Beyond market and language commodification: Contemplating social-market value and social-welfare concerns in language education policy and practice in Pakistan

Abstract

This study demonstrates how stakeholders’ treatment of English language as the sole marketable/saleable commodity in educational setting can have implications for multilingualism and existing linguistic diversity in Pakistan. Language commodification refers to the valuation of languages as marketable/saleable commodities and their relative exchange value. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, and administrators/principals conducted in schools and a university during three different PhD studies. This article specifically focusses on how stakeholders view English-medium education and indigenous languages. Given stakeholders’ diversity-as-a-problem orientations and rationalization of English-medium education, we propose an epistemic reorientation in which the social-market value of languages and social-welfare considerations may become the basis of language-in-education policy and planning. Social-market value refers to the role languages play as social, educational, cultural, and pedagogical resources for the larger social development, peace, and integration of society. The social-market perspective upholds multilingualism as a resource rather than as a problem. The article concludes that academic researchers could use intellectual activism as change agents to foster critical multilingual awareness and expose stakeholders to alternative competing epistemologies. This awareness is expected to help redress the conceptual myths and fallacies most stakeholders hold about the social potential of languages and multilingualism.

Keywords:

• Language commodification
• language policy and planning
• social-welfare considerations
• social-market value
• Pakistan
• indigenous languages