Neoliberalism as language policy
TL;DR: This article explored how an economic ideology (neoliberalism)serves as a covert language policy mechanism pushing the global spread of English in South Korean higher education and concluded that the social costs of elevating competitiveness to a core value enacted on the terrain of language choice.
Abstract: This article explores how an economic ideology—neoliberalism—serves as a covert language policy mechanism pushing the global spread of English. Our analysis builds on a case study of the spread of English as a medium of instruction (MoI) in South Korean higher education. The Asian financial crisis of 1997/98 was the catalyst for a set of socioeconomic transformations that led to the imposition of “competitiveness” as a core value. Competition is heavily structured through a host of testing, assessment, and ranking mechanisms, many of which explicitly privilege English as a terrain where individual and societal worth are established. University rankings are one such mechanism structuring competition and constituting a covert form of language policy. One ranking criterion—internationalization—is particularly easy to manipulate and strongly favors English MoI. We conclude by reflecting on the social costs of elevating competitiveness to a core value enacted on the terrain of language choice. (English as a global language, globalization, higher education, medium of instruction (MoI), neoliberalism, South Korea, university rankings)*
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TL;DR: In this article, a case study of an English-medium instruction (EMI) program for undergraduate students at a major university of finance and economy in mainland China is presented, where the authors make a critical analysis of national/institutional policy statements and interviews with professors and students to uncover EMI-related language ideologies, language practices, and language management mechanisms.
Abstract: With the relentless internationalization and marketization of higher education in the past decades, English has been increasingly adopted as a medium of instruction at universities across the world. Recent research, however, has shown that despite its various optimistically envisioned goals, English-medium instruction (EMI) is not without problems in practice. This article reports a case study of an EMI Business Administration program for undergraduate students at a major university of finance and economy in mainland China. Informed by Spolsky’s language policy framework, the study made a critical analysis of national/institutional policy statements and interviews with professors and students to uncover EMI-related language ideologies, language practices, and language management mechanisms. Findings evinced a complex interplay of these three constitutive components of language policy in the focal EMI program and revealed considerable misalignment between policy intentions and actual practices in the classroom. These findings raise concerns about the quality and consequences of EMI in Chinese higher education. The article concludes with recommendations for further research on EMI policies and practices in China.
220 citations
TL;DR: The authors report a case study of an undergraduate English-medium program at a major university in mainland China and examine the language ideology, language management, and language practices revolving around the focal program.
Abstract: This article reports a case study of an undergraduate English-medium program at a major university in mainland China. The study critically examines the language ideology, language management, and language practices revolving around the focal program. The data sources included national and institutional policy documents related to English-medium instruction and interviews with both professors and students in the English-medium program and its parallel Chinese-medium program. Drawing upon Spolsky’s language policy framework for “sensitizing concepts”, qualitative analyses of the data revealed gaps between policy rhetoric and ground-level reality in the implementation of the focal program. Notably, institutional measures intended to enhance the quality of English-medium instruction were found to function as gate-keepers of access to English and potential benefits accruing from English proficiency. These findings add to our understanding of how medium-of-instruction policies in higher education are complicit in perpetuating and accentuating inequalities in Chinese society.
187 citations
Cites background from "Neoliberalism as language policy"
...the prestige/rankings of universities (Piller and Cho 2013; Unterberger 2012)....
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TL;DR: This article focused on the challenges faced by teachers of English to young learners against the backdrop of the global rise of English and highlighted some of the challenges that have not been highlighted in the literature on young learner teaching to date.
Abstract: Drawing on data from a recent research international research project, this article focuses on the challenges faced by teachers of English to young learners against the backdrop of the global rise of English. A mixed-methods approach was used to obtain the data, including a survey, which was completed by 4,459 teachers worldwide, and case studies, including observations and interviews with teachers, in five different primary schools in five different countries. A number of challenges emerged as affecting large numbers of teachers in different educational contexts, namely, teaching speaking, motivation, differentiating learning, teaching large classes, discipline, teaching writing, and teaching grammar. Importantly, some of these challenges have not been highlighted in the literature on young learner teaching to date. Other challenges are more localised, such as developing teachers' English competence. The article argues that teacher education should focus less on introducing teachers to general approaches to English language teaching and more on supporting teachers to meet the challenges that they have identified.
