**6. Multilingual and multicultural interaction**

Many people believe that in the new world order, multilingualism and multilingual communication will be unnecessary because everyone would be able to speak in a lingua franca, presumably English. In a variety of ways, this argument is flawed. Assume that the resources are available to teach this lingua franca to everyone. There is a naïve belief that joyful homogeneity will result in a return to the pre-Babel condition of affairs. However, the usage of a 'lingua franca' is by definition intercultural communication since people transfer the pragmatic and discourse patterns of their native languaculture4 into their lingua franca [28].

The expanding circle of countries adopting English in a limited number of domains (such as Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Lebanon, and Israel) now outnumber L1 English speakers in the non-traditional English-speaking countries, which Kachru [29, 30] refers to as the outer circle (the nations of the New Englishes, such as India, Singapore, Fiji, Nigeria, and the Philippines). As this disparity grows, it will become ever more critical for L2 users to be given the opportunity to codedetermine the language's usage rules.

Otherwise, their academic work, enterprises, and diplomatic efforts will continue to be discounted due to the diversity of their English [31, 32].

It will be even more critical for English speakers in the inner circle to learn about and accept other people's communication styles. Unless an extraordinarily high level of biculturality can be attained, pushing learners to change their pragmatic and discourse patterns as part of the acquisition and use of a lingua franca is an infringement of human rights. Furthermore, having a thorough understanding of at least a second language and culture allows a person to know what kinds of questions to ask in order to comprehend a different culture's communication patterns, and having a good understanding of several facilitates an understanding of the range of possibilities of such communication patterns. The employment of a lingua franca is insufficient for gaining access to a society's fundamental cultural elements or insider perspectives; without a working grasp of the target language, one must rely on the selective interpretation of the "other." The idea that English will always be the sole language of the web, which is the medium of the future, is one of the arguments in favour of monolingualism. While the internet was formerly thought to be a tool for language unification, the percentage of home sites in English has dropped dramatically since 1998 ([33]: 51; [34]). Those that protect multilingualism (particularly governments) must ensure that there are incentives for electronic multilingual communication.
