The power of identity and ideology in language learning,

The Power of Identity and Ideology in Language Learning Designer Immigrants Learning English in Singapore... His primary areas of research are identity and ideology in second language

Head, Department of International Education & Lifelong Learning

Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po, Hong Kong SAR

Editorial Board

Jan Blommaert, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands

Feng Anwei, The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China

Ofelia Garcia, The Graduate Centre, City University of New York, USASaran Kaur Gill, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

Mingyue (Michelle) Gu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin NT, Hong Kong SAR

Gu Yueguo, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Hartmut Haberland, Roskilde University, Denmark

Li Chor Shing David, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po,

Hong Kong SAR

Li Wei, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

Low Ee-Ling, National Institute of Education, Singapore

Tony Liddicoat, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Ricardo Nolasco, University of the Philippines at Diliman, Manila,

The Philippines

Merrill Swain, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada

Virginia Yip Choy Yin, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT,

Hong Kong SAR

The book series Multilingual Education publishes top quality monographs and edited volumes containing empirical research on multilingual language acquisition, language contact and the respective roles of languages in contexts where the languages are not cognate and where the scripts are often different, in order to be able to better understand the processes and issues involved and to inform governments and language policy makers The volumes in this series are aimed primarily at researchers in education, especially multilingual education and other related fi elds, and those who are involved in the education of (language) teachers Others who will

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The Power of Identity

and Ideology in Language Learning

Designer Immigrants Learning English

in Singapore

ISSN 2213-3208 ISSN 2213-3216 (electronic)

Multilingual Education

ISBN 978-3-319-30209-6 ISBN 978-3-319-30211-9 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30211-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934854

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

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Peter I De Costa

Wells Hall B257

Michigan State University

East Lansing , Michigan , USA

In this book I present a critical ethnographic school-based case study that focuses

on the language learning experiences of fi ve Asian immigrant students These dents were specially recruited by the Singapore government as part of a national foreign talent policy The book draws on varied data gathered over an academic year, including video- and audio-taped classroom interactions, audio-taped inter-views with the focal students and their Singaporean classmates and teachers, obser-vations of the students outside of the classroom, and artifacts Inspired by the work

stu-of Jan Blommaert (2010, 2015), Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1991), Bonny Norton (2000, 2013), and Stanton Wortham (2006), this study adopts a poststructuralist view of language and language learning Specifi cally, language is seen as an act of semiotic reconstruction and performance engaged by the language learner Particular attention was paid to how the immigrant students negotiated a standard English ideology and their discursive positioning over the course of the school year The book also considers how the prevailing standard English ideology interacted in highly complex ways with their being positioned as high academic achievers to ultimately infl uence their learning of English In particular, I argue that this potent combination of language ideologies and circulating ideologies created a designer student immigration complex By framing this situation as a complex, the study problematizes the power of identity and ideology in language learning

East Lansing, MI, USA Peter I De Costa

I am deeply indebted to the administrators, teachers, and students at the school I call Oak Girls’ Secondary School I understand the risks they took in allowing me access

to their school and thank them for their trust For an entire year, they allowed me to

be a small part of their lives I am particularly grateful to Daphne, Daniella, Jenny, Wendy, and Xandy, who came to play a central role in this research project Boundless thanks are owed to my dissertation advisor, Jane Zuengler, for her unstinting support over the years Her patient guidance and expert advice were instrumental in seeing my dissertation, upon which this book is based, to comple-tion in May 2011 I am also deeply appreciative of the insightful input from my dissertation committee members: Margaret Hawkins, Stacey Lee, Sally Magnan, and Junko Mori

This project would also not have been possible without the generous fi nancial support provided by the Second Language Acquisition Program and the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during my doctoral studies The funding I received by way of a university dissertation fellowship and travel grants enabled me to collect my data, present my work at conferences, and eventually write the thesis I am honored that the thesis was conferred the Second Language Research Special Interest Group dissertation award by the American Educational Research Association in 2013

I would also like to recognize the opportunities afforded to me by graduate dent awards from the American Association for Applied Linguistics and the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia Equally helpful were the travel awards to pres-ent my research at various conferences during my three years (2010–2013) as a visiting assistant professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies However, it is primarily in the last two years that this book was revitalized through the generous support I received from the College of Arts and Letters (CAL) at Michigan State University The CAL Research Award I received in 2014 and the generous conference funding I received from MSU have been instrumental in help-ing me update my review of the literature and to refi ne my earlier analyses

My work has benefi tted immensely from open dialogue with my students at Michigan State University, particularly those enrolled in my graduate seminar (LLT

855: Identity and Ideology in Multilingual Settings) and my research assistants, Sarut Supasiraprapa and Yaqiong Cui Jolanda Voogd and Helen van der Stelt at Springer showed much encouraging enthusiasm I thank them for their forbearance and understanding in seeing this book to print

I thank my family and friends for the support and encouragement they have vided me over the long years of this project I had the privilege of having my par-ents, Augustine and Sally De Costa, believe in me from the start I am especially grateful to James Seals, who encouraged me to continue writing and to convert my thesis into a monograph Thanks for keeping it real for me As I work on the fi nal revisions to this manuscript, it is only fi tting that I wrap up this book project, which began exactly eight years ago, on a gorgeous winter morning in San Francisco

pro-Looking out at the Bay, I am reminded by Aihwa Ong’s work on Flexible Citizenship

In many ways, I embody the designer immigrant whom I write about in this book Having spent my Christmas break in Singapore, I am relishing my brief stay here in California, a state that has always been welcoming of immigrants

It’s been almost fi ve years since I wrote the fi rst full draft for my dissertation, with most of my writing done while looking out at a different bay in Monterey But now, as I look at the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, I think about my own Pacifi c shuttle and how blessed I am to be able to move back and forth between multiple worlds Without all of these people and places in my life, I would not have completed this book on mobility, which is as much mine as it is theirs

