THE UK needs to abandon its outdated views on the way English is used around the world, the British think tank Demos said in a report released this month.
Demos is an influential think tank for democracy in the UK. It analyses social and political change and helps policy makers and public service providers respond to emerging policy challenges. In the report “As You Like It: Catching up in an age of global English”, Demos calls for a radical shift in the way English is taught and defined, arguing that Britain is failing to keep pace with the rise of “global English”.
Demos states that Britain’s attitude to English is better suited to the days of the Empire than to the modern world. It says that the UK needs to embrace new forms of the language to maintain its influence in the global market. The report points to the examples of “Chinglish” and “Hinglish” ?adaptations of English influenced by Chinese and Hindu languages respectively.
“English can no longer be seen as a single language, but more as a family of languages. Each of these reflect the different ways people experience the world,” said Sam Jones, co-author of the report.
In a series of recommendations, the report says the UK should focus English teaching on how the language is now used around the world, “not according to arcane strictures of how it should be spoken and written”.
However, Lee Knapp, the UK manager for University of Cambridge ESOL, questioned whether the drive to maintain standards of English was really “imperialism”.
Knapp said he welcomed the recommendations to change government policy, but added: “The fact is, people want to have a standard English available. The more varieties, the greater the use of English for communication, the more government authorities want to establish a reliable standard for their populations, the more employers want solid guidance for recruitment ? and more than anything else, we know the learners themselves want to be measured against an acknowledged standard.”
The report also proposes the establishment of “democtionary.org”, the online dictionary modelled on open source websites like Wikipedia. It would allow people to add entries from around the world ? with new words and definitions. The report argues that this would create a more valid reflection of the English language than that of the Oxford English Dictionary.
But chief editor of the OED John Simpson denied the OED was a prescriptive rather than a descriptive reference work. “We don’t regulate English ? we describe it,” he said. “Nowadays the OED is online, accessed regularly all over the world, and its entries trace many varieties of English that now form the language.”
