Introduction

The imposition of the colonizers’ language on the natives has been instrumental in the colonial process. In this essay, my aim is to explore how the English language was intrinsic to the expansion of the British Empire and its culture in India and in the African continent. I will also examine two very different attitudes towards the dominant status of English in former African colonies. Furthermore, I want to elaborate on how the current notion of English as a “world language” impacts both our post-colonial society and the language itself.

In order to explain the characteristics of imperialistic language policies, we must first define the concept of ‘imperialism’. Former empires sought to “civilize” the other on the grounds of a supposed moral and intellectual superiority; this was used as an excuse to achieve the political dominion of the territory. Thus, the imposition of the empire’s religion, culture and language primarily served the purpose of expanding the metropole’s power. This aspect of imperialism, the system by which the metropole exerted full political control on its colonies disappeared after the decolonization movements of the mid-twentieth century. But imperialism can also be conceptualized from an economic perspective: the exploitation and control of a country’s resources by a foreign power regardless of whether the country is under its full political control or not (Phillipson, 1992).

Phillipson (1992) provides a tentative definition for English linguistic imperialism: it takes place when ‘the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and the other languages’ (Phillipson, 1992, p. 46). That is, English rules over other minor languages for both material and ideological reasons: more resources are devoted to English than to other languages, and those who are proficient in English enjoy more benefits in society. He also describes English linguistic imperialism as a type of linguicism, the ‘ideologies, structures, and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources […] between groups which are defined on the basis of language’ (Phillipson, 1992, p. 47).

Western European powers understood the importance of language for the expansion of their nations even in the early stages of colonialism. In his Gramática de la lengua castellana, Antonio de Nebrija articulated the idea that language and empire are inseparable entities. With the victory of the colonisers over the natives comes the introduction of the metropole’s laws and language on ‘the barbarous peoples and nations of alien languages’ (Evans and Fernandez, 2018, p. 271). An early example of this linguistic conquest is the British colonization of Ireland. Even though British settlement in the island started in the 12^th century, it was during the reign of the Tudor dynasty in the 16^th century when the British attempted to fully Anglicize the country. Henry VIII was keenly aware of the problems that the existence of several languages in the same country supposed for the creation of a single national cultural identity. Thus, he tried to supress the use of Irish in Ireland with the 1537 ‘Act for the English Order, Habit and Language’. The British colonization of Ireland was significant because it influenced the later colonial experiments of other countries, and of Britain itself.

According to Phillipson (1992), English-speaking countries could be classified in two main groups: core-English speaking countries, where the dominant social group are native speakers of English (i.e. Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia), and periphery-English speaking countries, where we can include those countries in which English has been imposed as a result of colonialism (i.e. India, Nigeria). There are many different attitudes towards the English language within the periphery-English speaking countries. In India, where 462 different languages are estimated to be spoken (Simons et. al., 2018), English was adopted as an official language along with Hindi in 1950 to avoid disputes between Hindi and non-Hindi speaking states. It remains one of the official languages of India up to this day and is the means of communication between non-Hindi speakers and the government.