Acknowledgments

1 Foreign Talent and Singapore 1

1.1 Global Flow of Migrants 3

1.1.1 Designer Immigration: A Worldwide Phenomenon 4

1.1.2 Language as a Filtering Tool 5

1.2 Critically-Oriented Research on Model Minority and Immigrant Youth 6

1.3 Making the Case for Designer Immigrants 9

1.4 Overview of the Chapters 9

References 10

2 Reconceptualizing Language, Language Learning, and the Language Learner in the Age of Globalization 13

2.1 Introduction 13

2.2 Globalization and Educational Processes 14

2.3 Poststructuralism and SLA 15

2.4 Pierre Bourdieu and SLA 16

2.5 Consequences of Globalization and the Commodifi cation of Languages 18

2.5.1 Language as Ideology, Semiotic Reconstruction, and Performance 19

2.5.2 Language Learning Through an Ideology and Identity Lens 22

2.5.3 Imagined Communities, Social Imaginaries, and Circulating Ideologies 24

2.5.4 Symbolic Competence and Enregistering the Globalized Language Learner 26

References 27

3 Researching, Analyzing, and Constructing the Data 33

3.1 Introduction 33

3.2 Critical Ethnographic Case Study Research Concerns 34

3.3 Conducting Ethical Research at Oak Girls’

Secondary School (OGSS) 35

3.3.1 Gaining Access to Oak Girls’ Secondary School 36

3.3.2 The School and Its Participants 37

3.3.3 Designer Immigrant Participants 38

3.3.4 Situating Myself as a Refl exive Researcher 39

3.4 Performing a Critical Ethnographic Case Study at Oak 41

3.4.1 Observing Classroom Interaction 41

3.4.2 Video-Taped Classroom Interaction 43

3.4.3 Audio-Taped Classroom Interaction 44

3.4.4 Observing Interaction Outside of the Classroom 44

3.4.5 Interviews 45

3.4.6 Artifacts 46

3.5 Coding and Analyzing the Data 47

3.5.1 Coding and Categorization 47

3.5.2 Transcription of Interaction and Interview Data 48

3.5.3 Discourse Analysis 49

3.6 Conclusion 50

References 51

4 The Sociolinguistic Context of Singapore and Oak 55

4.1 Introduction 55

4.2 The Different Languages of Singapore 56

4.2.1 Singapore’s National Bilingual Policy 56

4.2.2 English in Singapore: A Tale of Two (Unequal) Englishes 59

4.3 The Ideology of English Language Standardization 60

4.3.1 Policing English: The Discourse of Crisis and the Speak Good English Movement 60

4.3.2 Policing English: The English Language Syllabus and the Singapore School 62

4.3.3 Class Matters: The Cosmopolitan and Heartlander Divide in Relation to English 64

4.4 Conclusion 65

References 66

5 Designer Student Immigration and the Designer Student Immigrant Complex at Oak 69

5.1 Introduction 69

5.2 Designer Student Immigration in the Singapore Education System 70

5.2.1 Two Types of Scholarships 70

5.2.2 The Designer Immigration Recruitment Process at Oak: Insights from the Ground 71

5.2.3 Recruiting Designer Immigrant Students in China 72

5.2.4 Recruiting Designer Immigrant Students in Vietnam 72

5.2.5 Applying World Systems Analysis to the Oak Context 74

Contents

5.3 Oak: A Cosmopolitan ‘Mecca’ 75

5.3.1 The Benevolent Culture at Oak 76

5.4 Circulating Ideologies and the Designer Student Immigrant Complex 77

5.4.1 The “Scholars” 77

5.4.2 Circulating Ideology #1: Focused and Hardworking Students 78

5.4.3 Circulating Ideology #2: Better and Brighter Students Than Their Singaporean Classmates 79

5.5 Bringing Language and Circulating Ideologies Together: The Social Identifi cation of Scholars and the Designer Immigrant Complex 81

5.5.1 Ideologies at Work: Iconization, Recursiveness, and Erasure at Oak 83

5.6 Conclusion 84

References 84

6 Language Ideologies at Oak 87

6.1 Introduction 87

6.2 The Standard English Language Ideology at Oak 88

6.2.1 Language Management at Oak 88

6.3 Linguistic Practices Valued and Denigrated at Oak 91

6.3.1 Sanctioned Genres: Conforming to the “Right” Organizational Structure 91

6.3.2 Other Valued Forms of Accuracy 93

6.4 A Monoglot Standard English Ideology at Oak 95

6.4.1 Enacting a Monoglot Standard English Ideology: Its Impact on Jenny and Daphne 96

6.4.2 Jenny 96

6.4.3 Daphne 100

6.5 Responding to a Monoglot Standard English Ideology: Learner Investment, Styling, and Semiotic Reconstruction by the Designer Immigrant Students at Oak 104

6.5.1 Jenny’s Investment 104

6.5.2 Jenny’s Styling and Semiotic Reconstruction 107

6.5.3 Daphne’s Investment 111

6.5.4 Daphne’s Styling and Semiotic Reconstruction 112

6.5.5 Linguistic Negotiations by Daniella, Wendy, and Xandy 117

6.6 Conclusion 119

References 120

7 The Designer Student Immigrant Complex: Its Impact on Learning 123

7.1 Introduction 123

7.2 Revisiting the Designer Student Immigrant Complex 124

7.3 The Effects of the Complex on Three Focal Students 125

7.3.1 Daphne: Countering the Master ‘Scholar’ Narrative 126

7.3.2 Negotiating Teacher Expectations and Positioning 128

7.3.3 Negotiating Personal Expectations and Positioning 134

7.3.4 Negotiating Peer Expectations and Positioning 137

7.3.5 Daniella 139

7.3.6 Negotiating Teacher and Peer Expectations and Positioning 139

7.3.7 Negotiating Personal Expectations and Positioning 149

7.3.8 Jenny 152

7.3.9 Harnessing ‘Scholar’ Expectations 152

7.3.10 Relating the Designer Student Immigrant Complex to Examination Performance 158

7.4 Conclusion 159

References 159

8 Looking Back and Moving Forward 163

8.1 Overview 163

8.2 Implications of the Study 164

8.3 Future Directions 167

References 170

Appendix 173

Transcription Conventions 173

Contents

Peter I De Costa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at Michigan State University He teaches on the Second Language Studies Ph.D and MATESOL Programs His primary areas of research are identity and ideology in second language acquisition, English as a lingua franca, and ethics

in applied linguistics His work has appeared in Applied Linguistics Review , Critical

Inquiry in Language Studies , International Journal of Applied Linguistics , Journal

of Asia Pacifi c Communication , Language Learning , Language Policy , Language Teaching , Linguistics and Education , Research in the Teaching of English , System ,

and TESOL Quarterly He is the editor of the recently published Routledge volume, Ethics in Applied Linguistics: Language Researcher Narratives

Fig 4.1 SGEM artifact on the door of the staff room at Oak:

I love my English teacher 62

Table 1.1 Total population as of June 2010 2

Table 3.1 Student population at Oak according to ethnicity 37

Table 3.2 Student population at Oak according to mother tongue languages studied 37

Table 3.3 Summary of database 42

Table 3.4 Summary of classroom observations 43

Table 4.1 Percentage of reported home languages by the resident population aged 5 years and over 57

Table 4.2 Percentage of resident population by age group who spoke English most frequently at home 59

Table 5.1 Circulating ideologies surrounding designer immigrant students at Oak 84

Table 6.1 Scheme of assessment 90

Table 6.2 Marking key for free writing and situational writing 95

Table 7.1 Responses to being called a ‘scholar’ 157

Table 7.2 End of the year examination grades 158

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

P.I De Costa, The Power of Identity and Ideology in Language Learning,

Multilingual Education 18, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30211-9_1

Chapter 1

Foreign Talent and Singapore

Abstract This chapter describes the backdrop of national social engineering against which this Singapore-based study, which explores the language learning experiences of fi ve Grade 9 immigrant students in an English-medium school, is

situated I refer to these students as designer immigrants (Simmons, Economic

inte-gration and designer immigrants: Canadian policy in the 1990s In M Castro (Ed.),

Free markets, open societies, closed borders? Trends in international migration and

immigration policy in the Americas (pp 53–69) Miami: North-South Press, 1999a;

Simmons, Immigration policy: Imagined futures In S Halli & L Driedger (Eds.),

Immigrant Canada: Demographic, economic and social challenges (pp 21–50)

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999b) as they were recipients of ships funded by the Singapore government By using a language identity (Norton,

Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2013), language ideological (Blommaert, The sociolinguistics of global-

ization New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), and circulating ideological

(Wortham, Learning identity: The joint emergence of social identifi cation and

aca-demic learning New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) framework, I explore the struggles and pressures they encountered in learning English in my year-long critical ethnographic case study The school became not only a site of control where the interests of the state were promoted, but also a site of struggle for these designer immigrant students as they wrestled with a hegemonic language ide-ology and a cosmopolitan identity that demanded homogeneity by way of English language standardization For them, language acquisition was not a gradual and neutral process of internalizing the rules, structures and vocabulary of a standard language Rather, the dynamics of their language acquisition were entangled with deeper social issues that characterize the nexus of language identity, ideology and migration

