Why linguistic entrepreneurship?

1 Introduction

Under the burgeoning influence of neoliberalism (Block et al. 2012; Holborow 2015; Piller and Cho 2013), several ideological trends have converged to reframe language learning as a project of entrepreneurial self-development. One of these is enterprise culture (Du Gay 1996; Keat and Abercrombie 1991; Ong 2006; Wee 2011), in which characteristics such as initiative, innovation, self-reliance, resilience, and the ability to respond quickly to competition are celebrated. Another is the theory of human capital (Foucault 2008; Holborow 2012; Park 2016; van Droon 2014), which considers the skills, competencies, and aptitudes of an individual as capital that must be carefully managed and developed so as to maximize its value in the market. A third ideological trend is the commodification of language (Cameron 2005; Heller 2003, 2010; Muth and del Percio 2017; Sharma and Phyak 2017), in which language is loosened from its traditional role as a marker of ethnonational identity to be reimagined as a flexible economic resource that can be mobilized for profit.

Through the concept of linguistic entrepreneurship, this special issue suggests that these trends jointly work as an affective regime (De Costa et al. 2019; Wee 2016) that compels individuals, communities, and organizations to take up language learning as a moral imperative – that is, linguistic entrepreneurship presents the learning of languages as a responsibility of a good citizen and ideal neoliberal worker. The result is an appropriation of multilingualism and language education into the logic of capitalism. And in this special issue, the specific details of this appropriation are delineated and their implications explained through the exploration of a number of case studies and critical commentaries.

The notion of linguistic entrepreneurship thus serves as a unique and innovative contribution to the existing body of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and language policy research on neoliberalism. While linguistic entrepreneurship overlaps with and supplements the commodification of language, which has been a highly influential framework for the study of language and neoliberalism, it is also crucially distinct from the latter as it offers a way of talking about how the neoliberal reframing of language learning is deeply grounded in subjective experiences and the formation of subjects. In other words, while the commodification of language focuses on the shift in language ideologies that lead to the changing role of language in the political economy, linguistic entrepreneurship illuminates the concrete processes by which people as well as institutions come to align themselves with the ideal of neoliberalism, developing a particular sense of self as subjects through a range of ideological, historical, and political economic conditions. By drawing upon the notion of linguistic entrepreneurship, then, the contributions to this special issue foreground the dimension of neoliberal subjecthood that serves as a key pivot for the neoliberal reframing of language learning.

This nexus of neoliberal subjecthood and language learning is particularly relevant for the current ‘multi/plural turn’ in language studies (Flores 2013; Kubota 2016), in which the emphasis on multilingualism under the conditions of postmodernity is actively embraced by sociolinguistic and applied linguistic research, through concepts such as translanguaging (Li Wei 2018), translingualism (Canagarajah 2012), and metrolingualism (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015). While such perspectives offer significant challenges and correctives to dominant ideologies of language that reify language boundaries and the hegemony of standard language, they have also been criticized for not sufficiently problematizing the uncanny parallel that exists between neoliberal celebration of language learning as a commodifiable skill and scholars’ valorization of language users’ skills at managing linguistic resources (Kubota 2016). The perspective of linguistic entrepreneurship, which suggests that the commodification of language under neoliberalism operates precisely by exalting the linguistic skills of human subjects as a target for entrepreneurship, can serve as a perspective that enhances our critical awareness of the fine line between the neoliberal promotion of language learning and a democratic vision of multilingualism.

In the rest of this introductory article, we lay out in detail the value of examining multilingualism and language education policy from a linguistic entrepreneurship perspective. We outline how neoliberalism has led to a growing emphasis on accountability, competitiveness, efficiency, and profit in language education and language policy. The consequence is that language learning is increasingly constructed as a form of linguistic entrepreneurship, where greater pressure is placed on individuals and institutions to enhance their language skills and competence as an economic resource that contributes not only to the individual’s own material and social well-being but also to economic development of the broader community.

Indeed, in many national contexts, linguistic entrepreneurship plays a prominent role in language education policy (Pan 2016; Park and Wee 2012). What is notable of such policy is that it frequently frames language learning in moral terms. That is, investment in language learning is promoted as a responsibility of a good citizen who takes good care of one’s own human capital and contributes to society through conscientious management of it. The moral and affective grounding of linguistic entrepreneurship is what distinguishes it from other notions such as language commodification (Cameron 2005; Heller 2010). Through a discussion of various cases, we show how linguistic entrepreneurship can be a pertinent analytical framework for critiquing the way neoliberal management of language permeates the actions of individuals and institutions alike.

