8.1 Dialogicality and Struggle in Policy Discourse

So far, this book has looked at a number of actions that surround the exercise of power over discourse in different types of institutional or community settings, including how language policies are created, debated, interpreted and enforced. In relation to these actions, I have highlighted the need to take account of the broadest possible array of agentive spaces available around any ‘policy’, underlining the fact that any exercise of power is in its nature a complex social phenomenon. Yet the book has thus far examined primarily how any given policy is supported by these many different agencies, and I’ve paid relatively little attention to how people act in opposition to policy and the institutional or community authority it is imbued with. The focus of this chapter is thus on resistance, a complex and potentially rather slippery set of actions characterised by an overall orientation against a policy and/or against the authority the policy is associated with. The slipperiness of resistance comes precisely from the fact that, rather than a coherent typology of sub-actions that can be anticipated ahead of time and out of context, it is constituted by a multitude of potential types of action which, in context, are intended by those who perform them and/or interpreted by those who perceive them as being ‘against’ a policy or an authority. As I will discuss below, a key challenge in the study of resistance is thus to make sense of how this orientation ‘against’ is communicated.

Before delving into the specifics of how resistance can be identified and described in an empirical sense, some attention must be devoted to the conceptual background to the study of resistance in language policy. In Chapter 1, I described this book as representative of a ‘critical’ approach in the sense that it seeks to interrogate where in society unequal relations of power are present, how they are reproduced, and how they may be changed for the better. This understanding of criticality has its roots in the position adopted by other traditions, in particular critical discourse analysis, the core focus of which is on social domination, or ‘power abuse of one group over others’ (Wodak & Meyer, Reference Wodak and Meyer2015, p. 9). While such an understanding may form a useful starting point in language policy, it is also in its nature far too restrictive, as is evidenced by the actions examined in this book thus far, since the one-dimensional focus on ‘domination’ gives little room for the type of agentive participation seen, for instance, in creating or interpreting a policy. Indeed, while Wodak and Meyer leave space for examining ‘how dominated groups may discursively resist [power abuse]’ (Reference Wodak and Meyer2015), relatively little attention is paid by frameworks in critical discourse analysis to such resistance, with the conceptual and empirical focus instead squarely placed on power in a ‘negative sense’ – as oppressive actions that serve to stifle grass-roots agency and maintain the unequal status quo by perpetuating dominant ideologies. While such a focus is valuable in language policy when it comes to the study of how ‘common sense’ ideas around language are enforced (see Chapter 7), it is equally important to take account of how people, whether one-by-one or collectively, try to reshape the dominant structures around them. This ultimately also means that while we must maintain a transformative orientation, looking to change society for the better, language policy scholarship must not assume that it alone has agency in pursuing such changes, and must instead observe how people create positions of power that allow them to argue for and try to achieve such transformation.

Such a focus on power as potentially oppressive as well as potentially liberatory has profound implications for the conceptualisation of notions like discourse, ideology and hegemony in language policy. In Chapter 5, I drew on Reisigl and Wodak’s (Reference Wodak2015) conceptualisation of discourse as being related to a macro-topic (e.g. language policy), consisting of multiple perspectives, and reflecting continuous interaction between these. The latter quality was described as dialogicality by Bakhtin (Reference Bakhtin1981; Reference Bakhtin1984), who saw different ways of construing the world as co-existing in continuous interaction, with individual discursive actions existing not in isolation but as part of complex, interwoven dialogues (see also Savski, Reference Savski2021). As outlined in Chapter 5, such dialogues occur both at the intersubjective level, as part of exchanges between the voices of individuals (reflecting their life trajectory, experience, socialisation, see Pietikäinen & Dufva, Reference Pietikäinen and Dufva2006), and at the ideological level, through the contrasts that arise between different social belief systems. Thus, while the voices of certain actors may become dominant in discourse and the ideologies spread by such voices may become hegemonic, this should not imply the existence of monoglossia (one-voicedness) or monophony (one-ideologicalness). Rather, any dominance or hegemony should be seen as a site of constant struggle, where the ‘common sense’ (Gramsci, Reference Gramsci1971) that dominant groups seek to impose is open to continuous subversion, contestation and transformation, and where in turn continuous discursive effort is expended by dominant groups to try and maintain the status quo.