Keywords Language learning • Designer immigrants • Identity • Ideology •

Migration • Singapore • Social engineering

Much has been written about global cities Hannerz ( 1996 ), for instance, who fers the term “world cities,” believes that a truly world city must also be an active producer of the symbols and ideas that move the world today One feature common

pre-to such cities is their ability pre-to draw human capital In many ways, as Fernandez ( 2008 ) observes, Singapore, with its long history of immigration going back to its founding in 1819, is the quintessential “brain gain” city It has always drawn in people from abroad who seek to create a better life for themselves and their fami-lies This continuing trend in attracting foreigners is borne out in the recent Census

2010 data in Table 1.1

Particularly signifi cant as indicated in Table 1.1 is the rise in the number of zens in one decade Given that Singapore’s birth rate remains below the required 2.0 replacement level, 1 the steady increase in the number of citizens between 2000 (2,985,900) and 2010 (3,230,700) is intriguing Equally important to note is the growth in the permanent resident (PR) population from 287,500 in 2000 to 541,000 in 2010 In both cases, the remarkable rise in the number of new citizens and PRs was due to rigorous recruitment processes on the part of the Singapore government to actively attract people who possess high level skills and tertiary education The genesis of this recruitment strategy can be traced to a decade earlier when the government announced its foreign talent policy Speaking at the 2000 National Day Rally, Goh Chok Tong, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, underlined Singapore’s agenda to lure talented Asian migrants to Singapore in order

citi-to help the country scale new economic heights:

Globalization and technology have made the competitive environment a tougher one for us

… Talent and knowledge will decide who will be winners and losers We must therefore

change out mindset towards foreign talent If we systematically recruit and welcome talent , and absorb them into our society , they will raise our know - how and competitive edge … If

we can absorb a steady infl ow of global talent into Singapore, our ideas and outlook will stay fresh and vibrant, and we can be a competitive global player (Goh 2000; as quoted in Wee and Bokhorst-Heng 2005 , p 170, Italics mine )

It is against this backdrop of national social engineering that my study is situated,

as I explore the language learning experiences of fi ve Grade 9 (Secondary 3) grant students who were studying in an English-medium school, Oak Girls Secondary, in Singapore Following Simmons’s ( 1999a , b ) categorization, I refer to these students as “designer immigrants” as they were recipients of scholarships funded by the Singapore government By using a language identity (De Costa and

immi-1 The birth rate was just 1.29 in 2007 (National Population Secretariat 2008 , p 1)

Table 1.1 Total population

Singapore citizens 2,985,900 3,230,700 Permanent residents (PRs) 287,500 541,000 Non-residents 754,500 1,305,000 Total 4,027,900 50,076,700 Source: Singstat ( 2010 , p v)

Norton 2016 ; Norton 2013 ), language ideological (Blommaert 2010 ; Kroskrity

2010 ), and circulating ideological (Wortham 2006 ) framework, I explore the gles and pressures they encountered in learning English in my year-long critical ethnographic case study The school, as my study will illustrate, became not only a site of control where the interests of the state were promoted, but also a site of struggle for these designer immigrant students as they wrestled with a hegemonic language ideology and a cosmopolitan identity that demanded homogeneity by way

strug-of English language standardization Language acquisition, as I will demonstrate, was not a gradual and neutral process of internalizing the rules, structures and vocabulary of a standard language Rather, as we will fi nd out, the dynamics of their language acquisition were entangled with deeper social issues that characterize the nexus of language identity, ideology and migration, resulting in what I describe as a

designer student immigration complex

1.1 Global Flow of Migrants

The issues surrounding the growing “global fl ow” of migrants across borders today

is very much a contemporary concern that has not often been recognized in applied linguistics, much less studied Such a fl ow needs to be addressed and investigated because, increasingly, the complexion of migrants is changing While the vast majority of migrants in the past was comprised of refugees who fl ed their countries

in fear of strife and war, or immigrants with interrupted education who left their home countries in search of a better life, there is a growing number of mobile and highly educated migrants who respond to new opportunities and lifestyles in differ-ent cities and countries across the world (e.g., Shin 2012 ; Vandrick 2011 ) The latter group of migrants is generally welcomed by the governments of their host coun-tries, such as the Singapore government, and many are often invited to take up citi-zenship in these countries after being courted or recruited by their governments Such a rigorous and carefully engineered process of immigrant selection has resulted

in a new breed of “designer immigrants” (Simmons 1999a , b ) The expanding ence of this special group of immigrants consequently destabilizes the traditional conceptualization of the canonical immigrant, that is, one who is impoverished, poorly educated and turned away by the governments of the countries to which they migrate I would add that the rise in the number of such immigrants also enriches the “discourses of the (relatively affl uent) Global North and (less affl uent) Global South, center vs periphery … [that] factor into the experiences and reception of the newcomers as well as … how they are positioned and accommodated” (Duff 2015 ,

pres-p 59) And while “South-North” (i.e., movement from developing to developed countries) migration of talent predominates, the notion of the “global fl ow” of migrants is further complicated, as Yeoh and Lai ( 2008 , p 237) point out, by the reverse and new fl ows of such mobile migrants in various directions, thereby result-ing in circulatory and not just linear migration This phenomenon of talented mobile migrants, or designer immigrants, is examined in greater detail next

1.1 Global Flow of Migrants

1.1.1 Designer Immigration: A Worldwide Phenomenon

The term “designer immigration” was coined by the Canadian sociologist Alan Simmons to describe this phenomenon of selecting highly-skilled migrants (Simmons 1999a ) Designer migrants, as Simmons notes, are “migrants who are selected as if they were ‘made-to-order’ to fi ll perceived shortages in the current Canadian labor market and business community,” with the ideal migrant being “a person with very high-level job skills or capital and entrepreneurial experience” (p 53) To facilitate the successful procurement of these migrants, several mea-sures, including giving bonus points for occupational skills in areas of current need and speeding up the processing time for applications, were introduced Overall, the shift to a more entrepreneurial immigration policy was part of a broader neoliberal agenda adopted by Canada as it sought to “reinvent itself as a sophisticated niche player in a competitive global economy” (Simmons 1999b , p 45) Indeed, since the 1990s, Canada’s policy on designer migrants has only gained greater depth and defi nition In the spring of 2007, for instance, the Foreign Credential Referral Offi ce (FCRO) was launched to help internationally trained individuals obtain information

on how to enter the Canadian labor market (OECD 2008 , p 234)

However, Canada has not been alone in orchestrating a designer immigration policy According to International Migration Outlook 2007, an annual report pub-lished by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which comprises developed countries in Europe, Asia, Oceania and North America, over three-quarters of OECD countries would be showing declines in their working- age population between 2010 and 2015 without immigration (OECD 2008 , p 54)

To avert this problem, which threatens to lower the GDP per capita of these tries, several other governments have announced shifts in their immigration policy towards a more proactive and selective approach to attracting high-skilled migrants Germany, for instance, has implemented new legislation to attract highly qualifi ed persons, especially those needed to promote economic development A review of the economic benefi ts of educating international students revealed that providing post-study work opportunities would not only help Germany recoup the cost of education for all international students but would also stem its aging population trend (O’Malley 2015) In the United States, a Committee for Economic Development was formed during the Bush administration The Committee’s report

Reforming Migration : Helping meet America ’ s need for a skilled workforce called

for a doubling of the number of highly skilled permanent foreign workers admitted

to the United States The need to create more high-tech visas, in particular, was highlighted in the report (Committee for Economic Development 2001 ) This request has been well heeded, if the steady rise in the number of H-1B visa holders, which reached a record 315, 857 in 2014, is an accurate measure (UCIS 2015 , p 4)

