Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Division of English Language and Literature
English for International Communication
Spring 2007
Crystal (2003) Chapter 4 - Answers
1. Crystal (2002) mentions ten different cultural areas in which English can be seen as being dominant. Which of these do you think is the most powerful globally?
At the moment it would seem that the presence of English as the working language of a vast multitude of international organizations would be the most important from a more global perspective. This is especially true if we -consider large multinational conglomerates as a specific type of international organization. The simple fact that most international organizations are controlled by inner core countries or have English as a working language is a clear sign that English as represented by the small set of inner core countries, more specifically The US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Ireland) play an inordinately large role in international organizations, especially in relation to their populations. This is especially true of the last three which have very small populations indeed but a large amount of international power.
Crystal, himself, is very careful not to get into any kind of political debate in relation to the effects (good or bad) of these cultural legacies and sticks to merely listing statistics of language use in these international organizations, a position which makes this chapter as boring and vacuous as it possibly could ever be. The neutral listing of such statistics do tell us that English is the language of choice for international organizations, but this is obvious. Any group interested in getting people to notice them needs to at least provide information in English about the group and if the organization is truly international (multi-regional) then English will have to be the working language as it is the logical choice of a lingua franca for a group with members who speak different languages. Really for any international group to be taken seriously they need to use English. An interesting example is the Agence de la Francophonie (ACCT) for which the, ̋Mission of the agency is to bring together francophone countries for purposes of creating a worldwide dialogue.̋ What is interesting about this is that the lead for their website is in English. So English is used in international organizations, but this is not a surprise for us. English is the global language and it would seem strange for English not to be used for international organizations.
In a sense we can think of this particular cultural legacy as being one that helps to fuel all the others because it is so wide ranging and really is a representation of the political, military and economic power of inner core countries which supports the cultural power of the English language. We can see from the introductory part of this chapter that this was a trend which started with the end of WWI. Contrary to earlier claims which were made about the height of British colonial power reaching its zenith in the end of the 19th century it is clear that it was in the post WWI era that this zenith was reached, for it was a time when the UK picked up vast new territories and, more importantly also a time when former UK colonies like the US, Australia, New Zealand and even South Africa also became colonial powers. At some, point it was taken for granted that English speaking countries were better at running things ands since they already ran so many things it was natural for them to appoint `juniors` (in the Korean use of the word) to also handle things.
2. It would seem that many of these `cultural legacies` are also somehow related to technology. What is the nature of this connection?
There seems to be quite a direct link between pretty much all of these cultural legacies and technology. To a large extent this can be traced back to the what we said before about English being automatically associated with new technological developments. As new technologies were developed either in the UK or the US or at least came to be used and further developed in the US on a grand scale there was no discussion of the language which would be used in relation to these technologies. The people who knew how to run and use these new technologies all spoke English (although many of them were NOT native speakers), so the English language became entwined in these new developments.
For the majority of these cultural legacies it is easy to see the connection to technology. Obviously, the development of the printing press was reliant upon the development of new printing technology as well as transportation technology, for it is one thing to be able to print a large number of newspapers and quite another to be able to distribute them to large numbers of people over a large physical space. The same can be said for international safety. Obviously horse carts or a small number of slow moving wind powered boats with no effective means of communicating with others while in transit do not require very much systematic regulation. Faster boats, in much larger numbers, and airplanes flying over all sorts of international borders and into airports by the thousands, however, do need to be regulated. The development of better means of transportation as well as machines for seeing them (radar) and communicating with them (radio) makes this both possible and necessary. The technological basis can be seen for other areas like broadcasting which was and still is reliant on the on the development of camera and television technology and then new computer and, further, multimedia technology.
It is also interesting to see how these different technological effects feed into each other. We would not normally think of advertising, for example, as being reliant on technology, but of course it is and very much so (photography and video, for example). It as well has had a great effect on the development of some of the technological bases for many of these cultural legacies. In each of these specific cases there has been a complex array of connecting factors which brought seemingly disparate forces together. This can be clearly shown in the development of advertising (which we will discuss at length in question 4 below).
3. Why do you think English (and particularly the USA) has been able to make so many cultural contributions globally in the recent past? Is there any special reason?
