The future of global English

their purposes, as in the case of Euro-English (p. 182). Local usages

are emerging, and achieving standard status within a region. For
example, ‘Welcome in Egypt’ is now so established among Egyptian
speakers of English, of all educational backgrounds and social classes,
that it must now be seen as a variant as standard in character as is the
prepositional variation between ‘quarter to’ and ‘quarter of ’ in US and
UK time-telling.71
If Englishes did become increasingly different, as years went by,
the consequences for world English would not necessarily be fatal. A
likely scenario is that our current ability to use more than one dialect
would simply extend to meet the fresh demands of the international
situation. A new form of English – let us think of it as ‘World Standard
Spoken English’ (WSSE) – would almost certainly arise. Indeed, the
foundation for such a development is already being laid around us.
Most people are already ‘multidialectal’ to a greater or lesser
extent. They use one spoken dialect at home, when they are with their
family or talking to other members of their local community: this tends
to be an informal variety, full of casual pronunciation, colloquial
grammar, and local turns of phrase. They use another spoken dialect
when they are away from home, travelling to different parts of their
country or interacting with others at their place of work: this tends to be
a formal variety, full of careful pronunciation, conventional grammar,
and standard vocabulary.
Those who are literate have learned a third variety, that of written
standard English which (apart from a few minor differences, such as
British vs. American spelling) currently unites the English-speaking
world.
In a future where there were many national Englishes, little would
change. People would still have their dialects for use within their own
country, but when the need came to communicate with people from
other countries they would slip into WSSE. So, a multinational
company might decide to hold a conference at which representatives
from each of its country operations would be present. The reps from
Kolkata, sharing a cab on their way to
71
It has begun to be cited as accepted usage in some local editions of ELT textbooks.
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the conference, would be conversing in informal Indian English.

The reps from Lagos, in their cab, would be talking in informal
Nigerian English. The reps from Los Angeles would be using informal
American English. Any one of these groups, overhearing any other,
might well find the conversation difficult to follow. But when all meet at
the conference table, there would be no problem: everyone would be
using WSSE.
People who attend international conferences, or who write scripts
for an international audience, or who are ‘talking’ on the Internet have
probably already felt the pull of this new variety. It takes the form, for
example, of consciously avoiding a word or phrase which you know is
not going to be understood outside your own country, and of finding an
alternative form of expression. It can also affect your pronunciation and
grammar. But it is too early to be definite about the way this variety will
develop. WSSE is still in its infancy. Indeed, it has hardly yet been
born.
If one happens to be in the right place at the right time, one can
glimpse the birth pangs. I saw such a pang while attending an
international seminar at a European university in the late 1990s.
Around the table were representatives of some twenty countries. There
were two people from the UK, two from the USA, and one from
Australia, with the others all from countries where English was either a
second (official) language or a foreign language. The lingua franca of
the meeting was English, and everyone seemed to be using the
language competently – even the native speakers.
We were well into the discussion period following a paper which had
generated a lively buzz of comment and counter-comment. Someone
then made a telling remark. There was a silence round the table, which
was broken by one of the US delegates observing: ‘That came from
out in left field.’ There was another silence, and I could see some of
the delegates turning to their neighbours in a surreptitious way, as one
does when one does not understand what on earth is going on, and
wants to check that one is not alone. But they were not pondering the
telling remark. They were asking each other what ‘from out in left field’
meant. My neighbour asked me: as a native speaker, he felt confident I
would know. I did not know. Baseball at that time was a closed book to
me – and still is, very largely.
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One of the braver of the delegates spoke up: ‘Out where?,’ he