In describing these social engineering measures, I would like to emphasize that (a) organizations like the OECD are neoliberal institutions, and (b) many governments today are also guided by neoliberal impulses that constitute the primary motivation behind such global moves to attract immigrants Further, that this global talent war

for designer immigrants is not restricted only to Western countries is demonstrated

by Yeoh and Lai ( 2008 ), who in their review of “talent” migration in and out of Asia point out that countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Japan are aggressively attempting to attract highly skilled workers For instance, South Korea has imple-mented its Brain Korea 21 policy to steer the country towards knowledge economy status through building world-class universities, by increasing emphasis on global connections and scholarly exchanges Even Japan, a country that traditionally has not encouraged immigration, amended its immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 2006 in order to “increase the opportunities for immigration of researchers and engineers specializing in information systems” (OECD 2007 ,

1.1.2 Language as a Filtering Tool

Membership into this exclusive club of cosmopolitan citizens (De Costa 2014 ; Kenway and Bullen 2005 ), however, is determined not only by one’s qualifi cations Language often plays a pivotal role in securing membership, and prospective candi-dates are often evaluated, among other things, according to their competence in the dominant language of their host country (Extra et al 2009 ; Slade and Mollering

2010 ) In October 2007, for instance, in keeping with a change to the Citizenship Act, Australia introduced a mandatory test of English ability (OECD 2008 , p 226) Similarly, in line with the new points-based immigration policy introduced in the U.K., points are awarded for a migrant applicant’s English language capabilities ( https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration )

That language is a factor to sort and sieve future citizens is a primary concern among applied linguists (e.g., Blommaert 2015 ; De Costa 2010a ; Kanno and Kangas

2014 ; Norton 2013 ) investigating issues related to language learning because they address the fundamental question of who gets included and who gets excluded in the learning process Common among this set of critical applied linguists in the belief that language bears linguistic capital (Bourdieu 1991 ) and the amount of power an individual can claim in the social world is contingent on his or her linguis-tic ability and use In Singapore, the process of abjection, in particular, is amplifi ed because sorting is done at an early age through its designer immigration program which targets high ability students from neighboring Asian countries who are as young as 15 Crucially, there has been a jarring paucity of research worldwide on designer immigrant students at the high school level In the United States, much of the recent research concerning ESL learners has focused on how Generation 1.5

1.1 Global Flow of Migrants

Asian students have been stigmatized and the acts of resistance engaged by them in reaction to being framed in negative, defi cit terms In her study of Vietnamese high school students, Harklau ( 2000 ) examined how their representation as “bad” stu-dents resulted in their poor academic performance By contrast, Talmy ( 2004 , 2008 ) focused on the enactment of “linguicism” (Phillipson 1992 ) on the part of Generation 1.5 Asian students in a Hawaiian high school as a means of distinguishing them-selves from newly arrived Asian immigrant students (labeled derogatorily as

“FOBS”, or “Fresh Off the Boat”) Attempts to distinguish themselves from their newly arrived classmates by refusing to do work in the ESL classroom in turn had detrimental effects on their academic careers, reminiscent of the fates of the rebel-lious “lads” in Willis’s ( 1977 ) seminal study Similar fates were met by the partici-pants in studies outside the United States Findings from Miller’s ( 2003 ) Australian high school-based study, for instance, revealed that Tina, John, and Alicia, who hailed from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou (China), respectively, were ren-dered “inaudible” by their classmates and teachers Overall, while these studies that are embedded in a critical perspective have examined how power relations infl u-ence learning, they do not focus on the challenges that designer immigrant students

at the high school level have to negotiate In fact, there are hardly any studies on learners at this level One exception is De Costa ( 2007 ) who, in a different study involving older students, worked with Grades 11 and 12 designer immigrants from China in a Singapore high school The closest studies to date are those that have interrogated issues surrounding model minority students in the United States

1.2 Critically-Oriented Research on Model Minority

and Immigrant Youth

The notion of the “model minority” fi rst emerged in the 1960s in association with Asian Americans who were lauded for their high level of education, economic self- suffi ciency, low crime rates, and positive contributions (Lee 2005 ) Within educa-tional anthropology, Lee ( 2005 , 2009 ) turned the notion of a model minority on its head by addressing issues of racism encountered by Asian American students in a U.S high school, while Lew ( 2004 ) examined how the lack of social capital and ethnic networks negatively impacted the academic futures of working class Korean American high school dropouts in Queens, New York Working with a similar agenda to investigate model minority youth, sociolinguists Bucholtz ( 2004 ) and Reyes ( 2007 ) examined how teens engage in a linguistic negotiation of identity in relation to stereotypes surrounding Southeast Asian American adolescents However, within SLA, researchers have remained conspicuously silent on the issue

of model minorities, with the notable exception of a California-based study ducted by McKay and Wong ( 1996 ) Taking up and extending Peirce’s ( 1995 ) con-cept of “investment,” McKay and Wong examined multiple discourses surrounding their four Mandarin-speaking junior high focal students Particularly interesting

was their analysis of how the model minority discourse circulating in the school and society produced confl icting results On the one hand, it positively infl uenced the English language development of Jeremy, a student from Taiwan, who construc-tively used the resources made available to him through this discourse to enhance his linguistic development On the other hand, it stirred defi ance in Michael, another Taiwanese student, who assembled his own counter-discourse that subsequently depressed his linguistic development

As signifi cant as the insights from McKay and Wong have been in furthering our understanding of how a model minority social identifi cation of immigrant students can affect their learning, McKay and Wong did not explicitly underline how the stratifi cation of the linguistic resources that the students brought with them, along with the circulating discourses surrounding them, affected their language develop-ment and general educational outcomes Also, the profi les of McKay and Wong’s focal students and those in the studies identifi ed earlier do not represent another type of learner whom we are increasingly encountering in our educational institu-tions today As noted earlier, much of the educational and SLA research to date has focused on students of the Generation 1.5 variety, that is, children of fi rst generation immigrants who may have spent some time being educated in their countries of origin before starting school in their new home countries The keen interest in this group of immigrant students may stem in part from the fact that they constitute, “a surging demographic in high schools and universities in many immigrant-receiving countries that tend to be ill-equipped and under-resourced to attend to their specifi c needs, abilities, and histories” (Duff 2014 , p 243) Much of the language identity work on Generation 1.5 students to date has emphasized learner agency and how these learners overcame odds stacked against them In his work with an Azeri stu-dent, Nasim, originally from Iran, Ronald Fuentes ( 2012 ) describes how Nasim exercised her agency and succeeded at university Harklau and McClanahan ( 2012 ) and Varghese ( 2012 ) also report on the successes of the Latina and Somali students, respectively, with whom they worked The agency of Bloch’s ( 2007 ) Somali focal student and Riantseva’s ( 2012 ) Russian case participants were also instrumental in helping them achieve academic success By contrast, designer immigrant students, who come to their host countries without their parents, embody a different segment

of the “global fl ow” of peoples While this group of learners is also fast populating academic institutions in developed countries, they are, however, underrepresented

in the SLA literature and other literatures as well

To date, much of the research on immigrants in SLA has fallen into two broad categories: refugees or voluntary immigrants, both in search of better lives (for a detailed discussion of language and migration to the United States, see Dick 2011 )

