The success of
imported dramas such as The Bridge could be because of their subtitles,
not in spite of them. Photograph: Carolina Romare
Being an English-speaking country is a blessing – and a curse.
It is a blessing to be native speakers of the language of Shakespeare –
and the language of world science and popular culture (and financial
capitalism … well, maybe not).
The success of UK science is built not just on its excellence but also its English, which since the decline of the Soviet Union has been the only serious global scientific language. The success of UK universities in recruiting international students also owes a great deal to our language.
But it is also a curse. As the incentives to learn other languages decline year by year, we are increasingly locked into an anglophone prison. It may be an advantage to travel almost everywhere and be "understood". But maybe our ability really to understand, to get inside, other cultures is also declining. The Chinese speak English; not many of us speak Mandarin. Who has the advantage?
There are glimmers that we recognise our loss. BBC4's success in importing foreign-language series may be because of the need for subtitles not in spite of them. It is appealing to hear Danish or Swedish. If they were dubbed, they would lose authenticity. Maybe there is a wider lesson here: monolingualism inhibits multicultural sensitivity.
This inhibition is expressed in a number of ways. Within the university the humanities, where such sensitivity is crucial, are hardest hit. Stem subjects may be able to flourish as a monoglot domain (because their language is as much mathematics as English). But that can never be the case with literature, philosophy, history – and even some of the less theoretical social sciences – without a narrowing of perspectives and creative possibilities.
In wider society it is at least possible that the lack of challenge to neo-liberal ideas can be attributed partly to monolingualism. Alternative ideas can only become influential when they are translated into English, as the spectacular success of the French economist Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has demonstrated.
Secondly, we are not really talking about English but "Globlish", a communication tool stripped of most of its cultural resonances. Non-native English speakers can easily become fluent in Globlish. Maybe they can even speak it better because most are not inhibited by faint memories of the King James Bible or Hamlet. For them Globlish is largely a functional language.
Other European countries now offer courses taught in English. In Scandinavia and the Netherlands this has long been routine at postgraduate level. But now Germany and even France have joined in. English, of course, has displaced Russian as the second language across central and eastern Europe.
Most of these courses are in business and management, or science and engineering. While anglophone students remain in their monolingual prison, other students are becoming increasingly and confidently bilingual – on top of being skilled managers or engineers.
There is another risk – of complacency. Not only is the language premium enjoyed by anglophone countries likely to decline as Globlish becomes more pervasive, but the current bias may tend to flatter us. The dominance of UK, and American, universities in global league tables may be exaggerated. Perhaps we are not quite as good as they suggest.
It is not simply a question of the bias towards English in a narrow sense. The gatekeepers of the global science system are mainly located in, or draw their profits from, the anglophone world – the big university presses and the major scientific journals (even those published by Springer or Elsevier). But the advance of open source publishing will reduce the power of these gatekeepers.
So we should beware of imagining that English will always be the language of global science. It is not even necessary to believe that the geopolitical future will be dominated by China to conceive of alternative futures.
It is enough to imagine the world as a pluralist space and then to ask how well prepared the UK is to thrive in such a space – and also to recognise that we have already become a pluralist multi-cultural society, whatever Ukip may nostalgically imagine. The way forward is not just to promote other languages; we also need to learn to celebrate wider cultural differences.
The success of UK science is built not just on its excellence but also its English, which since the decline of the Soviet Union has been the only serious global scientific language. The success of UK universities in recruiting international students also owes a great deal to our language.
But it is also a curse. As the incentives to learn other languages decline year by year, we are increasingly locked into an anglophone prison. It may be an advantage to travel almost everywhere and be "understood". But maybe our ability really to understand, to get inside, other cultures is also declining. The Chinese speak English; not many of us speak Mandarin. Who has the advantage?
There are glimmers that we recognise our loss. BBC4's success in importing foreign-language series may be because of the need for subtitles not in spite of them. It is appealing to hear Danish or Swedish. If they were dubbed, they would lose authenticity. Maybe there is a wider lesson here: monolingualism inhibits multicultural sensitivity.
This inhibition is expressed in a number of ways. Within the university the humanities, where such sensitivity is crucial, are hardest hit. Stem subjects may be able to flourish as a monoglot domain (because their language is as much mathematics as English). But that can never be the case with literature, philosophy, history – and even some of the less theoretical social sciences – without a narrowing of perspectives and creative possibilities.
In wider society it is at least possible that the lack of challenge to neo-liberal ideas can be attributed partly to monolingualism. Alternative ideas can only become influential when they are translated into English, as the spectacular success of the French economist Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has demonstrated.
Secondly, we are not really talking about English but "Globlish", a communication tool stripped of most of its cultural resonances. Non-native English speakers can easily become fluent in Globlish. Maybe they can even speak it better because most are not inhibited by faint memories of the King James Bible or Hamlet. For them Globlish is largely a functional language.
Other European countries now offer courses taught in English. In Scandinavia and the Netherlands this has long been routine at postgraduate level. But now Germany and even France have joined in. English, of course, has displaced Russian as the second language across central and eastern Europe.
Most of these courses are in business and management, or science and engineering. While anglophone students remain in their monolingual prison, other students are becoming increasingly and confidently bilingual – on top of being skilled managers or engineers.
There is another risk – of complacency. Not only is the language premium enjoyed by anglophone countries likely to decline as Globlish becomes more pervasive, but the current bias may tend to flatter us. The dominance of UK, and American, universities in global league tables may be exaggerated. Perhaps we are not quite as good as they suggest.
It is not simply a question of the bias towards English in a narrow sense. The gatekeepers of the global science system are mainly located in, or draw their profits from, the anglophone world – the big university presses and the major scientific journals (even those published by Springer or Elsevier). But the advance of open source publishing will reduce the power of these gatekeepers.
So we should beware of imagining that English will always be the language of global science. It is not even necessary to believe that the geopolitical future will be dominated by China to conceive of alternative futures.
It is enough to imagine the world as a pluralist space and then to ask how well prepared the UK is to thrive in such a space – and also to recognise that we have already become a pluralist multi-cultural society, whatever Ukip may nostalgically imagine. The way forward is not just to promote other languages; we also need to learn to celebrate wider cultural differences.
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