The Singaporean context I examined in Chapter 5 offers a good example of how such dynamics play out in real life. As discussed, Singapore is a highly diverse linguistic ecology in which, aside from English as the language of official communication and Chinese, Malay and Tamil as heritage languages of the three core ethnic communities, a creolised basilectal variety referred to as Singlish is also widely spoken. Singlish is lexically, grammatically and phonologically significantly different from English, with the two existing along a continuum that Singaporeans navigate on a daily basis according to a number of social factors (e.g. setting, participants, medium, etc.). The indexical meaning of English and Singlish is a site where significant struggle has occurred over the last decades, with efforts made since the early 2000s as part of the Speak Good English Movement to codify standard English as representative of Singaporean national identity and to marginalise Singlish as ‘bad English’ (Rubdy, Reference Rubdy2001). While these attempts were initiated as a form of community language policy (in this case, a campaign in media and education), they were in line with ideology of key state figures, such as former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who once referred to Singlish as a ‘handicap’. Yet, the movement has also faced significant resistance, founded on a counter-narrative in which Singlish, rather than standard English, is positioned as a symbol of national unity (Wee, Reference Wee2014). Indeed, it is now possible to observe instances where Singlish is explicitly celebrated, such as through its adoption by the airline Jetstar for in-flight announcements, part of a promotional campaign related to the 2016 National Day. The construction of such overtly subversive counter-narratives is a key element of resistance, but it is a mere part of the many forms that actions ‘against policy’ can take – I examine these in the following section.

8.2 Language and Grass-Roots Mobilisation

Overall, the scope of what types of actions ‘resisting’ can entail is exceedingly broad, particularly when one considers the entirety of semiotic means that can be used to mediate it. Perhaps the most visible, obvious form of resistance is public protest in its different forms, where the key semiotic means is space itself. As illustrated by ‘Occupy’-style protests in the last decade, a key means of resistance in protest is the physical appropriation of public space, both in order to facilitate the construction of a new semiotic landscape (e.g. through the emplacement of protest signs and symbols, see Gillen et al., Reference Gillen, Yu, Fan and Ho2020; Hanauer, Reference Hanauer, Rubdy and Ben Said2015; Seals, Reference Seals, Rubdy and Ben Said2015) and to disrupt the existing structure of space (e.g. by blocking or obstructing traffic in a major intersection) in order to amplify the voices of protesters. In such cases, resistance may at times flout norms of ‘peaceful protest’ and include elements of violence, since the occupation and reappropriation of public space is not likely to be achieved without some degree of imposition upon others, nor is it likely to pass without counter-resistance. The environmental protests led by groups like Extinction Rebellion in the UK are a case in point, since they involve a level of physical force on the part of protesters (i.e. making use of their bodies to block traffic) as well as evoking physical force on the part of those seeking to suppress them, both law enforcement and normal citizens (who for instance end up attempting to drag protesters away in order to free traffic). Elsewhere, resistance may be much less overt, and may simply involve the juxtaposition of contrasting narratives with only limited evidence of struggle. Moriarty’s (Reference Moriarty2014) study of a tourist town in the West of Ireland for instance observes contrasts between state-imposed signage, which featured English prominently while giving Irish a largely tokenistic presence, and its much more meaningful use on signs created by residents, where Irish indexed both local belonging (to community members) and authenticity (to outsiders).

