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Makale Özeti:
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English has become the dominant global language of communication, business, industries, entertainment,
diplomacy, politics, science and the internet. Governments as well as some scholars appear to be accepting
such a spread of English uncritically. Over a billion people speak English as their second or foreign
language; these second- and foreign-language speakers of English include millions of migrant and
immigrant English as a Second Language (ESL) school-age students, over 560,000 intemational ESL
university students in the US and over 137,000 in Canada (OECD 2003) and about a billion others in the rest
of the world speak English as a Foreign Language (EFL) (Guo and Beckett, 2007). The purpose of this paper
is to argue whether the increasing dominance of the English language is contributing to neocolonialism by
empowering the already powerful and leaving the disadvantaged further behind, an issue that needs
attention. Specifically, the paper will start how English has become an international language since 1871
and then will discuss how English as a dominant language worldwide is forcing a pedagogical and social
culture on to its learners, along the way socio-psychologically, linguistically and politically putting them in
danger of losing their first languages, cultures and identities, and contributing to the devaluation of local
knowledge and cultures. Drawing on the work of critical theorists who have pointed out the close
relationship between language and power, the paper will strive to show how the global spread of English is
not only a product of globalization, but also the most potent instrument of cultural control and cultural
construct of neocolonialism.
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