In Julie Traves’s essay “The Church of Please and Thank You,” she stresses the connection between language and culture and insists that students of English as a foreign language (EFL) are absorbing Western values as they learn English, comparing EFL teachers to Christian missionaries who attempt to convert others to their value system. Traves uses the term “linguistic imperialism” (174:7) to emphasize the colonizing power of English, and she advocates for a new way of teaching English so that it can become a bridge between cultures rather than a dominant force (178:25).
For this blog response, I would like you to write a coherent paragraph-length response (at least 125 words) in which you thoughtfully respond to the following questions: Do you agree with Traves that “English has irrevocably changed and acculturated the world already” through linguistic imperialism (179:30)? Do you view English as a culturally colonizing force that is invading and absorbing other cultures, including your own native culture? Why or why not?
Follow the “Blog Response Guidelines” posted on BB > Assignments > Glob. HW Assignments and post your response in the “Leave a Reply” section below before class time on Thursday, 2/6.
The Global University (Spring 2020) 
I agree with the statement that English has a huge and irreplaceable impact on the world. People from different counties all give tacit consent to English for being their international communicating languages. The word “international” means “between nations,” but why does English dominate the international language. Perhaps because the countries that speak English as their native languages have superior political and economic influence, people nowadays cannot live without English. For example, the programming language is composed of signs and the English alphabet, so wherever programmers must deal with English letters every day. In my own country, almost every product displaced in stores has its English name next to Chinese to give buyers the impression that “the products have the high-qualified standard as those sold abroad.” I do think English has intervened in other cultures’ development and heritage. One of my friends from Hongkong speaks English better than Chinese, and she even doesn’t familiar with some simple connotations in Chinese. She told me that Hongkong starts practice English as the everyday language from middle schools, so she only learns Chinese for six-year. The rest 12 years of her English-speaking experience take her away from being a traditional Hongkong people.
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I agree with your point that English has the power to intervene in other cultures’ development and heritage. I also find that in China, even when bus reports the sites or some notes, it will translate the contents in English after speaking in Chinese. So it is clear that English is very popular and used commonly in a foreign country which has totally different native language. Moreover, the reason you provided for why English dominates the world languages is convinced. Since the English is used around the world, it seems to be a bridge to connect different groups of people, which help them communicate with each other. In fact, I totally agree with you that people nowadays can’t live without English, especially when we consider the economy effect, such as international trade.
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I partly agree with your idea. Yes, it is absolutelt true that English is popping up even in China, a country whose language does not even use alphabet. However, we should not ignore the fact that more foreigners – when I say foreigner I mean Americans and other people from non-Chinese countries since I am from China – are visiting China and some of them even plan to move into China. These English names in the subway station, on the product package, can make their lives in China much easier.
I cannot approve the way these Hong Kong schools teach students. Native language is important, and it can reflect the value and culture of your ancestors. Even if your English is better than your Cantonese (or mandarin), you are still a Chinese. It will cause trouble with the recognition of your identity, and lead to the loss of, as you said, “other culture’s developement and heritage.”
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You are right to query if HongKong schools only use English in school. My friend told me that some schools teaches Cantonese as well, but most good schools in HongKong practice English as their daily language. In my opinion, the education resources ought to be equal, and should not have such difference.
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I do agree with your statement that English has a huge impact on the world. I think the reason for it is that English is easier to learn, and many countries have English as their first language. However, I don’t agree with you that English has intervened with other cultures. It is true that lots of schools in Hongkong teaches in English, but that doesn’t mean its culture has been intervened. I think culture is very difficult to intervene just by encouraging people to learn a new language. In the end, culture is built by people, and it will take generations to change the culture in one place. The most successful way to intervene in a culture is by colonizing, and it requires a large amount of immigrants to move to a new place and spread their culture. It will also require the locals to accept other values and choose to pass it on. There are many aspects of culture and some of them have nothing to do with language, such as food, customs and values. People’s knowledge of English has nothing to do with those aspects. It would be very horrifying if a language can single handedly change a culture.
