&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/79606?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Frieze+talks+2011%3A+Do+you+speak+Globish%3F%3AArticle%3A1647964&amp;ch=Art+and+design&amp;c3=GU.co.uk&amp;c4=Frieze+art+fair%2CFrieze+art+fair+2011%2CArt+%28visual+arts+only%29%2CExhibitions%2CArt+and+design%2CFestivals+%28Culture%29%2CCulture%2CLanguage&amp;c5=Unclassified%2CArt%2CNot+commercially+useful&amp;c6=Jennifer+Allen&amp;c7=11-Oct-14&amp;c8=1647964&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Blogpost&amp;c11=Art+and+design&amp;c13=&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FArt+and+design%2FFrieze+art+fair&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;With its catchy phrases and light vocabulary, Globish is fast becoming the art world&#039;s dominant language. But is it changing the way we see art?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;English is the main language of the art world &ndash; and not just in London and New York. Go to an exhibition opening in Berlin, Mexico City or Beijing, and you&#039;re sure to hear English spoken with a wide array of foreign accents. Artists, curators, gallerists &ndash; whatever their native tongues &ndash; no longer even ask if you speak English. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalartlab.org.il/ArchiveVideo.asp?id=516&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Kosovan artist Jakup Ferri&#039;s confessional video &ndash; An Artist Who Cannot Speak English is No Artist (2003)&lt;/a&gt; &ndash; suggests artists should study English alongside drawing, sculpture and photography.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpn-globish.com/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;French businessman Jean-Paul Nerri&egrave;re&lt;/a&gt; argues that the art world doesn&#039;t speak English so much as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/speak-easy/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Globish (short for Global English)&lt;/a&gt;. It&#039;s how non-native English speakers communicate with each other. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/arts/21iht-Blume22.html?pagewanted=all&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Nerri&egrave;re&lt;/a&gt; wrote Don&#039;t Speak English &hellip; Parlez Globish! (2004) as both a manifesto and a guide to learning the new language with a lightweight vocabulary of only 1,500 words. There are trees but no species; there are vegetables but &quot;potato&quot; seems to be the only one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To make up for the 600,000-plus words in the Oxford English Dictionary, Globish uses simpler yet longer formulations: &quot;kitchen&quot; becomes &quot;the room where you cook&quot;. Niece, &quot;the daughter of my brother&quot;. Native anglophones often have trouble communicating with globophones, who use a more inventive vocabulary. &quot;We have an understandment,&quot; two globophones &ndash; one Swedish, the other German &ndash; once confided to me about their exchanges. Given these differences, could British schools soon be teaching Globish as a foreign language alongside French, Spanish or Chinese?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Globish seems to have filled the art world with a more specialised vocabulary. Fashionable terms such as transgression, dystopia and disobedience have bled into the titles of works while losing meaning for artists and audiences. That&#039;s what the Dutch artist Nicoline van Harskamp argues &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanharskamp.net/pages/work-newlatin.html&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;in her video The New Latin (2010)&lt;/a&gt;. An artist&#039;s native tongue often becomes weighed down by English art jargon in the wall captions, press releases and magazine reviews which accompany their work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely, then, that Globish has contributed to the rise of theory and concepts in contemporary art and criticism. What debate is complete without a nod to Michel Foucault&#039;s biopolitics, Jacques Ranci&egrave;re&#039;s aesthetic unconscious and everybody&#039;s &quot;criticality&quot;? The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2398&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;American literary scholar Jonathan Arac&lt;/a&gt; has made a similar argument about literary criticism in a global age. Theories and concepts lend themselves to abstractions which are easier to communicate than feelings and individual preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Culinary taste offers a good comparison. You can probably name your favourite French wine, but try explaining &ndash; in French &ndash; its particular bouquet and why you love it. Like food, art has an impact on our bodily senses through colours, shapes and endless associations. By contrast, a theory can always be reduced to a one-liner: transgression, dystopia, disobedience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Harskamp, however wary of jargon, embraces English. &quot;[It] belongs to me as much as it belongs to an American,&quot; she says in her video. &quot;Why not reclaim and co-opt the language that was imposed on us? And then celebrate it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can only agree, as editor of the fully bilingual frieze d/e (d stands for Deutsch and e for English). A new publication of frieze, frieze d/e focuses on Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Those who read our German texts are native speakers, but the majority of our English readers are globophones, including many Germans. I try to cut down on the art jargon &ndash; not just words such as &quot;criticality&quot; but curiosities such as &quot;spatial interventions&quot; &ndash; while ensuring that the English remains accessible. To date, we&#039;ve used more than 1,500 words. But we try to put them together in the most readable way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/friezeartfair&quot;&gt;Frieze art fair&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/frieze-art-fair-2011&quot;&gt;Frieze art fair 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/art&quot;&gt;Art&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/exhibition&quot;&gt;Exhibitions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/festivals&quot;&gt;Festivals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/language&quot;&gt;Language&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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