This article discusses some key functions and features of English in participatory popular cultur... more This article discusses some key functions and features of English in participatory popular culture and social media in Nepal. Analytical attention is paid to how English use in rap battles is entangled with other local languages and semiotic modes to create translingual practices and how online metapragmatic comments about the rap battles give rise to diverse language ideologies. The study shows that by creating their social life offline and online, Nepali young adults project themselves as individuals who have access to niche Englishes via popular culture. English use by Nepali youth functions not only as an instrument to understand Western popular culture but also as a symbolic resource to index a range of such social identities as 'educated' , 'civilized' and 'competent'. The article concludes by arguing that Nepali young adults create new subjectivities that are often suggestive of social transformation.
Language and Intercultural Communication in Tourism: Critical Perspectives, 2021
The volume interrogates culture and interculturality in tourism in detailed analyses of discursiv... more The volume interrogates culture and interculturality in tourism in detailed analyses of discursive details in tourism interactions and focuses on the notion of culture as a process or phenomenon engaged in or enacted on by individuals. Drawing on discourse analytic and ethnographic approaches, the book brings together perspectives from the lived experiences of residents, hosts and ethnographers to explore the extent to which linguistic and cultural differences are constructed, identities negotiated, and power relations maintained and perpetuated in tourism encounters. The volume draws on insights from those working across a range of geographic contexts and explores the interplay of these issues in English as well as other languages and language varieties used in tourism interactions.
Language and intercultural communication in tourism, 2021
This chapter aims to investigate how cultural stereotypes are
constructed in instructional discou... more This chapter aims to investigate how cultural stereotypes are constructed in instructional discourse for tourism workers. The analysis of stereotypes is important because it reveals some underlying ideologies about intercultural communication in tourism. In these contexts, workers are taught how to communicate in tourist–guide interactions. The study is part of my larger linguistic ethnography that investigates the role of language and communication in tourism (Sharma, 2016). The data consists of instructional discourses for pre- service tour guides in a tour guide training program in Kathmandu, Nepal (see Sharma, 2018 for more details).
Tourism as a global economic activity utilizes communication to create and represent cultural dif... more Tourism as a global economic activity utilizes communication to create and represent cultural differences between the tourist and the Other through various media and spaces, despite the fact that such differences have become weaker and deterritorialized due to transnational mobility and globalization. Tourism communication reinscribes ethnocultural stereotypes, and this action is often motivated by a quest for cultural authenticity in the Other. The Other commodifies its cultural stereotypes with various discursive and semiotic tools and is often motivated by the exchange value of its cultural identity. Most previous scholarship on global tourism communication focused on North-South tourism mobilities, based on the stereotypical image of the tourist as an English-speaking white male. The recent demographic shift in world tourism presents us with a different picture. There are touristic encounters between people who move from one part of the Global South to another, and English does not necessarily serve as the default language of communication in these exchanges. There is also a shift in theoretical orientation in understanding what intercultural communication entails. Instead of treating culture and interculturality as essentially determined by broad variables such as nationality or ethnicity, attention is now given to the process that individuals engage in and perform via communication. Although there are some scholars who view intercultural communication in tourism as a positive force in raising people’s cross-cultural awareness, recent scholarship is mostly informed by a critical lens in that tourism is used to (re)produce, maintain, and justify relationships of inequality between the traveler and the local. A critical focus on intercultural communication provides important insights into our understanding of contemporary tourism and its situatedness within broader societal structures of power and ideologies.
In this chapter, we focus on the globalization of the Chinese language and discuss how its presen... more In this chapter, we focus on the globalization of the Chinese language and discuss how its presence is contributing to the transformation of the visual landscape in one South Asian country: Nepal. As one of the rapidly transforming countries in South Asia, Nepal is a case study for understanding the sociocultural, linguistic, economic, and political implications of the spread of the Chinese language. The chapter aims to explore the changes that are reconfiguring Nepal’s economic, educational, and political spheres in relation to the Chinese language. An examination of these changes not only has implications for understanding Nepali society, but it invokes the importance of rethinking the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010; Gao, 2017). We make the argument that global flows do not only originate in the West and are not solely channeled through the English language. We urge sociolinguists to turn their attention to the flows and networks within non- Western regions, particularly in the context of low-income and developing countries.
In this chapter, we discuss the functionality of English in Nepal’s school education. We take neo... more In this chapter, we discuss the functionality of English in Nepal’s school education. We take neoliberalism as a major ideology shaping this functionality in the country’s language education policies and practices, with a focus on EMI policy. The data are drawn from our ongoing ethnographic work collected from various sources such as curriculum documents, media reports, and interviews with parents, teachers and the representatives from local government (municipalities). The interviews were conducted in Nepali and translated into English by the authors.
This article examines how Linguistic Landscapes in the Covid-19 pandemic construct the borders of... more This article examines how Linguistic Landscapes in the Covid-19 pandemic construct the borders of place and people. We build on 'semiotic ideology' (Keane, 2018) and 'semiotopology' (Peck, Stroud & Williams, 2018) to analyze the bordering practices in citizen Linguistic Landscapes during the pandemic in Nepal. Our analysis shows that citizens combine multiple semiotic resources, both linguistic and non-linguistic, to create physical boundaries to restrict the mobility of people during the pandemic. However, the findings show that such practices are ideological; they promote the othering of the tenants, returnees from abroad/outside the valley, and nonlocals. We argue that keeping place and people at the centre of analysis provides a critical framework to widen the scope of Linguistic Landscapes as a broad visual and semiotic space that embodies the bordering practices and categorization of people and their impacts on emotions, identities, and sense of belonging.
Universities in English speaking countries have been witnessing an increasing number of internati... more Universities in English speaking countries have been witnessing an increasing number of international faculty who speak English as an international language. However, the universities are mostly guided by the dominant monolingual ideologies and language policies that favor verbal repertoires in standard English even though instructional communication is characteristically multimodal. Against this backdrop, this article focuses on two faculty members in STEM and investigates their instructional interaction. Using multimodal interaction as a theoretical and methodological heuristic, the analysis pays attention to how modes, codes and material objects are ensembled in specific configurations as instructors and students engage in the process of meaning negotiation. The instructors' instructional practices and perspectives demonstrate the importance of the entanglement of language with diverge semiotic, social and material elements of communication. The findings suggest a need for a broader definition and scope of instructional interaction in STEM.