2 Entrepreneurial learners

In De Costa et al. (2016), we noted that language learning may be presented as linguistic entrepreneurship through the way learners frame their motivation for language learning as well as through the mode of language learning that learners adopt. Regarding motivation for learning, we pointed out that the Korean early study abroad phenomenon, known as jogi yuhak (Bae 2013; Gao and Park 2015; Lo et al. 2015; Park and Bae 2009), constitutes a case where an entrepreneurial framing of the motivation for language learning becomes of prime importance.

During the late 1990s and 2000s a number of Korean middle class parents have been sending their children abroad to study in English-speaking countries (such as the US, Canada, Australia, and sometimes southeast Asian countries like the Philippines or Singapore). The goal was to acquire valuable competence in the English language, to help the student get ahead in the competition for better educational and job opportunities upon returning to Korea. But relevant to the idea of linguistic entrepreneurship is the fact that jogi yuhak is not purely about acquiring linguistic competence in English. The student’s immersion into an English-speaking environment is meant to help her to acquire native-like competence in English – something that is otherwise considered impossible back in Korea – thus helping the student to fully realize the value of her human capital on the global stage (Gao and Park 2015). This is why jogi yuhak is considered an effective strategy for competition in Korean society. Its entrepreneurial motivations, in which acquisition of English is pursued as part of a project to enhance the value of human capital in the body of the student, position the student as a good neoliberal subject.

By way of example, in De Costa et al. (2016) we discussed the case of Jiyeong, a 10-year old jogi yuhak student studying in a Singaporean government school, and who had been living in Singapore with her mother for about a year. Her mother talks about how linguistic competence helps Jiyeong in her pursuit of higher education and in her future career. However, she does not present these as fixed goals for Jiyeong. Instead, she suggests that English will enable Jiyeong to pursue whatever goals that she may set for herself. To Jiyeong’s mother, then, acquiring English is important because it allows the jogi yuhak student access to greater opportunities associated with further self-development while branding oneself as a globally aware and mobile individual. Thus, for jogi yuhak families like Jiyeong’s, linguistic entrepreneurship is manifest in the way they frame the student’s English language learning as part of a broader project of entrepreneurial self-development.

Where the learner’s mode of language learning is concerned, the case of foreign students on scholarship in Singapore can be presented as an example. Singapore has been actively recruiting high-performing students from neighboring countries through scholarships, with hope that they will become a contingent of new citizens that will contribute to the nation’s further economic growth (De Costa 2016). These scholarship students, in the words of one such student, are expected to be ‘‘very smart and industrious and able to conduct excellent work’’ (De Costa 2016: 22), and are usually placed in the nation’s top schools. These students often strived to demonstrate characteristics associated with entrepreneurship, such resourcefulness, semiotic dexterity, and willingness to take risks in their English language learning, as a way of presenting themselves as subjects that align well with the personhood expected of scholarship students.

For instance, one of the students is Jenny, from China, who initially had difficulties in learning English. But she was ultimately successful in overcoming these difficulties and even went on to top her class. What was significant about her was how she displayed much reflexivity in her English language learning to constantly seek out better strategies for managing her acquisition of English. For instance, in acquiring new vocabulary, Jenny initially relied on memorization but she soon realized that for a word to sink into her long-term memory, she needed to be able to apply it to the context of a sentence. She was often seen using her electronic dictionary in class, furiously keying in words unknown to her and waiting for an answer in Mandarin Chinese to be generated. Jenny’s teacher, Madam Tay, also noted: ‘‘she’s literally checking the dictionary for every other word and writing the translation on top of the word’’ (De Costa 2016: 99). But by reflecting on the effectiveness of her own language learning practices, and taking on a more adaptive and active approach of using a new word outside the classroom and paying attention to its various possible meanings, Jenny demonstrated persistence, resourcefulness and semiotic dexterity. In this case, linguistic entrepreneurship was displayed through the way Jenny reflexively and flexibly sought out new modes and strategies for language learning to maximize the value of studying in Singapore.

