Is ‘English' a language? A brief history of a pointless dispute

Richard Hudson

last changed 27 February 2011

Bibliographical information

Published in English Drama Media, the three-times-a-year journal of NATE, in June 2010. (Click here for a comment by John Dixon, and here for a reply by me, both published in English Drama Media 19, February 2011, 53-55.)

Abstract

[This brief paper reviews forty years of language teaching as part of the subject called English in English schools. It concludes that the competition between language and literature for the title 'English' has benefitted nobody. Although language teaching shows the continuing benefits from the enormous boost given by the Schools-Council Project in the 1960s, it falls short in the more formal and technical aspects which require special expertise which teachers trained in literature have never been given. It recommends the testing of grammatical analysis skills and (eventually) a separation of language from literature.]

What does the noun English mean? In ordinary usage there's no doubt that it's the name of a language: if I speak, understand or learn English, then what I am speaking, understanding or learning is a language. But put the word into an educational context, and uncertainty sets in. If you teach English, are you teaching a language or a body of literature or culture which happens to be written in English? And when the government describes English as a core subject, does it mean the study of the language or of its literature? It's not just English that faces these questions: exactly the same uncertainties afflict foreign language teaching, especially at university level. Where does the study of French – meaning of course the French language – fit into the programme of a French department? A BA programme in French or English need not have much to do with the language named in the title of the programme.