ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a number of perspectives on ideology as it influences language policy and educational practice in the teaching and learning of English in the contemporary world. It shows the critique of linguistic imperialism addresses only part of the ideological weight that English carries. The chapter examines a corpus of language policy statements from the United States government about English language teaching over a number of decades to identify the ideological positions that are explicitly articulated. It focuses very much on the ideological discourses that shape how English is constructed as the object of teaching and learning. The chapter shows the ways in which ideology is a constituent part of the social realities of English language education in the contemporary world. The emerging focus on English as a Multilingua Franca is an especially interesting ideological construction as defined by Jenkins: “multilingual communication in which English is available as a contact language of choice but is not necessarily chosen.”.