176 citations
Cites background from "Neoliberalism as language policy"
...Such discussions call into question the underlying premises on which the introduction of learning English at an early age are predicated (see also Pillar & Cho, 2013)....
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TL;DR: The South Koreans in the Debt Crisis as mentioned in this paper examines the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997-2001), arguing that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency.
Abstract: South Koreans in the Debt Crisis is a detailed examination of the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997–2001). Jesook Song argues that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency. Song demonstrates that the government was not alone in drawing distinctions between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. Progressive intellectuals, activists, and organizations also participated in the neoliberal reform project. Song traces the circulation of neoliberal concepts throughout South Korean society, among government officials, the media, intellectuals, NGO members, and educated underemployed people working in public works programs. She analyzes the embrace of partnerships between NGOs and the government, the frequent invocation of a pervasive decline in family values, the resurrection of conservative gender norms and practices, and the promotion of entrepreneurship as the key to survival.
Drawing on her experience during the crisis as an employee in a public works program in Seoul, Song provides an ethnographic assessment of the efforts of the state and civilians to regulate social insecurity, instability, and inequality through assistance programs. She focuses specifically on efforts to help two populations deemed worthy of state subsidies: the “IMF homeless,” people temporarily homeless but considered employable, and the “new intellectuals,” young adults who had become professionally redundant during the crisis but had the high-tech skills necessary to lead a transformed post-crisis South Korea.
108 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the sociolinguistics of the COVID-19 crisis and made a concerted effort to open a space for intercultural dialogue within sociliinguistics, and they concluded that, in order to learn lessons from COVID19 and to be better prepared for future crises, socinguistics needs to include local knowledges and grassroots practices not only as objects of investigation but in its epistemologies.
Abstract: Multilingual crisis communication has emerged as a global challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic Global public health communication is characterized by the large-scale exclusion of linguistic minorities from timely high-quality information The severe limitations of multilingual crisis communication that the COVID-19 crisis has laid bare result from the dominance of English-centric global mass communication;the longstanding devaluation of minoritized languages;and the failure to consider the importance of multilingual repertoires for building trust and resilient communities These challenges, along with possible solutions, are explored in greater detail by the articles brought together in this special issue, which present case studies from China and the global Chinese diaspora As such, the special issue constitutes not only an exploration of the sociolinguistics of the COVID-19 crisis but also a concerted effort to open a space for intercultural dialogue within sociolinguistics We close by contending that, in order to learn lessons from COVID-19 and to be better prepared for future crises, sociolinguistics needs to include local knowledges and grassroots practices not only as objects of investigation but in its epistemologies;needs to diversify its knowledge base and the academic voices producing that knowledge base;and needs to re-enter dialogue with policy makers and activists
102 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1970
TL;DR: The Second Edition of Bourdieu's Theory of Symbolic VIOLENCE as discussed by the authors is a collection of essays about the foundation of a theory of symbolic violence and its application in higher education.
Abstract: Preface to the Second Edition - Pierre Bourdieu Foreword - Tom Bottomore PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS OF A THEORY OF SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE PART TWO: KEEPING ORDER Cultural Capital and Pedagogic Communication The Literate Tradition and Social Conservation Exclusion and Selection Dependence through Independence Appendix The Changing Structure of Higher Education Opportunities Redistribution or Translation?
9,637 citations
Book•
01 Jun 2002
TL;DR: The promise of global institutions broken promises freedom to choose, the East Asia crisis - how IMF policies brought the world to the verge of a global meltdown who lost Russia? unfair trade laws and other better roads to the market the IMF's other agenda the way ahead.
