The ideological role of English, beyond its instrumental value, is reported to be immense. British colonial rule deployed English as an ideological tool which facilitated colonial subjugation and religious conversion. Connections between English and evangelism have widened in the postcolonial and globalising world, leading to labelling English as…

This study sheds light on the socio-economic factors determining the (re)location of sociolinguistic prestige in postcolonial environments. It uses the case of Namibia, an ethnolinguistically diverse African country that replaced Afrikaans -- an established lingua franca -- with English as its official language to weaken the hold of the formerly…