ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the key concepts of the subsequent chapters in this book. The book introduces the discourse of English as an International Language (EIL) and suggests that this discourse tends to look at the spread of English as natural, neutral and beneficial. It also discusses the cultural politics of English as an international language; one of the basic challenges is how to come to terms with this pedagogically. The book explains that the key aspect of the development of linguistics and applied linguistics has been their status as disciplines, as academic fields of study that define and control language and language teaching. It shows the discourse of EIL is brought up to the present by showing how it has shifted in accordance with other global changes, and specifically how it has moved from a rhetoric of colonial expansion, through a rhetoric of development aid to a rhetoric of the international free market.
