Ethnocentrism, or not?

Question

Do you read the comment from an editor of the OED as ethnocentric or not?"any literate educated person is in a very real sense deprived if he does not knowEnglish" (Burchfield 1985, p. 160).

Englishuser · Accepted Answer

Rather.

Englishuser

Nef · Answer

yes

Milky · Answer

And yet some would not read it that way.

MrPedantic · Answer

I don't have the book in question; but on one website, this version appears:

1. "English has also become a lingua franca to the point that any literate educated person is in a very real sense deprived if he does not know English."

It seems to me that this is a slightly different case from the quotation in the original post: a lingua franca is by its nature non-ethnocentric.

(Whether the statement is true or not is of course another matter.)

MrP

Milky · Answer

"English itself can be said to have a history of imposition, some would argue this is for material and political reasons and that in most periphery communities more often than not it is in competition with local/native languages and does not just happily co-exist. In 1796 the British colonized the ethno-linguistically diverse island of Ceylon under one political umbrella, they imposed English as the national language and went about setting up English schools at both secondary and Tertiary levels, this education not only included language lessons but discipline (in keeping with that usually found in British public schools) and Protestant teachings. Students were often expected to board to be protected from outside cultural and linguistic influence. This education was needed for particular jobs but was only available to those able to pay the fees, Christians were given preferential treatment with regard to admission and most students finished their education having been converted to Christianity regardless of previous cultural and religious beliefs, in the main natives competed to be given an English education, mainly because the Tamils defined themselves by religion and not language. The native church devised a mission which offered Western (English) scholarships to students who promised not to desert their religion, this enabled natives to embrace the new language without in the main losing cultural identity. This is not to say the program was without opposition, many natives accepted the Christianity they were compelled to in public, but continued to practice Hinduism in private, not all forms of opposition were as subtle as this. Tamil scholars were sometimes vocal with regard to the English only education of younger generations, Ananda Coomarasamy called the English educated natives -a generation of spiritual ******** (1946:32) ".

Milky · Answer

When the British started ruling India, they searched for Indian mediators who could help them to administer India. The British turned to high caste Indians to work for them. Many high caste Indians, especially the Brahmans worked for them. The British policy was to create an Indian class who should think like the British, or as it was said then in Britain “Indians in blood and color but English in taste, in opinions and morals and intellect”.

http://adaniel.tripod.com/Languages3.htm

Forbes · Answer

Milky"any literate educated person is in a very real sense deprived if he does not know English" (Burchfield 1985, p. 160).

In one sense this is quite literally true, but only in the sense that one could equally say: any literate educated person is in a very real sense deprived if he does not know French/Spanish/German/Chinese/Japanese)Tamil/Bengali/Latin/Greek/dozens more.

Ethnocentrism, or not?

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