The construction of language-based ethnic borders in educational settings : discursive approaches to social exclusion in language policy and policing

Abstract

This thesis is a compilation of three studies. The main policy objects for analysis are two public debates over language-in-education policies in mass and social media platforms and the experience of, and attitudes towards, language policing incidents on university campuses. Discursive approaches are adopted in the three studies, which are generally informed by poststructuralism that emphasizes the discursive nature of social practice and identities. Study 1 examines 138 news articles published in Hong Kong about Putonghua as a medium of instruction (PMI) for teaching Chinese during a one-year period. Informed by the concept of news framing and the multiple streams approach (MSA), the study investigates the discursive participation of the local Chinese print media in the PMI policy process. Detailed thematic analysis revealed how the press might have discursively impeded policy outputs with regard to PMI practice in Hong Kong. The results remind policy entrepreneurs of the importance of framing, counter-framing, and the ways in which different stakeholders engage with the mass media. Study 2 adopted a post-structural framework to examine problem representations in the public debate over the Shanghainese Heritage Project (SHP), a policy proposal to promote the use of Shanghainese, the local Chinese variety in Shanghai, in 20 pilot kindergartens. The dataset consists of 279 news articles, 98 online forum threads and 800 social media postings, covering a period from January 2013 to June 2017. The findings suggest that the policy problem for SHP was officially represented as the declining vitality of Shanghainese, while explicitly constructed as the conflicts between “locals” and “non-locals” by the netizens. As a result, children from migrant families might risk being dis-citizened under SHP. The study reminds language policymakers and educators of possible ramifications associated with the policy and suggests that both Shanghainese and other regional Chinese varieties should be maintained and respected in schools. Study 3 investigates into language policing incidents at two universities in Hong Kong during the society-wide demonstrations against an extradition bill introduced in 2019. Interviews with eleven students suggest that language use became an important resource to mark collective identities, i.e., Chinese mainlanders and Hongkongers. This led to events of rejection, isolation and social exclusion on campus experienced by students from Mainland China. However, social exclusion seemed to be a game played by both sides. Collectively constructed social categories were accepted and adopted in both groups, and the automatically presumed political stance associated with group identity emerged as the most defining difference that reinforced the “Us” vs “Them” relation. The study then deconstructs this boundary from the perspective of post-structuralist discourse theory (PDT) and discuss the implications for educators. The thesis finds that various forms of resistance to standardized language may at the same time become a form of oppression, social exclusion and discrimination. Discursive approaches to language policy reveal the oppressive side of resistance by deconstructing shared social categories that reproduce social exclusion. These approaches form an eclectic collection of theories and methods that can enrich our understanding of the dynamics in the process of language policy.