The ideologies behind the language: who owned it then?

The dominant position English has today is not only a result of the colonization and cultural expansion executed by England and the USA over the centuries but the junction of them with a planned and extensively funded program of language propagation. In this propagation, an idealized, unrealistic image of English as a superior language, along with ELT as great allied, was spread, as analysed by Phillipson (1992). An example of ELT being used as a political act is the speech of the Minister from Sri Lanka in which it is said that with less money than used in the movie Star Wars ” the Americans can get the whole of Asia listening to their president.

English teaching is a bigger weapon in the armory of the English-speaking peoples than Star Wars” (Phillipson, 1992: 9).

With the speech from the Minister as an example, we can realize that there was a clear ideological and political agenda behind the propagation of English around the world, which happened because a language is a very important cultural trait that works as a representation of a culture and may carry powerful discourses and ideologies within it. Through language,

you communicate and share the beliefs, culture, concepts of right or wrong, and views over the world of a society.

An important tool in the spread of the English language was the ELT business with English courses, materials and, later on, proficiency exams. With the language propagation in African and Asian countries and the constant discursive propagation of English being a superior language and necessary for professional and educational success (Pennycook 1998), the interest in learning the language in those regions (and later on, in the whole world) became enormous. Because of this increasing interested in the language, ELT transformed into a very profitable business in addition to being a great tool to spread influence in those regions.

Part of the process of glorifying English as a superior language and culture was the attempt to belittle local languages and their cultural products, which could work as a way to reinforce the positive attributes of English and the cultures associated with it. As brought by Holloway (1951), it was a common discourse that the English literature was a “product of great

civilization” (1951: 45) and that should be presented in Asian and African countries once they did not have a literature of their own.

The phenomenon of teaching English as a political tool was not linked with one isolated event, but with many occurrences, as we can observe the same strategy used in Africa and Asia being used in Eastern Europe (Phillipson 1992). The British government, when greeting the end of communism, had its foreign secretary proclaiming that the UK aimed to replace Russian, which was taught as an official second language in that region, with English. This happening explicitly shows how spreading a language equals spreading political and cultural influence as well as dominance, and how teaching it may carry a political agenda. An example

of this fact was the content of the Seebohm committee report in which it was said that the kind of activity expected from the British council was to help “creating abroad an

understanding and appreciation of Britain', just as English teaching is not only profitable but 'an excellent way of establishing the Council' presence overseas” (Phillipson, 1992: 304) as well as using English as a tool to “transmit cultural values” (1992: 305).

A way to popularize English and make people want to learn it and associate the language with prestige and higher social status was to create and spread a close link between professional and academic success to having high proficiency in the language (Pennycook 1998). This discourse was so intensely propagated that it went from personal beliefs to a common-sense attitude, which was a massive internalization of the hegemonic ideology that being

professionally and academically successful was only possible for those who knew the language.

Pennycook (1998) also illustrates that these perceptions were not only attributed to the English language, but also to the literature, people, and culture associated to it, which, then, justified the need of them to be glorified, pursued, and held in the higher standard, with the justification that “´as the mind grows, language grows, and adapts itself to the thinking of the people. Hence, a highly civilized race will ever have a highly accomplished language. The English tongue is in all senses a very noble one´ (George 1867, p. 4)” (Pennycook 1998: 5).

Therefore, as English is a very ´noble language´, so is all the community of native speakers associated with it, hence the necessity of it to be disseminated.

It is important to notice that by ‘English’, as mentioned in the excerpt, it is implied the British variety of the language, which was considered the only authentic variety. This feeling of ownership of the language brings us to the English standard ideology (Jenkins

2007), which started when the new Englishes emerged and the control and ownership of the UK and the USA over the language (Widdowson 1994) started diminishing. English standard ideology is a discursive action to place one variety as the ‘authentic’ and others as

‘deviations’.

Jenkins (2007) demonstrates how the Standard English Ideology has been linked with

gatekeeping practice in SLA (second language acquisition) research, English language testing, ELT (English language teaching) material, and teacher education historically and in the current days. Through analysis of renowned ELT periodicals, she could prove how the anti ELF feeling is strong and influences the use and perception people have of the English language.

Currently, the anti-ELF feeling not only works as a gatekeeper for further research of the varieties emerged from the Outer Circle countries, also known as New Englishes, but also prevents people from studying, writing, teaching and learning any other variety that is not the BrE or AmE. Anything that goes beyond these varieties in terms of grammar rules or accent is considered wrong, unwanted, and as a variant of the standard and correct form of the

language. This ideology was so strong that it was common to see even linguists defending this idea (Jenkins 2007).

In Jenkins (2007), we are presented to the aversive reaction many native-speaker linguists from the USA and the UK had towards the many new varieties of the English language, which they described as something ‘spoiled’, ‘impure’, and ‘dangerous’ to be around the ‘real’

English from the Inner Circle. She also mentions how expected it is that some native-speaker

linguists feel very unease with the loss of control over the language by the USA and the UK, especially the linguists involved with ELT.

This aversion against the many varieties of English seems to have found space among not only grammarians but also sociolinguists, who do not hesitate in making dismissive

statements towards variations of the language, as brought by Jenkins (2007). Among them are Trudgill and Quirk, who stated in a conference in the Japanese Association of Language Teachers (JALT) that “students permitted to think their ‘new variety’ of English was accepted, would be defenseless before the harsher but more realistic judgment of those with authority to employ or promote them.” (Jenkins 2007: 9) meaning that the Japanese teachers should not ´permit´ their Japanese students to make their own interferences in the English language and should remind them of the ‘real’ standard English.

When we say one’s variety of a language is ‘not existent’ or ‘illegitimate’, we are implying the same values to the culture and identity associated with that language because, as we have seen, language is intrinsically connected and mingled with those. If we believe in respecting human diversity, we should do the same with the cultural product of it, which is language, and nothing that goes against it should be legitimated, but in fact, deconstructed.

In this section, we could observe that the consequence of the language expansion of English was the rise of new varieties of the language, which received a huge backlash from many linguists from the Inner Circle. Fearing the loss of the control over the language, there was the spread of an idea that only one version of English was the correct one, which was the one from the Inner Circle and any other variety should be considered as wrong and deviant.

Having control over the language was important because the language was used as a way to spread political and cultural influence around the world. An effective way to spread the language, therefore influence as well, was to make people want to learn it and, for that, a discursive work was done in associating being fluent in English with success. Part of this discursive work was to make local languages look inferior when compared to English, which was presented in an idealized manner. An important tool in this entire process was ELT with its educational books, courses, and teacher formation programs.