English Language as a Bearer of 'Liberal' Culture

By Katelina Leone

My interest in English as a Global Lingua Franca was triggered by Jennifer

Jenkins few years ago, when I heard an interview with her for BBC Radio 4.
Her theory that non-native speakers of English have the right to develop
their own ways of speaking, especially pronunciation, was as a saviour to me
as I was struggling immensely with the pronunciation of those difficult
sounds, like ‘th’ and ‘r’ for example. Since then I have read various articles
and books referring to different aspects of Global English and my interest in
the topic developed in all of those aspects. However there is a side of this
topic, which is left out of the question. And this is how English was seen as
language of freedom in the seventies and eighties by many people living
under the Communist regime. I, myself was one of those people, absorbed
and brought up with western music, although I was much too young to fully
appreciate the value of the political freedom.

Nowadays, the spread of the English language and American popular culture
are often referred to as a form of cultural imperialism, and English is often
labeled as a language terminator. But there was a time when the English
language and Anglo-American culture were praised and perceived as a
symbol of freedom and democracy. The aim of my paper will be to produce
a study about the power of the idea and image of the West as it was in East
Europe before the transformations of 1989 and even after that. My objective
is to tell the story of what rock and roll meant to people who were trapped in
the East for the wrong reasons. I am going to look at the English language as
a bearer of 'liberal' culture - part of a package that included pop music, radio,
free market values, TV, films, and a certain version of internationalism/
globalisation. This was also a source of generational opposition, as western
culture certainly was in Eastern Europe in the seventies and eighties.
History

The globalization of the English language initially started at the end of the
19th Century with the invention of the telegraph, the device which first
connected the world. Another very important factor is that ‘language goes
where power goes. There has been some suspicion around the world of the
English speaking powers and their motives for the globalization of English’
(Bragg, n.d.). The reason why English has been associated with world
powers is that for the past two centuries the British Empire followed by the
American Empire had been colonising the world, imposing their language on
the colonised populations. Nevertheless, the colonization did not last for
long and it cannot be referred as a main factor for the globalization of the
language, but it was followed by the Western industrial revolution. The
advancement of the economics at that time is of great significance for the
popularity of the language. Lately, English gradually developed into the
language of business, administration and free trade.

However, this was certainly not the case in Eastern Europe. 1945, the end of
the World War II, is a dividing line between the East and the West, when the
Iron Curtain descended across the Continent. East European countries were
Communist states and were under the political influence of the Soviet
Union. To the east of the Iron Curtain, the states developed their own
international economic and military alliances. The Communist governments
adopted an Anti-American ideology and everything western was outlawed.
For forty years the Communist dictatorship of the Eastern block seemed
impenetrable. However, the repression led to mass resistance and people
were secretly searching for signals from radio Free Europe and The Voice of
America, some managed to smuggle goods from the West and records of
Western music. That was the time when English language and everything
Western represented freedom for those living on the eastern side of the Iron
Curtain.

‘When we were listening to the radio, we were part of the free world, if only
for a few moments, whether the system we lived under liked it or not. Rock
and roll was the Internet of the '60s and early '70s. It was the carrier of the
message of freedom…’

Simonyi (2003), Hungarian Ambassador

References:

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

Jenkins, J. (2001). The Phonology of English as an International Language.

Oxford: Oxford University Press

Bragg, M. (n.d.), Whose English Is It, Anyway?, BBC,

http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-
bin/search/results.pl?uri=%2Fworldservice%2F&q=english+and+globalizati
on&edition=i,

Hobson, N. (2005) The Globalization Of English,

http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-
20050307TheGlobalizationofEnglish.html

Hurst, R. (n.d.) How Many People Use Internet and What Do They Use it
For, http://www.bcentral.co.uk/business-
information/marketing/ebusiness/how-many-people-use-the-internet-what-
do-they-use

[The writer is associated with Press For Peace (PFP) as Researcher.]