Policies of English language teaching as part of the global “war of ideas”

Abstract

Language education policies have been discussed mainly as national concerns rather than as international issues. However, in the case of the English language, its inexorable spread in the world today raises questions about the overt and/or covert policies that act to speed and strengthen its teaching and learning far beyond English-speaking countries. In this chapter we examine a number of official documents published in the past seven decades by major institutions within the United States in search of overt policy statements about the teaching of English at a global level. A qualitative content analysis of tens of such documents depicts a triple policy orientation aimed at accessing a diversity of audiences in the general public and élite groups in countries around the world; influencing their beliefs and ideas as well as their feelings and attitudes; and thereby promoting what the documents repeatedly characterize as American values and culture. The uncovered policy lines illustrated by ample examples from the documents should prompt various groups of people involved with the teaching and learning of the English language in the non-English-speaking world – national policy makers, language educators, language teaching material developers, and language teachers, as well as language learners and parents – to think again about the role that English plays in their lives.