【正文】 al ecological issues that affect the whole of humanity.Fourth, developments in the political sphere may well be causing increased isolation. The attack on 11 September 2001 and the growing fear of terrorism in the intervening period have heightened patriotism and may have caused Americans to turn inward. The drop in numbers travelling abroad as a result of fears for personal safety can only exacerbate retreat from the international and global.Fifth, the reluctance of North Americans to experiment with supranational regional governance is part and parcel of these current attitudes towards political independence. The North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) remains solely economic with no political dimension, and studies of North American opinion have found that:The European subordination of national identity and values in the pursuit of greater economic advantages seems to neither be necessary nor desired in North America. (EKOS 2003)Consequently, the United States could be said to be bucking the trend and retaining many of the attributes of the nation state. It is interesting that in the current 39。English only39。 debate within the United States itself, many in the establishment elites have taken a stance clearly within the nineteenth century nationbuilding mould and have argued against any public space for the languages of other constituent groups (cf. Gonzalez 2001). Thus we appear to be witnessing asymmetric developments within globalisation: loss of economic autonomy and political sovereignty for many states。 continuing economic autonomy and political sovereignty together with the survival of some elements of traditional 39。one nation, one territory, one language39。 nationalism for the United States. Opposition to English spread: questions of justice and equityThus in the opening years of the twentyfirst century we have a situation where a globalising world is using the US paradigm and the English language, but where Americans seem to participate only where this is of clear advantage to them and opt out where it is not. It is little wonder that this situation of ascendancy and imbalance has led to intense irritation and antiAmerican feeling. I have explored it here because it is, no doubt, one of the causes for the strong reactions to the spread of English in many quarters. A growing body of scholarly literature sets out to demonstrate that the English language is imposed through a plex ideological process of dominant discourses linked to this pursuit of AngloSaxon selfinterest (. Tollefson 1991。 Phillipson 1992。 Calvet 1993。 Pennycook 1995。 Hagege 1996) and fuelled by an inwardlooking hegemon refusing to engage with the rest of the world in a multilateral way, resulting in disadvantageous language practices being imposed on poorer countries (Tollefson 1991 and 1995。 Blommaert 1999。 SkutnabbKangas 2000). It is these oppositional discourses that we shall now consider and evaluate whether they have had effect in the wider munity. Critical TheoryGiven the association of English with British colonialism and American extreme free market Capitalism, it is not surprising that much of the literature that opposes or questions the spread of English es from the Marxist and Critical Theory tradition.Critical Theory, which originated in the Frankfurt School, takes the stance that research cannot be . From this perspective Critical Theorists set out to marry the empiricism of the social sciences with morality. Their main contribution has been first to clarify the socially constructed character of society, revealing how ruling social groups propagate their world view to justify inequalities in social arrangements, and second to identify and enlist those in society whose interests would be served by social change. Critical Theory clearly has much to contribute in the area of language, and this dimension is highly developed in the work of Jurgen Habermas. Habermas’ theory of municative action presents contemporary Capitalism as a set of systems that colonise people’s lives. The systems are economic and political. The economic system is mediated by money and the political by language.Other major social theorists such as the Postmodernist French philosopher, Michel Foucault developed theories based on similar premises. Foucault’s work sought to uncover the historical construction of certain discourses and to the increasing importance of ideology as a mechanism of power in societies where overt control is no longer possible and ascribes a central role to discourse as the main tool of persuasion that ensures modern forms of power. This development was in direct contradiction to mainstream Linguistics whose proponents had long felt themselves to be in an academic discipline that was apolitical. The legacy of the Saussurean approach had been to study language as a free standing system。 the legacy of the Behaviourists had been to associate the study of language to the individual and to psychology rather than to the group and to sociology.The philosophical underpinning of both Critical Theory and Postmodernism seemed to offer insights for a number of politically aware linguists who reacted against apolitical approaches, and, by the late 1980s, the numbers working within the paradigm influenced by Critical Theory were such that one can begin to talk of the Critical Linguistics school. Critical Linguists turned to a consideration of `the relationships among language, power and inequality, which are held to be central concepts for understanding language and society39。 (Tollefson 2002: 4). They wanted to understand the social and political effects of particular language policies and practices, to make clear how such policies and practices were often presented as inevitable by elites who benefited from the status quo and to investigate how they disadvantaged individuals and groups who had little influence over the linguistic dimension of public life and who had to function within system