A refugee, according to the United Nations, is someone who “has left their country

of origin or habitual residence and owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion is unable or unwilling to return” (United Nations 1951 /1967,

p 16) Early SLA work on refugees looked closely at their grammatical ment In his work with a Hmong-speaking Laotian refugee in Hawaii named Ge, Huebner ( 1979 ), for example, focused on Ge’s evolving nominal reference system,

develop-1.2 Critically-Oriented Research on Model Minority and Immigrant Youth

while Duff ( 1993 ) examined how her Cambodian refugee learner’s English became less topic prominent and more subject prominent over time More recently, research

on refugees has shifted towards examining the social constraints placed upon their language learning Menard-Warwick ( 2005 ), for instance, looked at how the educa-tion of her focal learner, Serafi na, from Guatemala was interrupted as a result of death threats she received from the local military authorities who had confi scated her village, while Warriner ( 2007 ), who worked with female Sudanese refugees, investigated the challenges they encountered in earning GED certifi cation in the United States In my own work with a male Hmong refugee (De Costa 2010b ) and

drawing on the Bourdieusian concepts of capital , habitus , and fi eld (Bourdieu

1991 ), I traced the trajectory of my case participant, Vue Lang, and illustrated how

he was able to become a competent English language learner Importantly, SLA research involving refugees as exemplifi ed by the work of De Costa, Menard- Warwick and Warriner underscores how the language acquisition process is inextri-cably linked with and complicated by larger political issues

Early research on the second category of immigrants (i.e., voluntary immigrants),

in contrast, followed a somewhat different trajectory, perhaps due in part to the fact that they migrate not because their lives are in peril Schumann ( 1978 ) and Schmidt ( 1983 ), for example, examined the grammatical development of their focal learners, Alberto and Wes, who hailed from Costa Rica and Japan respectively Only more recently has research on voluntary immigrants focused on sociopolitical issues that impact learning One seminal study is Peirce ( 1995 ) that investigated the language learning experiences of two female immigrants to Canada who wanted an “eco-nomic advantage” (p 23) This shift in research agenda is well articulated by Duff ( 2008 ) in her review of case studies in SLA, where she noted:

Most qualitative SLA research conducted in the 1970s to the 1990s, and especially SLA case studies such as mine, refl ected a rather narrowly linguistic, positivist, or postpositivist

orientation to research Although qualitative, the analyses were fairly unidimensional and

less holistic than case studies in the social sciences and education generally are now …

Microcontextual features such as task environment or discourse context were in some ies examined carefully, but larger macrocontextual social, political, and cultural factors

stud-were often minimized (p 15, Italics mine )

Indeed, while the fi eld has progressed in terms of taking into account critical dimensions of language learning, it has yet to investigate how these dimensions affect the learning experiences of designer immigrants who can often be discerned from refugee and regular voluntary immigrants by their high levels of education

To some extent, designer immigrants share similarities with transmigrants , who

behave differently from regular voluntary immigrants in that they have “not made a

fi rm commitment as regards personal and cultural loyalties to the host society” (Block 2006 , p 17) That transnationals are vastly different from immigrants is apparent when we consider Block’s ( 2007 /2014) description of Carlos, a Colombian

in London who was previously a philosophy lecturer at a university in his home country Even though Carlos could only fi nd work as a porter in a university when

he arrived in London, it is clear that Block viewed him differently from his other focal immigrant learners because he saw Carlos “not as marginalized and down-

trodden labor migrant, but as [a] declassed professional transmigrant” (p 109) with cultural and social capital that “made him feel very different from the majority of SSLs [Spanish Speaking Latinos] with whom he came in contact at work” (p 107)

1.3 Making the Case for Designer Immigrants

The pressing need for me to investigate the language dynamics surrounding designer immigrants emerged after I taught English in a Singapore high school for 5 years and worked as an English language teacher educator for another two It became obvious to me, following my personal experience in working with this select group

of students and later through my observations of them in our schools as a practicum supervisor, that the language learning experiences of designer immigrants who were constructed as high academic achievers needed to be interrogated After all, not all of these recruited students cruised through the education system Those who did, often did so by successfully negotiating the language ideology which sanc-tioned the use of Standard English and the development of cosmopolitan citizens by living out the circulating ideologies that constructed them as high performing stu-dents By doing so, these “successful” immigrant students not only reinforced but also perpetuated the high academic expectations placed upon them This turned out

to be the case at Oak Girls’ Secondary School during my year of data collection With the above concerns in mind, I approached my study with the following research concerns:

1 What linguistic practices are valued and denigrated in the school, and what are the language ideologies embedded in these practices?

2 How do these practices complement or confl ict with the practices which the designer student immigrants bring to the school, and what are the consequences for them and the local students of enacting practices imported from their home countries?

3 How are these designer student immigrants positioned by others within and side the school, and how do they in turn position others? What are the circulating ideologies underlying these discursive positionings?

4 In what ways do these discursive positioning, language ideologies, and ing ideologies infl uence their ability to acquire school affi liated linguistic prac-tices and general learning outcomes?

circulat-1.4 Overview of the Chapters

The next chapter focuses on the theoretical framework that guides this study In Chap 3 , I describe the methodology adopted for this study The sociolinguistic context of Singapore and my research school is discussed in Chap 4 Chapters 5 , 6 ,

1.4 Overview of the Chapters

and 7 will offer an analysis and discussion of the data with regard to the research questions A fi nal chapter reviews the fi ndings of this study and discusses its impli-cations and limitations, and suggests directions for future research

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P.I De Costa, The Power of Identity and Ideology in Language Learning,

Multilingual Education 18, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30211-9_2

Chapter 2

Reconceptualizing Language, Language

Learning, and the Language Learner

in the Age of Globalization

Abstract This chapter considers how education in general and language learning

in particular have been affected by processes of globalization Specifi cally, I ine how these processes impacted my designer immigrant students After introduc-ing these processes, I discuss ways in which issues of structure and agency that constitute a poststructural approach to language learning have been taken up by critical researchers of second language learning Through a brief review of the con-sequences of globalization and the commodifi cation of languages, I place particular emphasis on how a Bourdieusian framework offers constructs to better understand globalized linguistic fl ows The chapter also introduces how a reconstitution of lan-guage along ideological, semiotic and performative lines; that is, one that departs from a traditional structuralist perspective, is necessary to recognize the linguistic resources available to language learners in the twenty-fi rst century This linguistic reconstitution warrants a rethinking of language learning processes The chapter’s

exam-fi nal thoughts suggest that language learning be conceived through an ideology and identity lens which incorporates fundamental aspects of Bourdieu’s theories

Keywords Globalization • Postructuralism • Commodifi cation of languages • Bourdieu • Linguistic reconstitution

2.1 Introduction

In this chapter I consider how education in general, and language learning in ticular, have been affected by processes of globalization After introducing these processes, the constructs of structure and agency are discussed Through a brief review of the consequences of globalization and the commodifi cation of languages, particular emphasis is placed on how a Bourdieusian framework offers heuristics to better understand globalized linguistic fl ows The chapter also introduces how a reconstitution of language along ideological, semiotic and performative lines; that

par-is, one that departs from a traditional structuralist perspective, is necessary to nize the linguistic resources available to language learners in the twenty-fi rst cen-tury This linguistic reconstitution warrants a rethinking of language learning

recog-processes The chapter’s fi nal thoughts suggest that language learning be conceived through an ideology and identity lens which incorporates fundamental aspects of Bourdieu’s theories

2.2 Globalization and Educational Processes

Globalization, as Friedman ( 2005 ) points out, is not a new phenomenon He notes that it is a process that started around 1492 and has subsequently developed over three phases The fi rst phase (1492–1800) was characterized by the acquisition of colonies by imperial armies via brute force In the second phase (1800–2000), glo-balization saw the rise of multinationals and the early version of the World Wide Web Since 2000, the third phase of globalization has been about individuals par-ticipating in the global economy, leading to what Friedman calls a “fl at world” or level playing fi eld In such a fl at world, people like the designer immigrants identi-

fi ed in the previous chapter who are in possession of skills that are in demand are able to move relatively seamlessly across borders These “porous national boundar-ies … across which people, goods, and ideas fl ow,” according to Canagarajah ( 2006 ), is also defi ned by a “compression of space and time” which in turn allows

