Good point about Englishes, Khan! I disagree with your teacher 🙂 and I understood the point you are trying to make through ‘your’ English 🙂

There is the spoken kind, which is used as a global language of communication. I see this as a tool that is shared by all and can be adapted as the user feels is appropriate. Street talk, using the pronounciation mechanisms of another language (used to grate on me, but I am getting over it) etc … if it is agreed, understood & makes sense to the parties involved, then go for it – I am just another user (who is lucky enough to have English as his first language).

Also, we have written English. This is designed for more formal or for specific purposes and must operate as a standalone medium (I cannot use para-verbals etc. to help understand your meaning). As such, it has to be standardised to ensure that anyone using it, knows what to expect & what is meant. Controling votes have always gone to the highest stock holder, so the rule makers are mainly British & US English. The fact that US English makes many (common sense) changes to its British varient is reflective that English can encompass change, & as bodies of English users increase (i.e. Australian English), then others gain more of a say in its use.

We wouldn’t tell people they are not speaking ‘correctly’ though, unless this made a difference to their overall communication & conveyed image. In writing though, WYSIWYG; so if standards are conformed to, there is more chance you will be understood (read Burns).

The above does not highlight a change for a lot of inner-circle speakers…
I know a lot of L1 (British) speakers who write in a colloquial/ idiosyncratic/ dialectal manner and I know a lot of L2 users who write better standard English than some of my ‘mother-tongue friends’.
L1 users also have to learn this ‘correct’ form in order to progress academically (e.t.c.) but it doesn’t make them any less fluent or creative in speech and it doesn’t mean the language ‘belongs’ any less to them (I should really include myself in “them” too!).
Language rarely changes drastically through print, it changes through its users speech.
(British) English is a perfect example of such incongruity regarding speech and writing.
I think English DOES belong to anyone who uses it; while it might take a long time (if at all) for writing habits to reflect speech habits, day-to-day, spoken English is constantly evolving (in inner and outer circles).
Take American English (its users having made spelling and vocabulary alterations to the ‘British original’) as an example of proof!
We wouldn’t be talking about American, British, Australian (e.t.c) English if there hadn’t been some evolution and user-changes involved… and we accept all of these as ‘standards’!

Good point Sheila. Music is good example of a context where hybridization, creolization, bricolage, etc. clearly rule, both linguistically and musically, though it would be interesting to see how young people in the linguistic center — U.S., UK, Australia, Canada New Zealand — view, and respond to, K-Pop, etc. sung in English, linguistically speaking. That is, how do they view “foreign” artists singing in English.

Also very interesting to me is the question of to what extent are young monolingual English speakers in the linguistic center aware of, and open to/not open to, consuming music with lyrics in languages other than English. In fact, I’ve regularly discussed this topic and informally surveyed undergraduates on this in my International Communication course. Generally, speaking, there is little awareness among my students of music produced in languages other than English — except among students who are already “global”, in particular those with mulitnational backgrounds. On the other hand, there seems to be a fair amount of interest in the idea of exploring and discovering music sung in languages other than English — but very little knowledge of how to go about finding it, etc.

With time, as a uniform and simple ‘Global English’ takes over, idioms and phrasal verbs (among other things) will fall by the wayside and become the preserve of ‘Native English’, a minority and obsolescent language.

Good article, Christof.

Great point about London! Global cities like London, New York, Tokyo etc. really exist on a separate level from the nation state in which they are located (Saskia Sassen, of course, The Global City); small wonder that language ideologies works differently in these cities than in the rest of the country, too …

I would be interested to know what language researchers from places like Quebec for French and Mexico (or South America) for Spanish have to adhere to for publication – it’s a really good question.

A bit off-topic but as I was reading your post I started thinking music is one realm where it does actually feel like English is owned by ‘everybody’ and there isn’t as much of a hierarchy evident compared to more formal contexts. All kinds of English seems pretty acceptable these days in music. So for example K-Pop artists from Seoul will weave English into songs that become popular all over Asia to millions – and those fans will surely just see that the English language lyrics belong to the Korean singers.