Globalization and the teaching of ‘communication skills’

Abstract

The epigraph to this chapter reproduces some remarks made by a well-known American expert on communication in response to my own arguments about the effects of globalization on language and language-use.1 At the time of our encounter I was finishing a book about the contemporary obsession with ‘communication skills’ and ‘communication problems’ (Cameron 2000). One of my conclusions was that globalization had given new legitimacy, and a new twist, to the long-lived idea that linguistic diversity is a problem, while linguistic uniformity is a desirable ideal. My interlocutor did not dispute the factual part of this argument, but she did take issue with my negative attitude to the developments I had identified. What I regarded as a regrettable curtailment of linguistic diversity, she celebrated as progress towards increased global harmony and mutual understanding.

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