In this course, we will engage with the global spread of
English and the main forces behind the rise of English to a world language,
focusing on the impact of these developments on the acquisition and use of
English today. We will cover major historical, linguistic and socio-political
factors accounting for (ongoing) changes in the English language as well as
exploring current debates in the teaching and learning of global Englishes. In
the 21st century, teaching English has become essentially different from teaching
any other language, given that English has taken on a life of its own in almost
every corner of the world. In addition to global perspectives on users and uses
of English, we will also discuss how English functions to express local culture
and identity in the new varieties of English. Our discussion of English as a global
language will be based on corpus data drawn from the International Corpus of
English (ICE) and various English as a lingua franca (ELF) corpora.
- Dozent/in: Christine Simone Sing