have been through school sometimes write a more ‘correct’ English – i.e. one
closer to standard English – than the mass of native speakers; while the
domination of English explains why refugees refuse to stop at Sangatte: they
have not learnt French.
And, as we have seen, there are centrifugal forces. This is not restricted to
the dissociation between the two main dialects of English, American and
British. Within British English, dialects are diverging from one another and
from standard English, which increasingly appears to be a paedagogical myth
and ideological constraint. A gauge is required if the language of imperialism
is to expand throughout the whole world and it is therefore accepted that 99
per cent of native English speakers speak a very different language –
phonetically, lexically and syntactically – from the English diffused by the
British Council or the BBC. It is enough to see a film by Ken Loach – Sweet
Sixteen, for example – to be convinced of this. This proliferation of dialects
is not only geographical, but also diachronic. There are generational dialects,
which create peer-group solidarity among adolescents – for example, the
emergence of the variant of English called Estuary English, because it emerged
on the banks of the Thames, but which is spoken almost everywhere in
England by that vague category the media call ‘youth’. Finally, the standard
dialect is subject to a process of ‘becoming-minoritarian’ by the return of
dominated languages – in the United Kingdom, the Gaelic languages (Welsh,
Scots and Irish). This involves the emergence of contact dialects (in the case
of Wales, ‘Wenglish’), but it also involves an inflection of the major language,
of which literature becomes the privileged relay.
So there is indeed a linguistic imperialism, which is not merely uncontested
domination, but a process of hybridisation, becoming-minoritarian, centralisation,
and explosion all at the same time. One therefore has the impression that there
is a struggle of dialects just as there is a class struggle and that its outcome is
not predetermined. This is why English will end up like Latin: it will fall
victim to its internal contradictions, just like the empire. Moreover, it is not
certain that the political and economic situation of the empire is more secure
than its linguistic situation – at least if Immanuel Wallerstein’s analyses are
to be believed.^7 The whole question is how long this situation will last.
‘Chirac est un ver’ • 9(^7) For a recent version of his famous analyses of the centre and the periphery, see
Wallerstein 2003.