John P O’regan
Biographic Data
| ID | 4874824 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John P O’regan |
| GIVEN NAMES | John P |
| FAMILY NAME | O’regan |
| SIGNATURE | O’REGAN J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1335-820X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Performing the ideal scholar-self: Interplay between digital trans-literacies and neoliberal academic identity in overseas Chinese PhD student vlogs
Exploring AI for intercultural communication: Open conversation
AI is not new. What is new, however, is the speed and depth of its expansion in almost every aspect of our lives. This discussion forum is dedicated to exploring new frontiers and agendas for language and intercultural communication research. In this concluding piece, we invite the contributors to share insights on five key questions: their experiences (Question 1), the challenges and opportunities that we face (Question 2), the strengths and ski…
Artificial intelligence and depth ontology: Implications for intercultural ethics
Despite increasing concerns over the use of AI in surveillance, privacy, public health, climate change, global migration and warfare, the implications of its use in the field of intercultural communication are still not clearly defined. This paper critically examines the contemporary emergence of AI through the lens of a critical realist depth ontology to argue that AI, with its unending interplay of signs and symbols, is the ultimate simulacrum.…
A World without Capitalism Is Common Sense
The discursive emergence of ‘the market’ in capitalist political economy: Crisis system and the Longue Durée
This paper presents a longue dure account of the discursive emergence of 'the market'.It seeks to develop understanding of the 'crisis system' by showing that the crises of the present have their origins earlier than some critical realist scholars have suggested and can be better understood by the theorization of the generative mechanisms that emerged from the economic and political chaos of the early 1600s.Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is em…
I Told Them I Want to Speak Chinese!” The Struggle of UK Students to Negotiate Language Identities While Studying Chinese in China
This article leverages interview data from students of Chinese who enrolled at a UK university but pursued a period of study abroad in China, aiming to delve into their negotiation of language identities during their overseas experience.By employing Block's structural model in our discourse analysis, this research reveals the dynamic interplay between agency and structure, shedding light on the intricate process of language learning and identity …
Swiss Multilingualism and Global English: Bourdieusian Capitals in Contestation
This paper reports on a small-scale research study into the beliefs of teenagers in Switzerland on Swiss national languages and their status relative to English. High school students (n = 232) in the French-speaking city of Lausanne completed a questionnaire about the economic, social, cultural and symbolic value of German, Italian and English. The data was then analysed quantitatively by computing the means, standard deviations, significance, an…
The capitalist dialectics of international student mobility in the modern world-system
International higher education (IHE) and with that international student mobility (ISM) and internationalisation have become widely embedded in the educational mobility literature as commonplace conceptualisations in a world which is everywhere imagined as globalised. The present response paper considers the contribution of the papers of this special issue to our understanding of ISM and to international study-abroad in Asia while also locating t…
Global English and Political Economy
In this book, John O’Regan examines the role of political economy in the worldwide spread of English and traces the origins and development of the dominance of English to the endless accumulation of capital in a capitalist world-system. O’Regan combines Marxist perspectives of capital accumulation with world-systems analysis, international political economy, and studies of imperialism and empire to present a historical account of the ‘free riding…
L1 marginalisation in Japan: Monolingual instrumentalism and the discursive shift against yakudoku in the Japanese government’s Course of Study
This article focuses upon the Japanese government’s decision in 2009 to direct an ‘English-only’ strategy for English language education in senior high schools from 2013. In the Course of Study 2009, and more recently again in the Course of Study 2018, the Japanese government implicitly blames the local grammar-translation method of teaching, known as yakudoku, for the failure of teachers to foster their students’ English proficiency, and suggest…
The bureaucratic distortion of academic work: A transdisciplinary analysis of the UK Research Excellence Framework in the age of neoliberalism
