Cultural Identity Planning in China: A Diachronic Study of the English Language Education Policy

Abstract

This paper, by applying Discourse-Historical Approach [Wodak & Boukala, 2015], makes a diachronic analysis of 38 English Language Education Policy (ELEP) documents mandated in China since the 1980s, with the aim of generalizing the changing trajectory of cultural identity planning in China context of teaching English as a foreign language. It finds that ELEP before the year 2000 had a strong instrumentalism orientation, where a scientific planning of Chinese cultural identity is missing; then after the year 2000, cross-cultural communication ability is emphasized and learners’ Chinese cultural identity has been brought to the foreground. Currently, the policy discourses are mainly on defining foreign language talents and optimizing curriculum design with an aim to cultivate “dialogical communicators” [Gao Yihong, 2014a, b]. The paper concludes that cultural identity construction through top-down policy implementation would be a prolonged and challenging endeavor.