English as a Global Language - Humor Across the Disciplines - Lecture Slides, Slides of Sociology

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English as a Global

Language

International Road Signs:

English as a Global Language

• ¾ of the World’s Mail
• ½ of the World’s technical & scientific journals
• ½ of all newspapers
• 80 % of the information in computers
• All International Air Pilots
• All International Sea Captains
• Many movies, songs, and much business
• ½ of European business deals
• 7 of the Largest TV Broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC, CBC, CNN, C-Span)
• TV Televangelism of Christianity (McCrum 10)

Varieties of Global English, each

with its Own Peculiar Flavor

• Deutschlish
• Franglish (la langue du Coca-Cola)
• Indian English
• Japlish (man-shon vs. mai-homu,

basaburo, aisu-kurimu, mai-com [my

computer])

• Russlish
• Spanglish (McNeal 10, 38-39)

Competing Global Languages

• Arabic
• Russian (before the breakup of the

Soviet Union in Eastern Europe)

• Mandarin
• Spanish
• French

Education Act of 1870: RP

• Cockney (Cock’s Egg)
• RP (Received Pronunciation)
• Posh (Portside Out Starboard Home)
  • (McCrum 13-21)

Pin-Ups and Yank Magazine

• Every issue of Yank Magazine featured

a pin-up to remind soldiers of the girls

back home.

• A pin-up of Rita Hayworth is said to

have been taped to Fat Boy, the atomic

bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

• Compare this with the movie Dr.

Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Atomic-Bomb Words (McCrum

Atomic Holocaust

Chain Reaction (cf. Vonnegut’s “Ice Nine”)

Fallout

Fireball

Fission

Fusion

Mushroom Cloud Test Site (NOTE: The possibility of nuclear proliferation was one of the causes of Postmodernism & Deconstructionism)

Korean and Vietnam Wars (McCrum 25-

Korean:

Brainwashing

Chopper (Helicopter)

Vietnam: Defoliate Domino Theory Escalation Firefight Friendly Fire Hawks & Doves

Vietnam: Moratorium Napalm Pacification Search and Destroy The Silent Majority (ct. the Vocal Minority)

David Ofgor, Attaché to the US

Embassy in Phnom Penh:

• Talking to journalists:
• “You always write it’s bombing,

bombing, bombing. It’s not bombing.

It’s air support.” (McCrum 27)

Valley-Girl/Surfer-Dude: Bitchin Dude For sure Goady Rad To the max Totally Tubular

Gay Speech: Gay Out of the closet Queer Queen

Women’s Speech: Ms. Letter carrier JOKE: Mannheim Germany  Personheim Gerpersony

Silicon Valley Words (California) (McCrum 30)

Artificial Intelligence

CD (Compact Disk)

DVD (Digital Video Disk)

Data Processing

Disk(ette)

Flash Drive

Hacker

Input

Interface Jump Drive Modem On-Line ROM (Read-Only Memory) Software, Hardware, Wetware Word Processor

Disadvantages of English as a Global Language

• /š/  shoe, sugar, issue, mansion, mission, nation, suspicion, ocean, conscious, chaperon, schist, fuchsia, pshaw (spelled 13 ways).
• Full, reduced, zero grades of consonants
• Long, Short, -r, schwa, and zero grades of vowels
• 15 different vowel phonemes
• (/s/ /š/ /z/ /ž/)
  • (McCrum 42)

Advantages of English as a Global

Language

• Natural Gender, not Grammatical Gender
• Simplified Word Endings resulting in greater flexibility (N  V, etc.)
• Teeming Vocabulary (80 % is not Anglo-Saxon) but rather: Arabic, Celtic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Scandinavian, Spanish, etc. (McCrum 43)