Between the two extremes represented by overt protest, particularly in cases where it borders on violence, and passive juxtaposition of narratives, where struggle is largely unexpressed, lies an array of different phenomena that may be described as ‘resisting’. The classic work which presents an account of such practices is Scott (Reference Scott1985), which presents a detailed ethnographic account of life in a Malaysian farming village, focussing in particular on class conflict and on the strategies employed by marginalised groups to try and resist the agendas of dominant groups. Termed ‘weapons of the weak’ by Scott, these strategies were observed in a context where, for a variety of reasons related both to local culture, economic structure and coercion, overt resistance was in most cases simply impossible. Thus, when faced with challenges to their livelihood, farm workers quietly sabotaged newly acquired farming equipment, arranged boycotts when payment was deemed to be too low, strategically performed substandard work or worked at a slower pace, engaged in deception when negotiating, gossiped against or shunned those who accepted lower payment, or even simply stole items from wealthier residents. All this was done while largely avoiding open expression of conflict and maintaining harmony within the community through expressions of deference and conformity: ‘Where resistance is collective, it is carefully circumspect; where it is an individual or small group attack on property, it is anonymous and usually nocturnal’ (Scott, Reference Scott1985, p. 273). This avoidance of conflict is perhaps the key consideration in discussion of resistance in many contexts – it’s the behind-the-scenes work to try and subvert, obstruct or divert a policy that matters, not necessarily the public drama that takes place when different visions are confronted. Thus, to understand how policies may be resisted, we must in many cases peer beyond what is immediately visible, just as is the case in the creation of policy (see Chapter 4). For instance, while the adoption of a policy like CEFR (see Chapter 6) may appear like a nation-state is conforming to outside pressure by appropriating a new educational vision, it may well be the case that such a policy is in many respects adopted without significant change to practices, adopted on paper but then placed on a shelf or otherwise marginalised (for such a case in relation to CEFR, see Franz & Teo, Reference Franz and Teo2018). Similarly, while learning to speak English can appear like passive submission to hegemonic ideology (see Chapter 7), such acquisition can also be a type of pragmatic mimicry, which is done without subscribing to the underlying colonial ideological narrative (Canagarajah, Reference Canagarajah and Ricento2000; Pennycook, Reference Pennycook2010).

Underlining the fuzzy and often veiled nature of resistance are cases where relatively covert acts are widely understood as a form of resistance, even being obstructed or suppressed, while other seemingly more bald-faced acts end up going relatively unnoticed as a result of their strategic nature. In contexts where restrictions on freedom of expression exist, it is for instance common to find examples of protest which, while veiled, appear to be mutually understood both by those protesting and those being protested against. A recent case in China was the ‘white paper’ protests during 2022, in which citizens took to the streets to express their disagreement with the government’s Zero Covid policy by holding blank sheets of paper – these represented the fact that the protests were in effect ‘saying but not saying the unsayable’ in protesting against a policy closely associated with General Secretary Xi Jinping. Such cases of ‘saying but not saying’ suggest that there is a degree of interpretability when it comes to resistance – actions can come to be seen as resistance even when they do not overtly take up a position ‘against’, and can even be repressed on this basis (as was the case in the ‘white paper’ protests). In other situations, resistance may appear more blatant but may go unpunished because it is accompanied by a show of conformity. At the Islamic schools in the Deep South of Thailand investigated in Ayae and Savski (Reference Ayae and Savski2024), clear efforts were being made to communicate local belonging and difference despite nominal conformity to homogenising national policies. In this case, Thai, as the mandated medium of instruction, was ubiquitous in public signage at both schools, while at the same time a significant amount of signage could be observed containing the local language (Malay), indexing the local religion (Islam), and communicating narratives of belonging to both. In a context marked by violence in recent years (Lo Bianco, Reference Lo Bianco, Kelly, Footitt and Salama-Carr2019), and one where overt resistance to the dominant nationalist narrative can swiftly bring about accusations of sedition, such tacit hybridisation of resistant and conforming narratives is a key survival strategy.

