Markets of English - Joseph Sung-Yul park & Lionel Wee

Park, Joseph Sung-Yul and Lionel Wee. Markets of English: Linguistic Capital and Language Policy in a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge, 2012.


Following Bourdieu, the authors take a market theoretical perspective, which is "an analytic stance towards language that focuses on the ideologies and practices that shape and negotiate the value of language varieties as they are perceived in social context" (6).  They identify previous frameworks for critiquing global English: linguistic imperialism & linguistic human rights (both macrosocial approaches), World English (valorizes variety, but not internal heterogeneity), English as a Lingua Franca (core features for mutual intelligibility), and performativity/transculturation (power relations, local & hybrid practices).  The authors find important contributions from all these approaches in looking to factors beyond the linguistic for the global spread of English, but they find the last to be the most sophisticated in its complexity.

In relation to Kachru's three circles model, the authors maintain the "nation" category as a reference point for how ideologies of standard languages manifest power relations, but acknowledge that other levels of society need to be considered as well to recognize heterogeneity within and across groups since "[l]ocal evaluations of linguistic appropriation, which are commonly framed in terms of ideologies of allegiance, competence, or authenticity, etc., make reference to and are thus constrained by the Three Circles as an ideological construct" (70).

Based on Pennycook, the authors outline a performativity approach to critique English's global spread by saying that "identity is not something that precedes the practices that bring them into being, but something that is called into being through the linguistic acts that perform them" (83).    They trace the process of language abstraction that leads from viewing a language as communicative practice to an entity that can be standardized (or recognized according to set standards) and valued hierarchically.  Interestingly, they point out that the conceptualization of language as an entity is usually tied to literacy development and sedentary habits leading to the ideology of language being tied to place.

They also show the results of reconceptualizing language as an unchanging identity feature - with implications for language ownership - to a resource with currency that can be converted as it crosses markets and gets resignified.  What kind of market this is will determine what kind of a currency language will have since autonomous markets may encourage crossing and appropriation while a unified market controlled by an elite core will likely be more essentialistic.  Excesses of the indexical field are opportunities for pointing out underlying ideologies and to promote change.

In order to critique the inequalities created by the neoliberal view of English as a neutral world language, Park and Wee encourage teachers to recover and use a practice-based approach to language that creates changes within the unified market, not just autonomous ones.  They also hold that critique should move beyond the macro-level to the local and individual ones.