Linguistic Imperialism

There are various reasons triggering one's interest towards a language. It could be a decision to learn a language in order to make change in a mono-tone life; or it may come as a lesson in the curriculum that a student would have to 'learn'. However, in most of the cases, choosing a foreign language to study is a matter of interest - when analyzed in brief. Phipps (2007, pp.156), while telling about a Portuguese language class, notes some answers to questions such as: 'Why are you learning Portuguese' and the students replied; '.I like the work of Paulo Coelho - I want to be able to read him in the original' or 'I go there (Portugal) every year. to the same place. I know people. I just feel I should know their language too.' We can easily say that all of these reasons are of personal interest. Yet, it makes us think deeper and look for more reasons behind the curtain when language learnt is English.

In Linguistic Imperialism, Phillipson (1992:1) refers to English as 'contemporary phenomenon as a world language' and attempts to analyse the underpinning reasons of this 'phenomenon'. There are issues which are acceptable and those hard to comprehend or agree with. According to Canagarajah (1999), Phillipson's work is not strongly based on facts and he criticizes the way he documents evidence.

In this work, some issues mentioned in the book will be discussed according to my English teaching background and enlightenment of my readings regarding the topic.

Phillipson's (1992:1) one-sided approach is very visible from the beginning of his work when he states '. whether the language has been actively promoted as an instrument of the foreign policy of the major English speaking countries.'. This obviously gives the idea that he is ready to go for a particular reason which would be to blame the English speaking countries for doing this 'promotion'. However, nothing is that simple or obvious. There are some basic questions that we need to answer in order to make this argument on a more stable basis. As a result, we first need to discuss the actual 'identity of English Language Teaching'; discuss Phillipson's claims regarding existence of attempts to make ELT an academic base that is applied to every society; notice a resistance rising from those societies against the 'promoted' uniqueness and finally a quick look to see whether English is affecting other cultures and languages or actually being effected itself.

The Question of Actual English Language Teaching Identity

As Phillipson (1992) claims, language pedagogy once was a social science but it has been isolated from its roots in order to be used as a tool of politics and imperialism. So it is easy to interpret this as 'ELT is being used to meet targets of the men behind it'. Pennycook (1994:9) refers to the spread of the English language as 'natural, neutral and beneficial'. Rather than judging English being used as the evil force on other languages and cultures, he admits an existence of political spread of English as 'natural' which is a result of global power of English speaking countries and colonialism. Logically, when there is a powerful community existing, without trying too hard, its language will be admired by other societies aiming for the same level of prosperity. So the definition 'natural' makes more sense and comes as an acceptable term when it is used in order to refer to work of English speaking countries for spreading English or to the English language spread itself. Also, Canagarajah (1999:41) holds his position against blaming the language only and refers to Phillipson's (1992:318) declaration that language in itself is not good or evil - it is how language is used by power structures that implicates it in evil.

These days it may be difficult to differentiate between two faces of ELT which are; a spider web of a corporation under an umbrella of politics and a need for personal development and intelligence. However, Phillipson (1992), Canagarajah (1999) and Pennycook (1994) point out a language 'aid' (from West) to third world countries. As they carry on, aid is broadened as qualified teachers, course books & syllabuses and other materials. One of their rare common points in their works is the ELT 'aid' and they all point out British Council as the master of this aid. As a result, a learner in a third world country (or in an expanding circle community (Kachru 1992) would have to be exposed to the material aided (in old times) or produced (more appropriate term for recent situation) by British Council or such institutions. Then, a desire to learn English as a personal need does not look as naïve as learning Portuguese (however it is another colonialist language but not in the used context) as mentioned in the example in the beginning.

