The Rise of English, Rosemary Salomone
The Rise of English, Rosemary Salomone
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The Rise of English
Global Politics and the Power of Language

Author: Rosemary Salomone

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Unabridged: 21 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/31/2022

Synopsis

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.

But the rise of English has very real downsides at times generating intense legal conflicts. In Europe, imperatives of political integration, job mobility, and university rankings compete with pride in national language and heritage as countries like France attempt to curb its spread. In countries like India, South Africa, Morocco, and Rwanda, it has stratified society along lines of English proficiency and devalued commonly spoken languages. In Anglophone countries like the United States and England, English isolates us from the cultural and economic benefits of speaking other languages.

In The Rise of English, Rosemary Salomone offers a commanding view of the unprecedented spread of English and the far-reaching effects it has on global and local politics, economics, media, education, and business.

About Rosemary Salomone

Rosemary Salomone is the Kenneth Wang Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law. Trained as a linguist and a lawyer, she is an internationally recognized expert and commentator on language rights, education law and policy, and comparative equality. An elected member of the American Law Institute and fellow of the American Bar Foundation, she is a former faculty member of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, lecturer in Harvard's Institute for Educational Management, and trustee of the State University of New York. Her books include True American; Same, Different, Equal; Visions of Schooling; and Equal Education Under Law.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Colin

Three stars is maybe a little unfair considering I don’t think I’m really this books target audience. This felt mostly like an academic review of English’s present dominance throughout the world. And while said review contained many interesting factoids and a few rousing arguments about the importan......more

Goodreads review by Ron

At 504 pages this is a detailed and masterful account of the place that the English language has in the world. In the marketplace of languages English has an unassailable lead, a virtually monopoly on the words spoken by so many, especially in our world of globalisation, trade, migration/refugees, c......more

Goodreads review by Jonathan

Rosemary Salomone's "The Rise of English" analyzes the political and educational conflicts that have arisen in countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia due to the increasing prominence of English as a global "lingua franca" of business, politics, and culture. Fluency, or even just proficiency, in Engli......more

Goodreads review by River C. J.

How should I put it. Clumsy data in the latter part, along with constant biased allusion to "toxic" politics ruined the (in my opinion) perfectly depicted and well-put discussion on the "Rise of English" at the opening of the book. The balance is only fleetingly regained in the conclusion chapter.......more

Goodreads review by Chris

I learned about this book from an interview with the author in the Lawfare podcast, which focuses on US national security. In my multiple but brief travels in Europe I've felt the language's spread and wonder what it means to so many young people having transnational views of the world. This book do......more

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