A conceptual framework under which we can fit phenomena of resistance with reference to language is what Stroud has referred to as linguistic citizenship. Drawing on, among others, Isin’s conceptualisation of citizenship as a form of practice ‘by which actors constitute themselves (and others) as subjects of rights’ (Reference Stroud and Petrovic2009, p. 371), Stroud examines actions through which people ‘express agency, voice and participation through a variety of semiotic means, wrestle control from political institutions of the state, as well as put forward claims for new forms of inclusion by using their language over many modalities’ (2015, p. 25). In other words, just as citizenship relates to ways of equitably participating in society, linguistic citizenship is about claiming ownership of language and taking up an agentive stance toward it (for a similar argument with regard to English as a global language, see Widdowson, Reference Widdowson, Zamel and Spack1998). In Stroud’s sense, such participation involves ‘reframe[ing] semiotic practices of citizenship away from a totalising sense of language’ (Reference Stroud2015, p. 33), most often but not exclusively represented by ideological regimes where citizenship is narrowed, being associated with a particular language, whether national or international, or both (see e.g. Chapter 7). In such cases, linguistic citizenship involves all types of actions through which such narrowed down visions of belonging are subverted, and through which alternative, more inclusive notions are imagined and communicated.

In line with frameworks like linguistic citizenship, this chapter takes a broadly positive view of resistance, since it is a phenomenon often observed when authority in language policy is exerted to marginalise particular voices, ideas and forms of knowledge. However, there is also a need not to over-idealise grass-roots resistance – just as it is wrong to assume that power serves only the interests of the dominant group, it is also problematic to assume that any form of resistance is automatically positive. For instance, while activism can often take the form of resistance to the type of ‘totalising sense of language’ mentioned by Stroud, it can just as well serve to enforce dominant ideologies of language and perpetuate the exclusion of those which do not conform to them (Jaffe, Reference Jaffe1999). In extreme cases, resistance to language policy may also be founded on beliefs that are at odds with objective, scientific facts – for instance when local educational leaders decide to ignore provisions for multilingualism out of a firm belief that only complete immersion can facilitate language acquisition (for one such case, see Widiawati & Savski, Reference Widiawati and Savski2023).

8.3 Studying Resistance to Language Policy

In this chapter thus far, I have outlined what form resistance may take in language policy and discussed some of the key considerations that apply to its study. Fundamentally, the analysis of resistance is complex because there is neither a clear-cut typology of ‘resistant acts’ nor is there any guarantee that such acts would be overt, or that they would be overtly flagged as resistant. Rather, examining resistance necessitates a ground-up approach in which the focus is on contextualising resistant actions as part of the overall discourse around a particular policy, so that the point of reference for the identification of resistance is not a predetermined typology of actions but rather an orientation against a particular ‘totalising sense of language’ (Stroud, Reference Stroud2015, p. 33), as represented by a language policy. We can then consider whether acts that appear to constitute resistance are recognised as such in the setting under investigation, and whether any attempts to suppress such resistance are evident. Finally, we can observe whether the resistant acts engage in ‘prospective critique’ (Reisigl & Wodak, Reference Reisigl and Wodak2001) by projecting a counter-narrative to the ‘totalising sense of language’. These interests can be condensed in the following research questions:

These research questions underline a key complication in the study of resistance, namely the need to concurrently also focus on examining the status quo that the resistance is oriented ‘against’. Because of its overt intention to disrupt, resistance against language policy as an exercise of institutional or community authority must, as acknowledged by Scott (Reference Scott1985), be observed in dialogue with the exercise of authority. In particular, this applies to actions of enforcement (Chapter 7), which, aside from being specifically oriented to coercing those subject to authority into following it, can often also come to specifically serve as forms of ‘counter-resistance’ when they are deployed to ‘shut down’ voices. Such an analysis necessitates explicit attention to dialogicality, in particular to the interactional sequences between actions of enforcing and resisting. To an extent, this can be achieved through a focus on the diversity of voice and ideology in discourse around language policy, by observing how different ideological narratives are juxtaposed through the participation of different voices in debates (see Chapter 5). However, as outlined above, the dialogic analysis of enforcement and resistance must go beyond a superficial attention on the juxtaposition of narratives and instead focus on the specific ways in which actors engage in struggle around authority, including in cases where this does not occur through the overt voicing of opposing narratives but rather through passive tension in which direct engagement is avoided.

