Alastair Pennycook's article, "English and Capital: Some Thoughts," in the October 1997 edition of The Language Teacher, presents a troubling view of language and language teaching. While the piece gives some indication of the author's agenda, a more complete picture is available in his description of Critical Applied Linguistics (CALx), a field he sees as useful in the study of language education. He writes:

As a developing focus within an interdisciplinary domain, therefore, its [CALx] antecedents are best understood in terms of the critical domains on which it draws. These include, first, traditional areas of critical thought, such as Marxian structuralist analyses of society, studies in political economy, or theories of imperialism (in press).