The Unearned Advantage

Perhaps you are familiar with this website - TED

It's a website devoted to speeches with information the public may find interesting, educational, inspiring, etc.

This video with speaker Jay Walker gives an interesting perspective on Chinese learning English . . .

Really?

The following is an excerpt from an article I read recently about this topic I've also written about myself, but this says it so much better.

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One of the cornerstone principles of diversity is that of unearned, unacknowledged privilege – if you are benefiting from the rules you are blissfully unaware that others are disadvantaged by them.

You enjoy a privileged position, and, because of this you continue to advance and receive benefit while others fall further behind. Likely you are completely oblivious to this privilege, and would deny its existence if confronted.

Australian sociologist Professor Bob Pease says that given that the flipside of oppression and social exclusion is privilege, the lack of critical interrogation of the position of privilege allows those receiving the most benefit to reinforce their dominance. In other words – when you hold all the cards, you don't have to cut anyone else in on the deal.

Think this doesn't happen, or only happens to other people? What's your mother tongue? Chances are if it is English - and in particular if you are working in one of today's multinational firms - you are enjoying the unearned and unacknowledged privilege described above. And your non-native English-speaking peers are falling further and further behind.

How does linguistic privilege manifest itself?

Sometimes it's overt as a German executive in a British multinational firm, who was part of a 10-person European task force reports. The language of the meetings was English, and discussions were invariably dominated by the two team members from the United Kingdom (the group's only native English speakers). When she asked one of them to speak a little more slowly, she was told 'it is assumed if you are at this meeting that you have a language level sufficient to follow the discussions. If not perhaps you should not be here'.

The same effect is observed online – chat groups and forums are overwhelmingly conducted in English (60 percent of web pages today are in English, as are 60 percent of all Google enquiries) which in no way reflects the fact that fewer than 10 percent of the world's 6.5 billion people speak English as their native tongue.

One area where the inability to accommodate speakers of other languages is costing real money is in the field of knowledge management. Company intranets, educational journals, global think-tanks and multilateral agencies all use English as their main, or often sole, language.

According to Konosuke Matsushita, Founder of electronics giant Matsushita Electric, "Business is now so complex and difficult, the survival of firms so hazardous in an environment increasingly unpredictable, and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence."

If this is true, what about all the intelligence that we can't even begin to access, because of our insistence it is communicated in English?

Since language plays such a critical role in human interaction, how much innovation is being lost because of English language dominancy?

According to Dr David Hill of the World Innovation Foundation, over 99.8 percent of the world's population are excluded from any involvement with scientific and technological research, and less than one-twentieth of one percent of the world's population are engaged in the planet's leading edge research effort. This comes at incalculable cost to mankind.

It is important to eliminate 'unearned advantage' at all levels if you want to capitalise on the wealth of resources, talents and abilities within your environment. Reducing unearned advantage at the personal level starts with becoming aware.

Mary van der Boon is founder and principal of global tmc international management training & consulting based in the Netherlands. She is a native English speaker.

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Something to think about . . .

You may also find this slightly longer (10 min) video of a speech given by Patricia Ryan both interesting and insightful.

I am in no position to make a big difference, but perhaps we can all make a small difference along the way. I may be in that privileged, (unearned) advantaged minority that is a native English-speaker, but the very least I can do is be aware of the wealth of knowledge that many privileged, native English-speakers simply dismiss.