Konferenzen zum Thema Sprachwissenschaft in Großbritannien

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

This conference begins with the notion that English is today used by about 1.5 billion people, less than a third of whom speak it as their first language. This minority-majority reversal has significantly impacted the grammatical characteristics of English, the demographics of the Anglophone population, the domains in which English is used, and attitudes towards the language, which has been described both as a venue for increased global communication and as a cultural and economic predator. The history of the language is being rewritten as well, from one defined by conventional periodization and the triumph of English as a Germanic language, to one that has reoriented the historical and contemporary significance of the language’s traditional homelands. The Once and Future English asks the question: How will English’s present and past look to future speakers?