Reconceptualizing Language, Language Learning, and the Language Learner in the Age of Globalization

Abstract

This chapter considers how education in general and language learning in particular have been affected by processes of globalization. Specifically, I examine how these processes impacted my designer immigrant students. After introducing these processes, I discuss ways in which issues of structure and agency that constitute a poststructural approach to language learning have been taken up by critical researchers of second language learning. Through a brief review of the consequences of globalization and the commodification of languages, I place particular emphasis on how a Bourdieusian framework offers constructs to better understand globalized linguistic flows. The chapter also introduces how a reconstitution of language along ideological, semiotic and performative lines; that is, one that departs from a traditional structuralist perspective, is necessary to recognize the linguistic resources available to language learners in the twenty-first century. This linguistic reconstitution warrants a rethinking of language learning processes. The chapter’s final thoughts suggest that language learning be conceived through an ideology and identity lens which incorporates fundamental aspects of Bourdieu’s theories.