English as a World Language

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: good, University of Basel (Seminar for English Literatur and Linguistics), course: Seminar, language: English, abstract: English as a world language- a challenging topic that is fully treated in literature, because it is a topic of general interest. But during my researches, I realized that it was difficult to find literature about linguistic reasons for the establishment of English as a world language. Since this aspect is often interwoven within other reasons, for example geo-political reasons, linguistic reasons are seldom explicitly stated. Frequently, mixtures of reasons that have finally helped English to reach its high eminence as a world language are presented. In the end, I found some important aspects by picking them out of different texts and books and confined myself to present three important linguistic reasons for the establishment of English as a world language. Therefore, this paper does not claim to be complete, otherwise it would extend the prescribed lenght of the paper.