The critique of neoliberal discourse in (critical) sociolinguistic research underlines the tenets of ‘economic rationality’ (Lemke, 2001) in language practices and ideologies. For instance, it has revealed the... [ view full abstract ]
The critique of neoliberal discourse in (critical) sociolinguistic research underlines the tenets of ‘economic rationality’ (Lemke, 2001) in language practices and ideologies. For instance, it has revealed the self-developing subjectivity (Park, 2010), the culture of skills development (Shin, 2016; Urciuoli, 2008), and the calculation of language investment (De Costa, Park, & Wee, 2016). While such narratives of rationality have contributed to uncovering the neoliberal governing of language practices and ideologies and roles in reproducing social inequality (Shin & Park, 2016), they often fail to problematize the very underlying assumption—economic rationality. Furthermore, although the conceptual orientations to economic rationality have helped to “spot evidence of neoliberalism” in various social areas, they tend to neglect the importance of discovering and mapping discourses and life projects beyond it (McElhinny, 2016). Thus, instead of reproducing rationality, this colloquium revisits it in order to imagine an alternative critique of neoliberalism. In doing so, it draws attention to the oppositional concept on ‘an axis of differentiation’ (Gal, 2012)—irrationality. As in other paired ‘keywords’ in sociolinguistic research (e.g., centre-periphery, profit-pride, and public-private), this inclusion of irrationality will lead us to ask important questions of who constructs ir/rationality, why a certain meaning of ir/rationality is made, and what is a consequence of ir/rationality-making.
The papers in this colloquium present critical, ethnographic, and discourse analysis studies in various contexts of investment into English in East Asia. Each paper explores moments, events, ideologies, practices, and subjectivities that look “irrational” as discovered by social actors and/or researchers while employing the concept of ir/rationality in two distinctive ways. The first three papers take on the task of scrutinizing the notion of rationality specific to neoliberalism, discussing the problematic nature and impact of rationality in relation to language. The latter three papers take on the issue of rationality from a variety of perspectives outside of neoliberal economics, exploring alternative rationalities and their relation to language. Finally, the colloquium discusses how ir/rationality is realized (or realizable) and contested, and further how revisiting ir/rationality can contribute to creating a new narrative of research in the critique of neoliberalism in the field.
