As You Like It
The Future of the English Language
This work examines the implications of current trends in the English Language for policy agendas. Run in association with Cambridge Assessment, and ESOL Examinations at the University of Cambridge, it will identify not only areas in which policy makers will have to change to meet the challenges posed by the emergence of variants of English - Englishes - but also how government and others can work with providers to take advantage of the many opportunites that 'Englishes' present...
Democtionary
at 12:23pm on Thursday, 15th March 2007
We've just launched the pamphlet As You Like It: Catching up in an age of global English. You can download a pdf here. In it, we argue that Engish has developed around the world into something called 'global Engish' - which is best described as a family of language rather than one, single language with roots in one particular space.
There are lots of different forms spoken around the world, for lots of different purposes - people use English to communicate for business; some have taken on the language and developed national or regional variants such as Singlish, often embodying nationalistic or identity-based responses to the presence of English.
We recommend in the pamphlet that we should use the open nature of the Internet to track these developments with additions, entries and comments from people describing the words they use, where, and what they mean. Using 'tagging' we could track the links and associations amongst different forms, and using the geographical information track trends over time. We envisage a map of how the language is developing across the world, called Democtionary.org, that could complement dictionaries designed to record particular standards.
We're developing this idea into reality over the next months - if you're interested and / or would like to help out, drop us a line at englishlanguage@demos.co.uk.
There are lots of different forms spoken around the world, for lots of different purposes - people use English to communicate for business; some have taken on the language and developed national or regional variants such as Singlish, often embodying nationalistic or identity-based responses to the presence of English.
We recommend in the pamphlet that we should use the open nature of the Internet to track these developments with additions, entries and comments from people describing the words they use, where, and what they mean. Using 'tagging' we could track the links and associations amongst different forms, and using the geographical information track trends over time. We envisage a map of how the language is developing across the world, called Democtionary.org, that could complement dictionaries designed to record particular standards.
We're developing this idea into reality over the next months - if you're interested and / or would like to help out, drop us a line at englishlanguage@demos.co.uk.
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