Pennycook chooses to mention about schools as 'cultural and political arenas where different cultural, ideological and social forms are constantly in struggle' instead of considering schools as 'neutral sites where a curricular body of information is passed on to students' (1994:297). This gives a clue to consider the 'aid' in a wider aspect and see its consequences, because, if there is a cultural struggle going on in a classroom, then the tools used in this struggle will not be neutral as they will be 'aided' with some particular reason in order to work for one side's benefit. However, this still can be used to corrupt Phillipson's 'mind slavery' term (1992:35). Phillipson (1992) accepts the defeat already, because - for him - there is no way out of the mental slavery brought by language, whereas Pennycook claims an existence of a struggle in classroom even though one side has 'aided' weapons to use over the other language and culture.

Creating Uniqueness - One Academic Base of Teaching

Five Tenets

Phillipson's work (1992) which makes a harsh criticism about British (American is also included) academic base for ELT is an explicit example of inappropriateness of ELT abroad (outer & expanding circles) when varieties and local needs are considered. It is discussed (Phillipson 1992, Canagarajah 1999) that some fallacies of ELT exist on such teaching structures. Phillipson (1992:194) lists fallacies as;

- The monolingual fallacy - The native speaker fallacy - The early start fallacy - The maximum exposure fallacy - The subtractive fallacy

The fallacies will be supported in a while within a slightly different aspect. However, before that, I would like to mention about a review done by Davies (1996), on Linguistic Imperialism, who claims that the key ELT tenets (fallacies according to Phillipson 1992) are the results of a mistaken analysis of outcomes of Makerere conference in Uganda in 1961. Davies (1996), carries on and, says that such tenets did not actually mean what Phillipson thinks; and he has his point supported. To briefly mention (for 'The Monolingual Fallacy' and 'The Native Speaker Fallacy');

'These tenets do not accord with Recommendation (b) on page 6 of the report: - Our aim is to provide at all levels qualified teachers who are indigenous to the country in which the teaching takes place' (Davies 1999:493)

As it is obvious from the critique, Phillipson (1992) is mistaken in his perception of outcomes of the conference. Therefore he failed to come up with evidential 'fallacies'. Yet, the fallacies he brought up in discussion are highly beneficial to consider when ELT is the subject.

One sided academic base (as Canagarajah 1999 and Phillipson 1992 discusses) is not an 'applicable to all' tool to be used in ELT. Pennycook (1990) explicitly supports the idea of local needs and mentions that an ELT that refuses to explore the cultural and political aspects of language learning actually assimilates learners rather than empowering them. If we accept existence of a linguistic imperialism, it is only naïve to think that making people 'one of us' helps 'us'. If there is a certain political goal to be achieved, the 'evil' side needs people who do what they ask for; not who thinks in the same way. So, as Pennycook (1990) offers, ELT has to consider social and cultural needs and inter cultural politics thus use different academic bases rather than one - even though it is used for imperialistic interests.

Five Tenets from a Different Perspective

As a result, it would be reasonable to be against fully imposed fallacies via unique academic base (on a society) within an ELT context. Nonetheless, for a successful ELT, reasonable doses of five tenets can be used. If we are to have a look at them one by one;

1. The Monolingual Fallacy: It is open to debate that monolingual ELT is more beneficial in some cases rather than bilingual teaching; or when L1 support is minimized. 2. The Native Speaker Fallacy: A Native speaker is one good source to make use of while teaching; however, as Pennycook (1994) and Canagarajah (1999) supports, the awareness of local needs and social role of English is desired. Consequently, we can say that a native speaker with a strong awareness of local social context of learners is strongly beneficial. In addition to this, the native speaker also has a role of motivating young learners (as an authentic image rather than only being a teacher) as I have experienced in the classroom environment. 3. The Early Start Fallacy: As it says in Makerere Report (1961) English should be taught as early as possible 'as a spoken language'. There is no harm to make a foundation for further learning of English in early years without overemphasizing grammar rules. 4. The Maximum Exposure Fallacy: Depending on the age, giving comprehensible exposure - which may also be referred as comprehensible input (Krashen 1977a) - is a useful method to enable students to have more opportunities to see English in different uses. 5. The subtractive fallacy: Similar to the tenet 1, is not compulsory to use target language constantly, but overuse (such as Grammar Translation Method) may damage the learning quality in most of the cases as long as the learning style and motivation of learners are not dependent on to the GTM.

