1.2.2. Political reasons
It is important to deal with political reasons behind the
imposition of English because politics is an influencing player in the game of
whose language dominates in non-native contexts. The political reasons could be
classified as either internal or external.
The internal reasons come from the countries where English is
adopted as a solution to the problems created by multilingualism (Crystal,
2003). In fact, certain countries choose to adopt English, as a solution to
their multilingual situation such is the case of India and Kenya.
Multilingualism could create difficulties with communication internationally
for any country, as it could create a heated debate over what language to adopt
as the official language. In some multilingual contexts as remarked by
Phillipson (1992) «English has been described as an ethnically and
ideologically unencumbered language». This means that it
can be perceived as a «neutral» and «unifying» language
since it allows ethnic minorities in such countries to avoid conflicts about
which group language to choose as the official language of the country.
Communication between the different ethnic groups becomes carried through
English instead of the, less practical perhaps, variety of languages. As far as
neutrality is concerned, it should be stated that this apparent neutrality is
misleading as it can be argued that English in the context of most of such
countries is the language of elites, which means that at the end a language of
a minority is dominating the majority of uneducated members of the language
community (Pennycook, 1994). The only difference is that this minority is
privileged and perhaps supported by `English powers' such is the case of the
elite governing in Philippines in the 1980s described in Phillipson, 1992.
Apart from the internal reasons there are some external ones suggested by
Phillipson (1992).
The external reasons are those related to factors (or plots)
coming from outside the country which means the overt and covert pressure
exercised by the inner circle on some countries in order to impose English as
the language of the most important fields in the country and this is done
mainly for political and ideological purposes. Such a claim could be
illustrated with the attempts of the British government to alter the dominance
of the USSR over Eastern Europe in 1990s by imposing English as the second
language instead of Russian (Phillipson, 1992). However, other explanations for
this shift from Russian to English could be thought of especially in connection
to the fall of the USSR at that period and the loss of faith in the communist
ideology. This could mean that the spread of English in Eastern Europe came
from inside these countries not outside them.
External organised strategic imposition, as it is claimed by
Phillipson (1992), is neither for the sake of the beauty of English nor for the
sake of `civilising' people in
those countries. In fact, English could serve as a facilitator
of the emergence of free trade, which strengthens the imposition of
globalisation.
As far the situation in Tunisia, the context of this study, it
should be noted that despite the diversity of the linguistic situation, it
could not be said that it is a multilingual country in the same sense as in
Kenya or India but there are the regional dialects constructing the Tunisian
linguistic variations of the same Arabic with the presence of French and
Italian in the background. Therefore, the internal political reason explaining
the penetration of English in some countries does not apply to the case of
Tunisia.
In the case of Tunisia, the pressure of the inner circle is
not persistent as Tunisia is considered a francophone country for historical
reasons, especially due to the fact of having been colonised by France not an
English speaking country. This is an important fact that is going to be put
under study in the fourth chapter when analysing some aspects of the
relationship between English and French in Tunisia.
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