The notion of ‘authentic’ language becomes problematic within a framework of English as an international language: whose words and whose culture comprise authentic language? Native-speaker practices do not apply across multiple contexts of use. A more acceptable notion is ‘appropriate language’, but even this term needs to be examined, for what is appropriate in an international context may not be appropriate in a local context. We take the metaphor of the market-place to conceptualize appropriate pedagogy as serving both the global and local needs of learners of English. A market-place is not only a place of business and international idioms, but also a place of local communication and culturally-specific forms of discourse. We argue that the notion of appropriate pedagogy should be a pedagogy of both global appropriacy and local appropriation.