Researchers have made pedagogical suggestions regarding how to incorporate international varietie... more Researchers have made pedagogical suggestions regarding how to incorporate international varieties of English in teacher education, but the amount of research on how novice teachers develop such knowledge and pedagogies and put them into practice is noticeably inadequate. This study presents a two-part case study in order to address this concern. In the first part, the study reports how four pre-service teachers in a teacher education program developed their knowledge and awareness informed by an English-as-an-international language perspective in their curricula, materials, and classroom instruction. The second part reports how one of the four teachers implemented a pedagogical project with an aim to transform her students' attitudes and knowledge toward various Englishes. The data were drawn from semi-structured interviews, teaching philosophy statements, written assignments, and reflective journals. The findings overall provide important insights into understanding the emergence of transformative pedagogical awareness, philosophies, and praxis in addressing the diversity of Englishes by pre-service teachers in teacher education programs.
This article investigates the discourses of professional identities and linguistic capital format... more This article investigates the discourses of professional identities and linguistic capital formation communicated by international scholars in the STEM disciplines in the US university context. In so doing, the study examines interviews of 17 such individuals and identifies two key discursive processes: the formation of a marketable self and the enactment of the legitimacy of World Eng-lishes. The first discursive process is used by the professionals to position themselves as novice scholars needing to build necessary linguistic capital for employment and communication in the instructional setting. The second version of their discursive positioning, which was formed later in their career, demonstrates a competent self that legitimizes their existing linguistic capital and the ownership of non-Inner Circle Englishes for academic communication. As the participants position their identities vis-à-vis their profession, they claim transformation of the self in defining their linguistic capital and competence across time and space. The findings overall show that the (re-)for-mation and conversion of international STEM scholars' linguistic capital are variously shaped by relations of power influenced by the linguistic market and their respective disciplinary communities .
The chapter builds on the conceptualization of language commodification
proposed by Heller and Du... more The chapter builds on the conceptualization of language commodification proposed by Heller and Duchêne (2016). Following the authors, language functions as an economic resource under the late capitalist market in two major ways. First, language is a sellable tool of communication through which tourism destinations turn into commodities. Tourism workers’ employability depends partly on the language and communication skills that are valued in the market. In addition, linguistic resources, such as language signs, are used to brand the authenticity of tourism destinations. Second, language functions as an added value to mark a cultural authenticity in the tourism market. Cultural artifacts and performances as the markers of such authenticity have an enhanced commodity value when the language element is added to them. Framing language commodification within this conceptualization, this chapter studies heritage tourism in the context of indigenous ethnicity. It focuses on a Tamang village in the Himalayas, Nepal and examines language as a political and an economic resource.
This article explores how the ideologies of neoliberal linguistic entre-preneurship have created ... more This article explores how the ideologies of neoliberal linguistic entre-preneurship have created ethical tensions and contentious affects among Indigenous communities in promoting multilingualism and multilingual education. Taking the case of Nepal, our goal is to show how imperatives and characteristics that are articulated as key parts of neoliberalism are systematically perpetuated and appropriated in language education policies and discourses. We draw our data from interviews, ethnographic observation and instructional practices in the classroom. The article makes two major claims regarding how the neoliberal ideology of linguistic entrepreneurship has shaped the perceptions and practices of Indigenous peoples in a rapidly transforming society. First, it shows that the promotion of the English language in education should be understood as a key element of neoliberal educational entrepreneurship that considers education as a profit-making entity. And, second, the ideology of linguistic entrepreneurship is an embodiment of a broader neoliberal atmosphere to create an affective regime by which the feelings of collective identity and Indigenous language activism are trivialized and the affects that are perceived to empower a neoliberal subject are promoted. The new affective regime eventually contributes to translating the global dominance of English into a medium of instruction policy at the local level and supports English medium education as a market commodity.
The article examines the linguistic, material, and multi-modal aspects of professional communicat... more The article examines the linguistic, material, and multi-modal aspects of professional communication in guided tours in the Himalayas in Nepal. Using an ethnography-informed interactional sociolinguistics, the study analyses the key instances of miscommunication between an American tourist and an ethnic Tamang guide to understand how various identities are invoked by the participants. As the article considers the complexity of working for tourists in the second language in which a worker's competence is questioned, it also recognizes the importance of a range of semiotic resources that tour guides deploy to negotiate professional authority with tourists. Overall, the findings show how individuals manage interpersonal relations and expertise in transnational workplaces to contest and reconstruct dominant social positions and achieve their interactional goals. K E Y W O R D S interactional sociolinguistics, miscommunication, Nepal, tourism, work सार यस ले खले ने पालको हिमालय क् षे त् रमा पथप् रदर् शक सहितको यात् रामा हु ने व् यावसायिक सं चारको भाषिक, भौतिक र बहु मोडल पक् षहरू को अध् ययन गर् दछ।-सू चित अन् तरक् रियामू लक
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism , 2020
The overall goal of this special issue is to understand how bi-/multilingual
STEM scholars naviga... more The overall goal of this special issue is to understand how bi-/multilingual STEM scholars navigate and deploy spatial repertoires for professional communication. The articles present contextualized, empirical cases from various genre contexts: instructional practices, scholarly writing, language proficiency tests, and research group meetings. While all the articles adopt a spatial orientation to understanding STEM communication, the authors draw from diverse theoretical concepts that include chronotope, new materialism, and stance analysis for their data analysis. The analyses to understand these genre-specific contexts broadly combine two approaches: (1) analysis of actual communicative practices; and (2) meta-discursive comments by the professionals on their practices. In analyzing the disciplinary practices, language ideologies, and textual products, the authors use the methodological tools of interaction analysis, document analysis, observation, and interviews. Several articles combine more than one methodological tool in order to capture various aspects of disciplinary communication in the given genre context. The six articles included in this issue were first presented as a colloquium at the annual conferences of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia.
TESOL and Sustainability : English Language Teaching in the Anthropocene Era, 2020
This chapter aims to present a case of an alternative perspective on the human’s relationship wit... more This chapter aims to present a case of an alternative perspective on the human’s relationship with the environment and other nonhuman species as demonstrated in various communicative activities, and it discusses the implications of this perspective for addressing sustainability in applied linguistics and TESOL. In order to do so, this chapter examines intercultural encounters between Western tourists and local tourism workers on topics of climate change and the human–nature relationship in the context of Himalayan tourism from an applied linguistics perspective. The first part of the chapter takes an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse studies (Stibbe, 2015) to examine how the topics of the environment and relationships among species are discussed and socially constructed by the participants who come from different linguacultural backgrounds, and how their conversations are shaped by their respective sociopolitical histories and identities. The second section of the chapter discusses the implications of such intercultural discourses for applied linguistics and the TESOL field.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2020
This article responds to a call for applied linguistics and bilingualism
research from a spatial ... more This article responds to a call for applied linguistics and bilingualism research from a spatial repertoires perspective informed by new materialism. It focuses on the ways international faculty members carry out instructional interactions in STEM using English as an additional language. Using video data, the analysis demonstrates how visual technology, material space and human bodies collectively shape instructional interactions in a structural engineering class in a university setting. The communication shows a complex entanglement of language with technology, visual representations of concrete designs and embodiment. The study details the characteristics of repertoires that are expected in the given instructional space for an effective practice, and it sheds light on what new members can learn and do in order to be competent in their profession. Additionally, the data corpus can be used as an authentic resource for the disciplinary socialization of bi-/ multilingual STEM students and scholars for whom English is an additional language.
