Table Of ContentLanguage, Education and
Neoliberalism
CRITICAL LANGUAGE AND LITERACY STUDIES
Series Editors: Professor Alastair Pennycook (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia) and
Professor Brian Morgan (Glendon College/York University, Toronto, Canada) and Professor Ryuko
Kubota (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
Critical Language and Literacy Studies is an international series that encourages monographs directly
addressing issues of power (its flows, inequities, distributions, trajectories) in a variety of language-
and literacy-related realms. The aim with this series is twofold: (1) to cultivate scholarship that
openly engages with social, political, and historical dimensions in language and literacy studies,
and (2) to widen disciplinary horizons by encouraging new work on topics that have received little
focus (see below for partial list of subject areas) and that use innovative theoretical frameworks.
Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://
www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34
High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.
Other books in the series
Gendered Identities and Immigrant Language Learning
Julia Menard-Warwick
China and English: Globalisation and the Dilemmas of Identity
Joseph Lo Bianco, Jane Orton and Gao Yihong (eds)
Language and HIV/AIDS
Christina Higgins and Bonny Norton (eds)
Hybrid Identities and Adolescent Girls: Being ‘Half’ in Japan
Laurel D. Kamada
Decolonizing Literacy: Mexican Lives in the Era of Global Capitalism
Gregorio Hernandez-Zamora
Contending with Globalization in World Englishes
Mukul Saxena and Tope Omoniyi (eds)
ELT, Gender and International Development: Myths of Progress in a Neocolonial World
Roslyn Appleby
Examining Education, Media, and Dialogue under Occupation: The Case of Palestine and Israel
Ilham Nasser, Lawrence N. Berlin and Shelley Wong (eds)
The Struggle for Legitimacy: Indigenized Englishes in Settler Schools
Andrea Sterzuk
Style, Identity and Literacy: English in Singapore
Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee
Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places
Alastair Pennycook
Talk, Text and Technology: Literacy and Social Practice in a Remote Indigenous Community
Inge Kral
Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move
Kimie Takahashi
English and Development: Policy, Pedagogy and Globalization
Elizabeth J. Erling and Philip Seargeant (eds)
Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity
Jan Blommaert
Power and Meaning Making in an EAP Classroom - Engaging with the Everyday
Christian W. Chun
Local Languaging, Literacy and Multilingualism in a West African Society
Kasper Juffermans
English Teaching and Evangelical Mission - The Case of Lighthouse School
Bill Johnston
Race and Ethnicity in English Language Teaching
Christopher Joseph Jenks
CRITICAL LANGUAGE AND LITERACY STUDIES: 23
Language, Education and
Neoliberalism
Critical Studies in Sociolinguistics
Edited by
Mi-Cha Flubacher and Alfonso Del Percio
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS
Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit
DOI 10.21832/FLUBAC8682
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Names: Flubacher, Mi-Cha, editor. | Percio, Alfonso Del, editor.
Title: Language, Education and Neoliberalism: Critical Studies in Sociolinguistics/Edited by
Mi-Cha Flubacher and Alfonso Del Percio.
Description: Bristol, UK; Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters, [2017] | Series:
Critical Language and Literacy Studies: 23 | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017014936| ISBN 9781783098682 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN
9781783098675 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781783098699 (pdf) | ISBN
9781783098705 (epub) | ISBN 9781783098712 (kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Language and education–Social aspects. | Neoliberalism–Social aspects. |
Sociolinguistics.
Classification: LCC P40.8 .L3669 2017 | DDC 306.44–dc23 LC record available at https://
lccn.loc.gov/2017014936
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-868-2 (hbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-867-5 (pbk)
Multilingual Matters
UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.
USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA.
Website: www.multilingual-matters.com
Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters
Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com
Copyright © 2017 Mi-Cha Flubacher, Alfonso Del Percio and the authors of individual
chapters.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.
The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natu-
ral, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the
manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to
printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos
will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services Limited.
Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press Ltd.
Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc.
Contents
Contributors vii
Series Editors’ Preface xi
1 Language, Education and Neoliberalism 1
Alfonso Del Percio and Mi-Cha Flubacher
2 The Commodification of Language in Neoliberalizing
China: The Cases of English and Mandarin 19
Shuang Gao
3 ‘A Treasure’ and ‘A Legacy’: Individual and Communal
(Re)valuing of Isthmus Zapotec in Multilingual Mexico 37
Haley De Korne
4 From Language-as-Resource to Language-as-Struggle:
Resisting the Coke-ification of Bilingual Education 62
Nelson Flores
5 English as the Medium of Instruction in Korean Higher
Education: Language and Subjectivity as Critical
Perspective on Neoliberalism 82
Joseph Sung-Yul Park
6 Internationalization and English Language Learning in
Higher Education in Canada: A Case Study of Brazilian
STEM Scholarship Students 101
Jonathan Luke
7 Neoliberalism in ELT Aid: Interrogating a USAID ELT
Project in Southern Philippines 122
Honey B. Tabiola and Beatriz Lorente
v
vi Contents
8 Enterprising Migrants: Language and the Shifting Politics
of Activation 140
Alfonso Del Percio and Sarah Van Hoof
9 Assembling Language Policy: Challenging Standardization
and Quantification in the Education of Refugee Students
in a US School 163
Jill Koyama
10 The Games People Play: A Critical Study of ‘Resource
Leeching’ among ‘Blended’ English for Academic Purpose
Professionals in Neoliberal Universities 184
Gregory Hadley
11 Win-Win?! Language Regulation for Competitiveness in a
University Context 204
Martina Zimmermann and Mi-Cha Flubacher
12 Neoliberal Reforms in Language Education: Major Trends,
Uneven Outcomes, Open Questions 229
Mary McGroarty
Index 242
Contributors
Alfonso Del Percio is lecturer of applied linguistics at UCL Institute
of Education, University College London. His research focuses on
language, work and inequality; language, migration and governmentality;
multilingualism and nationalism; language, branding and the nation state;
language and political economy. His recent publications include ‘Discourses
of Diversity’ (Language and Communication, 2016, co-edited with Zorana
Sokolovska), ‘A Semiotics of Nation Branding’ (Signs and Society, 2016)
and Language and Political Economy, with Mi-Cha Flubacher and Alexandre
Duchêne (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Haley De Korne conducts research and advocacy in relation to
minoritized language communities, multilingual education, and language
politics. She has participated in Indigenous language education projects
as a linguist and educational consultant in a variety of contexts, in
particular in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center
for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan at the University of
Oslo, Norway, and gratefully acknowledges the support of a predoctoral
fellowship in anthropology from the Smithsonian Institute which enabled
the research presented in Chapter 3.
