Sunday 2:15 - 3:05 PM
TTI 306/7
Good Enough English: What Will Our Grandchildren Speak
Giles Slade
Honam University, Korea
With the global proliferation of EFL and ESL speakers, English is developing
simplified characteristics mirroring those of late Latin before it fragmented
into the romantic languages. More important, however, is the laissez faire
attitude towards frequent but small errors which complicate communication
but which do not prevent it. My paper will address issues like foreign
speaker avoidance behaviors visible in e-mail and web records of EFL/ESL
writers. My claim is that the growing tolerance of English language errors
marks the existence and acceptance of a new ideological separation between
skilled English use and successful communication. Abstract standards
of good usage, in other words, no longer apply to English in a global and
commercial context. Criteria of exigency and intelligibility have replaced
those of elegance and expertise.
With such global acceptance of good enough English, a period of intense
linguistic change has begun. My main claim is that in this period the transformation
of English and of the emergence of Weblish will be more rapid than that
of any other period of change in history, since it is both enabled and
sustained by the new powerful communication technologies.
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