All reactionaries are paper tigers

[qatarperegrine]

One of the main topics of this conference I'm attending is whether the spread of English as a global language is good (yay intercultural communication!) or bad (boo Anglo-American hegemony!).

As I suspect is typical wherever Anglo-American academics gather to criticize Anglo-American hegemony, there has been a fair bit of capitalism-bashing going on. The opening plenary speaker extensively quoted Marx in his talk on whether English is a panacea or a pandemic. The final speaker of the day wondered whether English can ever be culturally neutral, or whether it is too tied to the failing capitalist international regime.

I'm not normally one to sing the praises of rampant unchecked capitalism, but giving a speech on the failure of capitalism in the middle of Hong Kong struck me as a little humorous.

Comments

Global languages

[elkit.livejournal.com]

You (both of you, actually - hi Mary!) might like this book I am reading right now: The Story of French (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312341849/), about how French developed, spread, and continues to evolve, and how it stacks up to English. The two authors are Canadian - one who was raised with English as the first languages, the other a native French speaker.