There’s hard (coercive, force-based) power and soft (cultural, cajoling) power. Most empires over time have deployed both. The Brits and the French were quite good at both (the French haven’t quite given up yet). The Russians gave it quite a run (Putin hasn’t given up yet either). The US extended its reach beyond its shores starting at the end of the 19C, picking up the torch from the British across the 20C. Now, we’re fading as well on most fronts as the Chinese seek to pick up from where they dropped the ball six hundred years ago. But this essay isn’t about the number of aircraft carriers or economic clout, it’s about language.
I guess we’ll have to call it the “English Empire” to distinguish it from the formal/political versions run by His/Her Majesty’s Government from London (British) or the one steered from Washington and New York (American). It is, in a sense, a combination and continuation of both. If you’ve ever tried to pick up a few words in Mandarin, you’ll know our Mother Tongue gives us a big leg up (sorry for the somatic metaphor mixing!) in the inter-imperial competition of the 21C.
There’s evidence for it everywhere, but you have to look for it.
My favorite type of streaming video is foreign detective shows. My wife loves it when she walks by my room to hear fast-paced dialogue (when there are subtitles, I usually run the show at 1.5x normal speed) from wherever. They’re a great window into other cultures—French, German, Italian, Belgian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, Turkish, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Australian, etc.—and one thing they show is how much the English language permeates these other cultures.
These are not “Made for Netflix” shows; they are made for their local market. So, they depict not only (more-or-less) accurate foreign attitudes towards the US (characterizing us as crude, simplistic, materialistic, geopolitically domineering), but also how US culture and the English language appear in these various cultures around the world.
It’s quite remarkable how many people speak English; and I’m talking ordinary folks: cops, merchants, kids; not just academics and elites. This is not a big surprise for NW Europe for multiple reasons, but it shows up everywhere. Multiple characters are depicted as having some working knowledge of English. Sometimes they have to interact with a foreigner, but more often they use English slang. Both the users and the jargon skew a bit to the younger side, but hardly exclusively. The implication is that they learn it in school as well as from being sucked up into the (mostly-English-speaking) internet-driven global pop culture.
Next, there are the signs and documents. Street signs, subway signs, advertisements, etc. Some portion of that signage reflects a desire to help visiting Americans/Brits, but there aren’t that many of us. Rather, it’s s signal that globally, a relatively high proportion of travelers speak English, even if it’s not their native language. Beyond that, there’s the semi-ubiquitous presence of US multinational companies, particularly those focused on food, fashion, and culture. Again, it’s not just companies and organizations that are based in English-speaking countries, but those that use English as their baseline language for reaching the largest number of global consumers.
Another aspect was illustrated by a piece in the NYT this summer about the increasing distribution of English-language novels and other books across Europe and elsewhere. It’s partly based on culture (social media shows the English version of books and movies), partly the commonality of English speakers in other countries, and partly the leveraging of scale economies (since translations into globally less popular languages can get relatively expensive).
From a geopolitical competition perspective, this is a good thing for the Anglo-capitalist side. Chinese is the only real competitor and it’s hard to learn, not used much outside direct interactions with Chinese people and organizations, and not nearly as popular from a global cultural perspective (we have Disney, Harry Potter, and LeBron James on our side!). The Chinese know this and they’re pushing, but we have a big head start.
Beyond the matter of direct competition, this globalizing cultural infiltration can’t have but important long-term effects. It’s not just that the world will pay more attention to us, but that they will subtly and ineluctably start to think more like us. There’s an essential linkage between language and psychology. Words, of course, have different meanings and flavorings, they’re used in different frequencies and contexts, and shade how we think about food, family, business and life. I have spoken often of the historical differences of mentalité, but the same applies across contemporary cultures. The average Italian or Yiddish or Arabic-speaker sees the world differently than the average English or Chinese-speaker. Whether the world will hang around long enough for these differences to manifest, we’ll just have to see.
