Boot the bankers, keep the language
Is there a place for the English language in the emerging multipolar world? Or should it be discarded as a neocolonial artifact and instrument of domination?
As is clearly evident, the “Global South” is chafing under the Washington- and London-decreed Rules-Based Order; under the leadership of Russia and China, a new multipolar world order, long overdue, is inexorably emerging. But as James Tam (谭炳昌) argues in a delightful commentary on his website, the linguistic baby should not be thrown out with the imperial bathwater:
One good thing which came out of the Anglo and American colonial empires is the spread of English as de facto international language, laying the communication foundation of a truly globalised world. The present structure of planet-wide exploitation is unviable, wobbling due to its inherent blood-sucking design. A multi-polar global network is emerging to replace it.
Against the wish of linguistic nationalists and Esperanto dreamers (if there are still any left), English will remain the most widely used language in the new world order. Notwithstanding the historically distasteful origin of its popularity, the use of English should be maintained and reinforced for pragmatic reasons. Attempting to change the international language every time there’s a shift in world political and economic balance would be vain and impractical, working against the functioning of a fairer multi-polar framework.
However, global English of the 21st century should be properly positioned and realigned as World Putonghua of the new age. Putonghua is the quotidian Chinese promoted after 1949 to remove literary classism. It means ordinary language — for ordinary people.
English as World Putonghua is driven by pragmatism. It’s already here, working well in a wide geographic area. Some may perceive unjustifiable Anglophone advantage if the global use of English is maintained. In reality, it’s quite the opposite.
Non-native English users will continue to benefit from the mind-broadening effects of being multi-lingual. Besides having their private tongues in business and diplomacy, they will also have better access to the mindset of monolingual native English speakers, but not vice versa. Language is after all useful in promoting understanding and accessing the mind, including that of rivals.
Be sure to read the rest: English under the New World Order
As someone who worked for many years providing editing and other English-language services, I was well aware that on an individual level being a native-English speaker gave me a certain advantage in the world, but that this is counter-balanced by the fact that the English language clearly no longer belongs to the Anglophone world; the number of non-native English speakers far outweighs the native-born speakers. In view of this reality, we native speakers are beholden to maintain a certain modesty and light touch when “fixing” other peoples’ English. There’s no place in the new world order for Anglophone Grammar Nazis.
(Aside: the situation is dramatically opposite in the case of a less widely spoken language like Dutch, of which perhaps at most 10% of its practioners are not native speakers. As a result, I’ve noticed far less indulgence towards imperfectly formed written Dutch in online fora.)
My only ambivlance about English as “World Putonghua” is that the spelling system is so wretched. For me, learning Dutch and Spanish as an adult was made easier by the fact that in the spelling system of both languages has been regularized over the centuries, something Anglo-American societies could never pull off. Is it too late? The Dutch/Flemish Taalunie most recently updated spelling rules in 1996 and then again in 2005, but they only had to deal with two countries and some twenty million speakers. As we say in the Olde Countrie, where there’s a will, there’s a way; perhaps the global community of World Putonghua speakers will one day find a way.
I posted the link on a social media site and got this wonderful reply:
> I see no reason to worry over English as some historical quirk. It is a mongrel language with layers of platdeutsch, german, scandinavian, a few hints of the erased Brythonic Welsh mixed with the French latin of the Normans, imports of classical Greek and Latin and then all the Empire and American borrowings included while everywhere it's spoken it has its own local idiosyncrasies and contributions e.g. what gaelic structure brings. But it's all fine. We long ago ditched gendered noun encumbrance and more recently formal/informal you. The syntax has rules but is flexible. English can sometimes have 50% more words than some other languages. Verbs can be adjectivised, nouns can be verbised. Many other languages could not parse what I've just written. Words can have several meanings, are altered prepositionally in very flexible ways, including between concrete and abstract senses. Metaphor is a universe of its own. Not all these things are unique to English but the combination is wonderfully unique, a polyvalent, promiscuous, malleable, ever-expanding gift to the world. No inter-bank transfer system or internet protocol needed.
Colin thanks - I love this (your writings and 'being'), and I've thought for a while about the yin-yang of English language and how it's been an instrument of ambiguous control, especially in the context of Nick Duffell's work on Wounded Leaders and the Making of Them, and his co-authoring of the latest Simpol.org book with Simpol (Simultaneous Policy, global) founder John Bunzl. Alex Renton and Joy Schaverein are two other writers/educationalists on the boarding school problem. Duffell is a profound therapist also. Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata explains a lot to me about what's gone wrong since the end of the hunter-gatherer civilisations. Re language, I think part of this is the difficulty in remembering the names of non-English wise good people, and their works, notably Kazimierz Dabrowski' Theory of Positive Disintegration, which is immensely powerful in explaining the power of traumatic growth and sensitivity ('over-excitability' and giftedness - which tends to be diagnosed as mental illness and prescribed murderous pharma medication). Politicians such as Johnson, Cameron, Blair, etc were taught to use language to intimidate and bully of course. And English in the hands of psyops and advertising experts (Nudge and NLP, and leveraging of Transactional Analysis, etc) seems an extremely potent brainwashing weapon. I prefer the ancient notions of show and music and dance and nature rather than attempt to use a language that's been so distorted and controlled for so long, although that's moving into territory of zeitgeist and quantum IMHO, and what reality actually is at all :) Anyway thanks for your brilliance and beauty, etc., Alan
P.S. I suppose that everything is flexible, depending on what universes we each choose to make in our heads, which IMHO is arguably the only reality that there is :)