English, the lingua franca, as a global language and the decline of German as an international language of science

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: Gut, University of Graz, course: The Globalisation of English, Language Attitudes and Language Contact, 18 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the topic of English as a lingua franca as well as the past and current status of German as a language of science. One issue which is discussed throughout this paper is English as a global language. The questions that arise regarding this topic are: Why did English become so important in the last century? Why do we speak of English as a global language? How could English reach such widespread acceptance? What are dangers of a global language and could anything stop globalisation? In this paper many facets of English will be presented and discussed. The second important topic this paper covers is the decline of German as an international language of science. German used to be an important language of science in the 19thcentury until World War I. But what happened at that point and why did German lose its international character? Which circumstances are responsible for the decline of German? What is the present status of German in science and what are the future perspectives? All these questions and assumptions will be discussed in the following term paper and the closing remarks will summarise the findings.