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I agree with Leo’s claim that English could not intervene with other cultures. Learning English is merely to communicate and deliver one’s thoughts and feelings to other people, not learn and apply other cultures’. Yet I disagree with his argument that culture is able to intervene if vast amount of people immigrate to other countries. United States is such a melting pot that having a lot of races of diverse cultural backgrounds. Although they have many immigrants and diverse racial people, they do not have uniform culture but form different, new culture.
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I agree with Traves’ point that English has already changed the world through linguistic imperialism. For example, she uses the instance of Canadian Michael Schellenberg, who loves Japanese culture but also transforms his culture which opposes to Japanese grain. And she shows the trend that speakers of different languages begin to learn English and western culture, while this popularity is similar as British using English to govern Indians. Therefore, English is utilized as a tool to acculturated the world. Moreover, in my opinion, English is a culturally colonizing power which has invade my own culture. One of the dominant factor is that as we learn English, we not only view it as a tool to communicate with others, but also we have to learn the manner and western values in this language. From the studying process, we have to accept the new ideas in the culture represented by English, and try to understand them so that we could understand the thinking way of western people better. However, it is unavoidable that some ideas opposed to western way of thoughts in our own culture will suffer impact. For instance, contrary to the modest tradition in Chinese culture, the western culture acknowledges the importance of express own values.
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In Julie Traves’s essay “The Church of Please and Thank You,” she lists a lot of examples to support her argument that English has become a linguistic imperialism that it has already invaded and annex other languages and cultures. In my personal opinion, English is not that aggressive and powerful around the world and its cultures. To me, English does have a strong power to enable people from all over the world to communicate with each other and connect them together. However, it does not mean that English can easily invade other cultures by being a bond of languages. Also, most of the people of different cultures still speak their native languages and place English as a second language. And most importantly, a foreign language cannot express many particular meanings of other languages of their own culture. To my culture, I think there is no possibility for any foreign languages including English to replace my own native language, Chinese for having such a long history and cultural heritage. Therefore, I find English a great bond and connection of people and cultures instead of naming it a invasive linguistic imperialism.
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I agree and admire your strong culture identity. However, I do think English has the power to invade people’s own culture, in indirect ways. Maybe those ways are so indirect, it is not easy to find out. I think if you want to learn a language better, you have to learn its context, in other words, the culture behands it. Hence, the language just inserts the culture inside your mind.
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I agree with Traces that “English has irrevocably changed and acculturated the world already.“ Because countries that use English as a first language are mostly “affluent and developing nations,” indicating they hold major industries around the world, it is necessity to learn and speak in English. In my personal experience, I decided to study in U.S. because what I desire as a future career – advertising – is well developed and has the biggest market in here, U.S. As Traves addressed and referred to my experience, English has become an important, main factor to enter “global economy” and chance to realize someone’s future career. Along with career, not only learning and expanding the knowledge on one’s interests, but English has become a competitive advantage to getting a job, like Kathy Lee. Moreover, English become a standard to measure the people’s intelligence. In 2010, South Korean reporters could not ask any questions to President Barak Obama after his closing speech at the G20 Seoul Summit because their English was not fluent. Upon that, many countries condemned to South Korea about intelligence and education level just because they did not ask any question on the summit. Likewise, English plays an important role to measure one’s ability, intelligence, and in further job searching.
I partially agree English has a culturally colonizing force that is invading other cultures. Because I believe language has a “cultural connotation,“ it is compelled to look at English culture anyway. However, to be a “native English speaker” would have a limitation because core value on culture could not be diluted. Although I have studied English since I was in primary school, I still do not look or speak like a “native.”
