The increased use of English throughout the world during the past few decades is documented by Fishman and Conrad (1977). The spread of English is apparent not only within English mother-tongue countries but also in countries without a sizeable population of persons who claim English as a mother-tongue. However, this phenomenon has not been examined on a global level in combination with the use of a vast number of potentially explanatory variables selected from different disciplines. Nor has the cumulative nature of these variables been addressed in the study of the spread of English. The available variables generally stem from political science, sociology, economics, and demography, and have been brought together in sources such as Banks and Textor (1963), Russett et al. (1964), Gurr (1972), Feierabend and Feierabend (1972), and Sivard (1977) [as cited in Fishman and Solano (1987)]. The purpose of this study is to utilize this vast array of interdisciplinary variables in attempting to explain the global spread of English, and, particularly, to examine the effect of the possibly cumulative nature of these variables on explaining that spread. Our goal is to determine the degree to which various criteria of the spread of English can be accounted for by this means, one which essentially rules out spurious or redundant explanatory variables. This study is a methodology and data introducing study, which hopefully will yield substantive implications for future research, rather than one which attempts to test substantive hypotheses from the very outset.
PREVIOUS LITERATUREMost studies within the field of sociology of language are descriptive, i.e. they focus mainly on describing 'who speaks what language to whom' rather than on what factors have led to this state of affairs. Not surprisingly, it is this area within the sociology of language in which most of the literature on English-language spread is found (Fishman, 1969). Since the same is true for studies of language spread more generally, we will restrict ourselves here entirely to studies of the spread of English in order to avoid redundancy. Fishman and Conrad (1977), Nadel and Fishman (1977), Seckbach and Cooper (1977), and Rosenbaum et al. (1977) are examples of descriptive studies which employ a variety of techniques to measure the use of English in non-English mother-tongue settings. Each
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