The Institute of English and American Studies kindly invites you to the lecture given within the framework of the Science Month by
Diana Lemberg
Associate Professor of History, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, Junior Core Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University, 2021-22
The American embrace of global English since 1945
Time: 24 November 2021, 12 p.m.
Meeting link: https://unideb.webex.com/unideb/j.php?MTID=ma471bdc983eba79a1001a764594…
Meeting number: 2732 204 7947
Password: ggYed3f3rX4
Host key: 248659
Az előadás nyelve angol.
The language of this lecture is English.
Abstract:
Various theories exist about why English is today the leading global language of travel, commerce, and science, from those that frame it as a form of linguistic imperialism to others that emphasize bottom-up demand for a lingua franca. Historians of the twentieth century have recently stressed that English, despite initially spreading outside Europe through British imperial expansion, attained global preeminence only after the waning of British Empire, suggesting the importance of post-1945 U.S. influence to this history. However, from an empirical and archival perspective, American involvement in the field remains surprisingly understudied.
This talk draws on my recent research to explore the American embrace of global English in the mid- to late twentieth century, and its relationship to U.S. global power. From producing textbooks and radio broadcasts to designing teacher-training programs to administering courses for allied military personnel, Washington and powerful American foundations committed to reinforcing the role of English around the world during the Cold War. The talk will address the intertwined strategic, developmentalist, and market-based justifications that American policy elites offered for this support. It will also consider how the rise of global English has benefitted the United States, and in what ways it might be said to have disadvantaged the country.
Diana Lemberg is Associate Professor of History at Lingnan University in Hong Kong and currently a Junior Core Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University. Lemberg’s first book, Barriers Down: How American Power and Free-flow Policies Shaped Global Media, appeared from Columbia University Press in 2019. The project also yielded articles published in Modern Intellectual History, Foreign Affairs, and the Washington Post. Currently Lemberg is working on a manuscript about the U.S. government’s growing involvement in language training in the 20th century. A journal article related to this project appeared in January 2021 in Diplomatic History. Lemberg received a Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2014.