Seminario nazionale LEND Milano ottobre 20 -21 2017

Seminario nazionale LEND Milano, ottobre 20 -21 2017 Co-existing with a hegemonic language: English for critical purposes Robert Phillipson Emeritus professor, CBS www. cbs. dk/en/staff/rpmsc

Activating critical consciousness in academia • Academic freedom & university autonomy are paramount (UNESCO). • Historical and cultural awareness are necessary. • Language education needs to be seen in the wider language ecology, in socio-economic and political structures, at local, national and international levels. • Language policies should contribute to social justice and intercultural understanding. • Linguistic and cultural diversity are valuable. • Foreign language learning is an important variable.

USA exceptionalism past and present From George Washington 1783 & 1796 (the USA as ‘a rising empire’), to the Washington Consensus (neoliberalism) ‘The whole world should adopt the American system. The American system can survive in America only if it becomes a world system’ President Harry Truman 1947 President Barack Obama 2014 ‘Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. ’

Instrumental arguments for language use • l’Académie de Berlin 1782 Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français. • 1960 postcolonial dogma La òu on parle français, on achête français • EU 1990 -? Ce qui n’est pas clair, c’est l’anglais international. • European Parliament 2015 Use your mother tongue and the interpreters!

Instrumental arguments for language use • l’Académie de Berlin 1782 Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français. Myth of the superiority of French/ + … • 1960 postcolonial dogma La òu on parle français, on achête français Trade follows the flag, the myth of ‘soft’ power. • EU 1990 -? Ce qui n’est pas clair, c’est l’anglais international. Resist linguistic imperialism – form and content interlock. • European Parliament 2015 Use your mother tongue and the interpreters! Linguistic justice can prevail.

EU influence on language policy • English is structurally favoured: – – the default EU in-house language. Commission website has a language hierarchy. DG Research applications and their evaluation. High Level group on the modernisation of higher education, European Commission, June 2013, Recommendation 12, endorses English as the language of internationalisation, i. e. the sole international lingua academica. These are instances of largely unquestioned hegemonic processes. They are all instances of linguicism, discrimination on the basis of language (cf. racism, sexism, classim).

Continental European complicity in linguicism, which entails push and pull factors, supply and demand German higher education reform Entgegen dem Wortlaut des Bologna-Erklärung dient also die Studienreform den Ziel, die dort beschworene sprachliche und kulturelle Vielfalt Europas durch ein englisches Sprachmonopol zu ersetzen. Hans Joachim Meyer, 2011: 61 Contrary to the wording of the Bologna Declaration, the reform of higher education serves the purpose of replacing the linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe enshrined there by a monopoly of English.

From Goethe to Trump/May Celebrating multilingualism or monolingualism Goethe: Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen. People who know no foreign languages know nothing of their own. Wer English kennt braucht nichts von andere Sprachen. Whoever knows English has no need of other languages.

The hegemony of English and the USA On ne peut donc poser le problème de l’hégémonie anglaise sans poser le problème de l’hégémonie américaine … l’universel, qui en d’autres temps et de façon tout aussi abusive, parlait en français ou en allemand ou japonais. L’impérialisme peut donc imposer des objets de pensée. Et il faut réfléchir sur ce modèle pour voir si et comment il est possible d’accepter l’usage de l’anglais sans s’exposer à être anglicisé dans ses structures mentales, sans avoir le cerveau lavé par les routines linguistiques.

How can English linguistic hegemony and anglicising brainwashing be countered? How can we counteract the abuse of power that is intrinsic to linguistic hegemony? (. . . ) we need to reflect on this model so as to see if and how it is possible to go along with using English without the risk of being anglicised into its conceptual structures, without being brainwashed by its linguistic patterns. Pierre Bourdieu, 2001 La pensée unique (Hagège)

Choices for university researchers 1. To stay in esoteric ivory towers. 2. To undertake tasks determined and commissioned by those in power. 3. To use university autonomy and the individual’s academic freedom to study urgent sociopolitical issues in order to influence society in an informed, ethically sound way. (inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, Bertrand Russell, and other critical intellectuals)

Empirical questions Is the expansion of English adding to our linguistic repertoires, or is there currently a process of linguistic capital dispossession of national languages? As English expands, are other foreign languages being eliminated from school curricula?

