UC Berkeley

Neoliberalism has become the hegemonic rationality of our time, framing nearly every aspect of our social world in terms of competition. This dissertation sheds light on neoliberal infiltration and naturalization within the field of language education through three distinct but interrelated papers. In Discourses of dual language bilingual education, I map out the discursive landscape of the field and, building on Ruiz (1984), I theorize a cross-epistemic model to demonstrate why the English-as-resource paradigm of the nationalist era has transformed into a multilingualism-as-resource paradigm within the current neoliberal era. In Rebranding bilingualism: The shifting discourses of language education policy in California’s 2016 election, I use critical discourse analysis to compare Proposition 227 (1998), which effectively banned bilingual education in California, with its legislative repeal, Proposition 58 (2016), specifically demonstrating the discursive shift to neoliberalism that occurred between 20th and 21st century language education policies. In Mechanisms of neoliberalization within California’s language education policy, I draw on the tools of critical discourse analysis as well as corpus linguistics to examine California language education policy texts spanning from 1967 to the present, laying bare three discursive mechanisms of neoliberalization within the field: 1) infiltration of market-based vocabulary; 2) terminological sloganization; and 3) commodification of multilingualism.

While the neoliberalization of language education has contributed to more widespread support of bilingual education—now rebranded as multilingualism—it has also altered the reasons behind this support—from promoting equity and social justice to a market-based rationale of expanding individual opportunity in an increasingly globalized world. My findings point to the ways in which those who have traditionally been served by bilingual education—that is, racially and linguistically minoritized students—are being crowded out by more privileged (i.e., white) students seeking a competitive edge in the global market era. Neoliberal policies–through color-blind, a-historic, and universalistic rhetoric–are deceptively designed to appear objective and democratic (“for all”). I argue, however, that neoliberalism undermines democracy by reproducing colonial relations of power that privilege Whiteness. This collected work contributes to a deeper understanding of the political work of language.