Language ideologies and linguistic entrepreneurship in inter-Asian mobility: voices from international students at Chinese universities

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a bottom-up way of approaching China’s macro-level initiative in the regions of Asia and examines the language ideologies and linguistic entrepreneurship of international students as an agentive response to China’s rise. Using data gathered via semi-structured interviews, we present the narratives of 26 Asian international students enrolled in courses at higher education institutions in Shanghai. The findings reveal that China’s growing presence in the region has increased the instrumental value of Chinese, as a majority of students acknowledged China’s rapid development as well as the dominant positioning of Chinese in the current regional language system. Chinese was ideated as linguistic capital in the local labour market, where the learners were empowered to express their desire for material success and upward mobility. The findings also reveal linguistic entrepreneurship associated with Chinese language learning, and such agentive behaviour was previously observed in the domain of English language learning, especially in South Korea. We argue that the process of commodifying the Chinese language appeared to legitimise the value of Chinese in the regions of Asia, while providing an entry point to problematise our current understanding of English hegemony and linguistic imperialism in the changing global landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Language ideology
• linguistic entrepreneurship
• commodification
• Chinese language
• inter-Asian student mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Study in China Program was established in 2010 to attract international students to study in China, and it allows international students to engage in one to two years’ intensive Chinese language learning, before transferring to academic courses taught in Chinese at the undergraduate level.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities at East China Normal University [grant number: 2022ECNU-HWCBFBLW003].

Notes on contributors

Weiqi Yu

Weiqi Yu is Associate Professor at East China Normal University. The research interests focus on language policy and planning, international students/migrants and Chinese language education.

Wen Xu

Wen Xu is Assistant Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The research interests focus on language policy and planning, international students/migrants and Chinese language education.