English in Vietnam

Abstract

AbstractOver the past few decades, English has emerged as a lingua franca and the dominant foreign language in the fast developing and populous society of Vietnam, placing the country in the center of the Expanding Circle. This paper presents a sociolinguistic profile of English in Vietnam following Berns’ framework. The profile begins with a demographic description and defines how Vietnam can be considered part of the Expanding Circle. We discuss the functional distributions of English in Vietnam by (i) chronicling its instrumental function from Chinese domination in Vietnam in 111 BC until recent years, (ii) detailing its administrative function before and after the country's Economic Reforms of the 1990s, (iii) revealing its interpersonal function in contemporary Vietnamese society; and (iv) illustrating how English borrowings and nativizations are used in the media. We conclude with a discussion of Vietnamese learners’ attitudes towards English learning and different English varieties.