Language as culture or instrument? A personal and institutional trajectory Handelshøjskole i København (1917 - ) Copenhagen Business School (2000 -17) • 2000. Department of English • 2007. Department of International Studies and Computational Linguistics • 2012. Department of International Business Communication • 2017. Department of Management, Society and Communication

Language as culture or instrument? 2000. Department of English Professor English and Language Pedagogy Departmental specialisations in translation, interpretation, language for commercial, legal, financial purposes. English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish European Studies, American Studies 2007. Department of International Studies and Computational Linguistics + Department of Language and Culture 2012. Department of International Business Communication Italian, Russian translation, interpretation, European Studies, American Studies 2017. Department of Management, Society and Communication English, French, German, Spanish

Explanations for higher education in Denmark • Globalisation and internationalisation are seen as meeting external criteria (ranking, publications, greater use of English in teaching and research) • Policy for public universities is determined by unqualified politicians and civil servants • Government decrees big financial cutbacks and savings • The Board/Senate has a majority of non-academics • University management is top-down • Americanisation and European integration have led to policymakers thinking English is the only language that matters • Danes are expected to function equally well in academic Danish and English.

Constraints All of these factors limit academic freedom and university autonomy at both the institutional and the individual levels. What are the historical factors influencing these developments?

Evolution of a profession/business In 1934 the Carnegie Foundation sponsored a US/UK conference in New York. Agreement on the goal of ‘spreading English “as a world language” on a basis of UK-US collaboration’. This led to US funding of activities on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1930 s and again in the 1950 s with • the creation of departments of applied linguistics, and • an English Language Teaching profession/industry, • TESOL, IATEFL, national associations, now ‘global’, • Language testing: Cambridge, IELTS, TOEFL, etc. • ‘global’ publishers: Pearson, Routledge, OUP, etc. • hegemonic structures and ideologies (‘global’ English).

Winston Churchill’s understanding of globalization, 1943 The power to control language offers far better prizes than taking away people’s provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Winston Churchill at Harvard, 1943 This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other's wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.

Erik Holm, 2001 The process of European integration might never have come about had it not been imposed on Europe by the Americans. The European anarchy. Europe’s hard road into high politics. Copenhagen Business School Press.

‘the cause of freedom across the world’ The Margaret Thatcher Center For Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC has as its main goal to ensure that the US and UK can ‘lead and change the world’. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May. The monolingual, monocultural Brexiters, who are aiming at replacing EU membership by an Anglosphere.

British language expert falsely condoning ‘global’ English: the language of higher education in Europe… it seems inevitable that English, in some form, will definitely become the language of higher education. James Coleman, 2006

Misinformed discourse of academics and politicians English is the language of - science - Europe - development (British Council) - education, a ‘basic skill’ worldwide (BC) - the world’s common language (BC and Obama) - trust and dialogue in peace-keeping and conflict resolution (BC) - progress and national unity in former colonies - ….

Misinformed discourse of academics and politicians English is the lingua franca of - science - Europe - development (British Council) - education, a ‘basic skill’ worldwide (BC) - the world’s common language (BC and Obama) - trust and dialogue in peace-keeping and conflict resolution (BC) - progress and national unity in former colonies - ….

English a ’lingua franca’ ? • lingua economica? corporate neoliberalism = americanisation • lingua emotiva? Hollywood, music • lingua cultura? a subject in general education • lingua bellica? Afghanistan, Iraq, arms trade • lingua academica? publications, conferences, medium for content learning • lingua divina? Christian missionaries +/- TESOL • lingua frankensteinia? subtractive in specific domains

Multiple functions of English in the secondary school curriculim Hult, Francis 2017. More than a lingua franca: Functions of English in a globalized educational language policy. Language, culture and curriculum, 30/3, 265 -282. • traces the history of foreign language teaching in Sweden • uses all the lingua categories to track the role of each in the formulation of goals for English learning in the Swedish curriculum • reterritorialises English • assesses challenges for language teachers.

lingua franca : pernicious, misleading, false • A pernicious, invidious term if the language in question is a first language for some people but for others a foreign language. • A misleading term if the language is supposed to be neutral and disconnected from culture. • A false term for a language that is taught as a subject in general education. Historical continuity: term for the language of 1) the Crusaders, seen as Franks (from Arabic), and later used for limited commercial translations. 2) the crusade of global corporatisation, marketed as freedom, democracy (& human rights? ).

Motschenbacher, Heiko 2013. New perspectives on English as a European lingua franca. Benjamins. On the basis of a limited spoken language corpus, it generalises about communicative and linguistic traits, and concludes that ELF is detached from native English norms of language and Anglo-American cultural values. She cites ELF gurus: Jenkins (‘international academic communication is today hardly ever native communication’), Seidlhofer (people can operate with their own ‘common sense’ criteria), and Widdowson (‘the old conditions of relevance and appropriateness no longer apply’). This implies that ELF can do without any of the vocabulary, syntax, or phonology that has evolved in the UK, USA and elsewhere. It is also typical of ELF empirical studies that their examples are drawn exclusively from speech, the role of written English is ignored, but this does not deter ELF converts from drawing bold conclusions about the English language.