Against Uniqueness

Standard and Appropriated English

Phillipson (1992: 67-69) points out that ELT favour imperialism (also he uses 'imperial centre' to refer to English speaking countries) because it has three different functions within itself to empower it. He mentions about them as 'economic-reproductive, ideological, and repressive' functions. He carries on explaining them and says economic-reproductive function enables learners to access the technology and power via English in order to 'contribute to their society'. The ideological function is a channel via which 'modern' ideas of centre are transferred. It can also be regarded as a channel to assimilate learners and impose the target language culture. The last one which is the repressive function serves to enable English to be used as the leading language in other fields (such as learning another subject at school via English). This was a case that has been tried in Turkey's education system in late 90s. It was practised in five years high school format as one full year of (only) English learning before starting the remaining four years of education. The attempt of applying this to a totally different learning context, in which other needs were not met, resulted in massive disappointment and failure of high school graduates in university exams; because they were not able to comprehend or learn the required information about other subjects (i.e. geology) in English which was a language they did not master at all.

Phillipson, when expanding the concepts mentioned above, discusses that English 'replaces' and 'displaces' other languages (1992:27). When we leave the concept of unique academic base of ELT and Phillipson's position behind; and consider varieties and framework of appropriation - that English is used around the world for local purposes as Spichtinger (2000) also brings in to debate -, there is actually a resistance against impose of English that Phillipson fails to see. So, behind the curtain, it is not English replacing and displacing other languages completely as Phillipson claims, but it is actually local users of English amending the language according to their needs and local context when the appropriation takes place.

Being aware of what to acquire and what to ignore in imported (or aided) ELT materials and curriculum is a masterpiece and when it is achieved to be done; then society can benefit from this at a very high rate. Canagarajah makes readers think after an example and says '.raises the question about the relevance and appropriateness of the teaching material, curriculum, and pedagogies developed by Anglo-American communities.' (1999:12). As it is obvious, there is an awareness regarding this issue and even every other person against Phillipson (i.e. Canagarajah (1999), Spichtinger (2000), Kramsch and Sullivan (1996)) is supporting the appropriation framework. Thus, we can say that Phillipson, from his imperialism aspect, is not looking to the subject from a wide angle. Therefore, he blames English language for affecting (replace and displace in his words) other languages, whereas it is the English language who is actually being affected by local socio and cultural context.

A Brief Look at English as an International Language

Once English language is considered as an International Language (EIL), acceptance of variety and appropriation is valued. In this aspect, which Phillipson does not deal with in detail, there are on going suggestions offered by Jenkins (2006). As a person against unique standardization, she challenges against so many issues. Appropriation and localization of English will be at ease and simple to apply, when her suggestions are scaled on acceptable grounds - as they are extreme at some cases -. Jenkins (2006) suggests that there must be the acceptance of 'World Englishes' and standard varieties against two globally useful or appropriate versions (standard British and standard American English). This is a case which is also supported by Canagarajah (1999) and Pennycook (1994).

Conclusion

English is a global spread or 'phenomenon' as Phillipson (1992:1) refers. There is an acceptable and inevitable 'linguistic imperialism' existing within English language around the world as well as in ELT. The debate on the issue will be ongoing as long as the language is used by societies and demanded for personal needs. The effects of English language on the culture and the native language of learners will be decided according to the degree of 'appropriation' done (i.e. by the lecturer for an ELT class). As a result, supporting a unique academic base will do harm to a community rather than bringing benefits of the target language. Colonialism must have trapped certain societies in its language barriers; however, the rise of new Englishes and localization of English language will be able to improve such societies' control over the imposed language and strengthen their resistance. On the other hand, an opportunity to control culture and ideology flow along with English language learning is easier for those countries in outer and expanding circle - in the enlightenment of issues raised by Pennycook (1994) and Canagarajah (1999) - against the language imperialism.