English for Peace in Algeria

Abstract

English has the power to help bring socioeconomic prosperity and sociolinguistic peace to Algeria’s increasingly free market and complex multilingual situation. A hermeneutic approach toward the study of texts and part of a questionnaire are used to theorize about potential roles English could play in Algeria’s sociolinguistic context. It is found that an increasing number of social, cultural, and academic programs by the United States and the British Council could contribute to the spread of English in a peace-fostering manner. Algerians’ bottom-up initiatives, including those of teachers and social media users also have the potential to contribute to deethenicized worldly English that could be used to access more information and training opportunities. It is hoped that the spread of English, a language many Algerians seem to favor, could promote sociolinguistic peace and contribute to socioeconomic development.