Language and Science Policies of New Nations

Abstract

, Volume 221, Ni AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE Science serves its readers as a forum for the presentation and discussion of important issues related to the advancement of science, including the presentation of minority or conflicting points of view, rather than by publishing only material on which a consensus has been reached. Accordingly, all articles published in Science-including editorials, news and comment, and book reviews-are signed and reflect the individual views of the authors and not official points of view adopted by the AAAS or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated.

Positive and Negative Aspects of the Dominance of English

“…The best model I can think of for the right stance for ESP at present is dentistry: In the long run, the more successful dentists are, the less demand there will be for their services as they remove the problems they are trained to address. Likewise, if ESP practitioners succeed in enabling countries to attain their rightful places in the world through access to information (which, according to Kaplan, 1983, is stored primarily in English) and appropriate technology, those countries will eventually be in a position to assert their own native languages, and the dominance of English will gradually give way to reciprocity and fairness with, as Kaplan put it, "a balance between cultivation of indigenous culture-rich language and the need for a world language" (p. 1). It seems that we English-teaching professionals, especially ESP practitioners, can do what we can to aid the development of the world with self-reflective restraint, or we can continue to support, even unconsciously, the negative aspects of the dominance of English and suffer the consequences when English is no longer dominant.…”

“…One example of an international responsibility is the need to provide access to information to those who need it. Kaplan (1983), for example, articulated the responsibility of the English-teaching profession to teach nonnative speakers of English the key words to stored information, without which, no matter how well one speaks the language, such information may be unavailable. Because ESP practitioners are the most likely to interact with those who need access to educational or professional information, this responsibility falls on ESP.…”

Bilingualism as a Resource in the United States

“…Equivalent observations of the value of languages other than English have been made for a number of different professional specializations (Baldauf and Jernudd 1983b), and the mere fact of national language consolidation in the new post-colonial states points to the reciprocal need in natively English-speaking nations (Kaplan 1983).…”

English, information access, and technology transfer: a rationale for English as an international language

“…In many cases I have only touched upon the surface of exceedingly complex issues, any one of which could have been the entire focus of this paper.6 Nevertheless, the cumulative weight of evidence suggests that this line of argument for English as a world language represents a strong explanation for the current dominant position of English, not only as the language of science and technology, but also as the dominant world language more generally. As Kaplan (1983b) has noted in an editorial in Science:…”