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I totally agree with your point that English provides more future opportunities and acts as a standard of ability. To be honest, I’m quite shock when I read the example of 2010 summit and feel sorry for what happened. I can’t believe English has reached such importance role. In fact, the reason I come to study in the U.S is the same as yours for better educational resources. We can’t deny that English plays a crucial role in many careers and majors. However, I think that the situation of looking-highly-on English will change in the future. Indeed, in China, many companies will make clear requirement that employees need to reach a high English level. And most Chinese children start to learn English in kindergarden. But right now, people have noticed that English learning outweights first language learning and governments starts to change that situation by lowering English scores and increasing first language scores in University Enterance Exam in China. It’s kind of sad that seeing other language has higher status than our mother tongues. But I believe situation can be changed and history is fair.
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I agree with Traves’s statement that “English has irrevocably changed and acculturated the world already” through linguistic imperialism (179:30). I think English is invading and absorbing our culture including my country. I am from China, and kids in china are encouraged to learn English when they are very young. Parents think their kids will have brighter future to speak English fluently as soon as possible. On the other hand, young people in China behave more western than their parents. For example, young people like eating bread and milk for breakfast but their parents’ generation like having traditional Chinese breakfast. The more serious problem is that young people in China behave more like westerners, they accept the American style of thinking and living, which makes huge difference with traditional Chinese culture.
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As someone who enjoys learning languages a lot, I do not agree with her claim that English is a culturally colonizing force. It is true that when we are learning English, we are also absorbing western culture: In China, we use “Bye-bye” as farewells. In America, people say “have a good one”. I think “have a good one” is better since it contains best wishes inside. However, Chinese also has its own beauty, the numerous characters we are using definitely reflects the rich culture.
We should embrace different cultures with an open mind and appreciation. However, it is important to bear in mind that learning other languages necessarily means we should forget our own culture or think it is inferior to others, even the language we are learning is the language spoken by the most people across the world. Mastering more languages will give you a new perspective of the world, as well as more opportunities to know more groups of people and having a broader job market.
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Each language indeed has its beauty that we should be glad to embrace, but we should not ignore English’s overwhelming influence over the world. Since the USA has the most advanced academic achievement and techs, America attracts a lot of elites and scholars from different places. These visiting scholars are forced to learn and read documents and essays in English, which is not their primary language. Moreover, they are required to publish papers in English to get recognition in the world’s academic forum. Don’t you think it is kind of wasting time and lowering efficiency?
If English is not hegemonic, there may have more research progress done. Take my father as an example. When he was studying his doctor’s degree, he told me that he suffered a lot from the language barrier since his English is not good. The poor English made him read slower and write slower. Thus, I think the leading role of English does cause some troubles for people.
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I do not agree with Juile Traves opinion and I don’t view English as a culturally colonizing force and it absorbs other cultures. In Traves’s essay, she gives lots of examples where English teachers can’t control themself to spread American culture and students think learning English culture is essential to the process of learning the language. However, I don’t think her concerns will become reality. First of all, even English is the most popular language in the world and many schools will have their students learn English as a second language, but school won’t lecture them about English culture. Also, most students study English back home, so they would be surrounded with their own culture. If we change a perspective we will see how Traves’s point doesn’t make sense. Lots of kids in America will learn a second language, most likely Spanish or French; but not a lot of them will learn about their culture. Rest of the world learns English just like how kids learn Spanish in America. In my perspective, there are two types of learning English. One is where students treat English as a skill, learn how to speak, listen, read and write; becoming fluent is not their goal, they learn the basics so it will come in handy when they need it. They are most likely not gonna study or live abroad, might work at a English base company but they don’t need to understand the culture. Others want to be fluent in English, they want to study or live aboard, so they will intentionally to learn and understand the culture.
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In my opinion, English indeed changes the world with its powerful impact but not in an irrevocable way. The cultures invaded by English never die, they just hibernate as various forms other than speaking, like books, movies, art pieces, costumes, or architecture. When English is less impactful or aggressive, people will pick up and develop their culture again. Moreover, English influences other cultures in a variety of ways. It is like a key for other language speakers to know American / English cultures. For example, my English asked me to watch American movies, like Marvel comics, without subtitles to train my listening skills. During watching them, I desired to be a superhero to save the world. In this way, American culture about superhero came to my mind and influenced my view of life and values.
