Understanding English as a Lingua Franca

In Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, Barbara Seidlhofer deals with the linguistic implications of globalization in the Expanding Circle (Kachru 1992) viewed from a transformationalist perspective, as opposed to one that is hyperglobalist. As such, globalization is taken as the driving force behind social, economic, and political changes in the local setting, often to the benefit of its inhabitants. It need not be seen as the imposition of the global on to the local, leading to linguistic imperialism and cultural homogenization in the way hyperglobalists tend to view it (for example Phillipson 1992). From a transformationalist viewpoint, English is perceived as an international medium of interconnectedness (Dewey 2007) between the global and the local (or the centre and the periphery), leading to plurality in norms and approaches. In its new, unique, and unprecedented role, English, according to Seidlhofer, has thus become ‘both a result and a reinforcement’ of globalization and ‘naturally gets transformed accordingly’ (p. 83). It follows that a new sociolinguistic conceptualization of the language is warranted, one which should strip it of its native ‘ownership’ (Widdowson 1994) and of the control such ownership exercises (both explicitly and implicitly) on its international development. Such control is ironic, if not paradoxical, in view of the world’s NNS to NS ratio being approximately three to one according to conservative estimates. After all, as Jenkins (2003: 44) indicates, if, as a global language, English has become the language of ‘others’, it is natural that the ‘others’ should have the right to innovate. Their innovations cannot be automatically labelled ‘wrong’ by NSs.