This abstract is for a paper published in the journal World Englishes that examines the ways in which more than 100 American college undergraduates reflect upon their own linguistic privilege vis-a-vis the global hegemony of English. The students reflect as well upon the ways in which being at the center of the global linguistic configuration of power also hurts them inasmuch as it reduces their incentive, and chances, to learn a non-English language. The global hegemony of English is central to American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) as it ensures that while billions of other people around the world learn English, the dominant language in the United States, precisely because billions of others are learning English, very few English-mother tongue speakers in the U.S. learn other languages to any meaningful degree of fluency. Continue reading “American university students and the global hegemony of English”
American, Australian and Slovenian students debate the global hegemony of English
Below is an abstract for a paper that examines the way in which the global hegemony of English privileges Anglo-Americans. The paper is based on a critical textual analysis of online discussion board exchanges about this topic among American, Australian and Slovenian university students. The global hegemony of English is central to American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) because it allows mother tongue speakers of English in the U.S. to get away without learning another language and therefore places a significant linguistic blinder on them. It also causes them to be more inward looking inasmuch as so few English-mother tongue speakers in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, etc. expand their linguistic horizons in any meaningful or deep way. A failure to expand these horizons means, of course — and this is redundant, I know — that their cultural and linguistic horizons are smaller and more inward pointing that members of other language groups all of who pretty much are required to learn English. Continue reading “American, Australian and Slovenian students debate the global hegemony of English”
New Global Music Distribution System, Same Old Linguistic Hegemony? Analyzing English on Spotify
In 2018, I researched the presence of English-language songs in 14 different national Top Weekly Streamed songs lists on Spotify, which was then, and still is, the world’s leading online streaming service. I also analyzed Spotify’s Global Weekly Top Streamed songs list for the presence of English-language songs.
What I found — and I looked across an 18-month period — confirmed, for the most part, that, among other things, on Spotify, there was almost zero presence of non-English language songs on the U.S. and U.K. top weekly streamed songs lists, there was significant presence of English-language songs on the top weekly streamed lists in European countries such as Sweden, Germany and Poland, that there was somewhat less of a presence of English-language songs on several Asian countries’ Spotify lists and, finally, very little presence of English-language pop songs in the Spotify lists from countries in which Spanish is a dominant language such as Spain and Argentina.
The significant presence of English-language pop songs on Spotify charts in diverse countries ranging from Sweden to Poland to Germany to Japan and the near total lack of non-English language songs on the U.S. and UK Spotify charts show cultural and linguistic imperialism are not outmoded nor invalid. Indeed, a cultural and linguistic imperialism perspective reveals much about the cultural and linguistic hierarchies and inequities that characterize contemporary global cultural and linguistic configurations of power