Abstract: The promise of global institutions broken promises freedom to choose? the East Asia crisis - how IMF policies brought the world to the verge of a global meltdown who lost Russia? unfair trade laws and other mischief better roads to the market the IMF's other agenda the way ahead.
6,541 citations
"Neoliberalism as language policy" refers background in this paper
...…is a resuscitation of nineteenth century laissez-faire (hence, neoliberal) capitalism based on Adam Smith’s competitive equilibrium model, in which the unregulated (hence, free) market is assumed to work for the benefit of all if individual competition is given free reign (cf. Stiglitz 2002:74)....
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Book•
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: The Shock Doctrine as mentioned in this paper is one of the most popular non-fiction books of the year in the UK and the US, and it has been widely cited as the best book of all time.
Abstract: Around the world in Britain, the United States, Asia and the Middle East, there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos; exploiting bloodshed and catastrophe to brutally remake our world in their image. They are the shock doctors. Exposing these global profiteers, Naomi Klein discovered information and connections that shocked even her about how comprehensively the shock doctors' beliefs now dominate our world - and how this domination has been achieved. Raking in billions out of the tsunami, plundering Russia, exploiting Iraq - this is the chilling tale of how a few are making a killing while more are getting killed. "Packed with thinking dynamite...a book to be read everywhere." (John Berger). "If you only read one non-fiction book this year, make it this one." (Metro Books of the Year). "There are a few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books." (John Gray, Guardian). "A brilliant book written with a perfectly distilled anger, channelled through hard fact. She has indeed surpassed No Logo." (Independent).
2,713 citations
"Neoliberalism as language policy" refers background or result in this paper
...In 1996, international investors poured $100 billion into South Korea (Klein 2007:264)....
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...(Klein 2007:265) 26 Language in Society 42:1 (2013) Furthermore, the IMF, the global body tasked with preventing such crashes, did not respond immediately and when it responded it did not simply provide an emergency stabilization loan that a purely financial crisis demanded; nor were capital…...
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...South Korea’s economic development pre-1998 was achieved against the free market while the crisis and its continued effects were the result of the free market (Klein 2007)....
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...In 1995 it was 11.8 per 100,000 people (CIA world factbook, 1997; cited in Klein 2007:502) and by 2009 it had risen to 28.4 per 100,000, which translates into forty-two suicides per day (I. Song 2011)....
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...Klein (2007), on whose account we have mainly drawn in this section, attributes this lack of resistance to a state of collective shock—at going almost overnight from a model economy to one with a debt crisis....
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Book•
01 Jun 2009
TL;DR: In this paper, higher education scholars Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades detail the aggressive engagement of U.S. higher education institutions in the knowledge-based economy and analyze the efforts of colleges and universities to develop, market, and sell research products, educational services, and consumer goods in the private marketplace.
Abstract: As colleges and universities become more entrepreneurial in a post-industrial economy, they focus on knowledge less as a public good than as a commodity to be capitalized on in profit-oriented activities. In Academic Capitalism and the New Economy, higher education scholars Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades detail the aggressive engagement of U.S. higher education institutions in the knowledge-based economy and analyze the efforts of colleges and universities to develop, market, and sell research products, educational services, and consumer goods in the private marketplace. Slaughter and Rhoades track changes in policy and practice, revealing new social networks and circuits of knowledge creation and dissemination, as well as new organizational structures and expanded managerial capacity to link higher education institutions and markets. They depict an ascendant academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime expressed in faculty work, departmental activity, and administrative behavior. Clarifying the regime's internal contradictions, they note the public subsidies embedded in new revenue streams and the shift in emphasis from serving student customers to leveraging resources from them. Defining the terms of academic capitalism in the new economy, this groundbreaking study offers essential insights into the trajectory of American higher education.
1,929 citations
01 Jan 1990
639 citations