This article investigates the language learning desire of multilingual tourism workers. The data ... more This article investigates the language learning desire of multilingual tourism workers. The data were drawn from two sites in Nepal: an English for occupational purposes class and workplace interactions during treks. The article shows that the male tourism workers use their claims of heterosexual relationships with foreign female tourists as resources to build and boast their masculine identity and homoso-ciality among their peers. The workers' ability to communicate in tourist languages functions not only as a transactional tool, but also as a resource to enhance their language learning desire and investment in order to imagine, establish, and sustain heterosexual romantic relationships. Their relationships of intimacy combine with the opportunity for economic benefits and spatial mobility made largely possible by their ability to communicate in English and other international languages. The research contributes to our understanding of the connection between language learning, multilingualism, and desire in the context of intercultural contact.
Linguistic ethnographers largely agree that engaging in self-reflexivity enables researchers to i... more Linguistic ethnographers largely agree that engaging in self-reflexivity enables researchers to identify how their actions, subjectivities, and motivations influence research. In this article, I argue for a discourse-oriented ethnographic account as an alternative method for documenting and reporting such reflexivity. The overall goal of this article is to examine reflexive research practices in the study of tourism communication. Presenting illustrative cases, I closely analyze how the researcher's co-presence naturally opens up opportunities for some form of intervention in tourist-guide dyads. I show that researcher participation that is intended to resolve local interactional problems can have unintended consequences resulting in marginalization or exclusion of the key participants. The analysis shows that the researcher is not only the knowledge-maker in applied linguistics research but is also an object of analysis in the process. Overall, the study is intended to invite workplace researchers to reflect on whether and how much to participate, how their participation shapes researcher-participant relationships, how their relationship impacts data and knowledge claims, and how issues of balance and distance can be negotiated.
This article closely examines how both linguistic and non-linguistic objects and inscriptions emp... more This article closely examines how both linguistic and non-linguistic objects and inscriptions emplaced in the built environment transform the traditional residential-business street into a space of consumption for a new generation of Chinese tourists. The data consists of observation notes, photographs, and interviews obtained from an ethnographic fieldwork in Kathmandu, Nepal. The article makes three major arguments. First, the semiotic shift and the social practices that inhabit the space represent a key feature of a late capitalist society with a focus on the commodification of languages, cultures, and identities. Second, the practices index the global power of the Chinese language in challenging English and marginalizing other tourist languages. And third, these shifts urge us to understand the relation between semiotic and material resources in redefining traditionally West-oriented global tourism economies. The study overall provides new insights into how language and material goods can create a completely different kind of Chinatown, entailing a new interaction order between business owners and tourists, which use intertextuality, translanguaging, and multimodality, among others, as resources. These findings are starkly different from studies that have examined traditional Chinatowns in diasporic contexts.
This article provides an ethnographic discourse analysis of an intercultural communication traini... more This article provides an ethnographic discourse analysis of an intercultural communication training course for tourism workers in Kathmandu, Nepal, and investigates what kinds of registers and communicative practices Nepali tour guides are socialized into as part of the development of their professional competence. Nepali tour guides' work competence and skills include learning some tactics of self-presentation to create a certain kind of persona so that the guides can enhance positive affect in tourists, often in a language and communication style that is thought to be appreciated by tourists. The findings show that these training courses largely reproduce and reinforce market-oriented communicative practices in order to effectively commodify tourism as an object of material exchange in the market. Moreover, the nature of relationship between the 'first world' tourists and the 'third world' tourism workers as valorized in the training lessons can be interpreted from a perspective of masculine caring in a professional context where the training subtly turns the guest–guide relationship into a form of a master–servant relationship, invoking the discourses of servitude.
This article discusses some key functions and features of English in participatory popular cultur... more This article discusses some key functions and features of English in participatory popular culture and social media in Nepal. Analytical attention is paid to how English use in rap battles is entangled with other local languages and semiotic modes to create translingual practices and how online metapragmatic comments about the rap battles give rise to diverse language ideologies. The study shows that by creating their social life offline and online, Nepali young adults project themselves as individuals who have access to niche Englishes via popular culture. English use by Nepali youth functions not only as an instrument to understand Western popular culture but also as a symbolic resource to index a range of such social identities as 'educated' , 'civilized' and 'competent'. The article concludes by arguing that Nepali young adults create new subjectivities that are often suggestive of social transformation.
Language and Intercultural Communication in Tourism: Critical Perspectives, 2021
The volume interrogates culture and interculturality in tourism in detailed analyses of discursiv... more The volume interrogates culture and interculturality in tourism in detailed analyses of discursive details in tourism interactions and focuses on the notion of culture as a process or phenomenon engaged in or enacted on by individuals. Drawing on discourse analytic and ethnographic approaches, the book brings together perspectives from the lived experiences of residents, hosts and ethnographers to explore the extent to which linguistic and cultural differences are constructed, identities negotiated, and power relations maintained and perpetuated in tourism encounters. The volume draws on insights from those working across a range of geographic contexts and explores the interplay of these issues in English as well as other languages and language varieties used in tourism interactions.
Language and intercultural communication in tourism, 2021
This chapter aims to investigate how cultural stereotypes are
constructed in instructional discou... more This chapter aims to investigate how cultural stereotypes are constructed in instructional discourse for tourism workers. The analysis of stereotypes is important because it reveals some underlying ideologies about intercultural communication in tourism. In these contexts, workers are taught how to communicate in tourist–guide interactions. The study is part of my larger linguistic ethnography that investigates the role of language and communication in tourism (Sharma, 2016). The data consists of instructional discourses for pre- service tour guides in a tour guide training program in Kathmandu, Nepal (see Sharma, 2018 for more details).
