In this Centre for Research in Education in Asia (CREA) presentation, Lin Pan (Associate Professor and vice-chair of the English Department at Beijing Normal University (BNU)) will discuss her research on using English to realise "the Chinese Dream".
This research examines how “the Chinese Dream of the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” as the state’s ideology has influenced the global spread of English in China in recent decades and how the political economy of this ideology has affected the state’s foreign language planning.
To do so, Lin Pan investigates the two recently promulgated national guiding principles of foreign language education policy documents, namely, the 2017 version of the English Curriculum Standards (2018 ECS) at the senior high education level and the 2022 version of the English Curriculum Standards (2022 ECS) at the compulsory education level. These documents were drafted, promoted, and implemented over the past decade, along with the advocacy of the fulfilment of the Chinese Dream.
Through the lens of the global political economy (Marx, 1990 [1867]; Block, Gray, and Holborow, 2012; Block, 2017) and drawing upon the perspective of the modern world system (Wallerstein, 1989), this paper uncovers the different layers of this state ideology towards global English and English learning over the past decade in relation to the evolving political and economic contexts of China on the international stage.
The research will also reveal, in a broader sense, how state ideologies towards English may evolve in contestations for economic and political power in the modern world system and how they could affect language planning.
Speaker: Lin Pan
Lin Pan's research interests encompass language ideologies, sociolinguistics, and language education. She is the author of the book "English as a Global Language in China: Deconstructing the Ideological Discourse of English in Language Education," published by Springer International in 2015.
Additionally, she co-edited "Mandarin Chinese Teacher Education: Issues and Solutions" published by UCL IOE Press in 2018. Lin PAN has published papers in various journals, including Language Policy, System, Visual Communication, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Applied Linguistic Review, and English Today.
Currently, she is working on the second edition of the book "Exploring World Englishes: Language in a Global Context "with Philip Seargeant, to be published by Routledge.
Attend this event
The event will take place in 8 West 2.10 on the University of Bath campus.
It will also be available as a live stream, which you can watch via Zoom