"A New Worker, for a New Order, in a New Era": English, Power and Shifting Ideologies of Reflexivity in a Chinese Global Workplace

Autor/in	Gong, Eleanor Yue
Titel	"A New Worker, for a New Order, in a New Era": English, Power and Shifting Ideologies of Reflexivity in a Chinese Global Workplace
Quelle	In: Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 42 (2023) 6, S.831-853 (23 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Gong, Eleanor Yue)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0167-8507
DOI	10.1515/multi-2022-0097
Schlagwörter	English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Chinese; Language Usage; Work Environment; Foreign Countries; Language Attitudes; Global Approach; Ethnography; Historiography; Case Studies; Corporations; Personal Autonomy; Power Structure; Intercultural Communication; Employee Attitudes; China (Shanghai) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Zweitsprachenerwerb; China; Chinesen; Sprachgebrauch; Arbeitsmilieu; Ausland; Sprachverhalten; Globales Denken; Ethnografie; Geschichtsschreibung; Case study; Fallstudie; Case Study; Unternehmen; Individuelle Autonomie; Interkulturelle Kommunikation; Arbeitnehmerinteresse
Abstract	This paper offers a historiographic and ethnographic analysis of how reflexivity, as a communicative practice and valued personality trait, has been understood, regulated, legitimised and used to control Chinese workers from the planned-economy era to the present. Using a Shanghai-based multinational company as a case study, I document how and under what conditions English-mediated reflexivity, with its stress on self-entrepreneurship, came to replace former Mandarin-mediated reflexivity supporting a notion of collective workerhood. Special attention is paid to reflexivity's changing roles in shaping, managing and evaluating workers and facilitating understandings of labour, power and agency. The paper argues that the emerging English-dominated reflexivity represents a required linguistic shift for the creation of a new worker type in the current globalised economy as it normalises managerial technologies of discipline, stratification and exclusion. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01