Nelson Flores is an assistant professor of educational linguistics at the
University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. His research
seeks to denaturalize raciolinguistic ideologies that inform current
conceptualizations of language education. This entails both historical
analysis of the origins of contemporary raciolinguistic ideologies and
contemporary analysis examining how current language education policies
and practices reproduce these ideologies. His work has appeared in scholarly
journals such as Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, Linguistics and Education,
TESOL Quarterly and Harvard Educational Review.
vii
viii Contributors
Mi-Cha Flubacher is a postdoctoral assistant in applied linguistics at the
Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Austria. Collaborating
in various research projects, she has gained extensive research experience
on questions of multilingualism policies as well as multilingual practices
and their consequences, e.g. in the workplace, as her publications attest.
Her research interests include ethnographic approaches to the economic
commodification of language and multilingualism, to language as a site of
the reproduction of social inequality and to questions of language and race/
ethnicity in the process of exoticization.
Shuang Gao is a sociolinguist working at the Department of English,
University of Liverpool, UK. Her research interests include language and
identity, ethnography, language ideology, language and globalization. She
has published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language in Society and others.
Gregory Hadley is a professor of applied linguistics and cultural studies in
the Department of Humanities at Niigata University, Japan, and a visiting
fellow at Kellogg College, The University of Oxford. He received his PhD
from the University of Birmingham, UK. His most recent work is English
for Academic Purposes in Neoliberal Universities: A Critical Grounded Theory
(Springer, 2015).
Jill Koyama, an anthropologist, is associate professor in educational
policy studies and practice and teaching learning and sociocultural
studies. She is also affiliated with graduate interdisciplinary programs
in social, cultural and critical theory, the Institute for LGBT Studies and
second language acquisition and teaching. Her work is situated across
three strands of inquiry: the productive social assemblage of policy,
the controversies of globalizing educational policy and the politics of
immigrant and refugee education. Her work has appeared in the American
Journal of Education, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, British Journal of
Sociology of Education, Educational Policy, Educational Researcher and Journal
of Education Policy.
Beatriz Lorente is a lecturer at the Department of English of the University
of Basel and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Multilingualism of
the University of Fribourg. Her research interests are in language and
globalization, language and migration and language policy.
Jonathan Luke is a PhD student in the graduate program in linguistics
and applied linguistics at York University in Toronto, Canada. His research
Contributors ix
interests include language policy and planning, the global position
and function of English and critical English for academic purposes.
He is currently completing his dissertation research project involving
international students, English language learning and language policies in
higher education.
Mary McGroarty, professor emerita in the applied linguistics program
of the English Department at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff,
has taught courses in language policy and pedagogy for more than three
decades in Arizona and California. She has trained teachers in China,
Hungary, Morocco, Peru, Tunisia and Venezuela as well as the US. A past
president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, she has
served on several editorial advisory boards in the US, the UK and Canada
and has published in Applied Linguistics, Canadian Modern Language Review,
Language Policy, Language Learning, TESOL Quarterly and in many edited
collections.
Joseph Sung-Yul Park is associate professor in the Department of English
Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore. His work
focuses on the intersection of language and globalization, particularly
the politics of language and neoliberalism, the discursive processes of
transnationalism and English as a global language in an Asian context. He is
the author of The Local Construction of a Global Language: Ideologies of English
in South Korea (Mouton de Gruyter, 2009) and Markets of English: Linguistic
Capital and Language Ideology in a Globalizing World (co-authored with Lionel
Wee, Routledge, 2012).
Honey B. Tabiola is instructor in education at Father Saturnino Urios
University, Philippines. He has a master’s degree in English language and
literature teaching from the Ateneo de Manila University and was a graduate
student research fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National
University of Singapore in 2013. His research sits at the intersections
of English language teaching, critical social thought in education and
democratic citizenship.
Sarah Van Hoof is assistant professor of Dutch and multilingual
communication at Ghent University. Her research focuses on language
ideologies, institutional language policies and multilingualism in Flanders
(Belgium). Her work has been published in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse
Taal- en Letterkunde, Pragmatics and Journal of Germanic Linguistics and
in several edited volumes. She currently supervises the research project
