Communication is all around us. The exchanging of information is a human activity, but ultimately a natural one. For all our sophistication, we are greatly outnumbered by all those living things which could not get by without communication of one kind or another. It goes without saying that much communication in the natural world is non-verbal; most of us have from time to time been advised to think about our body language.
English is commonly called the lingua franca of the modern age. Spoken as a first language by up to four hundred million people – mostly in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the ‘Western offshoots’ – and, as a second language by up to a billion others, including large numbers in India and China, it is a truly global language.
Originally spread across the British Empire, it has continued to grow with the rise to global pre-eminence of the United States in the last century. It is an official language at the United Nations, in the European Union, and the Commonwealth, and, for many, seeing the face of ‘globalization’ for the first time, it speaks in English. Measured in terms of media rather than people, the impression is stronger still. Most webpages, worldwide, are written in English. In certain areas, for example, international science publishing, there is currently something like an English language monopoly.
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