신자유주의 언어정책에 관한 비판적 고찰과 대안 담론의 모색

Exploring the neoliberal language policy and alternative discourses

In recent decades, there has been a tendency to frame language abilities as a set of technical skills that can be defined, quantified, measured, predicted and ultimately controlled. Language Policy and Planning (LPP), which is commodified, over-rationalized, technologized, and monolingually driven, has led to the current conventions of developing curriculum, materials, and tests of language learning in multicultural education. The purpose of this study is to examine the neoliberal (dominant) and alternative discourses on the LPP in Korean linguistic societies. It was firstly discussed that the neoliberal discourses have been ideologically embedded with economism, rationalism, technocentrism, and neoliberalism. Then the alternative discourses were explored through relevant literature in lingua franca, ecological linguistic environment, metrolingualism, and translingual practice. It was argued that neoliberally driven LPP restricts the use of different languages other than Korean-only or English-only, and, therefore, discriminate lingua franca users, metrolingual, ecolinguals, and translinguals. Following the critical views on the current LPP, further research issues regarding postcolonial translingualism, critical discourse analysis, poststructuralism, language-as-resource ideologies were suggested. As the neoliberal approach to LPP has become a common phenomenon, the meaningfulness should be seriously questioned in fast-approaching multicultural contexts of communication in Korea.