Explaining the foundations of global English. A review article on Global English and political economy, by John O’Regan (Routledge 2021)

This is a complex, well-written book. The opening chapter is on political economy, followed by four chapters on the way capitalism has functioned in successive historical periods. In each of these John O’Regan (JOR) notes how English progressively became the supreme language of global power through exploring the dovetailing of political economy and language policy. The narrative integrates evidence from all continents of the synergies between corporate and government initiatives that consolidated the Anglo-American prestige variant of what JOR terms capital-centric English. In the first part of this review article I will present the principal ideas of each chapter, following which I suggest additional dimensions of how the globalisation of English was undertaken.