The Issues of Culture in Planned School-Centered Global English Implementation

Poland, ID LLCE2015-130

The paper will make an attempt to discuss various aspects bridging the issues of culture implementation during a planned school course of English as a global language (EGL). While basing on the list of salient features of EGL as presented by Smith (1976) and thoroughly analyzed by Brutt-Griffler (2002), an approach to the issue of culture as an element of EGL will be presented. Having accepted the basic line of reasoning as offered by McKay (2014), who argues that any language seen from the point of view of its application for international communicational purposes must be de-nationalized, the paper makes an attempt to answer the questions concerning the scope of language de-nationalizaton, especially when the culture-as-an-educational-dimension arguments offered by Adaskou, Britten and Fahsi (1990) are to be critically analyzed from the school curriculum stance. It is here where the definition of culture as a cognitive unit (Spradley, 1980) is to be juxtaposed with the expectations emerging from the popular notions of standard English, as presented by Strevens (1983), Quirk (1990) and Widdowson (1994).  Additionally, the issues of a norm as an element of conventional and culture-dependent language pattern are to be analyzed here (Bamgbose, 1998).  Finally, the paper will try to analyze the amounts of source culture, as well as the target one, necessary to be possibly introduced during a planned school-centered course of EGL.