The linguistic market for English in Bangladesh

Abstract

A large body of work has investigated the presence of English and its teaching and learning in the developing world where English is used as a second/foreign language. While this work has provided plausible explanations for the global spread of English as well as its uptake by education policy-makers and communities, there has been limited research on, in Bourdieu's (1991, p. 44) terms, the “economic and social conditions of the acquisition of the legitimate competence” in English. This paper draws on Bourdieu's concepts of linguistic market and linguistic capital to illustrate differential proficiency outcomes for different market actors affiliated with different education markets in Bangladesh. Although Bourdieu focused on the notion of a “unified market” with reference to the dominant or official language, investigating English as a second or foreign language requires exploring multiple markets of English in the polity. Drawing on a diversified understanding of the context of language policy and planning, these markets are located at the national and subnational levels. I argue that while macro-level policy-makers have been guided by “linguistic communism” in introducing English for all, it is actually market forces that determine, to a large extent, who attains linguistic competence and whose competence is likely to be transformed into linguistic capital.

Keywords:

• linguistic market
• linguistic capital
• English in Bangladesh
• English as a medium of instruction

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of the paper was presented as a plenary address at the 7th International Conference of the Bangladesh English Language Teachers' Association (BELTA) on January 3–5, 2015, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I would like to acknowledge with gratitude comments and feedback received from the two reviewers and the editor of the special issue of CILP.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

M. Obaidul Hamid is Lecturer in TESOL Education at the University of Queensland, Australia. Previously he worked at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research focuses on the policy and practice of TESOL education in developing societies.

Obaid had the opportunity to work closely with Dick Baldauf from 2005 to 2014. He was one of Dick’s Ph.D. supervisees and, later, a colleague in the School of Education at the University of Queensland. Together they taught Language Policy and Planning to postgraduate students, supervised a number of Ph.D. students and co-authored journal articles and conference papers. With Dick (and Hoa Nguyen), he edited Language planning for medium of instruction in Asia (Routledge, 2014).

Notes

1. Socialism was one of the four fundamental state principles of independent Bangladesh, the other three being democracy, nationalism and secularism.

2. IELTS is an international standard test of English proficiency for non-native English language speakers jointly managed by the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and Cambridge English Language Assessment.

3. The eight education boards are located in divisional headquarters across the country. They are responsible for conducting publication examinations such as the SSC and reporting student performance within their respective jurisdictions. However, the same examination papers are used by all education boards for the SSC and other school-leaving examinations.