English as a first language and second language

It is arguable that native speakers of English can no longer make strong proprietary claims to the language which they now share with most of the developed world. The Cairo Egyptian Gazette declared ‘English is not the property of capitalist Americans, but of all the world’, and perhaps the assertion may be made even more convincingly in Singapore, Kampala, and Manila. Bereft of former overtones of political domination, English now exists in its own right in a number of world varieties. Unlike French, which continues to be based upon one metropolitan culture, the English language has taken on a number of regional forms. What Englishman can deny that a form of English, closely related to his own equally communicative, equally worthy of respect—is used in San Francisco, Auckland, Hong Kong and New Delhi? And has the Mid-West lady visitor to London any more right to crow with delight, ‘But you speak our language—you speak English just like we do’, than someone from Sydney, Accra, Valletta, or Port-of-Spain, Trinidad?

It may be argued, then, that a number of world varieties of English exist: British, American, Caribbean, West African, East African, Indian, South-east Asian, Australasian among others; having distinctive aspects of pronunciation and usage, by which they are recognised, whilst being mutually intelligible. (It needs hardly be pointed out that within these broad varieties there are dialects: the differences between the local speech of Exeter and Newcastle, of Boston and Dallas, of Nassau and Tobago are on the one hand sufficiently different to be recognised by speakers of other varieties, yet on the other to be acknowledged as dialects of the same variety.)

Of these geographically disparate varieties of English there are two kinds: those of first language situations where English is the mother tongue (MT), as in the USA or Australasia, and second language (SL) situations, where English is the language of commercial, administrative and educational institutions, as in Ghana or Singapore.

Each variety of English marks a speech community, and in motivational terms learners of English may wish to feel themselves members of a particular speech community and identify a target variety accordingly. In several cases, thereis little consciousness of choice of target. For example the Greek Cypriot immigrant in London, the new Australian from Italy and the Puerto Rican in New York will have self-selecting targets. In second language situations, the local variety will be the goal. That is, the Fulani learner will learn the educated West African variety of English, not British, American or Indian. This may appear self-evident, yet in some areas the choice of target variety is hotly contested.

For example, what kind of English should be taught in Singapore schools to the largely Chinese population? One view is that of the British businessman who argues that his local employees are using English daily, not only with him, but in commercial contacts with other countries and Britain. Therefore they must write their letters and speak on the telephone in a universally understood form of English. This is the argument for teaching British Received Pronunciation (RP), which Daniel Jones defined as that ‘most usually heard in the families of Southern English people who have been educated at the public schools’, and for teaching the grammar and vocabulary which mark the standard British variety. The opposite view, often taken by Singaporean speakers of English, is that in using English they are not trying to be Englishmen or to identify with RP speakers. They are Chinese

speakers of English in a community which has a distinctive form of the language. By speaking a South-east Asian variety of English, they are wearing a South-East linguistic badge, which is far more appropriate than a British one.

The above attitudes reflect the two main kinds of motivation in foreign language learning: instrumental and integrative. When anyone learns a foreign language instrumentally, he needs it for operational purposes—to be able to read books in the new language, to be able to communicate with other speakers of that language. The tourist, the salesman, the science student are clearly motivated to learn English instrumentally. When anyone learns a foreign language for integrative purposes, he is

trying to identify much more closely with a speech community which uses that language variety; he wants to feel at home in it, he tries to understand the attitudes and the world view of that community. The immigrant in Britain and the second language speaker of English, though gaining mastery of different varieties of English, are both learning English for integrative purposes.

In a second language situation, English is the language of the mass media: newspapers, radio and television are largely English media. English is also the language of official institutions—of law courts, local and central government— and of education. It is also the language of large commercial and industrial organisations. Clearly, a good command of English in a second language situation is the passport to social and economic advancement, and the successful user of the appropriate variety of English identifies himself as a successful, integrated member of that language community. It can be seen, then, that the Chinese Singaporean is motivated to learn English for integrative purposes, but it will be English of the South-east Asian variety which achieves his aim, rather than British, American or Australian varieties.

Although, in some second language situations, the official propagation of a local variety of English is often opposed, it is educationally unrealistic to take any variety as a goal other than the local one. It is the model of pronunciation and usage which surrounds the second language learner: its features reflect the influences of his native language, and make it easier to learn than, say, British English. And in the very rare events of a second language learner achieving a perfect command of British English he runs the risk of ridicule and even rejection by his fellows. At the other extreme, the learner who is satisfied with a narrow local dialect runs the risk of losing international communicability.