The USA within the last hundred and fifty or so years has been able to make spectacular contributions to all of these cultural legacies on the basis of its virtually economic power. This was true starting in the middle of the 19th century and since then the US has grown at stellar rates economically and we know that from economic power flows all other powers (potentially at least). The US had great inventors (like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Eli Whitney, and George Washington Carver) and great entrepreneurs (like Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. Paul Getty, Andrew Carnegie, and William Randolph Hearst) who combined their forces to drive the economy. Not only were there inventions but there was the means to make full use of their new potential in developing lands and a developing economy. This really started after the US Civil War came to a head first after WWI when the US was able to take the lead in several cultural areas after the partial physical and almost total economic devastation of Europe. At the end of WWI virtually every European country owed the US money which they had borrowed to help fight the war, yet Finland was the only country to ever repay the debts. Because of this economic and social devastation the brain drain hit a new peak and the emigration of European elites to the US hit a peak in the post WWI era. The same process was to repeat itself on a much grander scale after the total destruction of the developed world in WWII when the US only enhanced its lead in all the areas already existing and used these advantages to create new industries based on new concepts and inventions. For a certain period of time after WWII the US was the only country capable of mass production of non-military goods. It was the only country with money and it had large numbers of troops scattered all over the world who had food and money and thus were able to spread American culture easily and openly as the US became for a time the running government of many countries. In this situation with a huge cultural and economic vacuum in the world Americanisms in almost every area came to the forefront of the world as the only possible source of cultural and economic goods and services. The trend has continued today in the guise of globalism where, while not all the companies are American in origin, they emulate Americanisms/Westernization/globalization in their advertising to the point that the national origin of most multinational companies is obscured and virtually irrelevant.
4. What is the significance of English in advertising?
Advertising, as mentioned above, is an extremely interesting area because it is here that we can see how all the different causes and effects leading to this current situation of English dominance come together. Advertising was an idea which originated in England in the 17th century. It was reliant first on the development of print technology and later came to be reliant on the development of new technologies like photography, television, radio, cinema as it came to play a larger or even founding role in such cultural endeavors as broadcasting, and cinema in addition to the press. At the same time, through these developments, it was an idea which allowed these same technologies to develop because it created an economic basis for the use of these rather expensive technologies. It is due to advertising that glossy magazines and newspapers, even TV (especially in the US) and movies can afford to be produced and sold at what seem to be quite low costs to consumers. TV is provided virtually free, newspapers and magazines are sold at a fraction of the cost to produce them as are movies which often cost 100 million or more US dollars to produce, yet are sold to consumers for 8 or so dollars.
So there is a strong technological base to advertising (in that mediums for this needed to be developed). There is also a strong economic side to this in that advertisers not only need people with money to buy the products being advertised, but they also need a product to sell. This is where the industrial revolution came in. Britain and the US was able to capitalize on advertising because they had new and wonderful manufactured products to sell. They also had the means to cheaply and quickly bring such products (especially in the case of the US and the extensive railroad lines there) to market. It is no coincidence that there is an explosion in the development of newspapers and the magazines at the same time that the industrial revolution commenced. Certainly part of this connection can be explained by new printing and transportation technology, but it was advertising (money up front - presales) which made the production of large number of products possible. Advertising made the press economically possible. This further fuelled the development of new and better technologies because through advertisements there was a cheap and effective way of disseminating information about these new technologies. Also, new technologies were developed for the purpose of advertising. Photographic technology was immediately put to use for the purpose of heightening advertisements as well as in the press. The two are deeply interconnected.
To this day advertising is still the driving force behind any economic success. The fact that it is controlled by the Americans and more often than not occurs in the English language plays an inestimably important role in the heightening of the image of the US in the world, often in stark contrast to the actual origin of a company. So when Hyundai makes an add in English featuring people dancing to hiphop in a nightclub scene they are not enhancing the image of Korea, they are embracing a global image based on Americanism which enhances the American image. Interesting.
5. What has made English dominant in the cinema industry?
The shift of cinema from Europe to the US was basically because of WWI. It was a brain drain of sorts where the studios in Europe were either destroyed, there was no money, and sometimes no freedom to work so European filmmakers moved in droves to the US (the California weather helped too). But this is just the surface of the whole thing. The US developed a system for mass producing movies and generating stars capitalizing on gaps in the European film industry. There are also the many technological developments which helped as well. Through these technological developments, like the American invention of sound movies, as well as conceptual development in running studios not as art factories but real factories the US was able to develop film making as an industry, even before Even before the 1940s and WWII the US had already come to dominate the film industry more or less by capitalising on the invention of sound in movies and the brain drain which had brought huge amounts of European musicians, actors, directors and composers to the US. In this context the musical was born and this became one of the most important and successful genres of movies worldwide during the depression of the 1920s and 30s. So by the start of WWII the US was already well poised to move onto a new level after the destruction o f all competitors after WWII.
