Looking Back on Predictions of Global English:
Applying Technology Theory to Develop Critical Multilingual Language Awareness
Keywords:
critical multilingual language awareness, global Englishes, nonfiction literature, technological determinismAbstract
The social construction of language norms has become an increasingly important theme at a time when generative AI and other language-based technology proliferate. One theme of the research and pedagogical approach known as critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) seeks to understand the impact of ideology on language learners. This paper shows how an episode from the history of the Internet can promote CMLA. At the end of the 1990s, some journalists, essayists, and scholars writing about the Internet were preoccupied with the idea that technology would cause English to replace other languages worldwide. In this nonfiction literature, these writers’ dramatic predictions about language use were bolstered by the profits of the dot-com boom as well as the fallacy known as technological determinism. Even when computing technology was available to support multiple languages, these authors neglected to consider the cultural capital that underwrote their analyses that supported English as a global language. Insights from the social construction of technology provide a framework for analyzing primary sources that suggest that technology would give English an advantage globally because other languages were incompatible with the technological world. That this prediction was false is evident today, when people can communicate online easily in many languages. More importantly, though, this episode supports CMLA in teaching and writing in practical ways. A more nuanced view of the interaction between technology and society helps writers and educators consider the impact of new technologies.
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