ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA

Never before has there been a time when so many nations needed to talk to each other so much or so many people wished to travel to so many places. These are definitely common features of our times. The presence of English language in the lives of peoples around the world nowadays represents for everyone, a time in human history with no precedents. More and more people bring the English language to their lives every day and words like bilingualism, multilingualism, and diversity constitute our world scenario.

We may point out that English language has become a lingua franca or world language for several reasons which were established historically; and that its strength has been constructed along the years due to the role played by the nations which speak this language. If we look a bit back in time, we will be able to perceive that English was the language of the leading colonial nation – Britain, in the late 17^th and 18^th centuries. Also it was Britain, the leader of the industrial revolution and obviously one of the most powerful countries of that time. In the late 19th century and early 20^th century, English was then the language of another leading economic power – The United States of America. So in recent history, English has repeatedly found itself in the right place at the right time (CRYSTAL 2001) and became part of significant changes in the world historically, socially or economically.

Back in the 1960s, social movements, fights for political independence, the human rights’ cause and the revolution in electronics’ industry found their way to make a stand throughout the world in English. All these aspects contributed to the expansion of this power and affected societies all over the world. Also, these facts established different networks of international alliances – in politics, the press, the advertising, businesses, tourism, broadcasting, motion pictures production, sound recording, education, culture, etc. Some of the consequences were the increasing contact of people from different countries with different first languages who started making use of English to communicate or interact socially.

The latest advances in communication and technology which comes with the global use of the Internet is another way to realize how powerful the presence of English language has become along the years. The internet has also established a new chapter to the history of the English language use in the world – websites, weblogs and social networks. It is definitely the language of the World Wide Web. The internet user will make use of English in order to reach a larger number of interlocutors whenever he or she is willing to send a message across the world. Scholars like Kachru (chart above) and other people from different scientific backgrounds contact each other in English as way to open their discussions internationally. Once again, it is proved that language limits are not that simple to be measured.

So in this sense, the number of people using English as a second or a foreign language has increased significantly bringing up “new englishes” or what we may call international English. It has become the “contact language” of several people independently of their nationality – a lingua franca.
Refferences: Kachru, The Other Tongue and David Crystal, The Language Revolution 2004.