The challenge in operationalising such a dialogic analysis is that it needs to be scalar, taking into account both the day-to-day context in which actions of enforcement and resistance are performed by different people as well as casting such exchanges against a broader confrontation of ‘grand narrative’ ideologies. One way of achieving this is by focussing on what can be described as points of struggle, conceptual nexuses around which particularly dense concentrations of dialogic discourse can be observed (Savski, Reference Savski2021). These can be seen as a reflection of the fact that discourses on social issues are often organised around questions to which differing ideologically driven answers exist, leading to particularly intense and diverse debate around them. In politics, this can often be observed in the form of ‘wedge issues’ (Hillygus & Shields, Reference Hillygus and Shields2008), topics which appear to divide society at large and become particularly obvious in the case of polarised societies, where they are the most visible points of difference between the two sides. In the US context, abortion and gun legislation are typical examples of wedge issues in the last twenty years, while political polarisation in Slovenia continues to revolve around the question of whether the communist partisans or anti-communist militia allied with the Nazis were on the side of justice in World War Two. While wedge issues may be a useful comparison, their association with politics, and in particular with the performance of political identities in the media (Wodak, Reference Wodak2011), means that they cannot be seen as representative of all types of discursive struggle. Much discourse is not as ‘in-your-face’ aggressive as political debates can quickly become, so identifying points of struggle must by necessity also look for subtler signs of disagreement between interactants.

The identification of points of struggle may involve the application of micro-analytic frameworks like the discourse-historical approach (DHA, see Chapter 5), which can allow for the examination of linguistic or semiotic patterns in the data. However, a broader, content-oriented approach is equally important, given that the aim is not necessarily to identify specific elements of language but to get a sense of the broader discursive dynamics in which these occur. Overall, the analysis can thus take a cyclical, inductive approach akin to traditional content analysis, where the aim is to extract a set of themes from a particular dataset (Hsieh & Shannon, Reference Hsieh and Shannon2005). In this case, such thematic analysis can involve identification of instances where actions of resistance and enforcement are performed, documenting both the issue around which struggle occurs as well as the means through which struggle takes place. The latter aim in particular necessitates contextualisation with reference to the discursive dynamics of the setting under investigation, as defined by the intersection of different social practices. Following Scollon and Scollon (Reference Scollon and Scollon2004), it is in such cases important to consider how the actions being observed fit in with the discursive norms characteristic of this setting (interaction order), how they reflect the existing scope of issues raised in the interaction (discourses in place), and how all this echoes both the development of the setting and personal backgrounds of its members (historical body). This implies that the holistic analysis of struggle and resistance in discourse is to a significant extent an ethnographic endeavour, one in which the aim is to make sense of struggle as a feature of everyday interaction. While such ‘sense-making’ may not always take the form of traditional ethnography, it does, as I will illustrate below, necessitate taking a triangulatory approach in which as much different data as possible are generated to back up one’s interpretation of how and where resistance takes place.

8.4 Case Study: Resisting Language Policy in a Facebook Group for Migrant Teachers of English

8.4.2 Resisting an English-Only Regime on Facebook

The data in this case study comes from a Facebook community aimed at migrant teachers of English in Thailand. As a longstanding community (established in 2007) with a large membership (over 40,000 at the time the research was conducted), the community is a key space for interaction between non-local teachers. The community sees a number of different discussion topics (e.g. sharing teaching experience, discussing teaching materials), but it is predominantly a space for migrant teachers to find work, meaning that the predominant genre of post seen is the job advertisement. It is in these advertisements that the inequalities related to race and nativeness mentioned above became readily apparent. I collected data in the community over a three-week period in May 2019. During this time, 135 teaching jobs were advertised, of which 60 (44.4 per cent) were reserved specifically for ‘native speakers’, a further 27 (20 per cent) used various types of ambiguous language to signal a preference for white applicants (e.g. ‘native or European’ or ‘native or South African’), 38 (28 per cent) did not specify a preference or explicitly stated that all teachers may apply, and 10 (7.4 per cent) were open to ‘non-native speaker’ applicants specifically. Significant differences could also be observed in terms of the salaries offered, with jobs open to ‘non-native speakers’ offering salaries on average 40 per cent lower than those offered to ‘native speakers’ and jobs without a specific preference being on average 12 per cent lower.

