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‘Enhancing human capital?’ Language and the Neoliberal University
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Berkeley Language Centre, October 5th 2012
Marnie Holborow
Dublin City University, Ireland.
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neoliberalism
• Stamp of our age ‘the common sense way many of us interpret, live in and understand the world’ (Harvey 2005:3)
• Neoliberal transformations – ‘redefined the relationship between state, society and the economy’
(Ward 2012:1)
• Neoliberalism and Education – means to dynamic market economy + another service to be delivered on the market.
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• ‘spread of market speak’ (Mautner 2010)
‘interdiscursive alignment’
• ‘marketisation of public discourse in neoliberal capitalism’ (Fairclough 2010)
discourse ‘colonised’ by the language of new capitalism discursive construal of the world
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interpretations neoliberal ideology in language
*Business communication * Institutional discourse * Critical discourse analysis
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‘discourse driven’ interpretations of neoliberalism
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discourse/text
social practice
‘when ideologies find expression in language we call them discourses’ Canagarajah and Ben Said 2011
discursive practice
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language, neoliberal ideology and the real world
• ‘social means behind meaning’
‘persistent context of all language’ (Hymes 1996)
• language-in flux, never settled
• socially driven and socially contested
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• less state subvention
• academic commercialism
• internationalisation
• university management methods
• degrees tapered to the employment market
• increased competition between universities 6
the ‘persistent context’ the evolving neoliberal university
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● austerity and ‘more for less’
2005-2010 20% increase in students in HE
2005-2010 fall in public funding for HE by 16%
● expansion marked by social class
● staff polarisation
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neoliberal university speeded up in post- crash Ireland
University staff
pay cut by up to
21% since 2008
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Why keywords?
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‘keywords… in which deep conflicts of value, and belief are .. engaged’.
Williams 1986:11.
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a process quite central in the development of a language when in certain words tones and rhythms meanings are offered, felt for, tested, confirmed, asserted, qualified, changed …..
Williams 1983:11
‘binding words which are indicative for certain forms of thought’ Williams 1983:15
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• Keywords are ‘the nodes around which ideological battles are fought’. Stubbs 2001:68
• ‘tips of icebergs’ Stubbs 2010:21-22
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Neoliberal keywords
social agency and meaning
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Ideology
• One sided representation
• Articulated from a particular social class
• Part-believed, part-rejected
• Influenced by real world events
• Coextensive with language but distinct from it
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‘neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of
their own, they are only manifestations of actual life’(Marx 1974:118)
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Neoliberal keywords ( HUNT REPORT 2011)
……higher education providers in the Irish market (p 108 )
….. the relationships between higher education and enterprise can position Ireland at the leading edge of the competitive market (p 31-2)
….. the commercialisation of new knowledge (p 32)
……business- academic partnerships (p76)
…… business engagement in curriculum development (p105)
……. The commercialisation of intellectual property from publicly-funded research should primarily provide a gross return to the economy (p 61)
……. leverage the traditionally high value we place on education (p 4)
market
enterprise
commercialisation
business
intellectual property
leverage (vb)
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I work in the knowledge and human resources industry. My company specialises in two kinds of product: we manufacture high-quality, multi-skilled units of human capacity; and we produce commercially relevant, cutting-edge new knowledge in user-friendly packages of printed material. I hold a middle-management level position responsible to a divisional head who reports directly to the Chief Executive. We have been increasing output of both products during the last twenty years, while at the same time pursuing a cost cutting programme by making efficiency gains of 1% per year. We compete in the global market place and our brand-recognition scores are high. The company’s name is HiEdBiz plc and its motto is ‘World-class products at rock-bottom prices’.
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‘Human capital’
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If Ireland is to achieve its ambitions for recovery and development within an innovation-driven economy, it is essential to create and enhance human capital by expanding participation in higher education. (p3 Hunt Report)
— n
economics the abilities and skills of any individual, esp those acquired through investment in education and training, that enhance potential income earning
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Human capital /smart economy
A key feature of the Smart Economy is building the
innovation or ‘ideas’ component of the economy through
investment in human capital and its ability and
effectiveness in translating ideas into valuable processes,
products and services
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Human Capital
Knowledge
transfer
Quality output
Global reputation
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human collocates with….
• (25)shields, love, affection, design, condition, endeavour, ability, activities, brain, memory, record, eye, susceptibility, propensity, case, propensity, universals, morality, condition, excrement, failings,
(Corpus of American English) • (25) rights, being, Rights, experience, nature, chain,
activity, actions, intelligence, heart, Rights, kindness, nervous system, servants, head, relations, rights abuses, nature, hand, look, reason, beings, operators, soul, gene,
(British National Corpus 9) ‘human capital’ 33
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Human capital metaphor
• Treats labour as a produced means of production
• Centres on differentiation of the labour force
• Brings social institutions previously relegated to
cultural and superstructural spheres into
the realm of economic analysis
Bowles and Gintis 1975
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a quality a thing
What the metaphor entails (1) Human skills, abilities
Capital
human skills and capital seen in
individual terms, divorced of social
context
What the metaphor entails (2)
ideological at two levels → commodification and erasing of social relations
human capital metaphor
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Human capital – rates of return
‘The Smart Economy is developed by
enhancing productivity per person by
investing in human capital’
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Becker(1962) rates of return : investment in education
: for the individual employee
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social agency and the adoption of neoliberal keywords
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2004 OECD Report on Higher Education in Ireland 2011 National Strategy for Higher Education until 2030 ‘The Hunt Report’
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The mission of Higher Education is described thus in the Hunt Report (DES 2011:10):
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In the decades ahead, higher education will play a central role in making Ireland a country recognised for innovation, competitive enterprise and continuing academic excellence, [……] If Ireland is to achieve its ambitions for recovery and development within an innovation-driven economy, it is essential to create and enhance human capital by expanding participation in higher education.
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liberal university * production of people able to govern, manage, lead
neoliberal university * production of human capital * responding directly to the needs
of capital
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Human capital ‘discursive ‘regime’?
• Restricts users - restricts acceptance?
• Problems of identification - alienation
23 2009 student demonstration Vienna
Wir sind kein Humankapital
It ain’t human and it ain’t capital
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neoliberal ideology and real world events
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create and enhancing human capital by increasing participation in higher education…….
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• ideology and discourse distinct
• keywords as a tool to investigate ideology in language
• role of social agents in spread of neoliberal keywords
• role of persistent context of neoliberal university in a period of economic crisis 25
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social nature of language
• ‘The speech act is by its nature social. The word is not a tangible object but an always shifting, always changing means of social communication. It never rests with one consciousness, one voice. Its dynamism consists in a movement from speaker to speaker, from one context to another, from one generation to another. Through it all, the word does not forget its path of transfer and cannot completely free itself from the power of those concrete contexts into which it has entered….the word enters our context from another context, permeated with the intentions of other speakers’.
(Quoted in Volosinov 1973: 199)
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AL a subject defined by other subjects?
Autonomous
Applied
Linguistics
General linguistics
Sociology
Public policy
Psychology
Health Sciences
Information technology
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Hall, Smith and
Wicaksono 2011 ;16
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The neoliberal view of applied linguistics?
Enterprise
Entrepreneurship
Innovation
Intellectual property
Language graduates
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Ideology and the real
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Ideology and real world events
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