Translingual Practices and Neoliberal Policies
In this book, I respond to recent criticisms that the research and theorization of multilingualism by applied linguists are in collusion with neoliberal policies and economic interests. While acknowledging that neoliberal agencies can appropriate diverse
- PDF / 491,190 Bytes
- 66 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 74 Downloads / 232 Views
Abstract In this book, I respond to recent criticisms that the research and theorization of multilingualism by applied linguists are in collusion with neoliberal policies and economic interests. While acknowledging that neoliberal agencies can appropriate diverse languages and language practices, including resources and dispositions theorized by scholars of multilingualism, I argue that we have to distinguish the language ideologies informing communicative practices. Those of neoliberal agencies are motivated by distinct ideological orientations that diverge from the theorization of multilingual practices by critical applied linguists. I draw from my empirical research on skilled migration to demonstrate how sub-Saharan African professionals in English-dominant workplaces in UK, USA, Australia, and South Africa resist the neoliberal communicative expectations to deploy alternate practices informed by critical dispositions. These practices have the potential to reconfigure neoliberal orientations to material development. I label the latter as informed by a postcolonial language ideology, to distinguish it from that of neoliberalism. While neoliberal agencies keep languages separated and hierarchical, treating them as instrumental for profit-making purposes, my informants focus on the synergy between languages to generate new meanings and norms, which are strategically negotiated for ethical interests, inclusive interactions, and holistic ecological development. I thus clarify that the way critical scholars and multilinguals relate to language diversity is different from the way neoliberal policies and agencies use multilingualism for their purposes.
Keywords Neoliberalism Translingual practice Multilingualism migration Language policy Development Africa
Skilled
1 Introduction The “multilingual turn” (May 2014) has been rightly considered as initiating a paradigm shift in applied linguistics. Multilingual policies have been theorized by critical applied linguists as more egalitarian and democratic for social relations © The Author(s) 2017 S. Canagarajah, Translingual Practices and Neoliberal Policies, SpringerBriefs in Linguistics, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41243-6_1
1
2
Translingual Practices and Neoliberal Policies
within and across nations (see, for example, May 2001; Skuttnab-Kangas 2002). Scholars in other disciplines are also beginning to promote social and institutional policies to accommodate multilingualism. Economists have been arguing that multilingualism can be beneficial for workplaces (Gazzola and Grin 2013; Grin 2001; Pool 1996). Social theorists such as Vertovec (2007) have treated superdiversity as a fact of contemporary life, and motivate sociolinguists to consider how social institutions might accommodate the semiotic resources people bring with them in mobility (see Blommaert 2010). The multilingual turn has now generated a philosophical critique of central constructs in applied linguistics, such as language competence, acquisition, and proficiency (Ortega 2014), not to mention t
Data Loading...
