Turning local bilingualism into a touristic experience

Global English and Political Economy

“…Lastly, in place of specifically linguistic competence, it puts symbolic capital, which is inseparable from the speaker's position in the social structure. (Bourdieu, 1977: 646) The language commodification literature consequently follows Bourdieu in being concerned principally with spokenness, and with the practices, policies and indexicalities around spokenness (Sonntag, 2009;Heller & Duchêne, 2012Boutet, 2012;Davuluy, 2012;Lorente, 2012;Park & Wee, 2012;Del Percio, Flubacher & Duchêne;, Schedel, 2018Van Hoof, 2018;Del Percio, 2018;Pujolar, 2018). In the words of Heller & Duchêne, for example, 'We draw on Bourdieu (1982) to argue that language can be understood as a social practice that consists of circulating communicative resources' (2016: 139).…”

Producing the Eikaiwa English language lesson: A dialectical approach to the contradictions of commodity production

“…It is argued that these shifts within the new economy summarised above set the scene for new ways of conceptualising and commodifying that which was formerly seen as a public good—not least language (Heller et al, 2014). Of particular importance to much of the literature on the new economy and its interrelation with language are particular industries referred to as language industries —specified as including tourism, call centres, translation, marketing, and language teaching (Da Silva, McLaughlin, & Richards, 2007; Heller, 2010b)—and the language workers therein (Boutet, 2012), all of which are often referred to as being ‘emblematic’ of the new economy (Boutet, 2012; Del Percio, Flubacher, & Duchêne, 2017; Muth, 2018; Schedel, 2018). Although such industries are acknowledged as not new per se, they nevertheless are said to embody ‘new […] forms of institutionalization […] set up to maintain and develop language as a resource’ (Da Silva et al, 2007, p. 187).…”

Language policy at a crossroads?

“…Perusal of one of the field's leading journals points to sustained interest in on‐the‐ground language policy and practice, and close, often interactional analysis of how policies are taken up, and in many cases remade, both in and through talk in schools, homes, workplaces and online. In recent work, for instance, scholars examine how a local tourist institute engages in linguistic management in order to package the local linguistic diversity, in this case French and German bilingualism, to turn it into a touristic experience that can be commodified and profited from (Schedel ); how Chinese parents engage in decision‐making about native and foreign languages in their own families, and the ideologies, emotions and practical implications therein (Liu and Lin ); and how nationalist arguments surrounding the Serbian language take up religion, nationality and the ‘Otherizing’ of Croatia through assertive, declarative discourse (Jovanović ). While the contexts, foci and research questions vary widely, in all cases, these papers utilize ethnographic, sociolinguistic and/or discourse analytic approaches to analyze how language policy is constructed and contested by local actors to achieve particular material or identity‐related goals.…”