	Hopefully, showing the interrelatedness between moral philosophy and literature shows that the two disciplines are deeply linked, in ways that cannot be fully explicated or understood. It is time that we accept the fact that morality and aesthetics are inextricably and inescapably connected, and that any judgment of literature is a moral judgment. In order to understand one or the other we must try to study and understand both.

	Modern technology has created a new era in the history of language. Means of travel, and especially means of communication, fashioned a world that is truly interconnected. Due to the economic and military dominance of America as the world's only superpower, English has become the language of this globalization. Although the era of Imperialism has come to a close, the sun still never sets on speakers of the English language. As Paul Jay suggests, this globalization of English is having dramatic implications on the study of English literature, and the force of these globalizing factors will only increase. He  claims that literature should no longer be studied from a nationalist perspective, but can only be understood from the context of a local culture (inter)acting with(in) a global culture. The study of British literature, from this perspective, must be the study of global literature, and the study of how all English language literatures and cultures affect one another. It is on this theoretical perspective that this paper will be based, believing that an overview of the current cultural status of English language literatures is a vital background to truly understanding British literature.
	Before exploring the effect of global culture on specific literature and literatures, it is important to examine some of the factors that make contemporary English so unique, and its impact so difficult to understand.
	Perhaps the most unique aspect of English is just how widespread it is. Not only is English the de facto language of the Internet, international business, and diplomacy, but there are large populations of native English speakers on every continent in the world. Never has any language had the sort of global diffusion, not to mention international power and prestige, that English currently has. One effect of this dominance is a dramatic increase in the number of English learners. By some estimates, there are currently between 750 million and one billion people learning English at some level. That means that there are currently far more people learning English than there are native speakers of the language, with many learners presumably being taught by other non-native speakers. This makes English a very vibrant and diverse language, with much variation in lexicon, semantics, and even syntax as it is affected in different ways by different cultures that it comes in contact with.
	These attributes of contemporary English are unique in the history of language, and there will certainly be some monumental changes in the language as more and more non-European speakers learn it. 