The Linguistic Entrepreneur: A Reimagining of Language Learners

The Linguistic Entrepreneur: A Reimagining of Language Learners

By Michael Rabbidge

Recent years have seen applied linguistic research compel a redefinition of the second language learner from that of a deficient user of a given L2  perpetually doomed to never achieve the golden status of native-like proficiency, to more inclusive positions of an emerging bi or multilingual user of a language with an ever expanding repertoire of linguistic and meaning making tools that allows them take their rightful place within the ever dynamic multilingual, multicultural, and globalized community.   

Language education policies across the globe are being reframed in moral terms, asking citizens to take on the responsibility of investing in a new language in order to be able to improve their own sense of worth and ability to contribute to global societies. Language learning is now being associated with character traits such as initiative, self-reliance, innovation, resilience, and competitiveness.

To be a successful language learner is to embody these traits, and couple them with linguistic competencies and aptitudes so that learners can take advantage of the current drive to commodify language in the global workspace. Consequently, language has now become less of an ethnonational identity as multilingualism and language education fall under the influence of capitalistic ideals (De Costa, Park, & Wee, 2021).

The linguistic entrepreneur is someone who exemplifies the traits of initiative, self-reliance and resilience as mentioned above. They are obligated to, as affective regimes (De Costa, Park, & Wee, 2019) that influence discourses within communities, organizations and governmental committees seek ways to align themselves and others with the need to remain relevant in the global community. The linguistic entrepreneur takes on the task of learning a new language so that they can take advantage of whatever cultural, social or economic capital (Bourdieu, 1986) may be desirable to them, allowing them to take their place in the globalized community and hopefully live with a degree of freedom and success.

Such reimagining can offer opportunity as well as cause conflict, as traditional notions of community, country, and linguistic identity come under increasing pressure to adapt to the prevailing winds of globalization. Likewise, traditional social inequalities can be upheld or dismantled by changes in how we view language learning.

Understanding the impact that changing contexts have on the evolving nature of language learner identity reveals opportunities for both learners and teachers alike to understand the possible influences at play on motivation and reasons for investment into language learning. This can, in turn, impact classroom decisions and practices that hopefully improve opportunities for all involved in language education. Knowing that learning a new language can impact access to future capital raises the stakes for all concerned in language education, and relying on traditional notions of what a language learner is based solely on linguistic criteria is increasingly becoming an insufficient method of measurement. 

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 96-111). New York, NY: Greenwood Press.

De Costa, P., Park, J., & Wee, L. (2019). Linguistic entrepreneurship as affective regime: organizations, audit culture, and second/foreign language education policy. Language Policy, 18(3), 387-406. doi:10.1007/s10993-018-9492-4

De Costa, P., Park, J., & Wee, L. (2021). Why linguistic entrepreneurship? Multilingua, 40(2), 139-153. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2020-0037