“people to shuttle rapidly between communities and communicative contexts” (p 25) Correspondingly, Blommaert ( 2010 ) describes globalization as a

shorthand for the intensifi ed fl ows of capital, goods, people, images and discourses around the globe, driven by technological innovations mainly in the fi eld of media and information and communication technology, and resulting in new patterns of global activity, commu- nity organization and culture (p 13)

Emphasizing the mobility aspect of globalization as underscored by Canagarajah ( 2006) and Blommaert ( 2010) but highlighting the dark side of globalization, Duchêne et al ( 2013 ) point out that while “the discourses of globalization and neo-liberalism are ones of ‘mobility,’ ‘fl ows,’ ‘fl exibility’ and ‘de-regulation,’ many of the practices entailed in globalization are of control and regimentation” (p 9) Crucially, such control and regimentation are manifested in various fi elds, including education

Within education, Spring ( 2008 ) identifi ed four ways, namely the world culture, world systems, postcolonial, and culturalist approaches, to interpret the processes of educational globalization Briefl y, the world culture approach operates on the prem-ise that all cultures are slowly integrating into a single global culture By contrast, the world systems approach views the globe as being integrated, but with two major unequal zones Postcolonial analysis, according to Spring, sees globalization as “an effort to impose particular economic and political agendas on the global society that benefi t wealthy and rich nations at the expense of the world’s poor” (p 334) Finally,

a culturalist interpretation emphasizes cultural variations and the borrowing and lending of educational ideas within a global context Of the four approaches, the culturalist interpretation seems to have much congruence with recent work in

critical- oriented SLA research The culturalist interpretation, which draws on anthropological research and a culturalist theorist perspective, questions the notion that models of schooling are simply imposed on local cultures, choosing instead to emphasize that local actors borrow from multiple models in the global fl ow of edu-cational ideas (see also Kumaravadivelu 2012 ; Shin and Kubota 2008 ) Such a per-spective has been taken up by linguists who work in the area of language pedagogy (e.g., Alsagoff et al 2012 ; Holliday 2015 ; Kumaravadivelu 2008 ; McKay 2002 ; Singh and Doherty 2004 ) who essentially argue for a culturally appropriate peda-gogy to be used in L2 classrooms While it is certainly crucial that we keep a fi rm eye on the practices of the L2 teacher, it is to the L2 learner that I turn my focus This focus is important, as Block and Cameron ( 2002 ) remind us, because

[g]lobalization changes the conditions under which language learning takes place by modifying languages and creating new literacies required by the workplace that schools are expected to teach (p 5)

Equally important to note are the effects of globalization and technology on agogy as a consequence of the deterritorialization and decentering of language, cul-ture, and people, as observed by Kramsch ( 2014 ), who also notes that:

globalization has changed the conditions under which FLs [foreign langauges] are taught, learned, and used It has destabilized codes, norms, and conventions that FL educators relied upon to help learners be successful users of the language once they had left their classrooms (p 302)

2.3 Poststructuralism and SLA

The agency of the L2 learner, in particular, has come under the spotlight in SLA research framed in a critical perspective According to Zuengler and Miller ( 2006 ), researchers who incorporate critical theory into their exploration of second lan-guage learning always account for relations of power in order to gain a fuller under-standing of the practices and interactions in which learners participate (see also Deters et al 2015 ) More recently, Miller ( 2012 , 2014 ) added that such agency and power are relationally constructed That L2 learning takes on a sociopolitical dimen-sion is underlined by Norton and Toohey ( 2001 ) who point out that since L2 learn-ers are situated in specifi c social, historical, and cultural contexts, we need to study how these “learners resist or accept the positions those contexts offer them” (p 310) This sociopolitical reality, I would add, also needs to be seen in relation to fact that migrant L2 learners, in particular, often “exhibit characteristics of adaptability, sen-sitivity to the speed of change and mobility, and … exercise agency in reconfi guring networks of affi liation.” (Heugh 2013 , p 28)

Working within a critical poststructuralist framework, the contributors to Pavlenko and Blackledge’s ( 2004 ) collection Negotiating identities in multilingual

contexts portray groups and individuals in multilingual societies who (re)negotiate

their identities in response to hegemonic language ideologies which demand

homo-2.3 Poststructuralism and SLA

geneity This interest in how structure and agency affect second language acquisition

is also the focus of the empirical studies in Heller and Martin-Jones’s ( 2001 )

collec-tion Voices of authority : Educacollec-tion and linguistic differences Situated in a host of

multilingual contexts across the world, their collection examines the ways in which structure and agency are articulated by linking ideologies, discourses, and practices with interactional, institutional, and community order

Writing about transnationalism and identity, and emphasizing the infl uence of Bourdieu on poststructurally-oriented applied linguistics research, Duff ( 2015 ) notes:

[p]ost structural scholars in applied linguistics concerned with identity and subjectivity (e.g., Kramsch and Whiteside 2008 ; Norton 2013 ), many of whom also draw on Bourdieu, caution us not to look for stable, singular, and essentialized connections between place, language, and identity Rather, they suggest that we consider the subjectivities inculcated, invoked, performed, taken up, or contested in particular discursive spaces and situations in

a moment-by-moment way and also consider the symbolic capital associated with those practices (p 62)

Overall, such attempts to examine the interaction of micro and macro factors that infl uence second language acquisition in particular and applied linguistics in gen-eral has prompted Block ( 2006 ) to comment that “reconciling structure and agency seems to be the ongoing problem par excellence for poststructuralists” (p 46)

2.4 Pierre Bourdieu and SLA

Particularly signifi cant is how a number of SLA researchers have turned to the sociological insights provided by Pierre Bourdieu for theoretical impetus Peirce ( 1995 ), for example, drew on Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital to explain her adult female immigrant participants’ desire to learn English After all, it was the symbolic and material resources that came with this newly acquired language that lured them to take up learning English Also important to note is that while power

is viewed as being fl uid, capital is also conceived in fl uid terms because capital accumulated in one fi eld can be converted into the ‘capital’ of another fi eld (Bourdieu 1998 )

Expanding Peirce’s notion of investment which is built on a framework using Bourdieu’s theories, McKay and Wong ( 1996 ) examined the language learning desires of four Chinese high school students in California and illustrated the impact

of these desires on their language learning outcomes Lin ( 1999 ) also turned to Bourdieu in her critical ethnographic study of ESL learners in seven Hong Kong high schools Her analysis of the data from her Hong Kong classrooms showed us how English as a socially unequally distributed form of linguistic capital could play

an important role in the gate-keeping social selection and social stratifi cation anisms of a society More recently, Menard-Warwick ( 2005 ) invoked Bourdieu’s concept of social capital to underline how her Guatamalan learner’s lack of social capital hindered her opportunities to learn English successfully, while De Costa

an “infi nite number of practices that are relatively unpredictable … but also limited

in their diversity” (p 55) More recently, Blommaert ( 2015 ) (re)framed habitus as a nexus concept, describing it as “an attempt at ‘macro’ generalization at the level of what we would call ‘micro’ practices – let us call it a “nexus concept” in which dif-ferent scale-levels of social behavior are shown to be dialectically connected” (p 8) That the habitus is fl uid and sits at the crossroads of macro and micro practices is crucial because it suggests that it is (a) shaped by ideology (Eagleton 1991 ; Rehman