In these examples, the learning of a language is not simply about acquiring competence in a new language. The conditions under which the language learning occurs – going overseas to a new environment, adapting to unfamiliar circumstances, being determined and persistent despite difficulties, showing initiative in handling new situations – are all supposed to index a particular kind of personhood, one who is a linguistic entrepreneur. In this way, linguistic entrepreneurship reveals how, through affective and moral framing of language learning, acts of language learning increasingly get incorporated into the neoliberal logic of human capital development.

3 Entrepreneurial institutions

Of course, these examples can be easily multiplied and not just within the school system. As many countries invest in the language capacities of its citizens as a way of enhancing its competitiveness in the global economy, linguistic entrepreneurship through active language learning may come to be presented by state and national discourse as a sign of good, responsible citizenship (Gao 2018). In Singapore, for instance, the government’s introduction of the SkillsFuture Singapore Initiative (SSG) is part of a national attempt to get Singaporeans to take personal responsibility for self-learning and self-improvement, in order to ensure their continued employability and their ability to contribute to the national economy. SSG is a statutory board under the Ministry of Education, and its role is to provide development programs for all Singaporeans, from students to working adults to senior citizens, as its website points out (http://www.skillsfuture.sg/AboutSkillsFuture; accessed 23 December 2018):

SkillsFuture is a national movement to provide Singaporeans with the opportunities to develop their fullest potential throughout life, regardless of their starting points. Through this movement, the skills, passion and contributions of every individual will drive Singapore’s next phase of development towards an advanced economy and inclusive society.

No matter where you are in life – schooling years, early career, mid-career or silver years – you will find a variety of resources to help you attain mastery of skills. Skills mastery is more than having the right paper qualifications and being good at what you do currently; it is a mindset of continually striving towards greater excellence through knowledge, application and experience. With the help of the Future Economy Council, education and training providers, employers, unions – you can own a better future with skills mastery and lifelong learning.

As the website makes clear, the SkillsFuture encourages Singaporeans to see lifelong learning not merely as a burden that must be undertaken if one wishes to be employable. Rather, individuals are persuaded to adopt ‘a mindset of continually striving towards greater excellence’ so that they ‘can own a better future’ and ‘drive Singapore’s next phase of development towards an advanced economy and inclusive society’. Importantly, language courses are among the various programs that the government recognizes for support under the scheme. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the phenomenon of linguistic entrepreneurship is relevant to any attempt at better understanding the SkillsFuture initiative in Singapore.

Which brings us to the fact that institutions, too, are subject to the normative expectations of linguistic entrepreneurship. Consider the fact that in English language education, there are many rankings that purportedly compare the quality of English of state and organizational actors, ideologically linking such quality of English with the economic profit that may accrue to those actors. For example, several commercial English language training providers such as GlobalEnglish Corporation or EF Education First offer annual lists that purportedly compare and rank the English language competence associated with industries, countries, cities, etc. (De Costa et al. 2019). The influence of such rankings on English language education — with concomitant consequences for the allocation of funding and other resources, expectation of families towards what governments and schools should provide in terms of English language education, etc. — cannot be underestimated.

Whether or not the particular institutions in the identified industries or countries are actually sufficiently bothered by these rankings to act upon them (e.g., to introduce initiatives that might improve the quality of English in the various industrial sectors or, in the case of cities and countries, to perhaps improve the quality of English taught in schools) is of course up to those individual actors. But the fact that such a ranking is available, that is, the fact that there are institutions (in this case, the GlobalEnglish Corporation and EF Education First) that deem it a worthy venture to publish such rankings, demonstrates that there is at least an implicit expectation that institutional actors should consider the quality of English language training a competitive enterprise, one that they should constantly monitor and strive to improve upon. That is, if the institutional actors are truly responsible actors who are genuinely concerned with the economic wellbeing and continued economic competitiveness of their workers or citizens (as the case may be), then they should be taking whatever steps may be necessary in order to improve the quality of English in the respective countries, cities or industries. This shows how linguistic entrepreneurship is not simply a moral imperative imposed by state or organizational actors upon their constituent members, but also an ideological condition that constrains the policies and practices of those actors as well.

We note that it might be expected that there should be strong synergies between learners and institutions, given that both are expected to display entrepreneurial attributes. But this is an expectation that needs to be investigated. Individuals and institutions have to abide by differing expectations. This not only means that understandings of what it means to be an entrepreneurial learner and what it means to be an entrepreneurial institution will differ; it also raises the possibility that there could be conflicting expectations so that one party’s attempts to demonstrate linguistic entrepreneurship might well come at the expense of the other. This is an important line of inquiry and one that two papers in this special issue (Sohn and Kang, Phyak and Sharma) take up.

