Neoliberalism and Linguistic Governmentality

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of language policies, ideologies, knowledge, and practices in the expansion and consolidation of neoliberalism and the forms of governance that emerge from it. It explores the current context of neoliberalism, explaining how it becomes a practice of governance of individuals and social groups. Adopting Foucault’s concept of governmentality, the chapter traces the main features of neoliberal governmentality, including its linguistic components. The chapter examines how neoliberalism is transforming language policies, educational programmes, and practices through the discourses of personal enterprise and language as profit. The impact of these discourses on speakers’ experiences and trajectories, particularly in the processes of linguistic self-training and capitalisation, are examined, as well as new forms of subjectivity that emerge from these processes. The final section discusses how the effects of neoliberalism as a practice of governance provide a window to a better understanding of the changes and challenges of language policies.

Engineering commodifiable workers: language, migration and the governmentality of the self

“…This change in communicational manner is generally imagined to help them meet the demands of future employers (Allan 2013(Allan , 2016. Scholars have further noted that this policing of communicational conduct draws on a meritocratic logic that assumes employment is a choice; that employment is dependent on an individual's willingness to optimise and flexibilise their self through the acquisition and internalization of those attitudes and tokens of knowledge that today's capitalism demands (Del Percio and Flubacher 2017;Martin-Rojo 2016). Governments and employers claim that constant self-regulation and self-realisation is the only viable way for an individual to remain competitive in an instable labour market (Sennett 1998;Urciuoli 2008).…”

MonicaHeller and BonnieMcElhinny. Language, Capitalism, Colonialism: Toward a Critical History. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press. 2017. xii + 310 pp. Pb (9781442606203) $44.95, eBook (9781442606227) $35.95.

“…Many of the authors that Heller and McElhinny draw upon – for example, Edward Said, J. K. Gibson‐Graham, Walter Mignolo, Nelson Flores – are strongly influenced by Foucauldian understandings of power and knowledge. His conceptualizations of governmentality and subjectification are being utilized by many scholars studying language and neoliberalism (Martín Rojo ). Yet Foucault himself did not often engage in Marxist theorizing.…”

Teaching the sociolinguistics of heteroglossia

“…The authors’ apparent discomfort with a discussion of current economic conditions transpires overall. No chapters address the interweaving of language with contemporary work logics, institutional neoliberalization (see Codó, ), or forms of subjectification aligned with market‐driven rationalities (Martín Rojo, ). I am convinced that some addition in this regard would have made this otherwise excellent publication an epistemologically more complete collection.…”