Whose English gets paid off?—Neoliberal discourses of English and ethnic minority students’ subjectivities in China

• Published in: Journal of sociolinguistics Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 65 - 84
• Main Authors: Guo, Xiaoyan (Grace), Gu, Michelle Mingyue
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.02.2024
• Subjects: Academic achievement; affect; Alternative approaches; Collective action; College students; Confession; Education policy; Elitism; Empathy; English; English as a second language learning; English language; ethnic minorities; Governmentality; Group identity; Inequality; Interpersonal relations; Language instruction; Language policy; Minority groups; neoliberal governmentality; Neoliberalism; Social relations; Subjectivity; Turkic languages; Uyghur people; China
• ISSN: 1360-6441; 1467-9841
• DOI: 10.1111/josl.12631

The study traces the trajectories of Uyghur college students’ subjectivity construction and transformation from Foucault's governmentality perspective. Drawing on ethnographic data of two telling cases, it explores how minoritized students’ subjectivities were linked to neoliberal discourses of English and constituted by power techniques, self‐technologies, and affective dispositions embedded in wider institutional transformations. Participants were found experiencing a shift to the individualistic subjectivity associated with academic achievement and performance in English away from the collective identity of “authentic Uyghur” symbolized by the Uyghur language. Two salient discourses of English, i.e., English as constraints, and English as academic excellence, emerging from the neoliberal‐oriented institutional English language education policies and practices, shaped the participants either as incompetent English learners or elite subjects. Participants learned to responsibilitize themselves through such self‐technologies as confession and preaching, and affective practices. Yet, technologies of hope and optimism became for a few the enjoyment of experiences and performance of elitism while projecting a majority disadvantaged as affectively problematic others. The self‐technologies and affective responses without recognition of larger structures of inequality could further reinforce the neoliberal logic. The affective labor of sense of solidarity, commitment to community, empathy for the deprived ones with critical reflection and collective action, nevertheless, may counter neoliberal logic and point to an alternative path to meaning‐making and social relations. 中文摘要 本研究从福柯的治理理论视角追溯了维吾尔族大学生主体性构建和转变过程。基于两个民族志案例数据, 该研究探讨了少数民族学生主体性是如何被植根于宏观制度变迁中的新自由主义英语话语, 权力技术和自我技术以及情感体验共同形塑和构建。分析发现, 维吾尔族学生经历了从集体追求以维吾尔语为象征的“纯正维吾尔人”到强调学术成就和英语水平的个人主义主体性的转变。在国家关于少数民族的语言政策、高等教育中新自由主义语言实践以及个人语言教育背景的交织影响下, 研究中浮现出两种关于英语的话语模式, 也即英语作为束缚和限制与英语象征学术能力和机遇的话语。这些话语模式和权力技术所强调的个人努力和精英主义价值观与个人自我技术中的忏悔和布道性分享以及情感体验和管理共同作用,塑造了个体的主体性, 使得维吾尔族学生或成为英语差生或成为名校精英。希望倾向的自我调控技术使得个别少数民族学生得以体验和展示精英主义, 而大多数少数民族学生却被视为有问题的情感他者。自我调控技术和情感反应如果忽视结构性不平等,可能会进一步加强新自由主义的逻辑。然而, 积极的情感反馈, 如对共同体的责任感和对弱势群体的同理心,加之以批判性反思和集体性行动,则可能突破新自由主义的逻辑, 谋求新的意义构建方式和社会关系模式。