2013 ), and (b) emblematic of an individual’s identity

On a wider note, the power of a framework based on Bourdieu’s work lies haps in its ability to get to the political core of learning As observed by Heller and Martin-Jones ( 2001 ), “the issue [of L2 learning] is principally one of what ways of using language, what kinds of language practices are valued and considered good, normal, appropriate, or correct in the framework of ideological orientations con-nected to social, economic, and political interests” (p 2) In other words, the differ-ent values accorded to language practices are highly contingent on the ideological lens through which the practices are viewed

By adopting such a Bourdieusian critical perspective in my study, I join other researchers who view language learning as a site of struggle because what is ulti-mately at stake is linguistic capital and the dire need for recognition This struggle

is enlarged and complexifi ed at a national, state, and individual level in light of the globalized fl ow of peoples and as globalization becomes more fi rmly entrenched Heller ( 2003 , 2011 ), for instance, has argued about the commodifi cation of lan-guage as a result of globalization and as nation states attempt to carve out niche markets (Flores 2013 ; Gee et al 1996 ) for themselves In his critique of neoliberal-ism, Flores ( 2013 ) reminds us that “neoliberalism is not simply about the corporati-zation of society but also the corporatization of the individual subject” (p 504) This act of commodifi cation of language and people, in turn, has triggered a host of globalization-related consequences that are relevant to my study It is to these con-sequences that I turn next

1 Not all social theorists, however, agree that Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus accommodates and accounts for the fl uidity that is characterized by globalization For a critique, see Archer ( 2012 ) 2.4 Pierre Bourdieu and SLA

2.5 Consequences of Globalization and the Commodifi cation

of Languages

Contrary to popular belief, as Heller and Duchêne ( 2007 ; see also Duchêne and Heller 2012 ) point out, the nation-state is hardly in jeopardy of extinction If any-thing, they argue, nation-states continue to play an important role, with existing nation-states reproducing linguistic boundaries in order to control access to the pro-duction and circulation of resources In this respect, they end up enforcing a linguis-tic panopticon of sorts, similar to that practiced by colonial powers in the past (Stroud 2007 ) This development has birthed a new type of discourse – that of endangerment – in an attempt to repel what is perceived to be a threat to the state The common rationale provided, as Heller and Duchêne observe, is the need to protect internal coherence (increasingly under threat from both local and immigrant sources of diversity), and to insulate themselves from other strong actors on the world stage Indeed, this discourse of endangerment has, for instance, been used in Spain (del Valle 2007 ) and Corsica (Jaffe 2007 ) Jaffe ( 2007 ), for instance, explored how Corsican was framed as being endangered by the imposition of standard French

in schools Importantly, the specter of globalization is also often invoked in

Singapore and resulting in and enacted through a regime of anticipation (Adams

et al 2009 ) Indeed, in the Singapore context, it is Singlish (the local Singaporean variety of English) which is often constructed as a threat to Standard English This threat has been observed by a number of sociolinguists who have investigated the use of English in Singapore (e.g., Alsagoff 2007 ; Chew 2007 ; De Costa 2010a ; Rubdy 2005 ; Silver 2005 ; Stroud and Wee 2007a , ; Wee 2003 , 2005 , 2006 ; Wee and Bokhorst-Heng 2005 ) Additionally, Standard English, as Chew ( 2007 ) points out, has also taken on a distinct market value as a result of commoditive turn in language:

More and more fee-paying students are expected from China Thus Singapore is poised to

“export” its own variety of LSE [Local Standard English], in keeping with the practice of ELT-exporting nations such as the United States, Britain, and Australia (p 81)

As a result of this development, Singlish is often denigrated by the authorities, much like how hybrid language practices are devalued in Hong Kong (Lin 2001 ) One indirect but major consequence of the commodifi cation of languages in the face of globalization is the tightened essentialization of languages as demonstrated

by Jaffe ( 2007 ) in regard to Corsica By the same token in Singapore, Singlish is often associated with being uniquely Singaporean (see Chap 4 for details about the sociolinguistic context in Singapore) Overall, the commodifi cation of languages has also spawned a need for us to reconsider how languages are valued differently

as they move with their users across borders As noted by Blommaert ( 2005 ):

Whenever discourses travel across the globe, what is carried with them is their shape, but their value, meaning, or function do not often travel along Value, meaning, and function are a matter of uptake, they have to be granted by others on the basis of the prevailing

orders of indexicality , and increasingly also on the basis of their real or potential ‘market value’ as a cultural commodity (p 72, italics mine )

The prevailing orders of indexicality described by Blommaert inevitably result in the linguistic capital of language users being measured against a value system Language learning in particular then becomes a political enterprise, with some

learners trying to establish a second order indexicality (Silverstein 2003 ) as they

“attempt to approximate stylistically or phonetically to the standard in an effort to index an aspirant or high-status identity for themselves” (p 219; see also Johnstone

2009 ) In short, as a result of the commodifi cation of languages, we need to rethink languages and language learning in an age of globalization Put differently, to facili-tate a contemporary understanding and examination of language use and acquisi-tion, new theoretical tools will be needed

and Performance

In Bilingualism : A social approach , Heller ( 2007 ) called for a view of language “as

a set of resources which circulate in unequal ways in social networks and discursive spaces.” Understanding language “as a set of ideologically-defi ned resources and practices,” she added, “constructs language as a fundamentally social phenomenon” (p 2) A similar take on language was advanced by Block ( 2008 a) in his review of language and globalization as evidenced in his observation, “What is needed is an approach to English as an international phenomenon that escapes essentialism but recognizes social structures, in particular the unequal access to all semiotic resources, including language, that reigns in the world today” (p 39) This semiotic turn in viewing language in non-essentialist terms is well documented and clearly mapped out in Makoni and Pennycook ( 2006 ), who called for a reconstitution of languages in the mould of C S Peirce’s interpretation of semiotics that foregrounds how interactions are socially situated (for a history of Peircean semiotics, see Thorne and Lantolf 2006; van Lier 2004 ; Young 2009) The contrast between Saussure’s and Peirce’s semiotics is succinctly described by Young ( 2009 ):

Because of the immutability of the Saussurean sign, communication by means of signs pens independently of who is talking, where the interaction occurs, or when the participants interact In the Peircean system, since the speaker’s sign generates a new sign for the hearer, the “Who?” the “Where?” and the “When?” of the interaction are crucial in semiotic com- munication Somewhere, somewhen, and somebody are thus indispensable features of com- munication, and they contrast with the nowhere, nowhen, and nobody of Saussurean theory (p 13)

More importantly, this poststructually-oriented shift toward a socially-sensitive understanding of language use needs to be seen in relation to contemporary global-ized fl ows of immigrant language learners who move fl uidly across physical and cultural borders (Appadurai 2001 ; Back 2015 ; Higgins 2015 ) As Appadurai ( 2001 ) accurately puts it:

2.5 Consequences of Globalization and the Commodifi cation of Languages

[W]e are functioning in a world fundamentally characterized by objects in motion These objects include ideas and ideologies, people and goods, images and messages, technologies and techniques This is a world of fl ows (p 5)

This world of fl ows that we inhabit has subsequently made the traditional notion

of local speech community somewhat obsolete (Rampton 1998 ; Silverstein 1998 ; Thorne 2009 ) Particularly problematic for Rampton is the one language-one cul-ture mapping as its association with homogeneity, uniformity, and territorial bound-edness is out of sync with contemporary reality A more salient approach, he argues, would be to focus our attention on repertoires and identity-constructing communi-cative practices Echoing a similar semiotic-oriented perspective is Blommaert ( 2003 ) who contends that a global level of analysis requires a “move from lan-guages to language varieties and repertoires” because “it is not abstract language” that is globalized, but rather “specifi c speech forms, genres, styles, and forms of literacy practice” (p 608) (see also Blommaert 2010 ) Such a reconceptualization of language conceives of users as capable of enacting a range of identities through language by invoking a variety of styles from the repertoires available to them This view is reinforced by Stroud and Wee ( 2007a ) in relation to the Singapore class-room context; arguing in favor of the conceptualization of language as a form of semiotic mediation, they point out:

