Since this formulation has a slightly provocative, if not insulting, aspect to it
(but my starting-point prompts strong reactions), I shall begin by explaining
the position I am speaking from. I am an Anglicist and have devoted my life
to the English language, which I love with a passion (I take the title of Milner’s
L’amour de la langue seriously).2 I am not only an Anglophile but an Anglomaniac.
And loving the English language entails a passionate attraction to the grammar
of this language, its sounds, its history, the literature that it sustains, the
culture that is inscribed and sedimented in it. In short, I think I can claim
that I am not an Anglophobe. However, it is clear that English has become
the global language and the language of globalisation because it is the language
of empire, whose practices are ever more explicitly imperialist. [...]The issue is controversial, but it preoccupies all those who are interested in English as the language of globalisation.5 For the language of
empire is not only in a position of strength, but also in a position of weakness
A Marxist Philosophy of Language, p. 7
