ABSTRACT
The idea of a single international wage level for an important category of workers would have been unthinkable just a few decades earlier, but now it quietly became part of global life. Policies and organizations, and not just technologies, were creating a new world community, and this also reminds us that the contemporary phenomenon of globalization arguably predates some of the most striking recent inventions such as cell phones, the Internet, and social media, which were called into being in part by new global needs. Developments in several areas combined to set the process of globalization in motion from the mid-20th century onward – or, if the new global history claims seem a bit exaggerated, to re-launch it after the tribulations of the world wars and depression decades. The globalization of English began with responses to some obvious new demands. International pilots almost inevitably needed a common language to communicate with airport control systems around the world.
