An estimated 1.5 billion people—roughly one in every five human beings—speak English, making it the most widely used language in the history of humanity. Like other colonial tongues, it spread first through “conquest, conversion, and commerce,” Rosemary Salomone writes in her book “The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language,” but its spread today is powered by a fourth process, what Salomone calls “collusion.” Around the globe, people pursue English and the opportunities it promises. “Korean mothers move their children to anglophone countries to learn in English,” Salomone observes. “Dutch universities teach in it. ASEAN countries collaborate in it. Political activists tweet in it.”

Some researchers worry about the erosion of various cultural identities that the expansion of English may bring. Just as daunting is the prospect of cognitive hegemony. Languages, some researchers argue, influence how we perceive and respond to the world. The idiosyncrasies of English—its grammar, its concepts, its connection to Western culture—can jointly produce an arbitrary construction of reality. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu voiced a common concern when, in 2001, he wondered if “it is possible to accept the use of English without the risk of one’s mental structures being anglicized, without being brainwashed by linguistic patterns.”

Manvir Singh surveys recent linguistic and cognitive studies to assess what might be lost with the expansion of English.

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