Is English a killer language for the linguistic diversity？.docVIP

Is English a killer language for the linguistic diversity？ 　　摘 要：This essay narrates briefly the rise of English across the global， analyzes the causes which make English turn into the global language and then presents the influence brought by English to various domains. 　　关键词：a global language；a killer language；linguistic diversity 　　中图分类号：G622 文献标识码：B 文章编号：1002-7661（2015）14-003-01 　　English， widely used all around the world for professional and academic purposes， has become a global language in the last fifty years. English was probably the third largest language by number of native speakers after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. However， when combining native and non-native speakers it was probably the most commonly spoken language in the world. Estimates including second language speakers varied greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery was defined and measured. Crystal （2003） calculated that non-native speakers outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. 　　The most influential model of the spread of English is Braj Kachrus model of World English. In this model the diffusion of English is captured in terms of three Concentric Circles of the language： The Inner Circle， the Outer Circle， and the Expanding Circle （Kachru，1992）. 　　The Inner Circle represents the traditional historical and sociolinguistic bases of English in regions where it is now used as a primary language： the United Kingdom， the United States， Australia， New Zealand， Ireland， Malta， Canada and South Africa， and some of Caribbean territories. 　　In the Outer Circle， English is used as the language of laws and administrations and plays a role of the second language in a multilingual society such as Singapore， Hong Kong， India， and other 50 countries or regions. 　　The Expanding Circle includes much of the rest of the worlds population not categorized above such as China， Russia， Japan. The total in this expanding circle is the most difficult to estimat