After WWII the blockbuster was developed on the basis of two principal forces; star power and new technology. After WWII when the world clamoured for entertainment the US was the only country then able to provide it and this meant making movies that had global appeal. From this we get the basic formula for making Hollywood movies today. It has to be able to sell everywhere. Simple stories with few or inconsequential local attachments and lots of excitement. Such movies are expensive and difficult to make because they require not only recognizable stars (expensive) but also the use of the newest technology (special effects) to heighten the excitement so that the movie will sell. Hollywood has honed the system to such perfection that it is virtually impossible for anyone outside Hollywood to make anything remotely close.
6. How has English been used to great advantage in the area of international safety?
Both the means of transport (airplanes and boats) involved and the tools used for regulating them (radar, GPS, and radio communication) were either developed by or were industries dominated by the US in the post WWII era. Since there was a huge surplus of English-speaking pilots and sailors around after WWII these people were then sent all over the world to set up these international safety organizations in English naturally. English is still being taken for granted.
7. What is the relationship between the Internet and English?
The Internet, along with computers in general, were largely developed by the Americans and as such is seen as being a largely English endeavor. This is true for many places in the world but is not necessarily true for all, as Korea and Japan are highly noticeable exceptions. The Internet is based on and has ushered in a slew of new computer-based technologies. Crystal (2003) gives us statistics on Internet use and blah.blah,blah, but, again, that doesn`t affect us too much here in Korea. Koreans have their own Internet search engines they prefer to use and are frantically developing some of their own technology (the Gom Media Player for example) which rival or even supercede American technology in the field. The Koreans and Japanese are also at the forefront of the entire Internet gaming industry, which has required a substantial development in computer technology. At the same time it must still be acknowledged that much of the software is still in the hands of American giants like Microsoft and the English aspects of the Internet still eclipse and obscure all other languages.
8. What role does English play in international travel and how did English manage to get that role?
This is simply a reaffirmation of English as a global lingua franca coupled with the statistic Crystal (2003) gives stating that the US is by far the greatest travel nation as regards both travel within the US (Americans travelling internally as well as foreign visitors) and outside the US (Americans visiting foreign destinations). Again, after WWII it was the Americans alone who had the money to travel internationally in large numbers. Systems were established in the immediate post WWII era for American-based tourism which have yet to be dismantled because they still work in the face of globalization. People expect to use English or be able to use English when they travel no matter where they go.
9. Which of these `cultural legacies` mentioned in Crystal (2002) has the strongest foothold in Korea?
It is hard to definitively determine which cultural legacy might have gained the strongest foothold in Korea without getting hold of specific statistics, but we can certainly quickly assess which ones have had the largest effect in Korea. Based on the idea of effect we can say with some confidence that of all the cultural legacies mentioned here education would be the one in which English has gained the largest foothold in Korea. It is the one which has had the greatest effect on Korean society as a whole. It is hard to measure the effects that English has had on the Korean educations system but we know they are massive. In a true sense, Koreans measure their educational achievements against US standards (often without knowing clearly what those standards are. Even Americans don’t know what their own standards are). The next step to making this comparison more meaningful and easier to actualize is to simply shift the medium language from the home language of Korean to a school language of English. This is, of course already happening as is evidenced by this course.
10. Which of these `cultural legacies` mentioned in Crystal (2002) has the weakest foothold in Korea?
It is somewhat hard to determine, as well, which of the ten cultural legacies mentioned by Crystal (2003) in which English has had the weakest effect in Korea without statistics, but we can use our feelings as careful observers of society as all university students should be. The one that the Koreans have had the most success in, at the expense of English, is the Internet. As we mentioned above, Koreans have been very successful in taking the computer industry by the horns and wrestling it to their own ground. This is most clearly, but certainly not exclusively, in the Korean development of their own Internet technology separate form that of the US. So, contrary to Crystal`s statement that to use the Internet one MUST be able to read English, Koreans simply don`t. Koreans and Japanese have the wonderful option of being able to ignore the English side of the Internet, or use it as they see fit.