ABSTRACT
It is not difficult to make a case that English is intimately tied up with globalization. From its wide use in many domains across the world and the massive efforts in both state and private educational sectors to provide access to the language, to its role in global media, international forums, business, finance, politics and diplomacy, it is evident not only that English is widely used across the globe but also that it is part of those processes we call globalization. What this means for English, other languages and cultures, and processes of global change, however, is much harder to determine. In order to tackle such a question, we need first of all to think through very carefully what is meant by globalization. In this first section, therefore, I shall sketch out some of the major concerns around globalization in an attempt to clarify how I am using the term in this context. The following sections will then look on the one hand, at ways in which English is tied up with processes of globalization (questions of English and various media, development, inequality and religion), and on the other, at different ways of thinking about English as a global language (as a threat to other languages, as lingua franca, as a collection of world Englishes). The chapter ends with a discussion of potential new ways of thinking about global Englishes.
