In Pursuit of the Bilingual Label or Something More? Opening Up Ideological Spaces in the Bilingual 2030 Policy
Journal
Language Policy
Start Page
151
End Page
167
ISSN
1571-5361
2452-1027
ISBN
9783031934896
9783031934902
Date Issued
2025
Author(s)
Tsou, Wenli
Abstract
Language issues in Taiwan play a central role in the construction of the Taiwanese identity and how Taiwan presents itself globally. The BILINGUAL 2030 policy, introduced in 2018, has further brought such issues into the spotlight, opening rich conversations about the place of English in the linguistic ecology of Taiwan. Building on the onion metaphor to evoke the layers through which policy travels, in this study we target the ideological spaces carved out within the “onion”—that is, the agendas put forward by key policy arbiters who wield a disproportionate amount of power in guiding the public’s understanding of what being bilingual means. We focus on three research groups in Taiwan—from the fields of education, English language teaching, and linguistics & cultural studies respectively—that carry distinct agendas in implementing, revising, or resisting the policy. Specifically, we share how the three groups approach language/bilingualism, language education/bilingual education, codeswitching/translanguaging, and the relationship between language, culture, and nation. The intention is to deepen the policy dialogue by examining how Taiwan may navigate tensions between globalization and localization, standardization and English lingua franca, as well as monolingualism and multi/plurilingualism in directions that help transform existing power structures in language and education.
SDGs
Publisher
Springer Nature Switzerland
Type
book part