Language Policy, Culture, and Identity in Asian Contexts

Bringing together scholarship on issues relating to language, culture, and identity, with a special focus on Asian countries, this volume makes an important contribution in terms of analyzing and demonstrating how language is closely linked with crucial social, political, and economic forces, particularly the tensions between the demands of globalization and local identity. A particular feature is the inclusion of countries that have been under-represented in the research literature, such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Korea. The book is organized in three sections:

• Globalization and its Impact on Language Policies, Culture, and Identity
• Language Policy and the Social (Re)construction of National Cultural Identity
• Language Policy and Language Politics: The Role of English.

Unique in its attention to how the domination of English is being addressed in relation to cultural values and identity by non-English speaking countries in a range of sociopolitical contexts, this volume will help readers to understand the impact of globalization on non-English speaking countries, particularly developing countries, which differ significantly from contexts in the West in their cultural orientations and the way identities are being constructed.
 
Language Policy, Culture, and Identity in Asian Contexts will interest scholars and research students in the areas of language policy, education, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and critical linguistics. It can be adopted in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on language policy, language in society, and language education.

Amy B.M. Tsui is Chair Professor in Language and Education at The University of Hong Kong. She obtained her Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Birmingham, U.K., and has taught in Hong Kong and Singapore. Her research interests and publications cover a range of areas, including conversational analysis, classroom discourse analysis, medium of instruction policy, teacher education, and information technology in education. Her most recent publications include Understanding Expertise in Teaching (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Classroom Discourse and the Space of Learning (with Ference Marton, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), Medium of Instruction Policies—Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? (co-edited with James W. Tollefson, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), Introducing Classroom Interaction (Pengin) and English Conversation (Oxford University Press). 
James W. Tollefson is Professor of English at International Christian University in Tokyo. He obtained his PhD in linguistics at Stanford University, and has taught in Japan, Philippines, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia. His research interests include language policy, migrant education, teacher education, and medium of instruction policies. His publications include Planning Language, Planning Inequality: Language Policy in the Community (Longman, 1991), Power and Inequality in Language Education (Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1995), Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002) and Medium of Instruction Policies—Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? (co-edited with Amy B.M. Tsui, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004).