The state of English as a global language: Communicating culture

The so-called spread of English around the world has been associated historically with British and, latterly, American cultural imperialism. And yet, in the context of globalization, English is now being reconstructed as a culturally neutral lingua franca, a universal means of communication desired and appropriated by all users. (How) has English freed itself of its cultural weight? Given the traditional relation between language and national sovereignty, how might the cultural polity of language be constituted in a post colonial, possibly post-national world? This article traces the major historical moves in the theorizing of English, particularly in relation to its teaching, on its path towards globality, analyzing how successive theories have located culture in, and subsequently displaced culture from, their models of language. In conclusion, the article focuses on the relation between language and culture in the communicative model of language that, since the development of new technologies of communication. The priority of communication over culture articulated in this model, it is argues, is central to the promotion of globalizations utopia of the unobstructed flow of messages across national borders.