The availability and easy access to innovative technology such as computers, mobile phones, internet, computer games, cartoons, comics, movies, and open-source study materials like Open Educational Resources (OER) are influencing factors for making English a lingua franca around the globe. These are also responsible for the rise of English with various pronunciations. The situation is more comparable with English in fifteenth century when there was the start of Caxton printing press. David Crystal was saying at a talk show in 2013, "Now when new technology comes along it influences language, it has to. Technology always has influenced language quite dramatically, think of the technologies of the past. Printing arrives in the 15th century, suddenly we have new varieties of English that were not there before." Only difference is that in the fifteenth century, the printing press brought changes inside England and in the twentieth century, the impact was the global.
Sometimes learning a new programming language, a new app, a new game is a point of reviewing or embracing English. The arrival of new technology Immediately makes people curious. They tend to verify, to participate and to use the new innovative system because the impulse is to know what is new in the innovation. They usually must consult the instruction manuals to know how to operate it. Of course, an instruction may come with many other languages. However, it is observable when a person does not have to new technology through their mother tongue, s/he usually seeks the pathway to know the new technology through English.
People use almost all technologies in English. In a sense, new technology helps or has been assisting to ensure in making English closer to the people of Global South countries. English keeps its path inseparable from those people. The rise of English studies has been observed in Japan, China, Bangladesh since the 1990s. People in those countries in the age of information technology are simultaneously opposing and emphasizing English studies.
Comments