In the years since the second Thatcher government (1983–87), and continuing until the present, universities in the UK have been subjected to a series of neoliberal reforms which have had a deleterious effect on academics’ working conditions and on the kind of research they are required to produce. 1986 saw the introduction of regular sector wide audits of research and scholarly activity designed to make academics more ‘productive’ and the institu…
Education and the discourse of global neoliberalism
This book investigates neoliberalism in education and explains how it is a complex phenomenon which takes on local characteristics in diverse geopolitical, economic and cultural settings, while retaining a core commitment in all its manifestations to market fundamentalism.Neoliberalism - that set of beliefs and practices which has become the economic orthodoxy of global preference since the 1980s - appears remarkably resilient despite the US fina…
Fetishism and the language commodity: A Materialist Critique
On Anti-Intellectualism, Cultism, and One-Sided Thinking. O'Regan Replies
I have been asked to respond to two forum pieces, one by Henry Widdowson and another by Will Baker, Jennifer Jenkins, and Robert Baird concerning my article ‘English as a lingua franca: an immanent critique’ in Applied Linguistics (2014 forthcoming). Let me begin then by saying that once the Applied Linguistics editors informed me that my article was being accepted for publication, I expected that there would be a response. ‘ELF’ researchers have…
English as a Lingua Franca: An Immanent Critique
Over the past 15 years or so there has developed a school of thought within English language education and applied linguistics globally which refers to the phenomenon and use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). The thinking of ELF movement researchers has placed their work at the centre of current debates about the form, function and legitimacy of the English that is used by speakers from diverse linguacultural backgrounds when they are in inter…
Citizenship, community, and counter-terrorism: UK security discourse, 2001–2011
This paper analyses a corpus of UK policy documents which sets out national security policy as an exemplar of the contemporary discourse of counter-terrorism in Europe, the USA and worldwide. A corpus of 148 documents (c. 2.8 million words) was assembled to reflect the security discourse produced by the UK government before and after the 7/7 attacks on the London Transport system. To enable a chronological comparison, the two sub-corpora were def…
The Ethics of Intercultural Communication
For some time, the role of culture in language education within schools, universities and professional communication has received increasing attention. This article identifies two aporias in the discourse of intercultural communication (IC): first, that it contains an unstated movement towards a universal consciousness; second, that its claims to truth are grounded in an implicit appeal to a transcendental moral signified.These features constitut…
Travelling languages: Culture, communication and translation in a mobile world
Based on the commonly held assumption that we now live in a world that is ‘on the move’, with growing opportunities for both real and virtual travel and the blurring of boundaries between previously defined places, societies and cultures, the theme of this book is firmly grounded in the interdisciplinary field of ‘Mobilities’. ‘Mobilities’ deals with the movement of people, objects, capital, information, ideas and cultures on varying scales, and …
Cultural Relativism and the Discourse of Intercultural Communication: Aporias of Praxis in the Intercultural Public Sphere
The premise of much intercultural communication pedagogy and research is to educate people from different cultures towards open and transformative positions of mutual understanding and respect. This discourse in the instance of its articulation realises and sustains Intercultural Communication epistemologically – as an academic field of social enquiry, and judgementally – as one which locates itself on a moral terrain. By adopting an ethical stan…
The text as a critical object: On theorising exegetic procedure in classroom-based critical discourse analysis
One of the reasons why critical discourse analysis (CDA) calls itself critical is because its perspectives of discourse and society are derived largely from critical social theory. Transferring these perspectives to educational contexts requires that teachers develop workable pedagogic frameworks and procedures which apply CDA principles and practices to the reading and discussion of texts in the classroom. If these are to be considered ‘critical…
Is discourse analysis critical? and This risky order of discourse
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDominique MaingueneauDominique Maingueneau is Professor of linguistics at the University of Paris-XII (Creteil). His research from the 1970s is focused on French linguistics and discourse analysis. He published many books in the latter area of study: from Initiation aux methodes de l'analyse du discours (Paris, Hachette, 1976) to the co-edition of a Dictionnaire d'analyse du discours (Paris, Seuil, 2002)…
