Although often seen as places of culture, cultivation and creativity, language courses borrow the language of creativity for test-centered practices. Research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology has long recognized language courses as sites for the legitimation of neoliberal ideals that emphasize language as global, individual, and…

This paper reviews the ongoing engagement of neoliberal ideology in Indonesian higher education institutions and in commodifying the global spread of English. With the growing number of faith-based higher education institutions in Indonesia, the neoliberal and English ideologies are contested and promulgated, creating ambivalent spaces. This…

Following the 9/11 tragedies, the interest in Arabic language and culture in nontraditional destinations such as MENA (Middle East & North Africa) has become vastly obscured with sociocultural and political issues. The mandate to maintain national security served to designate the language and its destinations critical, producing the hegemony…

The interconnected nature of today's world continues to permeate most aspects of modern life. Known as globalization, countries, economies, and people are all closer than ever before given increases in technology, innovation, and capital. These external pressures of globalization meet higher education in a process known as…

This article explores students' acquisition of cosmopolitanism through transnational education (TNE). It adopts a critical approach to educational cosmopolitanism, distinguishing 'ways of being' at the dispositional level and 'ways of doing' at the practice level, to unfold the contingency and multiplicity of cosmopolitanism as well as the…

Since Greece entered the EU, language learning has become prominent and gained further momentum in the context of modern globalized economy. Acknowledging the intense commodification of the modern foreign language education industry, this research explores Greek Foreign Language Learner (FLL) investment in multiple foreign languages, and how…

In Japan, neoliberal discourses rationalize English language proficiency as a pathway to meritocratic reward and success in the global knowledge economy. With this ideology in mind, this review engages the market orientation of English domestically and the causative implications of class-distinguished capital. Specifically, Bourdieu's theory of…

This research provides an interdisciplinary and contextual study on the phenomenon of English promotion at the turn of the 21st century. Through documentary research and semi-structured interviews, it examines the politico-economic and socio-cultural dimensions of English promotion in the context of East Asian countries, including China, Japan,…

Language tests are increasingly being used as gatekeeping tools in a globalised world. This article examines the processes of linguistic gatekeeping by the use of language tests in the context of migration. We draw on half a dozen cases of test-takers of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test who applied for entry into…

Many Christian universities in Korea are pursuing the globalization of Christian higher education to promote maximization of institutional competition, improvement of students' English skills, and enhancement of professors' research development through English Medium Instruction (EMI). EMI's flaws in application are not at all uncommon, as many of…

This article analyzes how multilingual education in the Madrid region has been addressed through the medium of Spanish/English content and language integrated learning (CLIL) bilingual programs, widely implemented in public schools of this region in the last decade. By adopting a critical interpretive perspective (Tollefson in "Language…

In this article, the authors argue that at the center of every English language learning moment lies desire: desire for the language; for the identities that English represents; for capital, power, and images that are associated with English; for what is believed to lie beyond the doors that English unlocks. However, despite its centrality within…