Week Seven

In the Baker article we examine Englishes being used a sort of lingua franca. We know that in the westernized civilizations English has become a common languge used in the business and international realms, making it a quintessential language to know in many areas. When it comes to English, though, there is not one culture in particular that has laid claim to its entirety.

Yes, it started back in the United Kingdom and the United States are seen as a very prominent country on our little planet, but English is a language. Languages transcend borders. Kachru elaborated with his circles of English. The Inner Circle is more the typical native-speaking countries like the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, etc. The Outer Circle primarily includes old colonies whose government spoke in English. This includes places like India, Nigeria, etc. The final portion is the Expanding Circle, which includes all other countries that are cultivating their use of English. This would be most of the European countries, Korea, etc.
With this in mind, it is easier to see how no one culture has been able to lay claim to the Lower-West Germanic language that we call English. Each of Kachru’s circles employs its own cultures to create socio-dialects. It is very possible that two people trying to speak English will not understand each other since they could be learning staunchly different dialects. So you would think that a true “native speaker” from the inner circle would then be the basis for the standard used as the lingua franca? Not so much.

Defining a native speaker is like nailing jello to a tree. If you make a specific parameters that the jello, or native speaker, is going to follow, it eventually won’t work due to change. You can freeze the jello with a hole in the middle, but eventually the jello is going to change states and fall off. The world is an ever-changing place, just like the state of the jello.

Are children raised in a bilingual household native speakers of two languages or neither? Even if it was perfectly, down the middle, bilingual, is the glass half full and they have mastered two languages equally in their childhood or are they NNS since there are parts lacking in their lexicons. If you started speaking a different language as a child and switched to English at school at a young age and stopped using your L1, is the L2 that you’ve spent 20 years perfecting after abandoning your L1 considered your native language? If we cannot define a native speaker, why should we set the standard English to be used around the world as NS English? It seems that the cultural need at whatever moment is to determine what ‘type’ of English is used.

The other article by Marra was a little different. It was studying trends in workplace communication of the Maori people. For those who don’t know, they are among New Zealand’s native population. The study was very dense, and hard for me to follow. It examined cultural implications on workplace dialogues, and also talked a lot about being ethical in studies. By ethical, I mean culturally responsible as well as respectful in general. Understanding the background of test subjects is very important in gathering accurate data.