and knowledge, without depth or past. This emerges even more clearly when
we consider a second aspect of British national education.
The percentage of British pupils who take an exam in a living language at
A-level is under ten per cent and continuing to fall. This does not mean that
ninety per cent of young Britons have never learnt a foreign language (there
is no obligatory programme for the English equivalent of the French baccalauréat,
but multiple choice). It does mean that they have given it up much earlier
than their continental counterparts. In Great Britain, notwithstanding worthy
proclamations by the government of the need for it (accompanied by an
insistence on ‘freedom of choice’ for parents and pupils which produces the
opposite effect from the one proclaimed), study of foreign languages is not
essential for two related reasons. What counts is content (a language is simply
a transparent vehicle, not a subject of interest or study in itself). But, above
all, a single language suffices – the language spoken by the whole world
because it is the language of globalisation and empire: those who have the
good fortune, or the privilege, to speak English as their mother tongue do not
need to learn a second language, unlike the unfortunate natives of secondary
languages and dominated cultures. Or, going even further: you need to know
English, and there is no need to learn another language, because English is
the language of imperialism.
English, language of imperialism
Since this formulation has a slightly provocative, if not insulting, aspect to it
(but my starting-point prompts strong reactions), I shall begin by explaining
the position I am speaking from. I am an Anglicist and have devoted my life
to the English language, which I love with a passion (I take the title of Milner’s
L’amour de la langueseriously).^2 I am not only an Anglophile but an Anglomaniac.
And loving the English language entails a passionate attraction to the grammar
of this language, its sounds, its history, the literature that it sustains, the
culture that is inscribed and sedimented in it. In short, I think I can claim
that I am not an Anglophobe. However, it is clear that English has become
the global language and the language of globalisation because it is the language
‘Chirac est un ver’ • 5(^2) See Milner 1978.