The linguistic market for English in Bangladesh

Bibliographic Data

ID12677889
AuthorsM Obaidul Hamid (0000-0003-3205-6124, ,, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume17
Issue1
Pages36-55
Publication date2015-11-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCurrent Issues in Language Planning (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-4208 • E-ISSN: 1747-7506
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14664208.2016.1105909
OpenAlexW2272179845
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited50

A large body of work has investigated the presence of English and its teaching and learning in the developing world where English is used as a second/foreign language. While this work has provided plausible explanations for the global spread of English as well as its uptake by education policy-makers and communities, there has been limited research on, in Bourdieu's (1991, p. 44) terms, the “economic and social conditions of the acquisition of the legitimate competence” in English. This paper draws on Bourdieu's concepts of linguistic market and linguistic capital to illustrate differential proficiency outcomes for different market actors affiliated with different education markets in Bangladesh. Although Bourdieu focused on the notion of a “unified market” with reference to the dominant or official language, investigating English as a second or foreign language requires exploring multiple markets of English in the polity. Drawing on a diversified understanding of the context of language policy and planning, these markets are located at the national and subnational levels. I argue that while macro-level policy-makers have been guided by “linguistic communism” in introducing English for all, it is actually market forces that determine, to a large extent, who attains linguistic competence and whose competence is likely to be transformed into linguistic capital

Competence (human resources · Economics · Foreign language · Language policy · Linguistic competence · Linguistic description · Linguistics · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Multilingual Education and Policy · Second Language Learning and Teaching

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