From Empire to Commonwealth: Reflections on a Career in Britain's Overseas Service
The Ethics of Intercultural Communication
For some time, the role of culture in language education within schools, universities and professional communication has received increasing attention. This article identifies two aporias in the discourse of intercultural communication (IC): first, that it contains an unstated movement towards a universal consciousness; second, that its claims to truth are grounded in an implicit appeal to a transcendental moral signified.These features constitut…
Education and the discourse of global neoliberalism
This book investigates neoliberalism in education and explains how it is a complex phenomenon which takes on local characteristics in diverse geopolitical, economic and cultural settings, while retaining a core commitment in all its manifestations to market fundamentalism.Neoliberalism - that set of beliefs and practices which has become the economic orthodoxy of global preference since the 1980s - appears remarkably resilient despite the US fina…
The bureaucratic distortion of academic work: A transdisciplinary analysis of the UK Research Excellence Framework in the age of neoliberalism
In the years since the second Thatcher government (1983–87), and continuing until the present, universities in the UK have been subjected to a series of neoliberal reforms which have had a deleterious effect on academics’ working conditions and on the kind of research they are required to produce. 1986 saw the introduction of regular sector wide audits of research and scholarly activity designed to make academics more ‘productive’ and the institu…
Cultural Relativism and the Discourse of Intercultural Communication: Aporias of Praxis in the Intercultural Public Sphere
The premise of much intercultural communication pedagogy and research is to educate people from different cultures towards open and transformative positions of mutual understanding and respect. This discourse in the instance of its articulation realises and sustains Intercultural Communication epistemologically – as an academic field of social enquiry, and judgementally – as one which locates itself on a moral terrain. By adopting an ethical stan…
Fetishism and the language commodity: A Materialist Critique
Citizenship, community, and counter-terrorism: UK security discourse, 2001–2011
This paper analyses a corpus of UK policy documents which sets out national security policy as an exemplar of the contemporary discourse of counter-terrorism in Europe, the USA and worldwide. A corpus of 148 documents (c. 2.8 million words) was assembled to reflect the security discourse produced by the UK government before and after the 7/7 attacks on the London Transport system. To enable a chronological comparison, the two sub-corpora were def…
L1 marginalisation in Japan: Monolingual instrumentalism and the discursive shift against yakudoku in the Japanese government’s Course of Study
This article focuses upon the Japanese government’s decision in 2009 to direct an ‘English-only’ strategy for English language education in senior high schools from 2013. In the Course of Study 2009, and more recently again in the Course of Study 2018, the Japanese government implicitly blames the local grammar-translation method of teaching, known as yakudoku, for the failure of teachers to foster their students’ English proficiency, and suggest…
The text as a critical object: On theorising exegetic procedure in classroom-based critical discourse analysis
One of the reasons why critical discourse analysis (CDA) calls itself critical is because its perspectives of discourse and society are derived largely from critical social theory. Transferring these perspectives to educational contexts requires that teachers develop workable pedagogic frameworks and procedures which apply CDA principles and practices to the reading and discussion of texts in the classroom. If these are to be considered ‘critical…
A World without Capitalism Is Common Sense
The capitalist dialectics of international student mobility in the modern world-system
International higher education (IHE) and with that international student mobility (ISM) and internationalisation have become widely embedded in the educational mobility literature as commonplace conceptualisations in a world which is everywhere imagined as globalised. The present response paper considers the contribution of the papers of this special issue to our understanding of ISM and to international study-abroad in Asia while also locating t…
Is discourse analysis critical? and This risky order of discourse
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDominique MaingueneauDominique Maingueneau is Professor of linguistics at the University of Paris-XII (Creteil). His research from the 1970s is focused on French linguistics and discourse analysis. He published many books in the latter area of study: from Initiation aux methodes de l'analyse du discours (Paris, Hachette, 1976) to the co-edition of a Dictionnaire d'analyse du discours (Paris, Seuil, 2002)…
