This article explores the impacts of economic and cultural globalization on language and language education. It acknowledges the spread of English and the negative impacts of this upon other languages and language communities. The case is made that new conditions of economic dominance by multinational corporations raise the stakes for schooling and language education. These conditions have established a "new Latin" of technocratic English that services and obscures the corporate order. It argues for the continuing importance of the state and state schooling and the expansion of the definitions and practices of critical language and literacy education.