As I noted while observing the community as a member, this inequality had a profound impact on its interaction order, with continuous antagonism between members being the norm. Fraught discussions would occur in the comments below many job advertisements, either in response to something in the advertisement itself (e.g. complaints because of the salaries being offered) or because of points being offered up in the comments (e.g. people asking questions that were perceived by others as unacceptable). Over time – I observed the community over a total of nine months before collecting any interactional data – it became obvious that its members, while a large and diverse body of people of different nationalities and professional backgrounds, were polarised into two overall groupings, one supporting the unequal status quo (i.e. preference for ‘white’ ‘native speakers’) and the other opposing it. Members of the two groupings tended to be of contrasting backgrounds, with those supporting the status quo usually identifiable as ‘white’ and/or ‘native speakers’, and those opposing it largely people of colour. A large proportion of the latter were Filipino, reflecting the fact that a sizeable part of the population of migrant teachers in Thailand are nationals of the Philippines (see also Perez-Amurao & Sunanta, Reference Perez-Amurao and Sunanta2020). While locked in antagonism, the two groupings shared an overall investment in teaching English in Thailand, and a level of familiarity between the core members could be observed. A key feature of the interaction order of the community as a whole was its key, best described as ‘edgy humour’ – humour which tests boundaries of social appropriateness – and it’s notable from the data below that this key seemed to run across the otherwise intense divisions between supporters and opponents of the status quo.

Language was a central point of struggle that underpinned this polarisation, perhaps unsurprisingly given that the community centred on the profession of language teaching and considering that the division around the status quo was rooted in inequalities resulting from divergent interpretations of ownership of language (i.e. by ‘native speakers’ alone or by others as well). Generally, community interactions took place in English, though much tension occurred around the issue of whether the Englishes of members were equally legitimate and with regard to whether other languages in members’ repertoires could be used. At one point, a British ‘native speaker’ member responded to departures from English by making the following post:

1. 1.0 A: If people keep posting Tagalog on this forum, I’m going to start using three syllable words. Fair’s fair!

Language policies on Facebook are a complex issue, since they may emanate from a range of possible authorities and take a number of different forms. Facebook itself creates institutional language policies through its management of certain kinds of discourse (e.g. hate speech, fake news, false advertising), but when it comes to communities like the one examined here, members responsible for overseeing the group (administrators, moderators) are granted a level of local institutional authority to create their own policies, having at their disposal a number of tools to try and enforce them (e.g. deleting content, excluding members). In this case, however, the language policy being created by A does not make use of these institutional mechanisms and instead attempts to establish a position of authority within the community (i.e. a community language policy, see Chapter 3). The policy also comes in a highly specific form, not as an institutional genre but rather, in the spirit of the ‘edgy humour’ key of the community, as a statement flirting with offensiveness to the large number of Filipino members, implying that three-syllable words are as incomprehensible to them as Tagalog, a language widely spoken in the Philippines, is to the ‘native speaker’ writer. It garnered a number of replies, many written in a similar ‘edgy humour’ key but others also departing from it:

1. 1.1 B: @A crazy old man! Common wake up and take your medicine seems like you are getting worse hahaha

2. 1.2 A: *worse

3. 1.3 C: @A helo bald old man hahaha

4. 1.4 D: @C *hello

5. 1.5 A: Ang mga Pilipino ay mga magagandang sensitibong tao. [Tagalog: Filipinos are good and sensitive people]

6. 1.6 B: @A hahahaha you are really showing that you are stubborn. you think you are always right hahahaha

7. 1.7 B: @A I dont care who you are but i think you deserve shit haha

8. 1.8 C: @A agulapa ti ukinnana… Haisst [Ilocano: arrogant motherfucker… urgh]

9. 1.9 E: @A in this cold insensitive world, i’ll take the sensitive part as a compliment thank you, add the sentimental and drama queen to level up to superlative form, yupe that’s who we are.

