Abstract
Building on recent calls to examine the material realities of people’s lives, our paper explores how developments in ecological approaches to second language acquisition (SLA) and recent SLA identity work can help advance the language policy and planning (LPP) research agenda. To this end, we draw on (1) the multi-level transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world put forward by the Douglas Fir Group (Mod Lang J 100(S1):19–47, 2016), which examines how language learning and teaching are influenced by micro-, meso-, and macro-level forces, and (2) Darvin and Norton’s (Annu Rev Appl Linguist 35:36–56, 2015) model of investment, which looks at the intersection of identity, capital and ideology. By combining these two frameworks, we explain how an ecologically-oriented LPP research agenda can be advanced by taking into consideration key social actors who exist in the complex material realities within which learners are embedded. We anchor our arguments in a case study of a Uyghur youth, Alim, in China whose Putonghua learning trajectory is traced as he moves across several cities over the span of 16 years. Alim’s lived experience illustrates how a SLA and LPP interface can be realized in research.
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(Reproduced with permission from van Lier 1995: 74)
(Reproduced with permission from Douglas Fir Group 2016: 25)
(Reproduced with permission from Darvin and Norton 2015: 42)
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14 September 2019
Multilingualism and policy making in Greater China: ideological and implementational spaces
Notes
In his overview of language policy across China, Wang (2017) divides language policies into the following four categories: (1) explicit policies to manage Chinese minority ethnic groups’ use of language in education; (2) policies that focus on Chinese students’ acquisition and use of languages—including Chinese and English—in education; (3) policies that addresses international students who come to China to study Chinese language and culture; and (4) policies that are concerned with international students who come to China to study content subjects (pp. 53–54).
More recently, a third category of schools—min han hexiao schools—has emerged. These are primarily Han-dominant schools where Uyghur lessons are offered, or Uyghur-dominant schools where Putonghua is offered.
Students enrolled in neigchu ban programs do not need to pay for tuition and living expenses. They only have to pay between 450 and 900 Yuan, depending on the financial standing of their families, to cover the cost of food, (http://www.xjedu.gov.cn/xjjyt/wjgz/wjtz/2004/18043.htm).
Uyghur students do not receive mother tongue education in Neichu ban and Neigao ban programs.
Given the complex set of sociolinguistic circumstances, the central government has adopted a series of preferential policies for ethnic minority students because it seeks to promote the development of the education of minority youth and to incorporate minority students into a modern, national education system. For example, ethnic minority students are offered additional points on their university entrance exams to enhance their opportunities for university acceptance, and a number of high schools in the more developed regions in China often take in Xinjiang youth in order to provide them with comparable quality education to their Han counterparts.
In their explicit call to move scholarship from China and elsewhere in East, South, and Southeast Asia toward the center of LPP research, Pérez-Milans and Tollefson (2018) add that concepts of language, nation, and state may be less useful than Confucian or Daoist understandings of these concepts, thereby suggesting the need to invoke ancient Chinese philosophy in order to better understand the complexities surrounding language policies and language rights in China.
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Acknowledgements
Funding was provided by The Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education (Grant No. 2015SJB078) obtained by the first author, Yawen Han. The second author, Peter De Costa, would like acknowledge funding he received from the Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University through the Dr. Delia Koo Global Faculty Endowment Award. All three authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments. All errors that remain, however, are strictly our own.
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Han, Y., De Costa, P.I. & Cui, Y. Exploring the language policy and planning/second language acquisition interface: ecological insights from an Uyghur youth in China. Lang Policy 18, 65–86 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9463-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9463-9