4 Linguistic entrepreneurship as affective regime

We have seen that both individuals and institutions position themselves, or are expected to position themselves, as being linguistically entrepreneurial. This points to the importance of attending to linguistic entrepreneurship as an affective regime. An affective regime refers to ‘the set of conditions that govern with varying degrees of hegemonic status the ways in which particular kinds of affect can be appropriately materialized’ (Wee 2016: 109). While some affective regimes may explicitly encourage a particular affect (as in signs at memorials that request respect from visitors), this isn’t always the case, as such regimes may operate by producing effects that lead subjects to seek out and infer the kinds of affects they are supposed to take up — as in notices that alert passers-by that they are being surveilled by CCTV, which lead them to modulate their behavior and adopting affects that may be deemed appropriate to that area.

The notion of affective regime is critical in helping us to understand and explain what might otherwise appear to be irrational and paradoxical behavior. In the case of linguistic entrepreneurship, there is a question as to why various actors would continue to engage in what may be seen as a highly competitive and stressful endeavor, making increasingly intensive investments in language learning, not so much for the joy of learning a language itself, but for pragmatic purposes that sometimes require much sacrifice and forgoing of other pleasures of life. Understanding such behavior requires attention to the affective dimension of language education. As we have pointed out elsewhere (De Costa et al. 2016:696), the notion of linguistic entrepreneurship:

… captures how neoliberal society not only makes us see language as a resource that can be exploited for profit (material or symbolic), but also makes such exploitation an ethical imperative where becoming a linguistic entrepreneur is seen as the responsibility of an ideal neoliberal subject.

Thus, even where there may be specific conflicts between the goals of individuals and those of institutions, to the extent that both groups of actors have subjectively embraced the affective regime of linguistic entrepreneurship, then there is at a broader level coherence and even possibly reinforcement of affect as these actors share a positive valuation of the importance of being entrepreneurial. These ideas are explored in the papers by Starr and Kapoor, and Li & De Costa.

We therefore now take the opportunity to briefly describe the individual papers that make up this special issue, while also providing some background as to how they came about.

5 The papers in this issue

The contributions to this special issue (except the contribution by Phyak and Sharma, and Li and De Costa) were developed from presentations at an invited colloquium for the Sociolinguistics Symposium 22 (June 2018), “Rethinking multilingual language-in-education policies in the Asia Pacific Rim: A linguistic entrepreneurship perspective”, organized by the guest editors.^[1] The invited colloquium was designed as a forum for interrogating the role of neoliberalism in the transformation of language-in-education policies in the Asia Pacific Rim, highlighting the regional context of the conference, which took place in Auckland, New Zealand.

We, as organizers, chose to use linguistic entrepreneurship as a perspective for this topic, as it was a useful way of addressing the range of conditions for language learning that are shaping various countries in the region. The contributions were thus invited to consider how linguistic entrepreneurship becomes manifest within the specific historical and political economic conditions of each country. In addition, contributions from senior scholars (Kubota, Lo Bianco) were invited to comment on the themes that emerged from the studies and to discuss the wider theoretical significance of the notion of linguistic entrepreneurship.^[2]

The empirical studies in this issue engage with the notion of linguistic entrepreneurship, either using it as a framework for understanding the conditions of multilingualism and language education in a specific national context, or critically assessing its utility in theorizing the relationship between language and neoliberalism based on local experiences of language learning. They deal with diverse cases from the Asia-Pacific region, which is a highly valuable testing ground for exploring the various mutations of linguistic entrepreneurship and the subjective experiences they engender, due to a couple of reasons. First, despite drastic cultural and linguistic diversity, conditions of neoliberalism in Asia have given rise to widespread investments in global languages such as English or regional languages such as Mandarin; and second, the unique history of colonialism, culture contact, and migration within the region led to a complex politics of language and identity, which have become entangled in the promotion of linguistic entrepreneurship. Contributors were reminded to highlight this theoretical and regional perspective in developing their papers.

