Table Of ContentGlobal English and Political
Economy
In this book, John O’Regan examines the role of political economy in the
worldwide spread of English and traces the origins and development of the
dominance of English to the endless accumulation of capital in a capitalist
world-system.
O’Regan combines Marxist perspectives of capital accumulation with
world-systems analysis, international political economy, and studies of
imperialism and empire to present a historical account of the ‘free riding’
of English upon the global capital networks of the capitalist world-system.
Relevant disciplinary perspectives on global English are examined in this
light, including superdiversity, translanguaging, translingual practice,
trans-spatiality, language commodification, World Englishes and English
as a Lingua Franca. Global English and Political Economy presents an
original historical and interdisciplinary interpretation of the global ascent
of English, while also raising important theoretical and practical questions
for perspectives which suggest that the time of the traditional models of
English is past.
Providing an introduction to key theoretical perspectives in political
economy, this book is essential reading for advanced students and researchers
in applied linguistics, World Englishes and related fields of study.
John P. O’Regan is Professor of Critical Applied Linguistics at UCL Institute
of Education, University College London, UK. He is co-editor of Education
and the Discourse of Global Neoliberalism (Routledge, 2021).
Language, Society and Political Economy
Series editor: David Block
ICREA & Universitat Pompeu i Fabra
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Titles in the series:
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Language and Neoliberal Governmentality
Edited by Luisa Martín Rojo and Alfonso Del Percio
The Commodification of Language
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Edited by John E. Petrovic and Bedrettin Yazan
Global English and Political Economy
John P. O’Regan
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Global English and Political
Economy
John P. O’Regan
First published 2021
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© 2021 John P. O’Regan
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 The political economy of English in a capitalist
world-system 1
English and capital 1
Capital and capital accumulation 9
Capital circulation and the free riding of English 12
Capital as part of an expanding world-system 16
Capital as a dialectical process 18
Accumulation and classical imperialism 22
The development of underdevelopment 25
Endless accumulation in a capitalist world-system 27
Structural power in international political economy 31
Accumulation as the endless repetition of the
original sin 36
Capital and normative English across the
longue durée 41
2 English and the political economy of informal empire,
1688–1850 44
The development of informal empire 44
The imperialism of free trade 49
Gentlemanly capitalism 54
The intrusion of capital, 1688–1815 58
Capital export and the opening to free trade,
1815–1850 62
3 The political economy of global English, 1850–1914 69
The intrusion of capital post-1850 69
The hinge of empire: India and the diffusion
of English 73
vi Contents
The social diffusion of English: Shanghai 79
The expansion of English in Africa 84
Railway imperialism and the transportation of English 89
Railway imperialism and the structuring of English in
China 92
Invisible chains of English across the longue durée 100
4 The political economy of global English,
1918–1979 102
Handing over the baton: transition, 1870–1918 102
Networks of English and the rise of US capital,
1918–1945 106
English and the institutional structuring of
the world-economy, post-1945 109
Cold War and the structuring of English in East Asia 113
Communist containment and English incorporation 118
US post-war capital networks: Europe, Latin America and
the Middle East 123
US linguistic seignorage and the transnationalization of
English, 1968–1979 126
1974 oil crisis and debt structuring in the capitalist
world-economy 132
5 Capital-centric English and the modern world-system,
1979–2008 135
Capitalist crisis management and the structuration of
English 135
Standard English as the capital-centric lingua franca of the
capitalist world-system 141
Sub-prime, the derivatives revolution and capital-centric
English 148
Language as a dialectical practical consciousness and the
financial crisis of 2007–8 153
6 The decline of the US world-hegemony 158
US hegemonic decline and the rise of China 158
China’s structural power 160
Hegemonic transition in a world-system 164
US economic nationalism and the challenge of China 168
US destabilization of the international trading system 171
Impediments to the Chinese global hegemony 174
Contents vii
7 Superdiverse translingualism, commodification
and trans-spatial resistances 181
The multi/plural turn and the persistence of the normative
form 181
The ownership of English 186
Language commodification 189
Resistance and superdiverse translingualism 195
Phonocentrism in superdiverse translingualism 200
The normative form as a social relation of capital and
capitalism 205
8 The demise of capitalism and the end of the hegemony
of English 209
Capitalist crisis and the normative hegemony 209
Immiseration, inequality and anti-systemic
assimilation 211
Ideological endism and the collapse of capitalism 214
Capitalist disintegration and the end of the English
hegemony 218
References 221
Index 254
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making, and but for the belief, encour-
agement and patience of others it might not have come to fruition. The topic
for this book was first suggested to me by David Block, the editor of the
present series. I do not have the right words to be able properly to express
the extent of gratitude that I owe David for continuing to have faith in this
project, even as it grew far beyond what we originally envisaged it would be.
