The Impact of Brexit on the ELT Industry Management

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of the war, the idiom of the two winning countries established itself as the official language of 
the international organizations mentioned before and became the most widely used language in 
international trade.
6
 
The whole process of globalization has been driven by neoliberal economic principles, 
massively tested in the UK by Margaret Thatcher and in the US by Ronald Reagan. Privatization, 
reduction of state deficits, freedom of trade and investment, abolition of protectionist barriers are 
the essential points of a policy created on the initiative of US and British political authorities and 
then projected in Europe. The deregulation policy has favored the transport revolution, which has 
enabled the upper classes to experience the thrill of travelling by plane, thanks to the multiplying 
of airline companies and to the falling of prices. The feeling is that the world has become a 
"global village", where anyone can think that a famous American actress like Marilyn Monroe is 
as familiar to her as her neighbor is; and people hope to be able to travel to places never seen 
before.
7
 On top of that, the authority of North America as a superpower was definitively 
confirmed in 1989 with the breakdown of the USSR, when the United States seemed to be the 
only one able to govern - even with the use of force - international relations, in terms of for 
military strength, political authority and economical solidity. 
The global spread of English has been a cultural fact, as well as political and economic. For 
decades American TV series broadcasted the American way of life in the Western world and 
massively inserted English into advertising. The relaunch of consumption was in fact 
enormously stimulated the former, that became a daily feature in everyone's life: it pushed 
people towards purchases which seemed to promise a new quality of life.
 8 
The same is true for 
the cinema, where the process of Americanization is even clearer: movies coming from the 
United States attracted many spectators, whether they were film noir, westerns, or brilliant 
comedies. Despite the resistance opposed by the flourishing European film companies, it was 
clear right from the very beginning that the real great successes came from Hollywood. This is 
why many talented European authors –  like Alfred Hitchcock – flew to the USA to search for a 
global audience.
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6
 The European Union and International Organizations, K. E. Jørgensen, Routledge (2009). 
7
 History, Historians, and Conservatism in Britain and America: From the Great War to Thatcher and Reagan, R. 
Soffer, Oxford University Press (2009). 
 
8
 Perché l’inglese è la lingua franca globale?, D. Canepa, Era Superba (2012). 
 http://genova.erasuperba.it/perche-inglese-lingua-franca-internazionale 
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English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing and teaching English, I. Mackenzie, Routledge (2014)