We caught up with leading English language expert and patron to IATEFL, David Crystal, at the organisation’s conference this week. He shares his insights on English as the world’s lingua franca and if such a concept will even exist in the future.
The PIE: This is my first International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) conference. What have you seen are the key topics trending at this year?
DC: I have no idea! You have to remember I’m the patron of IATEFL but I’m not actually an ELT specialist. I’ve never taught English language in a classroom in my life. Patrons are rather different characters. They’re usually there to add a dimension to an organisation that isn’t already there.
In my case I’m an academic linguist. My world is studying languages, the English language in particular. My job is to find out what is to be taught in relation to the English language, but in no way how. That’s the teacher’s job.
The PIE: How long have you been a patron of IATEFL?
DC: Since the mid-1990s. About 15 years or so now.
The PIE: During your time with IATEFL, what kind of changes have you seen in the organisation and English as a global language?
“My job is to find out what is to be taught in relation to the English language, but in no way how”
DC: When I first came to IATEFL, the annual conference attracted a few 100 people. Now there’s 2,500 here today. The scale of the enterprise has grown enormously. Why is that? Well one is the consequence of English becoming a global language. There are over 100 countries here, countries like Azerbaijan.
Fifteen years ago they would not have been here because English wasn’t that prominent in that country and because there weren’t that many teachers there.
Now, especially because IATEFL has actively tried to develop networking links all over the place, we’re getting participation from countries that never used to be here. This is the main change without a doubt. And it’s going to continue this way because English continues to grow.
The PIE: What is happening with the English language around the world right now?
DC: One of the sessions here is English as a global language and the complications that come from that. Once upon a time there was British English and American English. Now there are all these types of English all over the world developing new standards and new varieties.
The job of the English language learner has got more difficult especially online because they’ll see these varieties everywhere. The job of the teacher is more difficult because somehow they’ve got to take them into account.
The PIE: Do you have any thoughts about the growing number of non-Anglophone universities teaching courses in English?
“Once upon a time there was British English and American English. Now there are all these types of English all over the world”
DC: I think this is an important and natural development. When you’re learning English you’re always learning it with a particular purpose in mind. People say English is a tool, any lingua franca is a tool, but why do you want to use it? If you decide that you want to go in a particular direction, the more experience you have of its use in that domain the better.
So if you’re into the world of international business shall we say, then the more you can get courses, experience, go to conferences in the medium of English the more competent an interactor in the language you will be. What I see in the university world is a kind of preparation for that.
The opposite argument of course is that this is reducing the functions of native language. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Just because you’re doing one course in English doesn’t mean to say that all your other courses can’t be in other languages.
The PIE: What do you think will happen to other languages if English’s influence continues to grow?
DC: The future of languages is indeed in question. There are 6,000 languages in the world, half of them are spoken by so few people they are seriously in danger of dying out in the course of the present century. And of course languages that have larger number of speakers are concerned because one of the first signs of a language beginning to diminish is when it loses its functions. This has got to be managed very carefully otherwise there is indeed a risk.
The future of an international language is totally dependent on the power of the people who speak it
But you should never try to predict the future when it comes to language. A thousand years ago if you had predicted that Latin wasn’t going to be important they would have thought you were mad. And so a thousand years from now who knows, we could all be speaking Martian.
All we can say with certainty is that there’s no serious competitor to English as a global language at the moment, but the future of an international language is totally dependent on the power of the people who speak it. It only takes a slight shift in the balance of power for some other language to become prominent.
The PIE: What role do you see technology playing in the evolution of language learning?
DC: In a hundred years’ time we will have stunning quality machine translation, but it’s pretty poor at the moment. There will also be simultaneous real time interpretation. You remember The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the babel fish that you put in your ear? It will happen. That’s already around in a very primitive way. In a hundred years’ time it will be brilliant.
So if you speak Chinese and I speak English and we’re babel fishing each other, what need for a lingua franca then? So the whole question is up in the air really as a result of technology. At the moment English is retaining its dominant position and growing but in a hundred years’ time who knows?
The PIE: That could have huge implications for international student mobility. Students could study anywhere they wanted whereas now language is a barrier for some.
You remember The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the babel fish that you put in your ear? It will happen
DC: It’s no different from going to an international meeting of UNESCO and having all the interpreters translating the meetings. It’s not the perfect system but it’s pretty good. Replicating that technologically is impossible at the moment but already the basis is there and you can see how it will develop at least for the major languages. I can’t see a babble fish for a tiny little language but even that could happen eventually.
The PIE: If you’re not an ESL teacher, then what are your plans for the rest of the IATEFL conference?
DC: Every couple of years they ask me to do a keynote lecture, well that’s what I did last year. This year they cooked up this event called Meet the Patron. So that’s what I’m doing this afternoon. I’ll go to the IATEFL stand and just stand there and be met as it were by anyone who wants. This is what happens sporadically anyway at this event- people know my books and they’d like to come say hello and so it’s a kind of half social half professional exercise.
If people have a question about the English language they can come ask it and if I know the answer I’ll tell them. And if not point them in a certain direction. IATEFL is very much a family. People have been coming here for twenty years or more. It’s a lovely atmosphere and I’m not surprised the membership has grown so dramatically. When you come here once you come here again.
