Language ‘skills’ and the neoliberal English education industry

ABSTRACT

Neoliberal transformation of self, learning, and teaching constructs individuals as bundles of skills (or human capital) and subordinates learning to skill production characterized by an ethic of entrepreneurial self-management [Urciuoli, Bonnie. 2010. “Neoliberal Education: Preparing the Student for the New Workplace.” In Ethnographies of Neoliberalism, edited by Carol Greenhouse, 162–176. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press]. As such, language in the neoliberal discourse is constructed as a set of flexible skills, acquired by the entrepreneurial self in the market [Park, Joseph Sung-Yul. 2010. “Naturalization of Competence and the Neoliberal Subject: Success Stories of English Language Learning in the Korean Conservative Press.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20 (1): 22–38; “The Promise of English: Linguistic Capital and the Neoliberal Worker in the South Korean Job Market.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 14 (4): 443–455]. This paper examines ways in which English language education is restructured to fit such neoliberal imaginary through the case of the South Korean jogi yuhak (pre-college-aged study abroad) industry. The analyses highlight ways in which the language learning industry not only interplays with but also actively shapes the ideologies of neoliberalism, by developing and selling packaged products that make the projects of self-management seem more achievable and desirable. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the Korean case for the study of language and social inequality in education.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• English learning and teaching
• globalization
• language ideology
• South Korea
• Canada

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The data reported in this article come from a larger sociolinguistic ethnography on Korean jogi yuhak students attending Toronto high schools, which I conducted between 2006 and 2008 (cf. Shin 2012).