Critique of David Crystal's 'English: Which Way Now?'

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Didactics - English - Discussion and Essays, grade: 1,3, http://www.uni-jena.de/, course: Writing II, language: English, abstract: David Crystal who currently holds a position as honorary professor and part-time lecturer of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor, is a renowned author and editor whose works are mainly in the field of English language studies. He worked under Randolph Quirk as a researcher in the early 1960s and received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to the English language in 1995. Crystal is the patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) and the Association for Language Learning (ALL), but is, according to his website1, best known for his two encyclopedias for Cambridge University Press, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. In his article 'Emerging Englishes' which was published in the educational magazine Spotlight (April 2000, 54-58) as a reworked version titled 'English: Which Way Now?', Crystal lobbies for an International Standard English as a possible solution for the increasing number of English variants throughout the world.