Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Rosemary Salomone, "The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Description: Spoken by a quarter of the world's population, English is today's lingua franca--its common tongue. The language of business, popular media, and international politics, English has become commodified for its economic value and increasingly detached from any particular nation. This meteoric "rise of English" has many obvious benefits to communication. Tourists can travel abroad with greater ease. Political leaders can directly engage their counterparts. Researchers can collaborate with foreign colleagues. Business interests can flourish in the global economy.But the rise of English has very real downsides at times generating intense legal conflicts. In Europe, imperatives of...