Similarly, we will just have to see how much of the reverse osmosis is going on. Globalization always runs both ways. The Brits have curry shops everywhere thanks to their invasion of India. We have bodegas in most major cities and everyone speaks a few works at least of food-focused foreign language, even here in the most linguistically provincial country on the planet.
I guess we’ll have to call it the “English Empire” to distinguish it from the formal/political versions run by His/Her Majesty’s Government from London (British) or the one steered from Washington and New York (American). It is, in a sense, a combination and continuation of both. If you’ve ever tried to pick up a few words in Mandarin, you’ll know our Mother Tongue gives us a big leg up (sorry for the somatic metaphor mixing!) in the inter-imperial competition of the 21C.
There’s evidence for it everywhere, but you have to look for it.
My favorite type of streaming video is foreign detective shows. My wife loves it when she walks by my room to hear fast-paced dialogue (when there are subtitles, I usually run the show at 1.5x normal speed) from wherever. They’re a great window into other cultures—French, German, Italian, Belgian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, Turkish, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Australian, etc.—and one thing they show is how much the English language permeates these other cultures.
These are not “Made for Netflix” shows; they are made for their local market. So, they depict not only (more-or-less) accurate foreign attitudes towards the US (characterizing us as crude, simplistic, materialistic, geopolitically domineering), but also how US culture and the English language appear in these various cultures around the world.
It’s quite remarkable how many people speak English; and I’m talking ordinary folks: cops, merchants, kids; not just academics and elites. This is not a big surprise for NW Europe for multiple reasons, but it shows up everywhere. Multiple characters are depicted as having some working knowledge of English. Sometimes they have to interact with a foreigner, but more often they use English slang. Both the users and the jargon skew a bit to the younger side, but hardly exclusively. The implication is that they learn it in school as well as from being sucked up into the (mostly-English-speaking) internet-driven global pop culture.
Next, there are the signs and documents. Street signs, subway signs, advertisements, etc. Some portion of that signage reflects a desire to help visiting Americans/Brits, but there aren’t that many of us. Rather, it’s s signal that globally, a relatively high proportion of travelers speak English, even if it’s not their native language. Beyond that, there’s the semi-ubiquitous presence of US multinational companies, particularly those focused on food, fashion, and culture. Again, it’s not just companies and organizations that are based in English-speaking countries, but those that use English as their baseline language for reaching the largest number of global consumers.
Another aspect was illustrated by a piece in the NYT this summer about the increasing distribution of English-language novels and other books across Europe and elsewhere. It’s partly based on culture (social media shows the English version of books and movies), partly the commonality of English speakers in other countries, and partly the leveraging of scale economies (since translations into globally less popular languages can get relatively expensive).
From a geopolitical competition perspective, this is a good thing for the Anglo-capitalist side. Chinese is the only real competitor and it’s hard to learn, not used much outside direct interactions with Chinese people and organizations, and not nearly as popular from a global cultural perspective (we have Disney, Harry Potter, and LeBron James on our side!). The Chinese know this and they’re pushing, but we have a big head start.
Beyond the matter of direct competition, this globalizing cultural infiltration can’t have but important long-term effects. It’s not just that the world will pay more attention to us, but that they will subtly and ineluctably start to think more like us. There’s an essential linkage between language and psychology. Words, of course, have different meanings and flavorings, they’re used in different frequencies and contexts, and shade how we think about food, family, business and life. I have spoken often of the historical differences of mentalité, but the same applies across contemporary cultures. The average Italian or Yiddish or Arabic-speaker sees the world differently than the average English or Chinese-speaker. Whether the world will hang around long enough for these differences to manifest, we’ll just have to see.
Similarly, we will just have to see how much of the reverse osmosis is going on. Globalization always runs both ways. The Brits have curry shops everywhere thanks to their invasion of India. We have bodegas in most major cities and everyone speaks a few works at least of food-focused foreign language, even here in the most linguistically provincial country on the planet.
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