The ‘English as a Lingua Franca’ mission Considerable number of denunciations of ELF’s theoretical weaknesses and pedagogical irrelevance. See John O’Regan in Applied Linguistics, 35/5, 533 -552, 2014, ELF misrepresents the role of forms of English, reifying and hypostatizing them in theoretically invalid ways that ignore key social variables and socio-political realities. Labelling their corpus data as instances of a lingua franca misuses this concept.

German scholar denouncing loose use of the concept lingua franca. … the English used as an international scientific language is not a lingua franca, a non-language. English is a completely normal language with its specific monolingual semantics, like all other languages. […] It is the bearer, like all other natural languages, of a particular vision of the world. As such it is not universal and purely objective, which is what real lingua francas were. Jürgen Trabant, 2012

Anna Wierzbicka, in Imprisoned in English. The hazards of English as a default language (2014) ‘a conceptual prison… the practice of implicitly treating the English language as a standard in relation to which all other languages and cultures can be analysed and interpreted is still very widespread’. ‘The historically shaped vocabulary of English can be a conceptual prison for those who absolutize it and never look at it from a historical and cross-linguistic perspective’ (192). The risk is of being trapped in a restrictive conceptual universe with a ‘wall between ourselves and other people … one gets a slanted picture of what it means to be human …. one cannot understand oneself: one takes one’s own conceptual categories and cultural scripts for granted, one doesn’t appreciate their distinct character, shaped by a unique history and culture, and consequently one cannot get an insight into what it is to be an “Anglo” – a bearer of a particular culture and inhabitant of a particular conceptual and cultural universe’ (193).

Politecnico di Milano court cases Consiglio di Stato Constitutional Court decision Universities cannot offer entire programmes in another language unless they offer parallel programmes in Italian. They can offer individual course units entirely in other languages provided the choices are reasonable, proportionate and appropriate and do not reduce Italian to a subordinate position.

Scandinavia and Finland Nordic Declaration on Language Policy, 2006 • Universities have a duty to cultivate a national language and competence in English • Institutions must formulate a language policy • with explicit strategies for parallel competence • and an infrastructure to implement and monitor language policy • ‘international’ staff should become fluent in the academic discourse in the local language.

Lessons for language policy • Laissez-faire strengthens English • Much of the rhetoric of English as a lingua franca is misleading and can constitute linguicist discourse. • A single international language can have practical advantages but closes access to all other cultures. • A monopoly of English imposes thought processes and conceptual worlds from a single culture. • The dominance of English as a scholarly language needs to be counter-balanced by policies to ensure a healthy balance between national languages and international languages.

Lessons for language education Conceptual clarity in language policy is important. Seeing languages as either instruments or as cultures is a false over-generalisation. All languages are both. None are culturally neutral. Education, including foreign language education, is for more than skills or identifiable needs. Monocultures (Mc. Donaldization etc. ) are evil. Dispossession of linguistic capital must be resisted.

Churchill in Copenhagen, 1950 The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not to train, and to confirm character and not impart technicalities. We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers. We want some scientists, but we must make sure that science is our servant and not our master… No amount of technical knowledge can replace the comprehension of the humanities or the study of history and philosophy.

Churchill in Copenhagen 1950 (2) The advantages of the nineteenth century, the literary age, have been largely put aside by this terrible twentieth century with all its confusion, exhaustion, and bewilderment of mankind. This is a time when a firm grip on all the essential verities and values of humanity and civilization should be the central care of the universities of Europe and the world.

post-Churchill? • ‘engineers’ economists and bankers committed to neoliberalism • NATO globalised, English as lingua bellica • EU constitutional treaty and policies are no guarantee of linguistic justice • linguicism at micro and macro levels • academic freedom is constrained • Present-day policies strengthen global and local inequalities (the 99%)

linguicism From state monolingualism to empires (Spanish, French, British, etc) with linguistic imperialism (Nebrija, Rivarol, Macaulay et al) as a variant of linguicism. “ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, regulate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language” Tove Skutnabb-Kangas 1988

Linguistic imperialism • • a variant of linguicism structural: resources, infrastructure, … ideological: beliefs, attitudes, imagery hegemonic: internalised as normal and ’natural’ interlocks with culture, education, media integral to inequality, hierarchy, exploitation gives speakers of some languages more rights than others • consolidates some languages at the expense of others, i. e. subtractive, leading to individual and group language shift and language murder

EU democracy as defined by Jean-Claude Juncker We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no-one kicks up a fuss, because most people do not know what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. Juncker in The Economist, cited by Chris Patten, British EU Commissioner, 1999 -2004, in Not quite the diplomat. Home truths about world affairs. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2005, page 122.