Hyunjung Shin

The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic spurred a historic rise in blatant anti-Asian violence and microaggressions rooted in a dominant ideology of whiteness and belonging. This chapter focuses on international university students from South Korea to provide an important perspective for understanding the meaning and impact of racialized encounters. Student descriptions of racial incidents and interactions during the pandemic are examined using data from focus groups in four cities: Toronto, Saskatoon, Halifax, and Albany. International students’ experiences of racism and racialization were similar across Canada and the United States during the pandemic and racial encounters occurred in public spaces, with comments and behaviors that illustrate the enduring trope of fear and disease. At the same time, students recalled incidents in different ways, shaped by race relations, race ideology, and race discourse.

In recent decades, the commodification of the English language has aroused intensive research interest in the sociolinguistics on a global scale, but studies on the commodification of the Chinese language are relatively rare. Most studies take a critical approach in relation to its adverse impacts on minority rights and social justice. This study examined the language landscape in Chiangmai, Thailand, and the linguistic beliefs of local Thai Chinese language learners. Based on their feedback, this study investigated the commodification of Chinese language education in the community of Chinese language learners in Chiangmai. We found that from a less critical perspective, the commodification of a second language provides more accessible and affordable educational opportunities for learners, especially those from low-income families, and at the same time language proficiency can broaden learners’ career choices and provide employees with additional value in industries, such as tourism, commerce, and services. This finding implies that language commodification, rather than typically being associated with linguistic imperialism and unbalanced socio-economic status, can be a contributing factor in promoting higher-education availability and social sustainability in certain circumstances. There may be some mediating factors between the commodification of language and changes in the sustainable balance of language, opening up space for future research to explore.

This is one of the most comprehensive volumes on the relationship between the English language and issues of power in South Korea (henceforth Korea). Through the narratives of female English–Korean...

This special issue aims to develop a research agenda that brings language to the centre of our inquiry and critique of neoliberalism. Based on empirical case studies from across diverse contexts in Europe, North America, and East Asia, contributors to this special issue address two issues: (1) What can be said about the nature of neoliberalism when we approach it from the perspective of language as social and political process? (2) How does language learning and teaching, increasingly subject to the logic of the market, not only reflect neoliberal social transformations but also reinforce them? Together, the contributions to the special issue suggest new directions of research that will help establish language as an important key for understanding the shifting political economy of our time.