10. 1.10 E: @C and thats ilocano too, now shall i include cebuano pastilan litsi [Cebuano: My goodness!! Shit!!]

This interaction exemplifies the kind of back-and-forth I regularly observed in the community, with two acts of resistance against A’s attempted imposition of monolingualism (1.1 and 1.3, both poking fun at the policymaker) countered with acts of enforcement (1.2 and 1.4, both instances of what Cameron (Reference Cameron1995) referred to as ‘verbal hygiene’). A shift is brought about by A’s switch to Tagalog in 1.5, almost certainly achieved using automatic translation, considering that the writer, a British ‘expat’ and one of the most active members of the community, had never previously made use of any language other than English. This switch can be read as largely performative, meaningful not because of the propositional content being communicated but because of the emblematic nature (Poplack, Reference Poplack1980) of a non-Filipino making use of Tagalog. It triggers a number of reactions, including the type of humorous key noted previously (1.6 and 1.7) but also other forms of resistance. In 1.8, A is accused in a more overtly aggressive key of ‘arrogance’ in a post written in Ilocano, while in 1.10 Cebuano is used alongside English to express profanity. Along with 1.9, which invokes the notion of national identity through its reference to how ‘we’ (Filipinos) are not only ‘sensitive’ but also ‘sentimental’ and ‘drama queens’, the three final contributions to this interaction are signs of the formation of a resistant counter-narrative to the anti-Tagalog sentiment of A’s attempt to enforce monolingualism. Where A had attempted to marginalise Filipino members by delegitimising Tagalog in the community’s discourse, C and E flout this monolingual policy by introducing new languages representative of Filipino identity.

In general, a key resistance strategy of Filipino members was to flout attempts to restrict community discourse to English and engage meaning-making that made use of different languages in various ways, or translingual practice (Canagarajah, Reference Canagarajah2012). Translanguaging, or use of language ‘without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages’ (Otheguy et al., Reference Otheguy, García and Reid2015, p. 283) could be observed in cases where Filipino members made use of their shared translingual repertoires to engage in in-group interaction. This appeared particularly valuable where it allowed the members to establish distinct discursive spaces, separated from the many aggressions characteristic of the community’s polarised interaction order. In this sense, to engage in translanguaging without English appeared an almost conscious choice, a resistant strategy which allowed Filipino members to engage in types of interaction that would otherwise have been rendered impossible with the participation of English-speaking supporters of the unequal status quo. Elsewhere, I described this as a distinct form of translingual practice, called bordering – ‘a form of discursive agency in which indexical meanings are strategically employed to draw boundaries and exert interactional power’ (Savski, Reference Savski2024a, p. 3). A notable instance of bordering in action occurred in the aftermath of the discussion under post 1.0, analysed above, under the following job advertisement:

1. 2.0 B: Looking for 1 teacher

   NES 36k

   Secondary Level

   Mon to Fri

   7.30 to 4.30

   About 20 periods per week

   Near Mega Bangna

   Interview this Monday at 11am

   Start on June4

   DM me your resume. Please please please, don’t waste my time…

The interaction in the comment starts when the author of the advertisement (B) makes a complaint that refers back to the person who had attempted to enforce the English-only policy above (A). The reference is not entirely clear, with the mention of ‘shit posters’ either seemingly pointing either to direct messages B had received or to comments under the ad that had been deleted by the time of data collection:

1. 2.1 B: Is this what @A was talking about? I post for an English Teacher and I get shit posters?