From Empire to Commonwealth: Reflections on a Career in Britain's Overseas Service
The text as a critical object: On theorising exegetic procedure in classroom-based critical discourse analysis
One of the reasons why critical discourse analysis (CDA) calls itself critical is because its perspectives of discourse and society are derived largely from critical social theory. Transferring these perspectives to educational contexts requires that teachers develop workable pedagogic frameworks and procedures which apply CDA principles and practices to the reading and discussion of texts in the classroom. If these are to be considered ‘critical…
Is discourse analysis critical? and This risky order of discourse
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDominique MaingueneauDominique Maingueneau is Professor of linguistics at the University of Paris-XII (Creteil). His research from the 1970s is focused on French linguistics and discourse analysis. He published many books in the latter area of study: from Initiation aux methodes de l'analyse du discours (Paris, Hachette, 1976) to the co-edition of a Dictionnaire d'analyse du discours (Paris, Seuil, 2002)…
Cultural Relativism and the Discourse of Intercultural Communication: Aporias of Praxis in the Intercultural Public Sphere
The premise of much intercultural communication pedagogy and research is to educate people from different cultures towards open and transformative positions of mutual understanding and respect. This discourse in the instance of its articulation realises and sustains Intercultural Communication epistemologically – as an academic field of social enquiry, and judgementally – as one which locates itself on a moral terrain. By adopting an ethical stan…
Travelling languages: Culture, communication and translation in a mobile world
Based on the commonly held assumption that we now live in a world that is ‘on the move’, with growing opportunities for both real and virtual travel and the blurring of boundaries between previously defined places, societies and cultures, the theme of this book is firmly grounded in the interdisciplinary field of ‘Mobilities’. ‘Mobilities’ deals with the movement of people, objects, capital, information, ideas and cultures on varying scales, and …
The Ethics of Intercultural Communication
For some time, the role of culture in language education within schools, universities and professional communication has received increasing attention. This article identifies two aporias in the discourse of intercultural communication (IC): first, that it contains an unstated movement towards a universal consciousness; second, that its claims to truth are grounded in an implicit appeal to a transcendental moral signified.These features constitut…
Citizenship, community, and counter-terrorism: UK security discourse, 2001–2011
This paper analyses a corpus of UK policy documents which sets out national security policy as an exemplar of the contemporary discourse of counter-terrorism in Europe, the USA and worldwide. A corpus of 148 documents (c. 2.8 million words) was assembled to reflect the security discourse produced by the UK government before and after the 7/7 attacks on the London Transport system. To enable a chronological comparison, the two sub-corpora were def…
English as a Lingua Franca: An Immanent Critique
Over the past 15 years or so there has developed a school of thought within English language education and applied linguistics globally which refers to the phenomenon and use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). The thinking of ELF movement researchers has placed their work at the centre of current debates about the form, function and legitimacy of the English that is used by speakers from diverse linguacultural backgrounds when they are in inter…
On Anti-Intellectualism, Cultism, and One-Sided Thinking. O'Regan Replies
I have been asked to respond to two forum pieces, one by Henry Widdowson and another by Will Baker, Jennifer Jenkins, and Robert Baird concerning my article ‘English as a lingua franca: an immanent critique’ in Applied Linguistics (2014 forthcoming). Let me begin then by saying that once the Applied Linguistics editors informed me that my article was being accepted for publication, I expected that there would be a response. ‘ELF’ researchers have…
The bureaucratic distortion of academic work: A transdisciplinary analysis of the UK Research Excellence Framework in the age of neoliberalism
In the years since the second Thatcher government (1983–87), and continuing until the present, universities in the UK have been subjected to a series of neoliberal reforms which have had a deleterious effect on academics’ working conditions and on the kind of research they are required to produce. 1986 saw the introduction of regular sector wide audits of research and scholarly activity designed to make academics more ‘productive’ and the institu…
Education and the discourse of global neoliberalism
