This book presents the narratives of four Taiwanese young women, all proficient in English, set against the background of the dynamics of multilingualism in Taiwan. It chronicles their strategies and struggles when utilizing cultural goods – in this case their linguistic resources – to differentiate themselves within Taiwanese society. The study provides a uniquely bottom-up perspective by focusing intently on just four focal participants, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of how the intersection of socioeconomic status, age and gender shape their identities, experiences and practices. The book highlights the impact of neoliberalism on the women’s attempts at distinction and is a timely contribution to debates on multilingualism and issues of gender and socioeconomic status.

This edited book comprises chapters integrated around a central theme on college-educated Japanese, Korean, and Chinese women’s orientation to English study. The collection is composed of two parts: (1) East Asian women’s motivation to study in the West and (2) East Asian women’s dream to use English as a career. The first part discusses their international migration as facilitated by factors characteristic of East Asian nations (e.g. middle-class women’s access to advanced education and yet unequal access to professional career) and other factors inherent in each nation (e.g. different social evaluations of women equipped with competitive overseas degrees and English proficiency). The second part sheds light on the dreams and realities of East Asian female adults who, having been avid English learners, aim for "dream jobs" (e.g. interpreters) or have few other career choices but to be re-trained as English specialists or even as Japanese language teachers working abroad. This collection is suitable for any scholar interested in the lives and voices of young educated women who strive to empower themselves with language skills in the seemingly promising neoliberal world that is, however, riddled with ideological contradictions.

The global spread of English both reproduces and reinforces oppressive structures of inequality. But such structures can no longer be seen as imposed from an imperial center, as English is now actively adopted and appropriated in local contexts around the world. This book argues that such conditions call for a new critique of global English, one that is sensitive to both the political economic conditions of globalization and speakers’ local practices. Linking Bourdieu’s theory of the linguistic market and his practice-based perspective with recent advances in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, this book offers a fresh new critique of global English. The authors highlight the material, discursive, and semiotic processes through which the value of English in the linguistic market is constructed, and suggest possible policy interventions that may be adopted to address the problems of global English. Through its serious engagement with current sociolinguistic theory and insightful analysis of the multiple dimensions of English in the world, this book challenges the readers to think about what we need to do to confront the social inequalities that are perpetuated by the global spread of English

** Winner of AAAL Book Award 2020 ** **Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2018** The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language is the first comprehensive survey of this area, exploring language and human mobility in today’s globalised world. This key reference brings together a range of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives, drawing on subjects such as migration studies, geography, philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Featuring over 30 chapters written by leading experts from around the world, this book: Examines how basic constructs such as community, place, language, diversity, identity, nation-state, and social stratification are being retheorized in the context of human mobility; Analyses the impact of the ‘mobility turn’ on language use, including the parallel ‘multilingual turn’ and translanguaging; Discusses the migration of skilled and unskilled workers, different forms of displacement, and new superdiverse and diaspora communities; Explores new research orientations and methodologies, such as mobile and participatory research, multi-sited ethnography, and the mixing of research methods; Investigates the place of language in citizenship, educational policies, employment and social services. The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language is essential reading for those with an interest in migration studies, language policy, sociolinguistic research and development studies.

Language and Neoliberalism examines the ways in which neoliberalism, or the ideology of market rule, finds expression in language. In this groundbreaking original study, Holborow shows at once the misleading character of ideological meaning and the underlying social reality from which that meaning emerges. In universities, it is now the norm to use terms like entrepreneurial and business partnerships. How have these terms become a core component of education and gained such force? Markets have become, metaphorically, a power in their own right. They now tell governments how to act and warn them against too much public spending. Post-crash, the capitalist market continues to be crisis-prone, and in that context the neoliberal ideology remains contested. Free of jargon and assuming no specialist knowledge, this book will strike a chord internationally by showing how neoliberal ideology has, literally, gone global in language. Drawing on Vološinov and Bakhtin, Williams and Gramsci, and introducing concepts from Marxist political economy, Language and Neoliberalism is essential reading for all interested in the intersection of linguistics/applied linguistics and politics.

Human Capital in Gender and Development addresses timely feminist debates about the relationship between feminism, neoliberalism, and international development. The book engages with human capital theory, a labour economics theory associated with the Chicago School that now animates a wide range of political and economic governance. The book argues that human capital theory has been instrumental in constructing an economistic vision of gender equality as a tool for economic growth, and girls and women of the global South as the quintessential entrepreneurs of the post-global financial crisis era. The book’s critique of human capital theory and its role in Gender and Development gives insights into the kinds of development interventions that typify the ‘Gender Equality as Smart Economics’ agenda of the World Bank and other international development institutions. From the World Bank, to NGOs, and private businesses, discourses about the economic benefits of gender equality and women’s empowerment underpin a range of development interventions that aim to unlock the ‘untapped’ potential of the world’s women. Its implications are both conceptual and material, producing more interventionist forms of development governance, increased power by private sector actors in development, and de-politicization of gender equality issues. Human Capital in Gender and Development will be of particular interest to feminist scholars in Politics, International Relations, Development Studies, and Human Geography. It will also be a useful resource for teaching key debates about feminism, neoliberalism, and international development.

This book examines how neoliberalism finds expression in foreign language textbooks. Moving beyond the usual focus on English, Pau Bori explores the impact of neoliberal ideology on Catalan textbooks. By comparing Catalan textbooks to English textbooks, this book interrogates the similarities and differences between a minor and a global language in the age of neoliberalism. Drawing on insights from critical theory and critical pedagogy, this study provides a fresh perspective on foreign language textbooks and second language education more broadly. Language Textbooks in the Era of Neoliberalism paves the way for new critical perspectives in language education that will challenge the current hegemony of neoliberalism.

This book examines the ways in which our ideas about language and identity which used to be framed in national and political terms as a matter of rights and citizenship are increasingly recast in economic terms as a matter of added value. It argues that this discursive shift is connected to specific characteristics of the globalized new economy in what can be thought of as "late capitalism". Through ten ethnographic case studies, it demonstrates the complex ways in which older nationalist ideologies which invest language with value as a source of pride get bound up with newer neoliberal ideologies which invest language with value as a source of profit. The complex interaction between these modes of mobilizing linguistic resources challenges some of our ideas about globalization, hinting that we are in a period of intensification of modernity, in which the limits of the nation-State are stretched, but not (yet) undone. At the same time, this book argues, this intensification also calls into question modernist ways of looking at language and identity, requiring a more serious engagement with capitalism and how it constitutes symbolic (including linguistic) as well as material markets.

This book explores neoliberalism – a view of the world that puts the market at its centre- from the perspective of applied linguistics. Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics argues that while applied linguistics has become more interdisciplinary in orientation, it has ignored or downplayed the role of political economy, namely the way in which social, political and economic factors relate to one another within the context of a capitalist economy. The authors take the view that engagement with political economy is central to any fully rounded analysis of language and language-related issues in the world today and their collaboration in this volume represents an initial attempt to redress what they perceive to be an imbalance in the field. The book begins with a discussion of neoliberalism and an analysis of the ways in which neoliberal ideology impacts on language. This is followed by a discussion of how globalization and identity have been conceptualised in applied linguistics in ways which have ignored the political centrality of class – a concept which the authors see as integral to their perspective. The book concludes with an analysis of the ways in which neoliberal ideology plays out in two key areas of applied linguistics - language teaching and language teacher education. Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in applied linguistics.