Perspectives on the role of English

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Clarification of terms
While definition of the key concepts is seen as a necessary precursor to any
discussion of language, society and culture (Wardhaugh, 1998: 1), I will keep such
clarifications to a necessary minimum. The definitions presented here therefore, though
not necessarily conceptually water-tight, are straight-forward, clear and adequately
functional for the purposes of this paper.
Wardhaugh views ‘society’ as:
.....any group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes.
(ibid.).
In the context of English in an international setting, the ‘group’ might be loosely

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equated to ethnic, culturally homogenous populations, possibly within, but not
necessarily limited to national boundaries. Here the ‘purposes’ are taken to be social and
cultural maintenance and development.
Goodenough defines ‘culture’ as:
.....whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable
to [a society’s] members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of
themselves.
(Goodenough, 1957: 167, cited by Wardhaugh, 1998: 215).
Though somewhat dated, this is in line with my own view as it emphasises culture
as the knowledge-base and value-system to which members of a society must subscribe if
they are to be socially accepted. These knowledge and value sets are very often expressed
in a society’s language and literature.
For this reason, in addition to being 'a resource for conceptualization and
communication' (Widdowson, 1987: 17), ‘language’ might also be thought of as a
cultural resource, often reflecting as it does the values of the society in which it has
evolved (Hyde, 1994: 300). It seems that a language develops over time specifically so
that a society can adequately express the values and beliefs that it holds.
If EIL can be defined at all, it might be described as any of the Centre’s ‘received
pronunciation’ (RP) varieties of English, used for international communication where the
interlocutors do not have a common first language (adapted from Kennedy, 2001: 81).
However, both Kaplan (1987: 145) and Wardhaugh (1998: 28) point out that these RP
varieties differ between and even among themselves.
'Development' might be defined simply as change or evolution. The implicit
assumption is that the change is intended to benefit all members of the society, though
this will not always be the case. The term ‘maintenance’ indicates the continuance of the
society or culture in its current state.
Finally, a common distinction made when discussing EIL is that between the
native English-speaking ‘Centre’ countries, predominantly Holliday’s (1994: 4) BANA
nations, and the non-native English-speaking ‘Periphery’. I will follow this distinction
rather than Kachru’s (1985: 12-15; 1992b: 232-234) differentiation between ‘Inner’,
‘Outer’ and ‘Expanding circles’, for two reasons. Firstly, that it better reflects the power
relations between these two groups (Bisong, 1995: 122) and secondly, as Shaub (2000:
225) points out in the case of Egypt, Kachru’s distinction between Outer and Expanding
nations is not always applicable.

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