https://journals.openedition.org/ilcea/10549?lang=en

In its inception and consequent development, English for Specific Purposes implied precise modeling of language instruction to prepare professionals for the global job market. The language skills imparted are designed to make them competitive in terms of obtaining and maintaining professional posts and, in certain cases, to equip them to follow the future language developments required to retain the post. Mastering domain lexicon, rhetoric, and stylistics, undeniably empowers ESP learners’ career advancement potential. However, in view of such narrowly defined axial purposes, ESP has been referred to as a “restricted” language (Mackay & Mountford, 1978), which excludes other aspects of human experience, and is therefore also ‘restrictive’. As such, it does not involve any ontology, profound layers or nuances of human attempts to comprehend the entirety of existence, but rather “performativity” which Lyotard (1984) criticized as the imperative of neoliberal capitalism which sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency (Monboit, 2016). In spite of this, this paper argues that LSP can be an indispensable tool for social and personal advancement on the condition that LSP learners are empowered with unbiased critical awareness towards their desired professional environment so as to autonomously discern their own position in it, whether by simply adding to the further enhancement of the existing “performative” neoliberal capitalistic setting, or by making a difference by humanizing it, and striving towards a more complete personal existence.