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I do agree with your opinion about how English influence your life in various ways. But I don’t think that English will become less impactful, at least in recent few decades. Nowadays, as a international common language, English becomes more and more important in everywhere. For international students, English is a necessary tool for communicating with others. For those who choose to stay in their own country are making efforts to improve their English ability, because English is almost a required skill in working environment. For instance, a trade company will give preference to those who are good at English when recruiting. Also, for now, with the increased popularization of English, more people are willing to get touch with foreign culture. But they still maintain their own culture while being inclusive to others, which means that the popularization of English could not result in culture colonization, just allowing peoples’ life to be more diversified.
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I agree with your point that English did have a powerful impact on Westernizing the world but not irrevocably. Certainly, English and American culture had significantly influenced how the world it is now, especially in terms of globalization. Like the example you mentioned–Marvel comics and movies–, a lot of medias throughout the world including movies and dramas are dominated by those of the US. This definitely proves that American culture did spread far and wide historically. However, as you said, as the people with their culture have realized the value of their original cultures more and more recently, the different cultures that have been hidden from Western culture are emerging. One example is from the most recent Oscar Award: the movie “Parasite” by directer Bong, which contains full of South Korean culture, received four Oscar Awards including the best pictures as a first non-English film in history!
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I agree with your opinion that English affects the world through various ways. However, it is beneficial to absorb knowledge from other cultures. As the world becomes more globalized, it is hard to avoid culture invasion. Even though people could not choose English, there is still other culture and lanuguage to be chosen. What people should do is to accpet the fact that there might be one mainstreaming languge. Meanwhile, they should absorb what they need and remove those harmful things. Setting up relative rules could be helpful to local cultures and languges.
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In the essay “The Church of Please and Thank You”, the author Julie Traves mentions that English is a tool to invade the foreign speaker’s culture. I agree with Traves’s idea of linguistic imperialism. Due to lecturer Diane Pecorari’s words that you have to learn culture to better speak English and Lee’s concern that the culture differences will become less if everyone speaks English in the world, English does have power to integrate and affect foreign learners’ culture identity indirectly. I think English is trying to invade and absorb other cultures, but it is not strong enough to become a colonizing force. Take me as an example. I learn English because I need to study aboard and want to perform better in the university. When I study English, I find out that the culture attaching to English influences my mind and interest. However, I have the ability to find out which culture is positive and helpful and absorb it intentionally. Hence, I think the English doesn’t have the power of colonization.
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After World War I, World War II and rising of America, English apparently becomes dominant. I agree with Traves that English has changed the world. Most people in developed countries take English as their first language or at least European have more advantages to learn English than others because of similarity of language families. Indeed, most technology and innovation come from those country and it’s inevitable for people to think English is a necessary requirement to have a better life. Also I realize that America really does a good job on its culture output, like songs, movies, TV series, which make mass public, including me, can naturally connect English and better future with America. In Traves’s essay, she mentions about colonizing India by English in the history, which still leaves profound effect in India society, just as Sharma’s essay pointing out. An Indian educative movie, Hindi Medium, I saw exactly reveals that phenomenon. Middle-class parents try very hard to let their child go to English-speaking private school and their child is mocked by other children who speak English. I think throughout the history only strongest sets the rules. Therefore, right now, we have to admit that America has that power to make English dominant. But that may exist for the past and future decades, not forever. Currently, most developing countries are still in the fetish of learning English because we have to follow world-wide economic and politic rules made by English-speaking countries. Like in China, all undergraduate students have to pass the English level test in order to graduate. However, countries like China, India and Japan start to have stronger voices in the world. In the future, fetish of learning English will decrease, because world patter will become from mono-power (U.S) to multilateral powers.
