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Presenter
Assist. Prof. Dr. Feryal Cubukcu
Faculty of Education,
Dokuz Eylul University
Turkey

Title
Empowerment or Disempowerment: That is the Question in EIL


Abstract :
English has become the dominant global language of communication, business, industries, entertainment, diplomacy, politics, science and the intemet. Governments as well as some scholars appear to be accepting such a spread of English uncritically. Over a billion people speak English as their second or foreign language; these second- and foreign-language speakers of English include millions of migrant and immigrant English as a Second Language (ESL) school-age students , over 560,000 intemational ESL university students in the US and over 137,000 in Canada (OECD 2003) and about a billion others in the rest of the world speak English as a Foreign Language (EFL) (Guo and Beckett, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to argue whether the increasing dominance of the English language is contributing to neocolonialism by empowering the already powerful and leaving the disadvantaged further behind, an issue that needs attention. Specifically, the paper will start how English has become an international language since 1871 and then will discuss how English as a dominant language worldwide is forcing a pedagogical and social culture on to its learners, along the way socio-psychologically, linguistically and politically putting them in danger of losing their first languages, cultures and identities, and contributing to the devaluation of local knowledge and cultures. Drawing on the work of critical theorists who have pointed out the close relationship between language and power, the paper will strive to show how the spread of English is not only a product of globalization, but also the most potent instrument of cultural control and cultural construct of neocolonialism.