ABSTRACT
Throughout this book we have tried to develop a critique of global English that can account for the complexity of English in our globalizing world. We started out with the ever-more-pressing need to tackle the problems of inequality that are generated by and through English, and the multiple issues that we need to consider when we try to understand those problems. We then proposed that a key to developing a proper critique of global English is to focus on the processes by which English comes to be seen as a language with value, arguing that we must understand how the valorization of English with global economic value is supported and shaped by the discursive, semiotic, and ideological processes that construct the meaning of English. Bourdieu’s practice-based theory of the linguistic market, supplemented with more recent developments in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, was adopted as our framework, which allowed us to critically evaluate previous approaches to global English, and to construct a more holistic perspective that looks at the process through which global English is made. This finally led us to suggest particular directions for developing language policy that may contest and transform the order of the global linguistic market of English.
