Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction: notions of language
- Part I Micro-choices
- Part II Macro-choices
- 7 Code-switching: linguistic choices across language boundaries
- 8 Diglossia and bilingualism: functional restrictions on language choice
- 9 Language spread, shift and maintenance: how groups choose their language
- 10 Language and identity: individual, social, national
- 11 Language planning: communication demands, public choice, utility
- 12 Select letters: a major divide
- 13 The language of choice
- Glossary of terms
- References
- Internet resources
- Index
- References
13 - The language of choice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction: notions of language
- Part I Micro-choices
- Part II Macro-choices
- 7 Code-switching: linguistic choices across language boundaries
- 8 Diglossia and bilingualism: functional restrictions on language choice
- 9 Language spread, shift and maintenance: how groups choose their language
- 10 Language and identity: individual, social, national
- 11 Language planning: communication demands, public choice, utility
- 12 Select letters: a major divide
- 13 The language of choice
- Glossary of terms
- References
- Internet resources
- Index
- References
Summary
English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age.
John Adams (1780)Our most dangerous foe is the foreign-language press.
Theodore Roosevelt (1917)Adewale is known to me as an editor for the Heinemann African Writers series, Africa correspondent for Index on Censorship and a fellow Nigerian Englishman (though his English is Scots and mine Irish). A difference that fascinates: he was brought up in Lagos, I'm from London.
Gabriel Gbadamosi, 1999English has captured the world. When John Adams, second president of the United States, penned the above quoted words in ‘A Letter to the President of Congress’ while on a diplomatic mission to Europe, many would have brushed them aside as megalomania, but his prediction has been borne out more thoroughly than even he himself is likely to have expected. When we turn on the news to find out what is happening in Iraq, inhabitants of Baghdad and Basra tell us about it in English, and not just because those who wield the biggest guns in their country wouldn't listen to anything else. The same holds true of Beijing, Manila, Sarajevo, Sao Paolo, Jerusalem, even Paris. From Bangkok to Budapest, from Caracas to Casablanca, from Rotterdam to Rio, English is the language of choice if people want to reach out.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- SociolinguisticsThe Study of Speakers' Choices, pp. 220 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005