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I totally agree with your statement that English has changed the world. Like you said, America does a good job on its culture output. Hollywood plays an important role in spreading English language and western culture. Hollywood likes heroes, it creates a lot of movies of heroes like Rambo, Avengers and so on. Not only do audience all around the world listen to English conversation in movies, they are also affected by the idea that the muscular male is the sexiest. As a result, more and more male in the world begin to build their muscles in order to accommodate western aesthetic view. Also you talked about the British colony. India is one of the biggest British colony in Asia, and Hong Kong is also an essential one. After Hong Kong was colonized by Britain, British government forced citizens to learn English. As generation passed by, Hong Kong’s culture has influenced by western culture. Hong Kong citizens think and talk like westerners, their restaurant is more western than before, also the cantonese spoke in Hong Kong consists a lot of English words. Currently in China, parents are willing to let their children learn English because English can provide them with more opportunities. So, the new generations in China are influenced by western culture via learning English. We celebrate western festival like Christmas, eat western food and sometimes think like and behave like Westerners, these are very different from our previous generation.
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Nowadays, we do witness the popularization of English around the whole world, as the article mentions that 380 million people use English as the first language and 350 to 500 million speakers of English use it as a foreign language and the number is still increasing. However, it doesn’t mean “imperialism”. People learn to speak English, which is the international language to better blend in this global society. For instance, people need to be fluent in English speaking if they want to be hired in a foreign company or even a local company that corporates with foreign enterprises. Inevitably, English does have an impact on the world, making people’s life more diversified, bringing various cultures to us, and building up connections between individuals. But people just consider English as a tool of communication, rather than letting it be immersed in culture. Schools which are looking for native English speakers to teach students want to give opportunities for their students to experience different cultures rather than just learning to speak a language, which does not mean that we need to become part of the culture but to broaden our horizons. Countries still maintain their own customs while being conclusive to others.
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I agree with most of your opinions that English as a worldwide language is connecting people together as a tool of communication. However, I think it is not only a tool of communication, but also a culture representation of those who use English as their native language and grow in an English environment such as British people and Americans. For those who invent English and make it used until now, English is a precious cultural treasure. And for those who learn English as a second and foreign language, English is a convenient tool to have connection to the world. For example, Shakespeare wrote many classic works using old English and people who learn English as a foreign language is able to understand them. It is also a kind of cultural communication.
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I agree with your idea that English is now being used as a tool for communication between different countries since it is spoken to many countries around the world. However, I believe that nowadays due to fast advancing technology, people tend to accept and respect other language and not persisting English as the only way to communicate. For example, few days ago, Korean Movie “Parasite” has won 6 Academy Movie Awards. Even though the movie was covered in Korean, people enjoyed the message and story with subtitles. Therefore, I believe people tends to favor other’s cultures and necessity of English is getting lower due to the limitation between different languages are getting lesser
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I agree with agree with Traves idea of “English has irrevocably changed and acculturated the world already”. From Julie Traves’ “The Church of Please and Thank You,” Traves describes the spread of western culture as “linguistic imperialism”. Although different countries have their own words, one thing we have common is that English connects all people around the world. Western culture infiltrates in many different countries. In Asia, you can find McDonald’s everywhere. It is hard to say that Western culture and English language colonize another world, but it is obvious that they have a huge influence to their native cultures. In my country Korea, all the Basketball players or Baseball players admire NBA and MLB. It is really hard to find any athlete who does not have any Nike, Adidas, or Under armour brand sports utilities. The influence of Pop culture also made most of K-pop singers using English in their lyrics of the songs. I personally agree with Traves’ opinion that “English and its cultures irrevocably changed the world.” However, I do not see this too bad because western cultures also brought synergies to people in modern days and improves cultures and sports. Overall, linguistic imperialism of western culture drastically influenced the world.