This book investigates neoliberalism in education and explains how it is a complex phenomenon which takes on local characteristics in diverse geopolitical, economic and cultural settings, while retaining a core commitment in all its manifestations to market fundamentalism.Neoliberalism - that set of beliefs and practices which has become the economic orthodoxy of global preference since the 1980s - appears remarkably resilient despite the US fina…
Fetishism and the language commodity: A Materialist Critique
L1 marginalisation in Japan: Monolingual instrumentalism and the discursive shift against yakudoku in the Japanese government’s Course of Study
This article focuses upon the Japanese government’s decision in 2009 to direct an ‘English-only’ strategy for English language education in senior high schools from 2013. In the Course of Study 2009, and more recently again in the Course of Study 2018, the Japanese government implicitly blames the local grammar-translation method of teaching, known as yakudoku, for the failure of teachers to foster their students’ English proficiency, and suggest…
Global English and Political Economy
In this book, John O’Regan examines the role of political economy in the worldwide spread of English and traces the origins and development of the dominance of English to the endless accumulation of capital in a capitalist world-system. O’Regan combines Marxist perspectives of capital accumulation with world-systems analysis, international political economy, and studies of imperialism and empire to present a historical account of the ‘free riding…
Swiss Multilingualism and Global English: Bourdieusian Capitals in Contestation
This paper reports on a small-scale research study into the beliefs of teenagers in Switzerland on Swiss national languages and their status relative to English. High school students (n = 232) in the French-speaking city of Lausanne completed a questionnaire about the economic, social, cultural and symbolic value of German, Italian and English. The data was then analysed quantitatively by computing the means, standard deviations, significance, an…
The capitalist dialectics of international student mobility in the modern world-system
International higher education (IHE) and with that international student mobility (ISM) and internationalisation have become widely embedded in the educational mobility literature as commonplace conceptualisations in a world which is everywhere imagined as globalised. The present response paper considers the contribution of the papers of this special issue to our understanding of ISM and to international study-abroad in Asia while also locating t…
The discursive emergence of ‘the market’ in capitalist political economy: Crisis system and the Longue Durée
This paper presents a longue dure account of the discursive emergence of 'the market'.It seeks to develop understanding of the 'crisis system' by showing that the crises of the present have their origins earlier than some critical realist scholars have suggested and can be better understood by the theorization of the generative mechanisms that emerged from the economic and political chaos of the early 1600s.Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is em…
I Told Them I Want to Speak Chinese!” The Struggle of UK Students to Negotiate Language Identities While Studying Chinese in China
This article leverages interview data from students of Chinese who enrolled at a UK university but pursued a period of study abroad in China, aiming to delve into their negotiation of language identities during their overseas experience.By employing Block's structural model in our discourse analysis, this research reveals the dynamic interplay between agency and structure, shedding light on the intricate process of language learning and identity …
Exploring AI for intercultural communication: Open conversation
AI is not new. What is new, however, is the speed and depth of its expansion in almost every aspect of our lives. This discussion forum is dedicated to exploring new frontiers and agendas for language and intercultural communication research. In this concluding piece, we invite the contributors to share insights on five key questions: their experiences (Question 1), the challenges and opportunities that we face (Question 2), the strengths and ski…
Artificial intelligence and depth ontology: Implications for intercultural ethics
Despite increasing concerns over the use of AI in surveillance, privacy, public health, climate change, global migration and warfare, the implications of its use in the field of intercultural communication are still not clearly defined. This paper critically examines the contemporary emergence of AI through the lens of a critical realist depth ontology to argue that AI, with its unending interplay of signs and symbols, is the ultimate simulacrum.…
A World without Capitalism Is Common Sense
Performing the ideal scholar-self: Interplay between digital trans-literacies and neoliberal academic identity in overseas Chinese PhD student vlogs
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (16 works) · Linguistics (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Pedagogy (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (8 works) · Social science (8 works)