ABSTRACT
We are living in a time of “hyper-modernity,” Heller (1999) writes-an era in which control over the relations of production is shifting from the local and the state to the corporate and the global. The corporatization and internationalization of the access to and distribution of wealth, technology, and information threaten to create an even deeper and more far-reaching divide between rich and poor, both within nation-states and internationally. Globalization, Fairclough (2001) observes starkly, “benefits some people and hurts others” (p. 207). However, globalization is not only an economic process; as Fairclough (2001) also points out, language and power are central to “the academic analysis of the new world order and political struggles over it” (p. 204). Literacy education sits at the nexus of those struggles.
