ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author seeks out ways of thinking about the position of English in the world that will help him and other teachers to understand work differently. The first theme develops his concern with the limitations he see in the dominant ways of thinking about English language teaching in applied linguistics, which the author has called the discourse of English as an International Language (EIL). The second theme involves an attempt to think about the cultural and political implications of the spread of English, which he has termed the worldliness of English. The author introduces the discourse of EIL and suggests that this discourse tends to look at the spread of English as natural, neutral and beneficial. To pursue the issue of the cultural politics of English as an international language, he introduced the notion of the worldliness of English, a term which is intended to refer to the material existence of English in the world.
