ABSTRACT
Central to Derrida and his subsequent work is the notion of deconstruction, which works to question the ontological, teleological, and metaphysical history of Western thought that has always “dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of the game”. Foucault adds to poststructural thought with a focus on issues of discourse and power, arguing that systems of knowledge are determined through history via institutional power. In this frame, “a proposition must fulfil some onerous and complex conditions before it can be admitted within a discipline; before it can be pronounced true or false it must be within the true”. Phillipson is often cited as one of the first to bring the field of English language teaching into the sociopolitical realm, with his analysis of the spread of the English language across the globe. He frames this in imperialist terms, the British and then American empires, and a lingua franca that continues to threaten other linguistic varieties.
