Drawing on empirical case studies from across various European, North American, and East Asian contexts, two issues are handled: What can be told about the nature of neoliberalism from the viewpoint of language as social and political process; and how does language acquisition and teaching, progressively subject to the market logic, not only render neoliberal social transformations but also strenghten them? Together, the contributions to the special issue propose novel research directions that will help settle language as a notable key for grasping the changing political economy of our period.