How English went from peripheral peasant tongue to global language, and what its meteoric rise means
Channel: Language on the Move
Date: 2021-09-28

前世今生: How English went from peripheral peasant tongue to global language, and what its meteoric rise means for English language teaching today

Guest lecture by Professor Ingrid Piller, Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) at Yunnan University (Kunming, China), Sept 28, 2021

500 years ago, English was spoken by 2-4 million people, mostly illiterate peasants, in a small region not extending beyond the south-east of the British Isles. Today, English is used by around 1.4 billion people, many of who are highly educated and who can be found all around the globe. In this lecture, I will trace the meteoric rise of English over the past 500 years. The spread of English was initially tied to British colonialism and US imperialism. Some prominent language ideologies that inform contemporary English language teaching – such as the pre-eminence of the native speaker or the belief in the superiority of British and American varieties of English – are tied to that pattern of language spread. English today continues to spread on the wings of modernization policies in countries that are clearly outside or even opposed to the spheres of British and American influence, including China. Even so, English language teaching remains deeply beholden to Anglocentric ideas about what makes a good speaker and what constitutes good English.