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Title details for The Rise of English by Rosemary Salomone - Available

The Rise of English

Global Politics and the Power of Language

by Rosemary Salomone
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A sweeping account of the global rise of English and the high-stakes politics of language Spoken by a quarter of the world's population, English is today's lingua franca—its common tongue. The language of business, popular media, and international politics, English has become commodified for its economic value and increasingly detached from any particular nation. This meteoric "rise of English" has many obvious benefits to communication. Tourists can travel abroad with greater ease. Political leaders can directly engage their counterparts. Researchers can collaborate with foreign colleagues. Business interests can flourish in the global economy. But the rise of English has very real downsides at times generating intense legal conflicts. In Europe, imperatives of political integration, job mobility, and university rankings compete with pride in national language and heritage as countries like France attempt to curb its spread. In countries like India, South Africa, Morocco, and Rwanda, it has stratified society along lines of English proficiency and devalued commonly spoken languages. In Anglophone countries like the United States and England, English isolates us from the cultural and economic benefits of speaking other languages. In The Rise of English, Rosemary Salomone offers a commanding view of the unprecedented spread of English and the far-reaching effects it has on global and local politics, economics, media, education, and business. From the inner workings of the European Union to China's use of language as "soft power" in Africa, Salomone draws on a wealth of research to tell the complex story of English—and, ultimately, to argue for English not as a force for domination but as a core component of multilingualism and the transcendence of linguistic and cultural borders.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 17, 2021

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780190625634

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780190625634
      • File size: 1011 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 15, 2021
      An American law professor and linguist addresses the babel of controversy over the predominance of the English language as the world's lingua franca. As Salomone demonstrates, English rules as the international language of business, finance, and technology. However, its dominance crushes regional and Indigenous languages and identity and often leads to a dangerously blinkered monolingualism. In this relevant, timely historical analysis, the author tackles many of the relevant angles in the "English only" debate. The argument against "linguistic hegemony" is fierce and ongoing--not only in Europe, where Brexit has renewed calls for the conducting of Europe's business in French and other European languages, but also in Africa (still making peace with colonial languages), India, and even the U.S., where language immersion and bilingualism are hot-button topics. France wages a valiant battle to keep its language dominant, and calls for English-only graduate classes there and in the Netherlands and Italy have met with push back and lawsuits. In Africa, French and Chinese are giving English a run for its money. In Rwanda and Morocco, English is chosen as an equalizer, while in India (where there are thousands of Indigenous languages), the teaching of English exacerbates the class divide. "The world is chasing after English for the opportunities it presumably offers," writes Salomone, crossing geographical, generational, and class bounds, yet after the initial headlong rush to globalization, employers are learning the value of hiring people with facility in multiple languages. With the rise in migration and immigration, the author underscores that 1 in 5 people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home and that the pandemic has emphasized the need for language skills, especially in health care. "The health crisis...revealed the limitations of machine translation and the false sense of comfort with English monolingualism that technology has created," writes Salomone. A pertinent, accessible study that asks a big question: What language should the world speak?

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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