Of New Englishes and and New Literacies

English and the World

English is one of the 7,099 languages of the world (Simons & Fenning, 2017). It is not the oldest language but it is the language with the most number of speakers second to Chinese. It is the language with the highest number of non native speaker population in the world. From a mere population of three to four and a half million speakers in the 15^th century, when “Englishmen spoke English and English was the language of Englishmen” (Strang, 1977, p.156), the language has grown to become an international language with about 1.5 billion speakers representing 20 per cent of the 7.5 billion people on Earth (Lyons, 2017). This number includes both native and nonnative speakers; those who seek proficiency in the language for international communication and those who speak new varieties of the language which are gradually establishing themselves as endonormative varieties, i.e. varieties whose norms are not externally regulated and therefore do not seek standardization from foreign varieties. This is why as far back as 1962, Randolph Quirk noted quite early in spite of his later vacillation and questioning of the Kachruvian paradigm as an exercise in ‘liberation linguistics’ that:
English is not the prerogative or “possession” of the English…Acknowledging this must – as a corollary involve our questioning the propriety of claiming
that the English of one area is more “correct” than the English of another.
Certainly, we must realize that there is no single “correct” English, and no single
standard of correctness. (Quirk, 1962, pp17-18)

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   Emergence and Spread of English
   

The English language presents an interesting history which is important in appreciating the emergence of varieties and variations of English across the globe. English came to the world as a result of conquest which dates back to the invasion of some Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) and Frisians in 499 AD, some three hundred years after the birth of Jesus Christ. The invasion which occurred in the British Isles brought English in place of the Celtic language in use prior to this period. Through a process of territorial expansion and inner circle Diaspora movement, English became a language of conquest sweeping through the British Isle to Wales, Scotland and Ireland and later to parts of North American notably USA and parts of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of South Africa, the Caribbean Islands and much later through colonial conquests to India, Malaysia, Singapore, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and many other former British colonies in Asia and Africa. So, it can be seen that the English language from inception has been a language of conquest often and always seeking newer territories and peoples to dwell with from its ancestral home. It means that the coming of English into the world was one manifestation of language and cultural contact situations with the never ending tensions of indigene-settler proclivities. One can safely say that the English language is a linguistic vector which has steadily infested the linguistic landscape of the world with its strain of permissive linguistic virus. While a good number of countries have found and effectively deployed potent linguistic anti-virus, some countries like Nigeria have not successfully done so. This virus seems to be very good for Nigeria’s linguistic hard drive. Today, it is almost inconceivable to imagine any part of the world where English is not spoken either as a first language, official language, second language, foreign language, international language, or simply, as an additional language in appreciable numbers. Scheider (2003) underscores this reality in these words:
…English is the world’s leading language, the main vehicle of international communication, and in that role, it is an essential, indeed indispensible tool for international economy, diplomacy, science, the media, and also individual interactions across language boundaries. (p.233)
Increasingly therefore, the micro and macro uses of the English language in the world continue to expand through the globalization of English and the exponential use of English in virtually all spheres of life notably new literacies especially in the new media. In the words of Jowitt (2008, p. 1),
…at least eighty per cent of all Internet communications are now expressed in English. English easily outstrips all competitors for the role of international language: of them, only French can claim to be spoken by any significant number in every one of the continents, but it has far fewer speakers; and although Chinese can claim to have more speakers than English, it hardly has an international role for the time being (highlighted mine).

2.