Starr and Kapoor’s paper “Our graduates will have the edge”: Linguistic entrepreneurship and Mandarin enrichment centres in Singapore focuses on the teaching and learning of Mandarin in Singapore. In Singapore, where all government schools are English-medium, Mandarin is a compulsory subject for students of Chinese heritage. But as young Singaporeans increasingly speak English at home, the required study of Mandarin has become a source of anxiety for families. Mandarin ‘enrichment centres’, which provide supplementary tuition, leverage this anxiety in various ways, from pointing to a track record of top exam results to promising a unique approach that eschews traditional methods. In their analysis, Starr and Kapoor draw on data from the websites of 14 such centres, focusing on how these programs position learners in relation to the notion of linguistic entrepreneurship. They identify three broad classes of enrichment centres: traditional, modern-traditional, and anti-traditional, each offering distinct imaginings of the learner as linguistic entrepreneur. Traditional centres highlight academic achievement, promising ‘exam-focused’ strategies to optimize school performance. Modern-traditional centres, in contrast, frame enrichment as an elite lifestyle choice, emphasizing convenience and luxury. Finally, anti-traditional centres distance themselves from conventional pedagogy, which they characterize as ‘rigid’ and ‘soul-crushing’; instead, invoking notions of holistic, experiential learning, they promise a nurturing environment in which students naturally absorb language. Across these categories, the authors observe a common discourse of Mandarin learning as a character-building struggle, in which centres provide unique resources enabling learners to survive the Singapore education system and emerge as ideal neoliberal subjects who have maximized their potential.

Sohn and Kang’s paper “We contribute to the development of South Korea”: Bilingual womanhood and politics of bilingual policy in South Korea deals with the complex positioning of immigrants and multiculturalism under massive global flows of migration. This raises a new challenge for many nation-states in recalibrating the value of linguistic resources that new citizens bring with them. In particular, the South Korean government’s transforming the role of damunhwa mothers (foreign women married to Korean men) — from Korean as a second language (KSL) learners to bilingual teachers — is worthy of investigation. The government’s use of linguistic entrepreneurship is notable, since it is used to mobilize the marriage migrants as self-governed and autonomous bilingual professionals whose bilingual skills could be used in new bilingual education sectors: (1) bilingual teachers for Koreans learning foreign languages, and (2) bilingual translators for newly married immigrants becoming Korean wives. By transforming themselves from damunhwa mothers into bilingual workers, these newcomers could become contributing citizens who actively participate in a new multicultural landscape in South Korea. This process also facilitates the creation of a new womanhood: the wise bilingual mother who proudly bridges South Korea and her country of origin. However, the interview narratives of four damunhwa mothers demonstrate (1) negotiations of international and intranational linguistic markets facilitating the construction of linguistic hierarchies among multiple languages, which hindered many damunhwa mothers from getting work as bilingual professionals, and (2) a rise of tensions between domestic gender roles and transnational selves. Through these findings, Sohn and Kang highlight the limits of national language policy that centers on linguistic entrepreneurship, and instead call for more reflective accounts of ecological and translingual language policy in South Korea.

Phyak and Sharma’s paper is Regime of linguistic entrepreneurship: Neoliberalism and entanglement of language ideologies in Nepal’s language education policies. Recent studies have critically analyzed the impact of neoliberalism on discourses, policies and practices on language (Canagarajah 2017; Flores 2013; Kubota 2016). These studies have discussed the collusion of discourses of multilingualism with economic interests of the neoliberal market and highlight the need for understanding complex entanglements of neoliberal ideologies in language policy discourses at the local level. As Canagarajah (2017) argues, the analysis of the link between neoliberalism and linguistic diversity contributes to our gaining of ideological clarity needed for “more ethical and inclusive language competencies, dispositions, and practices” (p. 2). Building on the centrality of ideological analysis (Kroskrity 2009), Phyak and Sharma explore how neoliberalism has created moral and ethical tensions among Nepal’s linguistic minoritized communities in prompting multilingualism and discuss their engagement with those tensions to capitalize both local and global linguistic resources. Drawing on data from ongoing ethnographic study on the impact of neoliberalism in Nepal’s educational discourses, they analyze how indigenous youths use linguistic entrepreneurship as a negotiated strategy in learning English while reclaiming their own indigenous identity. They first discuss neoliberal ideologies that have contributed to the expansion of English in Nepal’s educational policies and analyze the place of English in indigenous youths’ linguistic entrepreneurship. Following this, they discuss the dilemma of indigenous youths regarding linguistic diversity in the context of simultaneous influences of neoliberalism and ethnolinguistic activism. Their analysis focuses on the impact of neoliberal enactments such as exportation of migrant workers, privatization of education, and increasing international development aid-agencies in indigenous peoples’ narratives of what counts as education.

