Volume 2021, Issue 271 - Special Issue: Ideologies of English in Asia; Issue Editors: Jinhyun Cho, Alexandra Grey and Loy Lising

That English has spread in Asia is well-known, but this critical reflection, and the five contributions and book review that we hereby introduce, contribute to rectifying the relative absence in the sociology of language literature of studies approaching language ideologies and practices in specific Asian contexts from local perspectives. We are not alone; our inspections of journal archives show that scholars are increasingly responding to this relative absence in recent years. What this special issue offers is further diversity of both authors and cases, and moreover this special issue draws attention to the immutable, binary structure underlying the various globally-circulating discourses of the East and the West as part of investigating how socially constructed East-West binaries interact with language ideologies about English and other languages. It shifts the attention from fixity – East versus West – to diversity, extending East to Easts and West to Wests as our contributors identify and examine multiple, endogenous “imaginative geograph[ies]” (from Arif Dirlik’s [1996] “Chinese history and the question of Orientalism”, History and Theory 35(4): 97) constructed through various Orientalist ideologies. It founds this approach on a combination of the theory of recursive language ideologies and critical Orientalism scholarship. This is generative of new and useful sociolinguistic analyses. Having laid out this theoretical extension, this editorial then provides an overview of the issue’s contributions, which examine how socially constructed East-West binaries are interacting with language ideologies about English and other languages on sub-national scales in various Asian contexts including in Korea, China, Japan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

By examining relationships between language and race within Bourdieu's theoretical concept of “misrecognition”, this article highlights distinctive ways in which the mental structure of a minority individual becomes Orientalized in relation to a racialized identity construction. Specifically, it examines how English becomes misrecognized as the key to a desired white identity in the case of one prominent Korean intellectual of the 19th century, Yun Chi-Ho (1864–1945). To this end, this article analyses the English diaries written by Yun, which began during his sojourn in the United States (1888–1893). The analysis of the diaries illustrates how Yun subjected himself to an Orientalized gaze in 19th century America, a society marked by racial and language boundaries and how his inferiority complex led him to pursue a white identity with English as a primary tool. While Self-Orientalism is regarded as both a cause and outcome of Asian participation in the construction of the Orient, this article reconceptualizes Self-Orientalism as a process of misrecognition born out of the colonial context of superior-inferior distinction characterized by the boundedness of language and race. The article concludes by broadening out from the case of Yun to illustrate the impact of misrecognition on the continued covert operation of Self-Orientalism in contemporary times.

Socially constructed and globally propagated East-West binaries have influenced language ideologies about English in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but they are not hegemonic. This essay explores how East-West language ideologies are reformed in mergers with Mandarin-minority language ideologies. It discusses two separate but similar recent studies of minority language speakers and language ideologies in the PRC, respectively by Grey and Baioud. Each study reveals aspects of how Mandarin and English are being socially constructed as on the same side of a dichotomous and hierarchic linguistic and social order, in contradistinction to minority languages. The essay thus problematizes the construction of English as a Western language and Mandarin as an Eastern language; both in academic discourses and in wider social and political discourses. The essay uses Asif Agha’s theory of “enregisterment” to unify the points drawn from each study. It concludes that the language ideologies and practices/discourses under examination reproduce the displacement of a subaltern status; we describe this process as dynamic, internal Orientalism and “recursive” Orientalism, drawing on foundational theory of language ideologies. This essay paves the way for further studies of recursive Orientalism.

While there is plenty of scholarship on the spread and study of English in China, scarce attention has been paid to representations of English in tourism discourses about China. This article aims to explore language ideologies undergirding representations of English language use in 253 travelogues from China Daily published since 2000. Findings show that most prominently in China Daily “standard” English was represented as a lingua franca for travel in China, a language of prestige, and a means of Othering. Some places are demarcated from others due to the lack of English-language services. Chinese people’s way of using English was reduced to Chinglish, a pejorative term indicating inappropriate or incorrect usage of English. Chinese use of English was thus ridiculed as an inferior Other. This critical discourse analysis of tourism discourses about China emanating from within the country demonstrates one facet of Orientalism – self-orientalism. CD ’s self-orientalist strategies were embedded in oppositional East-West ideologies that set an inferior China against a superior West. 摘要 英语在中国的传播和学习一直是语言学界的热门话题, 而没有研究关注过中国的英文旅游文本对这种英语现象的展示。这篇论文从批评话语分析的角度研究《中国日报》自2000年以来253篇旅游文章如何展示英语在中国的使用, 旨在探讨这种展示后面支撑的语言意识形态。研究发现《中国日报》旅游文章中最显著的主题是‘标准’英语被描述成在中国旅游的通用语, 享有至尊地位的语言和展现他者的手段。是否缺乏英语语言服务成为旅游地的身份标识物。而中国人使用英语的各种现象都被缩简成中式英语, 这是用来描述不恰当或不准确的英语用法的专用词。中国人使用英语的各种现象被嘲讽为低等的他者。该研究表明, 源于中国本土的旅游话语对英语的展示折射出东方主义的一个维度—自我东方主义。《中国日报》的自我东方主义的策略植根于把低等的中国和优越的西方对立的东西方意识形态。

