politics and the english language summary

Phillipson calls for radical change in language policy to redress the balance and to promote the multilingualism that reflects the more natural state of language use around the world. He claims this endangers their cultural ideals, their ways of life and their indigenous languages.Ĭollectively, English language teaching and its major agencies, such as the British Council, have been implicated in perpetuating myths about the significance and necessity of learning English and in ensuring that English has outstripped the teaching of other languages worldwide. Since the 18th century, Phillipson argues, the spread of English has accompanied the political and economic intentions of English-speaking nations to conquer other countries. One of the major arguments in his Linguistic Imperialism was that the spread of English, much of which had occurred through its prominence in global language education, has served to undermine the rights of other languages and to marginalise the opportunities that should exist for widespread multilingual education. The author, Robert Phillipson, argued that the global teaching of English was an act of linguistic imperialism. In 1992, a book appeared in the field of applied linguistics that presented English language teachers with a highly challenging, even shocking, proposition. Anne Burns of Aston University, Birmingham, and University of New South Wales, Sydney prepares to moderate a discussion on this topic at this year’s International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) annual conference.

Politics and the english language summary