English Worldwide and Linguistic Justice: Past and Present

Abstract

This opening article of the special issue “English worldwide and linguistic justice” starts from the premise that more interdisciplinary work is needed that bridges sociolinguistic research with linguistic justice theories to provide deeper, more nuanced understandings of the position and functions of English around the world today. A chronological review of the literature is provided to, first, go over the sociolinguistic models and frameworks that have been developed for the study of English worldwide since the 1980s up to the present moment, and second, summarize some of the main tenets from the literature that has touched upon such questions from the political and philosophical side. The central argument is that these two main areas, sociolinguistics and political theory, stand to gain from each other from such joint collaborative efforts, with mutual cross‐fertilization of theories and methods. This interdisciplinary work can result in a better understanding of our shared object of study (English worldwide), hoping in turn to provide more impactful language policies on the ground.