A conventional pedagogical emphasis that requires the students to pay attention to ness and standard English while downplaying the social meaning of language(s) for them only serves to ignore the complexity of the interactional and social structures found in the classroom (p 50)

The interactional and social structures that Stroud and Wee write about certainly need to be taken into account given the implementation of a pro standard English national language syllabus implemented in Singapore schools Importantly, the semiotic turn endorsed by Stroud and Wee is also underscored by De Costa ( 2010b ) and Pennycook ( 2007 ) Tapping into and extending the notion of global linguistic

fl ows, Pennycook ( 2007 ), for instance, theorized language as sedimented products

of repeated acts of identity Following an in-depth, sweeping look at the relationship between Global Englishes and Hip Hop’s “transcultural fl ows,” Pennycook called for a recasting of language in terms of semiotic reconstruction and performativity This radical recontextualization is (a) timely, given how cultural and linguistic material travels around the world to today, and (b) bears particular signifi cance to

my designer immigrant students who were expected to demonstrate the use of a standard variety of English in their linguistic repertoire

Interestingly, applied linguistic research on stylization to date appears to have followed two somewhat distinct tracks (for a greater discussion of style and styling see Jaspers 2010 ) The fi rst has developed much in line with the popular culture vein

on which Pennycook based his argument Alim, Ibrahim and Pennycook ( 2009 ) build on Pennycook’s view of language as being characterized by transcultural

fl ows by drawing our attention to the repeated stylizations involved in Global Hip Hop Culture Admittedly, Pennycook and his associates are not the fi rst researchers

to realize the potential of popular culture in facilitating language and literacy

development Other researchers such as Dyson ( 1997 ), Duff ( 2002 ), and Zuengler ( 2003 ) had done so earlier However, by drawing upon the work of Bakhtin ( 1981 ) and their focus on stylization as mediated through Hip Hop cultures, Pennycook and his colleagues are able to address the crossing of traditional boundaries by global-ized youth in digitally mediated societies today (Alim 2009 ) The importance of popular culture in relation to language study and identity construction is also under-scored by Bucholtz and Skapoulli ( 2009 ), who called for an examination of “the ways in which local and translocal semiotic resources are variously taken up by and imposed upon youth for the construction of selves and others in a range of interac-tional and sociocultural settings” (p 4)

This focus on new cultural resources fl owing toward youth is also dominant in a second line of applied linguistic research which draws heavily on linguistic anthro-pology However, researchers who have adopted the notion of stylization and applied it to a classroom context have thus far done so to emphasize how teenagers often style themselves with an agenda to mock others In his groundbreaking book

Language in late modernity : Interaction in an urban school , Rampton ( 2006 ) adopted the notion of stylization to underline how 14-year-old students in a London secondary school, Central High, playfully but skillfully alternated between posh and Cockney in ways that refl ected their understanding of social class as an identity marker Situating her study in an American high school, Chun ( 2009 ) examined how fl uent English-speaking Korean and Filipino American students used their lin-guistic resources to stylize immigrant speech in ways to distinguish themselves from newly arrived immigrant counterparts While Chun explored the complexities

of heteroglossia as enacted through U.S.-born Asian-descent teenagers’ practices of linguistic simplifi cation in relation to their peers in a school in Texas, Shankar ( 2008 ) who also drew on Bakhin’s notion of heteroglossia, did so in a way to link language use and racial identity of bilingual speakers in a high school in the Silicon Valley She focused on how Desi (South Asian American) English, which she labeled as FOB (“Fresh off the Boat”) styles of speaking, fostered the linguistic stereotyping of fi rst-generation or 1.5 generation Punjabi-speaking youth in the school The Desi-accented English examined by her bears similarities to the “FOB accents” (Reyes 2007 ), “Mock Asian” (Chun 2001 ), and “Stylized Asian English” (Rampton 2006 ) as they all refer to ways of speaking that ridicule the non-standard English associated with recent Asian immigrants More importantly, such acts of mocking invite comparison to Talmy’s ( 2004 , 2008 ) work on the cultural produc-tion of ESL learners in a Hawaiian high school as we see how ways of speaking inevitably intersect with circulating ideologies to impede English language development

Indeed, both lines of research offer the useful construct of stylization to view how language is used and learned today among youth Such a construct, along with (a) the blurring of boundaries among languages and dialects which are no longer seen as separate or ‘complete’ codes, and (b) the notion of language as a set of semi-

otic resources available to its users and which constitute their communicative

reper-toires (Rymes 2014 ), point toward how we understand language in the age of globalization

2.5 Consequences of Globalization and the Commodifi cation of Languages

2.5.2 Language Learning Through an Ideology

and Identity Lens

A shift in how language is viewed requires a commensurate shift in how we view language learning As seen in the previous section, applied linguists have increas-ingly been focusing on issues of ideology and identity as they relate to language use The notion of language ideologies, in particular, has long been used by linguistic anthropologists, given their interest in the belief systems pertaining to language that are shared by members of a group Silverstein ( 1979 , p 193), for instance, defi nes linguistic ideologies as “any set of beliefs about language articulated by the users as

a rationalization or justifi cation of perceived language structure and use”, while Kroskrity ( 2004 , p 196; see also, Kroskrity 2010 ) points out that language ideolo-gies, which are “constructed from the sociocultural experience of the speaker”, are often unnoticed and uncontested by people in their discourse (for a distinction between learner beliefs and learner ideologies, see De Costa 2011 ) A similar view

is echoed by McGroarty ( 2010 ) who describes language ideologies as “abstract (and often implicit) belief systems related to language and linguistic behavior that affect speakers’ choices and interpretations of communicative interaction” (p 3)

It is perhaps as a result of this “invisibility” of language or linguistic ideologies that they have become the subject of scrutiny of linguistic anthropologists In an early review of linguistic anthropology, Wortham ( 2001 , p 256) invoked Woolard’s ( 1998 ) identifi cation of two different lines of research on language ideology The

fi rst is largely macro in approach, with studies on language ideology focusing on standardization, language revitalization, language and nationalism, and diglossia and bilingualism (e.g., Blommaert 1999 ; Jaffe 1999 ) However, such work has pro-duced valuable tools with which to analyze language ideologies as they exist on a larger level (e.g., societal and national levels) Gal and Irvine ( 1995 ), in particular, have been instrumental in advancing a framework which is based on a Peircian semiotic approach According to them, ideologies are constituted by the semiotic processes of iconization, recursiveness and erasure Iconization involves assuming that any of the linguistic processes of a group are not merely contingent, but repre-sent the essence of the group Recursiveness entails the projection of a distinction made at one level onto some other levels so that the distinction is seen to recur across categories of varying generality, while Gal and Irvine refer to erasure as “the process in which ideology in simplifying the fi eld of linguistic practices, renders some persons or activities or sociolinguistic phenomena invisible” (p 974) These focal concepts have subsequently been used by linguists such as Wee ( 2006 ) and McGroarty ( 2008 ) to examine language ideologies that relate to national language policies in Singapore and the United States respectively Similarly, I used these fundamental tools when situating my focal designer immigrant students in the larger Singapore context in order to examine the language and circulating ideologies as well as their social identifi cation as cosmopolitan scholarship students that may have infl uenced their learning