ABSTRACT
English is unarguably the most-used official language and the medium of instruction among all languages in the world today (Eapen, 2007; Kurtz, 2007). It acquired this hegemonic position coincidentally and due to the economic and technological leadership of its ‘native speakers’. Britain and the British Empires incidentally led other countries in the agricultural and industrial revolutions between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (Reynolds, 2019). This made it the most powerful nation globally by the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. This power enabled the kingdom to dominate its immediate neighbouring kingdoms of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales and to acquire several colonies far away from home, including a number of West African countries (Graddol, 2006), which this chapter focusses on. This expansion of the British Empire, among other things, instituted the English language as the medium of education in schools they established to serve colonial administrative needs. The hegemonic position of English was cemented by the rise of the United States after World War II as the world’s economic and military superpower, whose influence was increased culturally and economically throughout the world. Their military and economic power increased their influence around the world culturally and economically (British Broadcasting Cooperation, 2021; Stein, 1984). Currently, the revolution of telecommunications technologies and the globalisation spearheaded by English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, have fuelled the spread and dominance of English even in countries that were not colonised by the English people such as Gabon, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Mali (Eapen, 2007). The Internet and its attendant applications, such as WhatsApp, Google, Yahoo and so forth, mostly originating from the United States, also reinforce the dominance and the spread of English worldwide.
