This special issue aims to develop a research agenda that brings language to the centre of our inquiry and critique of neoliberalism. Based on empirical case studies from across diverse contexts in Europe, North America, and East Asia, contributors to this special issue address two issues: (1) What can be said about the nature of neoliberalism when we approach it from the perspective of language as social and political process? (2) How does language learning and teaching, increasingly subject to the logic of the market, not only reflect neoliberal social transformations but also reinforce them? Together, the contributions to the special issue suggest new directions of research that will help establish language as an important key for understanding the shifting political economy of our time. [The papers in this special issue were first presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Dallas, as part of the panel "Applied Linguistics and Political Economy: Ideologies of Language and Identity under Neoliberalism."]