Tourism as a global economic activity utilizes communication to create and represent cultural dif... more Tourism as a global economic activity utilizes communication to create and represent cultural differences between the tourist and the Other through various media and spaces, despite the fact that such differences have become weaker and deterritorialized due to transnational mobility and globalization. Tourism communication reinscribes ethnocultural stereotypes, and this action is often motivated by a quest for cultural authenticity in the Other. The Other commodifies its cultural stereotypes with various discursive and semiotic tools and is often motivated by the exchange value of its cultural identity. Most previous scholarship on global tourism communication focused on North-South tourism mobilities, based on the stereotypical image of the tourist as an English-speaking white male. The recent demographic shift in world tourism presents us with a different picture. There are touristic encounters between people who move from one part of the Global South to another, and English does not necessarily serve as the default language of communication in these exchanges. There is also a shift in theoretical orientation in understanding what intercultural communication entails. Instead of treating culture and interculturality as essentially determined by broad variables such as nationality or ethnicity, attention is now given to the process that individuals engage in and perform via communication. Although there are some scholars who view intercultural communication in tourism as a positive force in raising people’s cross-cultural awareness, recent scholarship is mostly informed by a critical lens in that tourism is used to (re)produce, maintain, and justify relationships of inequality between the traveler and the local. A critical focus on intercultural communication provides important insights into our understanding of contemporary tourism and its situatedness within broader societal structures of power and ideologies.
In this chapter, we focus on the globalization of the Chinese language and discuss how its presen... more In this chapter, we focus on the globalization of the Chinese language and discuss how its presence is contributing to the transformation of the visual landscape in one South Asian country: Nepal. As one of the rapidly transforming countries in South Asia, Nepal is a case study for understanding the sociocultural, linguistic, economic, and political implications of the spread of the Chinese language. The chapter aims to explore the changes that are reconfiguring Nepal’s economic, educational, and political spheres in relation to the Chinese language. An examination of these changes not only has implications for understanding Nepali society, but it invokes the importance of rethinking the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010; Gao, 2017). We make the argument that global flows do not only originate in the West and are not solely channeled through the English language. We urge sociolinguists to turn their attention to the flows and networks within non- Western regions, particularly in the context of low-income and developing countries.
In this chapter, we discuss the functionality of English in Nepal’s school education. We take neo... more In this chapter, we discuss the functionality of English in Nepal’s school education. We take neoliberalism as a major ideology shaping this functionality in the country’s language education policies and practices, with a focus on EMI policy. The data are drawn from our ongoing ethnographic work collected from various sources such as curriculum documents, media reports, and interviews with parents, teachers and the representatives from local government (municipalities). The interviews were conducted in Nepali and translated into English by the authors.
This article examines how Linguistic Landscapes in the Covid-19 pandemic construct the borders of... more This article examines how Linguistic Landscapes in the Covid-19 pandemic construct the borders of place and people. We build on 'semiotic ideology' (Keane, 2018) and 'semiotopology' (Peck, Stroud & Williams, 2018) to analyze the bordering practices in citizen Linguistic Landscapes during the pandemic in Nepal. Our analysis shows that citizens combine multiple semiotic resources, both linguistic and non-linguistic, to create physical boundaries to restrict the mobility of people during the pandemic. However, the findings show that such practices are ideological; they promote the othering of the tenants, returnees from abroad/outside the valley, and nonlocals. We argue that keeping place and people at the centre of analysis provides a critical framework to widen the scope of Linguistic Landscapes as a broad visual and semiotic space that embodies the bordering practices and categorization of people and their impacts on emotions, identities, and sense of belonging.
Universities in English speaking countries have been witnessing an increasing number of internati... more Universities in English speaking countries have been witnessing an increasing number of international faculty who speak English as an international language. However, the universities are mostly guided by the dominant monolingual ideologies and language policies that favor verbal repertoires in standard English even though instructional communication is characteristically multimodal. Against this backdrop, this article focuses on two faculty members in STEM and investigates their instructional interaction. Using multimodal interaction as a theoretical and methodological heuristic, the analysis pays attention to how modes, codes and material objects are ensembled in specific configurations as instructors and students engage in the process of meaning negotiation. The instructors' instructional practices and perspectives demonstrate the importance of the entanglement of language with diverge semiotic, social and material elements of communication. The findings suggest a need for a broader definition and scope of instructional interaction in STEM.
Researchers have made pedagogical suggestions regarding how to incorporate international varietie... more Researchers have made pedagogical suggestions regarding how to incorporate international varieties of English in teacher education, but the amount of research on how novice teachers develop such knowledge and pedagogies and put them into practice is noticeably inadequate. This study presents a two-part case study in order to address this concern. In the first part, the study reports how four pre-service teachers in a teacher education program developed their knowledge and awareness informed by an English-as-an-international language perspective in their curricula, materials, and classroom instruction. The second part reports how one of the four teachers implemented a pedagogical project with an aim to transform her students' attitudes and knowledge toward various Englishes. The data were drawn from semi-structured interviews, teaching philosophy statements, written assignments, and reflective journals. The findings overall provide important insights into understanding the emergence of transformative pedagogical awareness, philosophies, and praxis in addressing the diversity of Englishes by pre-service teachers in teacher education programs.
This article investigates the discourses of professional identities and linguistic capital format... more This article investigates the discourses of professional identities and linguistic capital formation communicated by international scholars in the STEM disciplines in the US university context. In so doing, the study examines interviews of 17 such individuals and identifies two key discursive processes: the formation of a marketable self and the enactment of the legitimacy of World Eng-lishes. The first discursive process is used by the professionals to position themselves as novice scholars needing to build necessary linguistic capital for employment and communication in the instructional setting. The second version of their discursive positioning, which was formed later in their career, demonstrates a competent self that legitimizes their existing linguistic capital and the ownership of non-Inner Circle Englishes for academic communication. As the participants position their identities vis-à-vis their profession, they claim transformation of the self in defining their linguistic capital and competence across time and space. The findings overall show that the (re-)for-mation and conversion of international STEM scholars' linguistic capital are variously shaped by relations of power influenced by the linguistic market and their respective disciplinary communities .
The chapter builds on the conceptualization of language commodification
proposed by Heller and Du... more The chapter builds on the conceptualization of language commodification proposed by Heller and Duchêne (2016). Following the authors, language functions as an economic resource under the late capitalist market in two major ways. First, language is a sellable tool of communication through which tourism destinations turn into commodities. Tourism workers’ employability depends partly on the language and communication skills that are valued in the market. In addition, linguistic resources, such as language signs, are used to brand the authenticity of tourism destinations. Second, language functions as an added value to mark a cultural authenticity in the tourism market. Cultural artifacts and performances as the markers of such authenticity have an enhanced commodity value when the language element is added to them. Framing language commodification within this conceptualization, this chapter studies heritage tourism in the context of indigenous ethnicity. It focuses on a Tamang village in the Himalayas, Nepal and examines language as a political and an economic resource.
