ERIC Number: EJ1456041
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1534-8458
EISSN: EISSN-1532-7701
"Disinvestment" in Learners' Multilingual Identities: English Learning, Imagined Identities, and Neoliberal Subjecthood in Pakistan
Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, v24 n1 p132-147 2025
Most recent research on language learning and identity emphasizes on investing learners' capital as affordance to affirm their identities (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton, 2013). Learners' capital refers to prior knowledge, home literacies/native languages. Drawing on data from English language academies from Pakistan, this study finds a conflicting picture to the one advocated in the investment model. Gripped by the "deficit ideology," teachers and students tend to "disinvest" in the native languages. Analyzing data through the conceptual lenses of "Neoliberal Governmentality" and "Linguistic Entrepreneurship," we find that "enterprise culture" governs learners' mode of investment. It reflects in their construction of English learning as a form of entrepreneurship, celebrating competition, self-entrepreneurship, and relentless self-improvement. Given the "disinvestment" tendency, the current investment model seems to overlook the power-driven linguistic hierarchies, and linguistic inequalities that may hamper the use of such capital. The paper discusses decolonial pedagogy as an alternative to current ELT.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Teaching Methods, Decolonization, Educational Change, Self Concept, Native Language, Entrepreneurship, Competition, Neoliberalism, Individual Development, Power Structure, Prior Learning, Family Literacy, Language Attitudes, Cultural Capital, Private Education, Learning Motivation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Pakistan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A