English as an International lingua franca and the Teaching of Intercultural Communication

Abstract

The Spread of EnglishLife has become international today to an extent that is unparalleled in history. The expansion of trade relations, the growing political interdependence between nations, the increase in foreign travel for business, study and pleasure have all intensified contacts across linguistic and cultural borders and have thus added to the need for a limited number of languages that can be used world-wide as means of international communication. In many if not in most cases it is the English language that is the first and at the same time successful choice for this function.That English plays such a prominent role as an international auxiliary language is due to a complex fabric of 'push and pull factors' for language choice, the major ones of which may be summarized as follows: -As a result of the expansion of the British Empire, English has spread over all habitable continents. And although colonial times have been over for such a long time, the English language is still in official use, in addition to the autochthonous languages, in most of the now independent multiethnic and Karlfried Knapp (2015): Universität Erfurt. Article note: The editors and publisher are grateful to Karlfried Knapp and Narr, who have given permission to reproduce the following article: Knapp, Karlfried. 1987. English as an international lingua franca and the teaching of intercultural communication. In Wolfgang Lörscher, Rainer Schulze (eds.), Perspectives on language in performance. Studies in linguistics, literary criticism, and foreign language teaching to honour Werner Hüllen on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, 1022-1039. Tübingen: Narr. As a general principle, the original formatting of the text (including minor typographic inaccuracies) has been maintained.Brought to you by | University of Sydney Authenticated Download Date | 6/9/15 2:48 PM 1 The only former colonies where the status of E. has been weakened through measures of language planning seem to be Tanzania and Somalia. Elsewhere, attempts to substitute E. by an autochthonous language have failed. A frequently cited example is the case of India, where the intention to replace E. by Hindi was strongly opposed by the non-Hindi speaking population of South India so that finally E. had to be granted co-official status in the constitution. 2 This prestige, together with the argument of ethnic neutrality in a multilingual state, recently motivated plans by the SWAPO of Namibia to introduce E. as official language after independence, although E. is neither used in this function today nor spoken as the language of a distinct ethnic group, cf. Melber (1985).

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