asked. It took the US delegate by surprise, as plainly he had never had
that idiom questioned before; but he managed to explain that it was a
figure of speech from baseball, a ball coming from an unusual
direction, and what he had meant was that the remark was surprising,
unexpected. There were nods of relief from around the table. Then one
of the UK delegates chipped in: ‘You played that with a straight bat’, he
said. ‘Huh?’, said the American. ‘Oh, I say, that’s not cricket’, I added,
parodically. ‘Isn’t it?’, asked a delegate from Asia, now totally
confused. The next few minutes of the meeting were somewhat
chaotic. The original theme was quite forgotten, as people
energetically debated the meaning of cricket and baseball idioms with
their neighbours. Those who could added their own local version of
how they said things like that in their part of the world – the sports
metaphors they lived by. Eventually, the chairman called everyone
back to order, and the discussion of the paper continued. But my
attention was blown, and I spent the remainder of the session listening
not to what delegates were saying, but to how they were saying it.
What was immediately noticeable was that the native speakers
seemed to become much less colloquial. In particular, I did not sense
any further use of national idioms. Indeed, the speakers seemed to be
going out of their way to avoid them. I made a small contribution
towards the end, and I remember thinking while I was doing it – ‘don’t
use any cricket terms’. Afterwards, in the bar, others admitted to doing
the same. My British colleague said he had consciously avoided using
the word fortnight, replacing it by two weeks. And, as the evening wore
on, people began apologizing facetiously when they noticed
themselves using a national idiom, or when somebody else used one.
It became something of a game – the kind that linguists love to play.
There was one nice moment when the US, UK and Australian
delegates were all reduced to incoherence because they found that
they had disbarred themselves from using any of their natural
expressions for ‘the safe walking route at the side of a road’ –
pavement (UK), sidewalk (US) and footpath (Australian). In the
absence of a regionally neutral term, all they were left with was
circumlocution (such as the one just given).
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It is only an anecdote, but it is an intriguing one, as it illustrates

one of the directions in which people can go as they move towards a
WSSE. It did not have to be that direction. It would have been perfectly
possible for the seminar group to have gone down another road: to
have adopted ‘out in left field’ as an idiom, everyone adding it to their
own idiolect – de-Americanizing it, as it were. That did not happen, on
that occasion, though it seems to be happening a lot elsewhere. US
English does seem likely to be the most influential in the development
of WSSE. The direction of influence has for some time been largely
one-way. Many grammatical issues in contemporary British usage
show the influence of US forms, US spellings are increasingly
widespread (especially in computer contexts), and there is a greater
passive awareness of distinctively US lexicon in the UK (because of
media influence) than vice versa. On the other hand, the situation will
be complicated by the emergence on the world scene of new linguistic
features derived from the L2 varieties, which as we have seen will in
due course become numerically dominant. No feature of L2 English
has yet become a part of standard US or UK English; but, as the
balance of speakers changes, there is no reason for L2 features not to
become part of WSSE. This would be especially likely if there were
features which were shared by several (or all) L2 varieties – such as
the use of syllable-timed rhythm, or the widespread difficulty observed
in the use of th sounds.
The development of WSSE can be predicted because it
enables people, yet again, to ‘have their cake and eat it’. The concept
of WSSE does not replace a national dialect: it supplements it.
People who can use both are in a much more powerful position
than people who can use only one. They have a dialect in which
they can continue to express their national identity; and they have
a dialect which can guarantee international intelligibility, when they
need it. The same dual tendencies can be seen on the Inter-
net, incidentally, which simultaneously presents us with a range
of informal identifying personal varieties and a corpus of univer-
sally intelligible standard English. It is an interesting context for
those wishing to study the forces affecting language change, with
users searching for a balance between the attraction of a ‘cool’,
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idiosyncratic, but often unintelligible linguistic persona and the need to

use an ‘uncool’ standardized form of expression in order to make
oneself understood!
‘Having your cake and eating it’, of course, also applies to the
use of completely different languages as markers of identity. It may
well be that the people travelling by cab to the international conference
would be speaking Hindi, Hausa, and Spanish, respectively. When
they all meet at the conference table, they would switch into WSSE.
They do not have to give up their national linguistic identities just
because they are going to an international meeting. But of course this
scenario assumes that Hindi, Hausa, and Spanish are still respected,
alive and well, and living in their respective home communities.
There is nothing unusual, in linguistic terms, about a community
using more than one variety (or language) as alternative standards for
different purposes. The situation is the familiar one of diglossia, as
illustrated by the ‘high’ and ‘low’ varieties found in such languages as
Greek, German and Arabic.72 It would seem that English at the global
level is steadily moving towards becoming a diglossic language.
Already, in such locations as Singapore, we see two spoken varieties
co-existing (albeit uncomfortably, p. 174), one being used for
intelligibility (Standard British English) and the other for identity
(Singlish). A similar scenario is found in the Philippines, where
Standard American English coexists alongside Taglish. If WSSE
emerges as a neutral global variety in due course, it will make
redundant the British/American distinction. British and American
English will still exist, of course, but as varieties expressing national
identity in the UK and USA. For global purposes, WSSE will suffice.

A unique event?

There has never been a language so widely spread or spoken by so

many people as English. There are therefore no precedents to help us
see what happens to a language when it achieves genuine world
status; and predictions about the future, as we saw in the remarks
72
Ferguson (1959).

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