Globish

Here's an article by Noam Cohen that appeared in the NY Times a while back about the nature of English as a global language: "So English Is Taking Over the Globe. So What." Cohen brings up a couple of interesting points. What stands out to me, especially at the beginning of this course on language, is this quotation:

Globish is not a language, it will never have a literature, it does not aim at conveying a culture, values.

It seems like Mr. Nerrière has a good understanding of just what a language is (and by "good," I mean one I agree with). I imagine that as we get into discussions of what defines language, people are likely to bring up chimp languages and computer languages. But I've always had a problem labeling the utterances of chimps or computers, however communicative they may be, as language. They may be impressively effective at getting certain ideas across ("give me that fruit"; "your disk is full"), but they aren't creative. In order for me to consider a system of communication to be a language, it has to be tied to a culture, and it has to be creative and infinitely flexible. And "Globish" can't meet those requirements.

Of course, neither can any pidgin. But give it a few years, a couple generations, and the pidgin becomes yet another English creole. We know that any impoverished, simplified language will get turned into a full-fledged language, given time and use by humans. What's different here is that Globish is an attempt to crystallize the pidgin by applying prescriptive rules to it before it can become a full language in its own right. And that just isn't something I see happening.