Scaling value: transnationalism and the Aga Khan’s English as a “second language” policy

Linguistic Anthropology in 2018: Signifying Movement

“…The Language Policy special issue edited by Muth and Del Percio (), for instance, brings together studies that explore the specific institutional and discursive conditions that attribute economic value to different varieties of language in local context. These studies show that management of multilingualism for economic purposes is shaped not only by shifts in market conditions (Muth ) but also by multiple constraints, such as local circulation of state‐based ideologies of commodification (Brennan ), transnational identity construction of a community (Bolander ), older hierarchies of value attributed to language (Van Hoof ), as well as resistance toward this logic of commodification (Del Percio ). Similarly, Flubacher, Duchêne, and Coray's () ethnography of public employment service in Fribourg raises issues with how the bureaucracy's vague conceptualizations of language obscure the complexity of the correlation between language learning and employment, thereby leading to rationalizations of class, race, and gender‐based inequalities.…”