INTRODUCTION: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE COMPLEX

This book is concerned with an important topic in modern Sociolinguistics: the globalisation of English and the linguistic consequences of this process. The rise of English can be studied from a number of perspectives:

• as a topic in Historical Linguistics, highlighting the history of one language within the Germanic family and its continual fission into regional and social dialects;

• as a macro-sociolinguistic topic ‘language spread’ detailing the ways in which English and other languages associated with colonisation have changed the linguistic ecology of the world;

• as a topic in the field of Language Contact, examining the structural similarities and differences amongst the new varieties of English that are stabilising or have stabilised;

• as a topic in political and ideological studies – ‘linguistic imperialism’ – that focuses on how relations of dominance are entrenched by, and in, language and how such dominance often comes to be viewed as part of the natural order;

• as a topic in Applied Linguistics concerned with the role of English in modernisation, government and – above all – education; and

• as a topic in cultural and literary studies concerned with the impact of English upon different cultures and literatures, and the constructions of new identities via bilingualism.