This paper brings together notions of heteroglossia and religious identity to explore how English becomes indexical of Ismaili distinction in local communities in Pakistan and Tajikistan. Adopting a heteroglossic approach to language provides a perspective which is epistemologically compatible with notions of religion as social, human and interactional, as intricately connected to power, and as both reflecting and being shaped by perspective and positioning. In the paper, I use a “discourse analysis beyond the speech event” approach to engage with data collected during ethnographic fieldwork (qualitative interviews, focus group discussions, fieldnotes) amongst Ismailis in Hunza, northern Pakistan and Khorog, eastern Tajikistan. In analyzing these examples, I attempt to illustrate how ideologies of English become sites for the negotiation of religious distinction.

This paper reports on the perspectives of English language teachers and teacher educators on the most recent English language education policy and curriculum reform in Japan, implemented in preparation for hosting the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Previous research has comprehensively analysed how language ideologies based on national imaginaries, native-speakerism and deficit views of Japanese teachers’ pedagogy and practice continue to frame debates about English language education in Japan. Through select thematic episodes derived from the interview data with English language practitioners located in Japan, this paper brings into focus the views of English language educators who articulated insightful counter-positions to taken-for-granted understandings of effective English language use and teaching. The authors argue that in order to effect a paradigm shift in global English language education, in Japan and internationally, it is important to incorporate a critical examination of teacher perspectives that challenge and augment prevalent tropes about English language teaching and learning. The paper concludes with implications for addressing the policy-practice and theory-practice divides in English language education. It argues that a continued engagement with educator perspectives is an important space for bringing about a transformation of language ideologies and pedagogical change at the grass-roots level of the English language classroom. 概要 本論文は、東京2020オリンピック・パラリンピック競技大会開催に備えて行われた日本における最新の英語教育政策改革及び学習指導要領改訂に関する英語教師と英語教師教育者の見解について報告する。先行研究では、ナショナル・イマジナリーに基づく言語イデオロギー、ネイティブ・スピーカリズム、日本人教師の教授法及び実践に対する軽視が、どのように日本の英語教育に関する討論を形成し続けているのかについての分析が徹底的に行われてきた。本論文では、日本国内の英語教育者へのインタビューデータから選択されたテーマ別のエピソードを通して、効果的とみなされてきた英語使用及び教授に関する理解に対抗的な英語教育者の見解に焦点を合わせる。グローバル英語教育のパラダイムシフトをもたらすために、日本、そして世界において普及した英語教授及び学習に関するディスコースに抗う、もしくは助長する教師の見解を調査することが重要であると論じる。また、英語教育における政策と実践、及び理論と実践の隔たり解消のために教育者の見解が意味するものは何かについて述べる。教育者の見解に継続的に向き合うことが、言語イデオロギーや現場における教授法に変化をもたらす重要な役割を果たす。

This article seeks to examine whether and how a non-standard variety of English (i.e. Singlish) might contribute to (dis)affiliation amongst a multinational group of academically elite students in Singapore. Using interview data when informants expressed ideologies about Singlish and Standard English, I argue that informants tended to orient to two different social fields in interviews: a field of education where Standard English is consistently valued by them, and an informal field of socialisation where the value of Singlish is contested. Differences in valuation of Singlish suggest disaffiliation between two groups of academically elite students: (a) immigrants from China who arrived more recently and do not value Singlish; (b) localised peer groups (including immigrants and Singaporeans) who claim to value and practise Singlish in their informal interactions. There are implications for our understanding of the role of vernaculars in processes of transnational migration, and Singlish as a local marker of solidarity.

The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between indexicality, standardization policy and socioeconomic inequalities in the Galician linguistic field (as a minor language of Spain). I will examine the discursive role of Galician elites in the building of indexical orders from the Renaissance movement (19th century) onwards, and its links to the current negative representations of rural Galician. Also, I will explore the relationship between anti-rural prejudices, ideologies of class and standard ideologies, showing how common speakers share the stigmatizing indexical values of the elites, and rural speakers consent to the symbolic violence of which they are victims. Finally, I adapt the concept of gentrification from contemporary urbanism to the linguistic field in order to explain the impact of elitist academic lingualizing discourse on traditional speakers of Galician and also on the value of their varieties in the linguistic market. I support my analysis on the metalinguistic discourse of members of the intellectual elites authorized in the Galician linguistic and cultural field from Renaissance to contemporaneity, attitudinal matched-guise research, and ethnographic studies of the second millennium.