s, based as it is on a supposed pluralization of Englishes based around newly emergent national linguistic identities.
In the rest of this paper, I shall take up these issues from various perspectives in order to open up an understanding of current scholarship on the community of English speakers. I shall argue that we cannot come to an understanding of English without a complex appreciation of globalization as both a global and local process, as both an impositional and an oppositional set of relations that produces something new (neither the same nor merely pluralized) in the doing. First, I shall look at current debates over the global spread of English, looking particularly at the arguments over homogeny and heterogeny in the world. One of the central arguments here will be that one's understanding of English as part of a cultural empire or a language community depend very much on the model of globalization that one employs. Second, I shall look briefly at colonial language policy in order to make several points: colonialism created more complex empires than simple language communities. By this I mean that spreading the colonial language was only one tool and goal of colonialism. The use of vernacular languages ​​as both a policy of pragmatic vernacularism and part of an orientalist preservationism was at least as significant as the use of English. The spread of English has been driven by postwar changes, the rise of the US, changing economic and political conditions and so forth. One of the other effects of continuing colonial relations is the construction and maintenance of languages, what Makoni and I (Makoni and Pennycook, in press), following Foucault, have called the 'language effects' of missionary and colonial activity. Finally I will consider various new directions for thinking about language in the world. br/>
Beyond homogeny and heterogeny
So how do we start to make sense of these interrelationships between English and the local and global? Writers from different ends of the political spectrum are often united in their agreement that English and globalisation go hand in hand. Where they differ is in terms of the effects of such globalisation. Thus, reviewing David Crystal's (1997) book on the global spread of English, Sir John Hanson, the former Director-General of the British Council is able to proclaim: "On it still strides: we can argue about what globalisation is till the cows come - but that globalisation exists is beyond question, with English its accompanist. The accompanist is indispensable to the performance "(Hanson, 1997, p.22). Phillipson (1999), by contrast, in his review of the same book, opts for a critical rather than a triumphalist evaluation: "Crystal's celebration of the growth of English fits squarely into what the Japanese scholar, Yukio Tsuda, terms the Diffusion of English Paradigm, an uncritical endorsement of capitalism, its science and technology, a modernisation ideology, monolingualism as a norm, ideological globalisation and internationalization, transnationalization, the Americanization and homogenisation of world culture, linguistic, culture and media imperialism (Tsuda, 1994) "(p.274).
One view of English and globalization, then, views English as part of a process of global homogenization. Whether or not we wish to adhere to this particular version of imperialism, there are important concerns here about the relations between English and other cultural, political and economic relations. As Tollefson (2000) explains, "at a time when English is widely seen as a key to the economic success of nations and the economic well-being of individuals, the spread of English also contributes to significant social, political, and economic inequalities. "(P.8). On the one hand, then, some see English as fulfilling "the perceived need for one language of international communication. Through English, people worldwide gain access to science, technology, education, employment, and mass culture, while the chance of political conflict is also reduced. "Yet on the other hand, amongst other things," the spread of English presents a formidable obstacle to education, employment, and other activities requiring English proficiency "(p.9). Phillipson's (1992) book, Linguistic Imperialism , remains the clearest articulation of this position. As Tollefson (2000, p.13) explains "Phillipson's analysis places English squarely in the center of the fundamental sociopolitical processes of imperialism, neo-colonialism, and global economic restructuring. In this view, the spread of English can never be neutral but is always implicated in global inequality. Thus Phillipson, in contrast to Kachru, argues that the spread of English is a positive development for some people (primarily in core countries) and harmful to others (primarily in the periphery). The spread of English, in this view, is a result of ...
