This paper uses a 'two-space' perspective on the global economy to help explain the recent elevation of English to a position of supremacy as the global language of communication and to explain the ambivalent impact that English has in this role on the communities embracing it. It is argued that English, in its global function and format, promotes material development and progression in 'physical' space, but at the same time facilitates dispossession and therefore regression in 'price' space. This view of global English as the linguistic counterpart to the contemporary phenomenon of 'proregression', or dynamic stasis, is contrasted with both the linguistic 'neutrality' and linguistic 'domination' theories of English in the world today.
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Lysandrou et al. (2003) studied this question.