The final empirical study in this special issue is Li and De Costa’s Problematizing enterprise culture in global academic publishing: Linguistic entrepreneurship through the lens of two Chinese visiting scholars in a U.S. university. The authors note that the global spread of English has made it the dominant language in academic publishing (Hyland 2016). Influenced by enterprise culture (Mayr 2008), scholars from peripheral non-Western countries face mounting pressure to publish in English Curry and Lillis (2017). This “publish or perish” sentiment is keenly felt in China (Tian et al. 2016), where the government recently announced its commitment to develop world-class universities and disciplines in order to enhance the international competitiveness of China’s higher education system. As a result, local Chinese scholars are increasingly encouraged to publish in internationally-indexed journals, as well as to engage in international academic exchange and cooperation arrangements (Li and Hu 2018). In seeking academic collaboration, a growing number of Chinese academics have participated in visiting scholar programs offered by western-based universities. In light of this emergent phenomenon, Li and De Costa explore how Chinese visiting scholars, driven by an ethical imperative to enhance human capital at neoliberal universities (Holborow 2013), exploited language-related resources available to them to succeed in academic publishing. Data, which include in-depth interviews, social media posts, journals, resumes and manuscripts that were in press at academic journals, were collected from two Chinese professors who took part in a one-year visiting scholar program at a U.S. university. Li and De Costa’s findings revealed that under the mounting expectations to publish in English-dominated SSCI journals to secure a job promotion, their focal participants enacted linguistic entrepreneurial practices by (1) auditing graduate courses, (2) attending seminars, workshops, and conferences, (3) reaching out to professors for their input on research proposals and journal manuscripts, and (4) inviting their U.S. colleagues to co-author with them by providing the latter access to analyzed data that they had collected in China. Collectively, these deliberate moves illuminate how linguistic entrepreneurship is taken up in the face of the demands placed on and by global academic publishing. The authors close by also discussing the implications of such a neoliberally inflected endeavor.

These contributions to the special issue are further discussed by commentaries from scholars who have worked extensively on language education. The two commentaries from Kubota and Lo Bianco identify further lines of inquiry, empirical as well as conceptual, regarding the investigation of linguistic entrepreneurship in language education. While Lo Bianco calls for greater inclusiveness for speakers of various languages, new learners, and other communities as we rethink multilingualism along linguistic entrepreneurial lines, Kubota exhorts us to consider how linguistic entrepreneurship often assumes a gendered and classed dimension in ways that might cause social division. Such intersectionality between linguistic entrepreneurship and other dimensions of social organization such as gender and class is indeed worth exploring more for a better understanding of linguistic entrepreneurship. For instance, sociolinguists have long been interested in how language use may or may not be reflective of differences in gender (Coates 2016; Hall and Bucholtz 1995; Holmes and Meyerhoff 2003). And studies of entrepreneurship have found that women, perhaps not surprisingly, face different kinds of constraints than men in trying to be entrepreneurial, are motivated to be entrepreneurial by different considerations and, as a concomitant, draw on different kinds of resources (Minniti 2009). For example, Sullivan and Meek (2012: .433) note that women tend to view entrepreneurship as ‘a solution to challenges faced in traditional jobs like unfavorable working conditions or work-family conflict’; they ‘pursue entrepreneurship to gain control over their advancement opportunities, performance evaluations, and to create a more pleasant work environment’; thus, whereas men tend to be motivated more by ‘financial success and innovation … women still value financial success, but they evaluate it as less important than the need for independence’. All of which raises important questions about how men and women might negotiate the normative expectations of linguistic entrepreneurship differently. This is an issue not merely of theoretical interest but of practical import. As we have explained, both individuals as well as institutions are expected to demonstrate linguistic entrepreneurship and moreover, the latter are additionally supposed to help facilitate linguistic entrepreneurship for the former. Understanding the intersection between gender and linguistic entrepreneurship is, in our view, a critical step in the ongoing struggle for gender equality. This, we suggest, highlights the importance of engaging with the multiple intersections that linguistic entrepreneurship forms with wide ranging dimensions of social life, as it can provide a lens for critically analyzing the ways in which older modes of inequality come to be rearticulated in the context of neoliberalism.