This article explores how the ideologies of neoliberal linguistic entre-preneurship have created ... more This article explores how the ideologies of neoliberal linguistic entre-preneurship have created ethical tensions and contentious affects among Indigenous communities in promoting multilingualism and multilingual education. Taking the case of Nepal, our goal is to show how imperatives and characteristics that are articulated as key parts of neoliberalism are systematically perpetuated and appropriated in language education policies and discourses. We draw our data from interviews, ethnographic observation and instructional practices in the classroom. The article makes two major claims regarding how the neoliberal ideology of linguistic entrepreneurship has shaped the perceptions and practices of Indigenous peoples in a rapidly transforming society. First, it shows that the promotion of the English language in education should be understood as a key element of neoliberal educational entrepreneurship that considers education as a profit-making entity. And, second, the ideology of linguistic entrepreneurship is an embodiment of a broader neoliberal atmosphere to create an affective regime by which the feelings of collective identity and Indigenous language activism are trivialized and the affects that are perceived to empower a neoliberal subject are promoted. The new affective regime eventually contributes to translating the global dominance of English into a medium of instruction policy at the local level and supports English medium education as a market commodity.
The article examines the linguistic, material, and multi-modal aspects of professional communicat... more The article examines the linguistic, material, and multi-modal aspects of professional communication in guided tours in the Himalayas in Nepal. Using an ethnography-informed interactional sociolinguistics, the study analyses the key instances of miscommunication between an American tourist and an ethnic Tamang guide to understand how various identities are invoked by the participants. As the article considers the complexity of working for tourists in the second language in which a worker's competence is questioned, it also recognizes the importance of a range of semiotic resources that tour guides deploy to negotiate professional authority with tourists. Overall, the findings show how individuals manage interpersonal relations and expertise in transnational workplaces to contest and reconstruct dominant social positions and achieve their interactional goals. K E Y W O R D S interactional sociolinguistics, miscommunication, Nepal, tourism, work सार यस ले खले ने पालको हिमालय क् षे त् रमा पथप् रदर् शक सहितको यात् रामा हु ने व् यावसायिक सं चारको भाषिक, भौतिक र बहु मोडल पक् षहरू को अध् ययन गर् दछ।-सू चित अन् तरक् रियामू लक
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism , 2020
The overall goal of this special issue is to understand how bi-/multilingual
STEM scholars naviga... more The overall goal of this special issue is to understand how bi-/multilingual STEM scholars navigate and deploy spatial repertoires for professional communication. The articles present contextualized, empirical cases from various genre contexts: instructional practices, scholarly writing, language proficiency tests, and research group meetings. While all the articles adopt a spatial orientation to understanding STEM communication, the authors draw from diverse theoretical concepts that include chronotope, new materialism, and stance analysis for their data analysis. The analyses to understand these genre-specific contexts broadly combine two approaches: (1) analysis of actual communicative practices; and (2) meta-discursive comments by the professionals on their practices. In analyzing the disciplinary practices, language ideologies, and textual products, the authors use the methodological tools of interaction analysis, document analysis, observation, and interviews. Several articles combine more than one methodological tool in order to capture various aspects of disciplinary communication in the given genre context. The six articles included in this issue were first presented as a colloquium at the annual conferences of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia.
TESOL and Sustainability : English Language Teaching in the Anthropocene Era, 2020
This chapter aims to present a case of an alternative perspective on the human’s relationship wit... more This chapter aims to present a case of an alternative perspective on the human’s relationship with the environment and other nonhuman species as demonstrated in various communicative activities, and it discusses the implications of this perspective for addressing sustainability in applied linguistics and TESOL. In order to do so, this chapter examines intercultural encounters between Western tourists and local tourism workers on topics of climate change and the human–nature relationship in the context of Himalayan tourism from an applied linguistics perspective. The first part of the chapter takes an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse studies (Stibbe, 2015) to examine how the topics of the environment and relationships among species are discussed and socially constructed by the participants who come from different linguacultural backgrounds, and how their conversations are shaped by their respective sociopolitical histories and identities. The second section of the chapter discusses the implications of such intercultural discourses for applied linguistics and the TESOL field.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2020
This article responds to a call for applied linguistics and bilingualism
research from a spatial ... more This article responds to a call for applied linguistics and bilingualism research from a spatial repertoires perspective informed by new materialism. It focuses on the ways international faculty members carry out instructional interactions in STEM using English as an additional language. Using video data, the analysis demonstrates how visual technology, material space and human bodies collectively shape instructional interactions in a structural engineering class in a university setting. The communication shows a complex entanglement of language with technology, visual representations of concrete designs and embodiment. The study details the characteristics of repertoires that are expected in the given instructional space for an effective practice, and it sheds light on what new members can learn and do in order to be competent in their profession. Additionally, the data corpus can be used as an authentic resource for the disciplinary socialization of bi-/ multilingual STEM students and scholars for whom English is an additional language.
This article investigates the language learning desire of multilingual tourism workers. The data ... more This article investigates the language learning desire of multilingual tourism workers. The data were drawn from two sites in Nepal: an English for occupational purposes class and workplace interactions during treks. The article shows that the male tourism workers use their claims of heterosexual relationships with foreign female tourists as resources to build and boast their masculine identity and homoso-ciality among their peers. The workers' ability to communicate in tourist languages functions not only as a transactional tool, but also as a resource to enhance their language learning desire and investment in order to imagine, establish, and sustain heterosexual romantic relationships. Their relationships of intimacy combine with the opportunity for economic benefits and spatial mobility made largely possible by their ability to communicate in English and other international languages. The research contributes to our understanding of the connection between language learning, multilingualism, and desire in the context of intercultural contact.
Linguistic ethnographers largely agree that engaging in self-reflexivity enables researchers to i... more Linguistic ethnographers largely agree that engaging in self-reflexivity enables researchers to identify how their actions, subjectivities, and motivations influence research. In this article, I argue for a discourse-oriented ethnographic account as an alternative method for documenting and reporting such reflexivity. The overall goal of this article is to examine reflexive research practices in the study of tourism communication. Presenting illustrative cases, I closely analyze how the researcher's co-presence naturally opens up opportunities for some form of intervention in tourist-guide dyads. I show that researcher participation that is intended to resolve local interactional problems can have unintended consequences resulting in marginalization or exclusion of the key participants. The analysis shows that the researcher is not only the knowledge-maker in applied linguistics research but is also an object of analysis in the process. Overall, the study is intended to invite workplace researchers to reflect on whether and how much to participate, how their participation shapes researcher-participant relationships, how their relationship impacts data and knowledge claims, and how issues of balance and distance can be negotiated.
This article closely examines how both linguistic and non-linguistic objects and inscriptions emp... more This article closely examines how both linguistic and non-linguistic objects and inscriptions emplaced in the built environment transform the traditional residential-business street into a space of consumption for a new generation of Chinese tourists. The data consists of observation notes, photographs, and interviews obtained from an ethnographic fieldwork in Kathmandu, Nepal. The article makes three major arguments. First, the semiotic shift and the social practices that inhabit the space represent a key feature of a late capitalist society with a focus on the commodification of languages, cultures, and identities. Second, the practices index the global power of the Chinese language in challenging English and marginalizing other tourist languages. And third, these shifts urge us to understand the relation between semiotic and material resources in redefining traditionally West-oriented global tourism economies. The study overall provides new insights into how language and material goods can create a completely different kind of Chinatown, entailing a new interaction order between business owners and tourists, which use intertextuality, translanguaging, and multimodality, among others, as resources. These findings are starkly different from studies that have examined traditional Chinatowns in diasporic contexts.