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I agree with Traves’ argument that English has irrevocably changed and acculturated the world. As Traves mentioned in her essay, a lot of countries including South Korea, China, and Japan think English is a crucial key to living a successful life in such a globalized century. This eagerness to succeed globally led them to learn English as earlier as possible, resulting in losing their own cultures little by little as time goes by. Although plenty of people who learned English as a second language want to protect their culture and are aware of keeping their language is the best way to do so, they irresistibly speak English instead of their own to live, what they think, a “better” life. As a result, linguistic imperialism emerges. Also, as Boroditsky argued through her essay “How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?”, learning a language is not simply gaining knowledge on how to speak or write, but to understand and naturally absorb the culture that language contains. Therefore, if the non-English speakers start to learn English as their second language and use excessively more than their first languages, they are exposed to American or British culture that English contains, eventually losing their own cultures. Traves shows several examples of this issue: one South Korean learning English as a second language draws Uncle Sam extending a fishing line from the US across the Pacific Ocean and says “English is the bait that Americans are using to catch Koreans in their net.” Based on Traves’ examples and explanations, English did have a significant effect on acculturating the world into Western ideas and cultures.
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I am glad you mention that some people learn English to make a better living. I believe people are attracted to learn English due to the benefit it could bring. Thus, I don’t think “imperialism” would be a good word to describe the situation, but yes, English indeed has changed the world irrevocably, since people who wants to protect their native language must learn English to achieve their goal, as you mentioned in your comment. That’s a complex paradox wouldn’t happen if English is not taking the dominating language position. In the later part of your comment, you mention the example of South Korean students and his bait analogy. Similar to what I mentioned in the former part of my comment, American is not one to blame since English-dominating situation is not their intention, although they are benefiting from it .
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I agree that English has changed the world irrevocably, although I don’t think “linguistic imperaism” is the main cause to this situation. Due to the success the US has achieved in the field of technology and finance market, people are attracted to come to the center of advanced technology and finance. Therefore, English becomes an essential tool for people who seek more opportunities and possibilities and spreads across the world. It is more like a natural selection rather than a process affected
by someone. Although the spread of English is just a side effect, it is threating other culture on the earth. English has become a ticket to promising life and bright future (Since those who first learned English and make good use of advanced information did succeed). It changes from a tool to a necessity. In China, English is a mandatory course for children since elementary schools, which seems to be unnecessary since not all of them will use English very often in their later lives. That’s a sign of English culturally affecting the world. If we continue to leave the situation as it is, other languages and culture would be under serious threat.
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I agree with your opinion. You mentioned that one reason causing the popularity of English is the outstanding technology and economy in the world. Since more and more information about technology and science are created by American scientists or researchers, the developers or researchers from other countries have to learn English in order to understand the most cutting-edge science or technologies. For example, I am a developer, who writes code to create programs, have to learn programming languages, like Python and Java, to “communicate” with computers. However, these easily use programming tools are all based on English because they were invented by American developers. I literally should type “print” to tell my computer to print a message. Admittedly, the Engish keywords used for programming is limited, so I do not need to be very fluent in English to write comprehensive codes. However, that is not the whole story. During the process of learning programming, I need to check plenty of documents, online courses, and blogs for beginners to study new tricks of writing a more complicated program or find out how to deal with a great variety of bugs in my codes. Expectedly, English resources are always my first choice because active contributors in English developer communities can provide more clear explanations to solve my problems in the code and abundant teaching resources to improve my coding skills. In conclusion, English serves as an essential key for me to learn to program.
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I do agree with Traves that English has changed the world a lot from various perspectives including culture, business and communication. However, I doubt the popularity of English is a form of “linguistic imperialism”. While western countries playing important roles in twentieth century, English unavoidably has become the most popular and international language under globalization. Admittedly, learning a language requires learners to know cultures and customs behind this language. That’s something will happen no matter what languages they are. Nevertheless, people could choose what to be learned and what to be removed. That is what we call ——“Critical thinking”. Meanwhile, countries and regions can set up relative rules and laws to help protect their own cultures and languages. I believe that English is just merely a language, not a tool to invade other cultures. However, I would like to see that English is absorbing other cultures. It should be encouraged.
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