In the same context, I owe an enormous debt to Routledge, and in particular
to Louisa Semlyen and Eleni Steck, who have been a most excellent editorial
team, and who have shown great forbearance and support in helping me to
pursue this book to its completion. As a book about the political economy
of English as a global language, it required a good deal of reading. But with
this topic, the more I read the more it became apparent that the answer
I was seeking as to why English was such a dominant language, and why in
particular that it was the structural dominance of the normative standard
that was at issue, was located in a much longer time period, and durée, than
the one I had started out with, such that it was necessary to reach back
to the beginnings of capital and of capitalism itself in order to be able to
make sense of it. As I explain in the first chapter of the book, the project in
its complexity became something of a ‘desk clearing’ exercise, which made
it both necessary and possible for me to engage in a range of disciplinary
areas and historical perspectives which have for the most part been absent
from debates about the global dominance of English. These include classical
and contemporary studies of imperialism and empire, world-systems analy-
sis, dependency theory, and issues around structural power in international
political economy.
Deep critical insight on the question of the global dominance of English
was provided by the Marx reading group to which I belong at the UCL Insti-
tute of Education (IOE). All of the members of this group are either applied
linguists or sociolinguists, and we have been reading Marx for about ten
years. Including myself, they are David Block, John Gray, Catherine Wal-
lace, Melanie Cooke and Siân Preece. We decided to embark upon a more
methodical reading of Marx because, outside of the dedicated left, very few
others appeared to be doing so, and yet in 2009–10 we found ourselves in
Acknowledgements ix
the midst of a profound systemic crisis to which the world’s most power-
ful governments’, including the then UK government’s, only answer were
swingeing austerity measures and the mindless pursuit of the very same eco-
nomic policies that had created the crisis in the first place. Even amongst
mainstream political and economic commentators at the time, in the wake
of the 2007–8 financial crash, Marx with his take on systemic capitalist
crisis was experiencing something of a revival. Within applied linguistics
and sociolinguistics there was also much greater attention being paid to the
connection between political economy and language, particularly from the
directions of anthropology and sociology. Moreover, the key thinkers we
were familiar with in the group, such as Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu,
Bhaskar and Derrida, in one way or another all appeared to define them-
selves and their work according to a relationship with modernity, and also
with Marx. It seemed to us that it would not only be educative to read
Marx, but that it was absolutely necessary to do so if one had any real ambi-
tion to engage with the unequal political economy of English in the world
and also with the intellectual debates which were preoccupying the academy
at the time, particularly around poststructuralism and the social turn. We
therefore started by reading Capital Volume I, and in the years which fol-
lowed we read all the major works. I owe a considerable debt to Marx and
to Engels in this book, but I owe an even greater debt to the members of the
Marx reading group, without whom such a systematic reading of Marx and
of capitalism would not have occurred. Apart from the critique of capital-
ism which Marx and his long-time collaborator Engels present, what is most
notable about Marx’s analysis is its great historicity. Capitalism very spe-
cifically begins in the sixteenth century, and it is crucially important to the
account which Marx gives that it is possible to pinpoint when and how this
evolution commences. Similarly, such historicity is also critical to world-
systems analysis and dependency theory perspectives, both of which were
also greatly influenced by Marx. But historicity is not unique to Marx and
Marxism, it is also central to Foucault and constructivism, for which there
is also no understanding of the present in the absence of an archaeology of
the past. All the more reason then that any account of the global dominance
of English should include the past of capital and of capitalism, because it
was from this that the global dominance of English and discourses around
English emerged.
My profound thanks also go to all the students on the MA Applied Lin-
guistics module English in Diverse World Contexts at the IOE, who with
enthusiasm and good humour have over the years willingly submitted them-
selves to my theorizing on the global dominance of English, in addition to
reading emerging section and chapter drafts. I believe I have learned at least
as much from them as I hope they have learned from me. Another group of
persons I wish to thank are IOE research students, past and present, whose
intellectual engagement has always given me cause for productive reflection
and thought, and who in their own ways have also been a great support to
