Read Text below and choose the correct alternative.
One Language or Many?
There are two competing pressures currently influencing the development of English: one acts to maintain international intelligibility, promoting a uniform World Standard English; the other acts to preserve national identity, promoting a diverse set of Regional Standard Englishes.
The drive for intelligibility
The pressure for international intelligibility is very strong, and may by now be unstoppable. International travel, satellite broadcasting, world press and television, world stock markets, multinational corporations, intergovernmental agencies and many other institutions have guaranteed a situation of daily contact for hundreds of millions of English speakers who together represent every major variety.
The drive for identity
The pressure to foster national identity is also very strong, and the signs are that divergence is increasing. The 1990s has seen no reduction in the number of conflicts which involve regions trying to establish their independence, and one consequence of successful nationalism was the early adoption of speech forms marking a linguistic distance between the new nation and its colonial antecedents.
Compromise?
There may be a natural balance which the language will eventually achieve. A nationalistic climate may cause a variety to move in a particular direction away from its source standard, but may then be pulled back when moderates within the community finds it increasingly difficult to understand what is being said.
(CRYSTAL, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
English Language, Cambridge: CUP, 2004, p. 113.)
