I don't post very much on this blog, but I don't want my posting on this new idea to be misconstrued as an idea I think is important or worthwhile: I just want to make note of it, in the moment, because it is just the kind of ridiculously shallow analysis that passes for cultural criticism in Anglo American media. Like Malcolm Gladwell's little gems or Thomas Friedman's grand pronouncements, the idea of "Globish" has the potential to be a hot word for a few minutes in the Western media (I can already see the little taglines on CNN or MSNBC "Is there a global version of English? The Globish question.") But it is one of the more inane questions I've heard people ask and it only demonstrates the basic insularity of these people. So the poor and oppressed of the world have figured out that the Western media can't be bothered to translate their protest signs? And business people in Japan and Korea have figured out that, because they both have to learn English to talk to the provencial US people they do business with, they can also find a common language between the two of them. So what? Why should we celebrate the fact that the rest of the world has figured out it is largely at the mercy of a dumb, hulking carcass crawling with insular uneducated maggots? And don't even get me started on the historical analysis...English was most certainly not the global language of the 19th century. All in all, reading this just makes me sigh: it is just another set of superficial analyses that we'll have to discuss as relevant--likely even in relation to the work of some of our trendier colleagues--even though it does very little to explain or even understand the phenomena in question or its basic context. Why do white guys of a certain age think they are being smart when they come up with crap like this?
*sigh*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/29/globish-international-language
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/apr/06/everyone-talking-globish-robert-mccrum
http://www.amazon.com/Globish-English-Language-Became-Worlds/dp/0393062554/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270570386&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Globish-World-Over-Jean-Paul-Nerrière/dp/0578028794/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270570386&sr=8-2
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2 comments:
you ask: "Why do white guys of a certain age think they are being smart when they come up with crap like this?"
because they live in a "dumb, hulking carcass crawling with insular uneducated maggots?"
:)
It would seem reasonable that one would follow the other I suppose: maybe I have erred on the side of the former being somewhat reflexive about the latter and therefore trying to avoid it, but that is obviously too generous.
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