This article provides an ethnographic discourse analysis of an intercultural communication traini... more This article provides an ethnographic discourse analysis of an intercultural communication training course for tourism workers in Kathmandu, Nepal, and investigates what kinds of registers and communicative practices Nepali tour guides are socialized into as part of the development of their professional competence. Nepali tour guides' work competence and skills include learning some tactics of self-presentation to create a certain kind of persona so that the guides can enhance positive affect in tourists, often in a language and communication style that is thought to be appreciated by tourists. The findings show that these training courses largely reproduce and reinforce market-oriented communicative practices in order to effectively commodify tourism as an object of material exchange in the market. Moreover, the nature of relationship between the 'first world' tourists and the 'third world' tourism workers as valorized in the training lessons can be interpreted from a perspective of masculine caring in a professional context where the training subtly turns the guest–guide relationship into a form of a master–servant relationship, invoking the discourses of servitude.
This paper makes an attempt to make a better understanding of expert-teacher interactions through... more This paper makes an attempt to make a better understanding of expert-teacher interactions through an examination of discursive practices by native English speaking ‘expert’ and English teachers from Asia. I analyzed ten online interaction events with
an aim to scrutinize the construction of knowledge and expertise among in an unfolding interaction, and looked particularly into claims of expertise, participants’ positioning and identity in these virtual interactions, and any hierarchical differences in their discourses that result from the power differences between the ‘expert’ and the participating teachers. In order to analyze the data, I used the critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework and draw insights from critical pedagogy. The analysis shows that the ‘expert’, positioned as the authority of knowledge, suggested solutions to challenges
hat the teachers in different parts of world are facing, and also articulated his view of good pedagogical practices. The analysis also reveals that the expert’s pedagogical ideologies at times compete and contrast with those of the teachers. The study, therefore, questions the effectiveness of the taken-for-granted pedagogical theories and practices from the native English speaking professionals for the teachers in the periphery
countries and suggests that teachers in the receiving end need to critically evaluate appropriateness of such pedagogical practices taking consideration of the local teaching/learning contexts.
This article presents a discussion of how criticality is constructed and implemented for English ... more This article presents a discussion of how criticality is constructed and implemented for English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher development in Nepal. The authors draw on P. Freire's (1970) notion of conscientization to discuss how Nepali EFL teachers develop critical awareness in incorporating local sociopolitical issues in their lessons. Building on Bakhtin's (1981) concept 10 of ideological becoming, they analyze these teachers' ideological becoming in adopting a critical approach to their pedagogical practices. The authors discuss the process of critical materials development, a subsequent professional development workshop, and a follow-up dialogue with teachers to show how critical awareness emerges from engaging teachers in understanding ideological tensions between dominant and alternative discourses of teachers' professional devel-15 opment. They interpret teachers' ideological tensions and their new consciousness in terms of their emerging sense of agency and a commitment toward a possible social transformation. The authors also argue that ideological conflicts and tensions in teachers' knowledge, teaching philosophies, and practices are a starting point for a transformative teacher development and they should be a core part of second language teacher education and professional development for second language 20 teachers.
This study investigates the teacher role in mediating the task and the learner in an advanced aca... more This study investigates the teacher role in mediating the task and the learner in an advanced academic writing class. Having identified three verbal (non-)participation patterns of students in collaborative tasks (silence, dominance and off-task talk) , I examine how these interactional concerns are understood and addressed by ESL writing teachers. Interview findings from the writing teachers suggest that the teachers play a key mediating role during the various phases of implementing a task-based lesson in order to address the concerns of silence, dominance and off-task talk. For example, in the task design phase, students can be assigned specific roles in their group or they can be given planning time necessary for the task. In the task performance phase, the teacher can make judicious interventions in order to encourage contributions from the quiet students or put the talkative students on hold for a while. The paper concludes with its contributions to and implications for the role of teachers in a task-based pedagogy.
Spirituality & Language Teaching: Religious Explorations of Teacher Identity, Pedagogy, Context, and Content, 2018
In this chapter I provide a historical survey of Hindu views and practices of learning, teaching ... more In this chapter I provide a historical survey of Hindu views and practices of learning, teaching and student–teacher relationships, and argue that some of what have been regarded as standard practices and innovations in language pedagogy in the Western world today, especially in Anglo-American educational contexts, were similar to some ideas in the traditional Hindu educational ethos and practices found in the Vedic traditions in the Indian subcontinent. In the second part of the chapter, I discuss how English language teachers can benefit from Hindu spiritual-philosophical bases in order to pay attention to the social responsibility dimension of language teaching. Understanding Hinduism can help English teachers address some critical issues, such as respect for students as individuals and members of a particular culture/community, peace and social harmony, human relationship with nature and an awareness of environmental crisis, among others.
This historical and philosophical survey provides an overview of ‘learning’‘teaching’ and ‘studen... more This historical and philosophical survey provides an overview of ‘learning’‘teaching’ and ‘student-teacher relationships’ as espoused in Hindu philosophy and its ancient educational practices. It shows that some of what have been regarded as the standard practices and innovations in language pedagogy in the Western world today, especially in Anglo-American educational contexts, were in existence in the traditional Hindu educational ethos found in the Vedic and Upanishadic periods in the South Asian sub-continent. This calls into question the representation of learner-centeredness, autonomy and class discussions as innovative constructs. It shows that such practices in TESOL, for example, are not inherently West-based and, thus, by contrast are in fact appropriate in non-Western cultural contexts like Nepal.
Although the value of small talk is traditionally trivialized for its lack of usefulness in accom... more Although the value of small talk is traditionally trivialized for its lack of usefulness in accomplishing goal-oriented communication, researchers now largely agree that it has an important role to play in various institutional contexts. However, this phenomenon is under-researched in the ESL classroom context. Attending to this concern, the present study examines various topics, distributions, and functions of small talk in the linguistically and culturally heterogeneous classrooms in an intensive English as a second language program in the United States. The findings show that small talk in the ESL classroom goes beyond its ritualistic function; it serves as an important tool for language learning and a useful resource for developing students' intercultural communicative competence. Based on the findings, we recommend that ESL teachers integrate small talk into their instructional practices in order to achieve various social, intercultural, and pedagogical goals.
