English, a World Language, a 1964 supplement to Free World

English, a World Language is a U.S. Information Agency sheet distributed in Manila, dated 4 May 1964 and printed as a supplement to Free World. It lists four claims for English and pairs them with photographs of a village class, a conference hall, audio-visual teaching and a Peace Corps volunteer (NAID 6949252).

The four claims

The archive describes a spread of magazines and booklets under the headline, a world-map emblem, a short list, and four captioned photographs: a village class, a United Nations chamber, audio-visual instruction, and a Peace Corps volunteer. The magazine covers include a dictionary, Sports Illustrated and The Economist, and the rest are only partly legible.

ENGLISH --A WORLD LANGUAGE

English is:

the favored publication language of the world

the official native language of 270 million people

the world's most favored "second language"

the common language of aviation

English class with the "Thomasites"

[...]

Peace Corps teaching aide

SUPPLEMENT TO FREE WORLD VOL. XIII NO. 5 MAY 1964

Issuer and audience

The issuer is the U.S. Information Agency, in the National Archives series of posters distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The imprint ties it to a magazine, Free World, volume XIII, number 5. The audience is a foreign public, and the purpose is coded as persuading or winning support. The archive's source category is "Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure."

How to read it

FRAME tags it bandwagon and card stacking: the reason given for learning English is that so many others already use it, and the figures chosen all point one way. None of the four claims carries a source on the sheet. "Favored" appears twice and is not defined.

There is no war and no enemy on this sheet. It sells a language, and with it access to the publications, conferences and teachers pictured around the list. A reader in Manila who took its advice and learned English would gain something real whether or not he came to like American policy. The persuasion is soft. The sheet does not say why an American government agency wants its readers learning English.

Another USIA sheet for Manila, from the next year, takes a harder line: Aggression from the North. For the Philippines and its earlier American history, see the benevolent assimilation case study. More sheets from the same agency are in the USIA poster gallery.