TEXTO II

It has become more or less a cliché these days to refer to English as a world language. At the 1984 conference to celebrate the SOth anniversary of the British Council there was a debate between Sir Randolph Quirk and Professor Braj Kachru on the (literally) million dollar question of 'who owns English’, and hence whose English must be adopted as the model for teaching the language worldwide (Quirk and Widdowson 198S). Since then, much has been written on the role of English as a language of international communication, and the desirability or otherwise of adopting one of the Inner Circle varieties of English (to all intents and purposes, either British or American) as the canonical model for teaching it as a second or foreign language. The position vigorously defended by Quirk in that debate— succinctly captured in the phrase 'a single monochrome standard’ (Quirk 198S: 6)— no longer appeals to the majority of those who are involved in the ELT enterprise in one way or another. Instead, Kachru’s equally spirited insistence that 'the native speakers [of English] seem to have lost the exclusive prerogative to control its standardisation’ (Kachru 198S: 3O), and his plea for a paradigm shift in linguistic and pedagogical research so as to bring it more in tune with the changing landscape, have continued to strike a favourable chord with most ELT professionals. And the idea that English belongs to everyone who speaks it has been steadily gaining ground.

Though still resisted in some quarters, the very idea of World English (henceforward, W E) makes the whole question of the 'ownership’ of English problematic, not to say completely anachronistic. Widdowson expressed the idea in a very telling manner when he wrote 'It is a matter of considerable pride and satisfaction for native speakers of English that their language is an international means of communication. But the point is that it is only international to the extent that it is not their language.’ (italics mine) (Widdowson 1994: 38S).

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Lest I should be misunderstood here, please note what it is that I am not claiming. I am not saying that there are no native speakers of English any more— if by native speakers we mean persons who were born and brought up in monolingual households with no contact with other languages. Indeed, that would be an absurd thing to say. As with every other language, there will— for the immediately foreseeable future at least— continue to be children born into monolingual English-speaking households who will, under the familiar criteria established for the purpose (Davies 1991), qualify as native speakers of English. But what we are interested in at the moment is W E, not the English language as it is spoken in Englishspeaking households, or the Houses of Parliament in Britain. W E is a language (for want of a better term, that is) spoken across the world— routinely at the check-in desks and in the corridors and departure lounges of some of the world’s busiest airports, typically during multinational business encounters, periodically during the Olympics or World Cup Football seasons, international trade fairs, academic conferences, and so on [...].

RAJAGOPALAN, K. The concept of ‘World English’ and its implications for ELT. ELT Journal Volume S8I2 April 2004.