This study presents a sequential analysis of the enactment of teacher identity in closing disagre... more This study presents a sequential analysis of the enactment of teacher identity in closing disagreements among students in small group peer interactions in an advanced academic writing class. In doing so, it discusses: (a) the micro-details of how oppositional stances and opinions are constructed, challenged and/or defended; (b) the sequential environment where the teacher's situated identity is invoked; and (c) the procedural consequence of the teacher's enacting of such an identity. Detailed analysis shows two major ways that the teacher's identity is invoked. First, by directing an inquiry or invitation to the teacher, students display their sensitivity to the uneven distribution of knowledge among the students and the teacher, thus publicly ratifying the latter's knowing-recipient status. Second, the teacher makes his/her situated identity relevant by self-selecting himself/herself as somebody with the institutionally accredited knowledge and competence to respond to the students. These two patterns are recognized as solicited teacher intervention and unsolicited teacher intervention respectively in this paper. The findings suggest that the enactment of teacher identity dismantles the interactional deadlock among the students and helps them with the task process.
Using conversation analysis as a methodological and analytical framework, this study presents a s... more Using conversation analysis as a methodological and analytical framework, this study presents a sequential analysis of disagreement episodes in small group interactions in an advanced academic writing class. Closer scrutiny of the sequences reveals that in order to bring disagreements to a close, participants make use of an array of interactional resources to defend and establish their positions as well as to challenge other members’ stances. From a collection of 48 disagreement episodes, I identify five different disagreement exit patterns and explain one of them – conceding – in detail. Analysis of pre-conceding activities in the disagreement episodes shows that participants deploy three major practices before they close the sequence: making an understanding claim, building a peer alliance and proposing an alternative position. They take cautious steps when they give in to the opponent’s stance. The findings expand our understanding of the intricate manoeuvres involved in group work tasks in a writing class.
Plagiarism has been troubling academic world since long. With the invention of electronic resourc... more Plagiarism has been troubling academic world since long. With the invention of electronic resources like internet in recent times, it has become easier and more accessible for students than ever before. Practice of plagiarism by students has resulted negative consequences in the academic field, and university teachers are now facing problems that are more challenging. This has led to the production and submission of assignments and research works that are not properly referenced and cited or, worse still, are those that are being submitted which are partly or completely written by someone else. This paper explores the issue of plagiarism among graduate students at Tribhuvan University focusing mainly on its nature, reasons, and prevention measures. The data for the study were obtained through two major sources: questionnaire and interview.
Building on the work that treats the center and the periphery as relative notions (Pietikäinen & ... more Building on the work that treats the center and the periphery as relative notions (Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2013), we discuss people's imaginations and ideologies of the English language in the context of Nepal-a global periphery. While Nepal remains at the periphery in global economic system (Wallerstein, 2004), it is at the center of development discourse for global funding agencies-both governmental and non-governmental. As Nepal receives a significant amount of foreign aid annually for poverty alleviation and rural development projects, the arrival of Western 'white' aid-workers in rural villages has been a new phenomenon. These aid workers who speak English are discursively considered to be someone important who brings 'development' in villages and helps people alleviate poverty. Considering center-periphery distinction as a 'discursively constructed' and 'constantly negotiated' ideological space (Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2013), this paper uses the notion of indexicality (e.g., Bucholtz & Hall, 2003; Silverstein, 2003) to explain how Nepali comedians both centralize and challenge, through their performances, the discourse of development and social class in the ideological construction of English in Nepal. Drawing on the data from two popular comedy performances, we discuss how English manifests as an aspirational and instrumental tool across two social classes and localities: a working class of peasants in a rural community in the Himalayas, and an elite family in the capital city of Kathmandu. For the villagers, English is constructed as a symbol of bikas (development) and a path to get rid of their poverty. For them, the ability to communicate in English is discursively imagined as a tool to socioeconomic development. All the villagers start learning English by rote not just to communicate with an American aid-worker who is visiting their locality as a bikas agent, but also to impress him with English so that he can take all of them to America. One village girl and her parents even imagine an 'alternative future' in that the American aid agent marries the local girl and takes her to America with him because of her English ability. For the people of the center in Kathmandu, 'good' English serves as a 'symbol capital' (Bourdieu, 1991) to construct a different kind of 'alternative future', the future of a family life with prestige and high class social identity. For example, being able to speak English by the potential groom's family is indexical of their honor in society, and at the same time performing inability to speak 'ramro' (good) Nepali even at the expense of good communication skills is considered as having higher symbolic value. This ability constructs a distinction of janne-bujhne (learned) among the people in Kathmandu. Overall, we analyze how media performative discourses construct and reproduce the complexities of localized ideology of English as a language of 'development' and imagine 'alternative futures' in both the center and the periphery of a global periphery. We discuss that the two media programs work in different orders of indexicality: first, they reproduce and reconstruct the existing ideologies of English across the two social orders. And second, and by the same token, they subvert those ideologies by using a mock language, stylization and irony in their performances. In sum, we show the use of indexicality as an important meaning making
This special issue builds on sociolinguistic research in tourism, semiotic landscapes, language m... more This special issue builds on sociolinguistic research in tourism, semiotic landscapes, language materiality, and multilingual and multimodal practices to explore how spaces for tourism are formed at the nexus of language and the material world.
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Papers: Globalization and language practices by Bal Krishna Sharma
constructed in instructional discourse for tourism workers. The analysis
of stereotypes is important because it reveals some underlying ideologies
about intercultural communication in tourism. In these contexts,
workers are taught how to communicate in tourist–guide interactions.
The study is part of my larger linguistic ethnography that investigates the role of language and communication in tourism (Sharma, 2016). The
data consists of instructional discourses for pre- service tour guides in a
tour guide training program in Kathmandu, Nepal (see Sharma, 2018 for
more details).
transforming countries in South Asia, Nepal is a case study for understanding the sociocultural, linguistic, economic, and political implications of the spread of the Chinese language. The chapter aims to explore the changes that are reconfiguring Nepal’s economic, educational, and political spheres in relation to the Chinese language. An examination of these changes not only has implications for understanding Nepali society, but it invokes the importance of rethinking the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010; Gao, 2017). We make the argument that global flows do not only originate in the West and are not solely channeled through the English language. We urge sociolinguists to turn their attention to the flows and networks within non- Western regions, particularly in the context of low-income and developing countries.
proposed by Heller and Duchêne (2016). Following the authors, language functions as an economic resource under the late capitalist market in two major ways. First, language is a sellable tool of communication through which tourism destinations turn into commodities. Tourism workers’ employability depends partly on the language and communication skills that are valued in the market. In addition, linguistic resources, such as language signs, are used to brand the authenticity of tourism destinations. Second, language functions as an added value to mark a cultural authenticity in the tourism market. Cultural artifacts and performances as the markers of such authenticity have an enhanced commodity value when the language element is added to them. Framing language commodification within this conceptualization, this chapter studies heritage tourism in the context of indigenous ethnicity. It focuses on a Tamang village in the Himalayas, Nepal and examines language as a political and an economic resource.
