ABSTRACT
This chapter contemplates what a terminal crisis of capitalism might mean for the present global hegemony of English in its normative standard form. It considers the current state of the capitalist world-system and capitalism’s response to this. The chapter discusses the ineffectual addressing of global inequality and the destruction of the natural world and examines how wealthy capitalist societies in the global North have sought to assimilate and neutralize anti-systemic opposition and dissent. The chapter presents a critique of the capitalist world-system and its leading global proponents as locked in a permanent state of ideological ‘endism’, according to which alternatives to capitalism cannot be countenanced. As the world-system hurtles towards seeming overwhelming internal contradiction and inevitable near-term collapse, this chapter asks where such a systemic failure would leave English and the global dominance of the normative standard form.
