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Globish pervades life throughout world

Reviewed by: Geoff Lambert

Posted: 05/29/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Globish

How the English Language Became the World's Language

By Robert McCrum

Doubleday, 314 pages, $33

THIS volume is an example of those elegant, erudite creations produced by senior members of one or the other of the posher London newspapers.

Author Robert McCrum, in fact, works for the Observer, and among his claims to fame is his authorship of the popular 1980s classic The Story of English, produced and narrated for by Robert MacNeil.

But McCrum's goal is not simply to travel to people in East Anglian pubs or Zimbabwean farm offices and act delighted about the figures of speech inhabitants use.

No, he is concerned about the origins, the evolution of the rules, the development and the influence, and so forth, of English (but English in a somewhat broader sense than that implied by English as the particular language of a people located in a particular territory).

Above all, he examines what he calls "globish," which is close to globalization, the argument that a form of English pervades the everyday pursuits of ordinary men and women in all parts of the world, defying national boundaries.

He notes, for instance, the apparent enthusiasm Chinese students take in attending after-class gatherings on Fridays in the parks of their cities. Their purpose? To learn English.

The list of topics McCrum deals with is vast. In a majestic chronological sweep, arguments and examples flow like a crystal stream.

For instance, he starts by considering the origins of the language in the face of four invasions and the Danish settlement of what is now England. This was a crucial period for the vocabulary but especially the structure of English.

The Norman Conquest (from 1066) established French as the language of the elite, but by the 14th century, English was the language of the common people and was slowly becoming indispensable in elite circles.

The writer Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales) and William Caxton (England's first printer) established norms for the usage of English.

But it was surely the latter 16th and early 17th centuries that transformed the language of a great developing empire into the world's most influential language. For this was the period of Shakespeare, the Authorized Version of the Bible, and the Prayer Book of the Church of England, as well as Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson.

It was also the start of British expansion and settlement overseas. Included in this phenomenon was the distinctive growth of North American English, as well as, later on, the dialects of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Part of the story, therefore, is how the language was adapted by those settlements.

McCrum is obviously correct in suggesting that American English is now the prime mover in the world today. British English has remained more "classical."

He produces some interesting vignettes, from Nathaniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln (the Gettysburg Address), and Martin Luther King Jr.

He also is a huge fan of Mark Twain (and who can disapprove?). Thus, Silicon Valley and Hollywood are the major spurs for American control of cultural, technical and perhaps most other forms of human expression.

Not everyone is pleased with English's supremacy. The French do a fair amount of sniffing, especially at the Disney Corp.

Elegant though it is, there is just a little bit of the unproven and the unlinked in the book. And at times McCrum is somewhat of a clever Dick.

But Globish is a glory!

Geoff Lambert is a political scientist at the University of Manitoba's St. Paul's College. His family has spoken English only since 1685.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 29, 2010 H9

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