Epilogue: Ways Forward for Global English

In closing this special issue, I seek to pull out some similarities and disjunctures that have emerged in the contributions to this special issue in order to consider how the study of global English might fruitfully be moved forward. I want to begin, however, by emphasizing, as Mufwene also finds himself needing to do, that my position “is not a denial of social injustice”, in fact, quite the contrary. Clearly, injustice is everywhere: in grotesque levels of inequality in the distribution of wealth, resources and privilege at global, national and community level. People across the world have their life and livelihood torn apart by war, poverty, famine, exploitation, violence, discrimination, many without the prospect of ever bettering their life. The global climate emergency and pandemics also strike unequally, exacerbating existing inequalities. Like so many others, I am not blind to such injustices and inequalities. Rather, what I have sought to convey, is an uncertainty over the power of linguistics in accounting for and addressing this injustice.