STEM scholars navigate and deploy spatial repertoires for professional
communication. The articles present contextualized, empirical cases
from various genre contexts: instructional practices, scholarly writing,
language proficiency tests, and research group meetings. While all the
articles adopt a spatial orientation to understanding STEM
communication, the authors draw from diverse theoretical concepts that
include chronotope, new materialism, and stance analysis for their data
analysis. The analyses to understand these genre-specific contexts
broadly combine two approaches: (1) analysis of actual communicative
practices; and (2) meta-discursive comments by the professionals on
their practices. In analyzing the disciplinary practices, language
ideologies, and textual products, the authors use the methodological
tools of interaction analysis, document analysis, observation, and
interviews. Several articles combine more than one methodological tool
in order to capture various aspects of disciplinary communication in the
given genre context. The six articles included in this issue were first
presented as a colloquium at the annual conferences of the American
Association for Applied Linguistics in 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Himalayan tourism from an applied linguistics perspective. The first part of the chapter takes an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse studies (Stibbe, 2015) to examine how the topics of the environment and relationships among species are discussed and socially constructed by the participants who come from different linguacultural backgrounds, and
how their conversations are shaped by their respective sociopolitical histories and identities. The second section of the chapter discusses the implications of such intercultural discourses for applied linguistics and the TESOL field.
research from a spatial repertoires perspective informed by new
materialism. It focuses on the ways international faculty members carry
out instructional interactions in STEM using English as an additional
language. Using video data, the analysis demonstrates how visual
technology, material space and human bodies collectively shape
instructional interactions in a structural engineering class in a university
setting. The communication shows a complex entanglement of
language with technology, visual representations of concrete designs
and embodiment. The study details the characteristics of repertoires that
are expected in the given instructional space for an effective practice,
and it sheds light on what new members can learn and do in order to
be competent in their profession. Additionally, the data corpus can be
used as an authentic resource for the disciplinary socialization of bi-/
multilingual STEM students and scholars for whom English is an
additional language.
constructed in instructional discourse for tourism workers. The analysis
of stereotypes is important because it reveals some underlying ideologies
about intercultural communication in tourism. In these contexts,
workers are taught how to communicate in tourist–guide interactions.
The study is part of my larger linguistic ethnography that investigates the role of language and communication in tourism (Sharma, 2016). The
data consists of instructional discourses for pre- service tour guides in a
tour guide training program in Kathmandu, Nepal (see Sharma, 2018 for
more details).
transforming countries in South Asia, Nepal is a case study for understanding the sociocultural, linguistic, economic, and political implications of the spread of the Chinese language. The chapter aims to explore the changes that are reconfiguring Nepal’s economic, educational, and political spheres in relation to the Chinese language. An examination of these changes not only has implications for understanding Nepali society, but it invokes the importance of rethinking the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010; Gao, 2017). We make the argument that global flows do not only originate in the West and are not solely channeled through the English language. We urge sociolinguists to turn their attention to the flows and networks within non- Western regions, particularly in the context of low-income and developing countries.
proposed by Heller and Duchêne (2016). Following the authors, language functions as an economic resource under the late capitalist market in two major ways. First, language is a sellable tool of communication through which tourism destinations turn into commodities. Tourism workers’ employability depends partly on the language and communication skills that are valued in the market. In addition, linguistic resources, such as language signs, are used to brand the authenticity of tourism destinations. Second, language functions as an added value to mark a cultural authenticity in the tourism market. Cultural artifacts and performances as the markers of such authenticity have an enhanced commodity value when the language element is added to them. Framing language commodification within this conceptualization, this chapter studies heritage tourism in the context of indigenous ethnicity. It focuses on a Tamang village in the Himalayas, Nepal and examines language as a political and an economic resource.
STEM scholars navigate and deploy spatial repertoires for professional
communication. The articles present contextualized, empirical cases
from various genre contexts: instructional practices, scholarly writing,
language proficiency tests, and research group meetings. While all the
articles adopt a spatial orientation to understanding STEM
communication, the authors draw from diverse theoretical concepts that
include chronotope, new materialism, and stance analysis for their data
analysis. The analyses to understand these genre-specific contexts
broadly combine two approaches: (1) analysis of actual communicative
practices; and (2) meta-discursive comments by the professionals on
their practices. In analyzing the disciplinary practices, language
ideologies, and textual products, the authors use the methodological
tools of interaction analysis, document analysis, observation, and
interviews. Several articles combine more than one methodological tool
in order to capture various aspects of disciplinary communication in the
given genre context. The six articles included in this issue were first
presented as a colloquium at the annual conferences of the American
Association for Applied Linguistics in 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Himalayan tourism from an applied linguistics perspective. The first part of the chapter takes an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse studies (Stibbe, 2015) to examine how the topics of the environment and relationships among species are discussed and socially constructed by the participants who come from different linguacultural backgrounds, and
how their conversations are shaped by their respective sociopolitical histories and identities. The second section of the chapter discusses the implications of such intercultural discourses for applied linguistics and the TESOL field.
research from a spatial repertoires perspective informed by new
materialism. It focuses on the ways international faculty members carry
out instructional interactions in STEM using English as an additional
language. Using video data, the analysis demonstrates how visual
technology, material space and human bodies collectively shape
instructional interactions in a structural engineering class in a university
setting. The communication shows a complex entanglement of
language with technology, visual representations of concrete designs
and embodiment. The study details the characteristics of repertoires that
are expected in the given instructional space for an effective practice,
and it sheds light on what new members can learn and do in order to
be competent in their profession. Additionally, the data corpus can be
used as an authentic resource for the disciplinary socialization of bi-/
multilingual STEM students and scholars for whom English is an
additional language.
an aim to scrutinize the construction of knowledge and expertise among in an unfolding interaction, and looked particularly into claims of expertise, participants’ positioning and identity in these virtual interactions, and any hierarchical differences in their discourses that result from the power differences between the ‘expert’ and the participating teachers. In order to analyze the data, I used the critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework and draw insights from critical pedagogy. The analysis shows that the ‘expert’, positioned as the authority of knowledge, suggested solutions to challenges
hat the teachers in different parts of world are facing, and also articulated his view of good pedagogical practices. The analysis also reveals that the expert’s pedagogical ideologies at times compete and contrast with those of the teachers. The study, therefore, questions the effectiveness of the taken-for-granted pedagogical theories and practices from the native English speaking professionals for the teachers in the periphery
countries and suggests that teachers in the receiving end need to critically evaluate appropriateness of such pedagogical practices taking consideration of the local teaching/learning contexts.