Link drop: English Next by David Graddol

In 2006 the British Council released a book called English Next by leading academic David Graddol, discussing the future of English as a global language.  You can download it free as PDF from the British Council website, and I'll be putting it on my little ebook reader for a leisurely read at a later date.

I'm not sure I'll agree with it, though.  While I agree that the English used in business meetings the world over isn't quite the language I speak, it's still not standardised, and it's pretty hard to imagine it ever becoming standardised with such a disparate discourse community.  Popular culture will probably still mostly be filtered through one of the major native-speaking populations (mostly Hollywood), and we're always going to need some model to teach to...