of fresh thinking if we are to tease out how English is
involved in complex processes affecting so many aspects of the lives of billions of
people. Globalisation is multifaceted and, as the scientific approaches named earlier
suggest, can be approached from many angles.
We are not suggesting that there is a simple correlation between haves, many of
whom speak English as an L1 or L2, and have-nots, many of whom do not, but it
must be a responsibility of ÂexpertsÊ on language
to investigate what correlational or even causal
links there might be, and how command of
English relates to contemporary power本论文由英语论文网 www.51lunwen.org整理提供
structures. Likewise, we have to investigate how
the manifestly false promises to have-nots about
the acquisition of (some) competence in English
leading them towards economic prosperity are
produced and marketed, and why this marketing
is so effective.
Addressing these issues represents a
challenge of monumental proportions. The
scientific and journalistic literature in many of
these areas is immense. Yet language matters do
not figure prominently in much political
discourse, nor in much social or political science.
However, if applied linguists fall in even
provisional efforts to situate the study of a language that is currently perceived as
being globally triumphant (the ÂworldlinessÊ of English, Pennycook, 1994) within
wider perspectives - intellectual and material, theoretical and practical - then our
scholarly discourses may remain as intellectual escapism