2. 2.2 C: @B kabalo kamo mag ilonggo? indi ko kaintindi sa inyo mga kano… [Ilongo: Can you guys speak ilongo? I don’t understand what you white people are talking about.]

3. 2.3 D: Wala akong pakialam tungkol sa mga job na ito ng pilay. [Tagalog: I don’t care about these lame jobs.]

4. 2.4 E: @D

1. 2.5 C: ang mga puti na eto manglait sa mga pinoy sobra… mali daw ang english natin.. kaya di tayo pwede.. [Tagalog: look at these white people insulting us… that the way we use english is wrong .. that we cannot be teachers]

2. 2.6 D: @C lage kase nila kinocorrect pag nag i ingles mga Pilipino dito kaya tama magtagalog na lang [Tagalog: they always correct us whenever we write something in english that’s why most Filipinos tend to use tagalog instead]

3. 2.7 C: @D totoo… lahat nalang mali sa kanila… parate tayong napaphiya… sina na ang magaling… [Tagalog: that’s right, whatever we say is all wrong in their sight… we are always humiliated by them… they know it all, they are better…]

4. 2.8 F: Amo na bag-o kamo magpost sang english, double check anay. Hapos man na. [Ilongo: That’s why you should double check before posting anything in english. It’s easy as that.]

5. 2.9 C: @F wala man sang perpecto… may ara haw? [Ilongo: no one is perfect, right?]

6. 2.10 D: pakitagalog haha [Ilongo: can you say that in tagalog haha]

1. 2.11 F: Hirap mag tagalog [Tagalog: It’s difficult to say in tagalog.]

2. 2.12 F:

1. 2.13 C: @F naka istar ako sa amerika for 20 years… wala gid ko nabitaan na reklamo sa mga pinoy about sa ila english… diri ya sa thailand tanan nalang sala sa mga puti na ari di.. [Ilongo: I’ve lived in america for 20 years… I have never been heard that filipino english is wrong… but here in thailand, everything is wrong for them..]

2. 2.14 C: kag indi man ako di ya maestro… [Ilongo: and I am not working as a teacher here.]

3. 2.15 C: syensya gid sa tanan… peace! [Ilongo: sorry all… peace!]

4. 2.16 F: @C kay halos tanan nga puti diri losers kag assholes. [Ilongo: because most of the white people here are losers and assholes.]

5. 2.17 C: @F ay huo tuod… mga wala obra sa amerika ari di.. [Ilongo: that’s right… the ones we have here are those who can’t find a job in america..]

6. 2.18 G: @C dri gani ina sila nagpamulya kay sa ila indi man sila kasarang magtudlo kay indi man sila kwalipikado [Ilongo: That’s why they come and teach in thailand because they are not qualified to teach in their home country.]

A few moments are key to understanding this extended interaction. Following a sarcastic reply by a Filipino member in Ilongo (2.2), another ‘native speaker’ member makes use of Tagalog through automatic translation to try and perform a mock Filipino voice (2.3), which is then followed by a highly offensive post which seems to liken Ilongo and Tagalog to non-human gibberish through the use of a meme (2.4). This is followed by a clear switch away from English in the interaction, first to predominantly Tagalog (2.5–7) and later to predominantly Ilongo (2.8–18). While these languages are prominent in this part of the interaction, it is worth noting that a number of elements, largely individual words or phrases, that may at least to some level be associated with English (e.g. ‘double check’, ‘english’, ‘peace’, ‘losers’, ‘assholes’), are also made use of. Given that no clear cue is given to indicate that these are perceived by participants as switches, and that no signal – beyond a bit of playful metalanguage in 2.10–12 – is given of the contextual relevance of the distinction between Tagalog and Ilongo, the interaction here seems to constitute translanguaging ‘without regard for watchful adherence to […] boundaries of named […] languages’ (Otheguy et al., Reference Otheguy, García and Reid2015, p. 283). At the same time, however, it also exemplifies how bordering can facilitate resistance, since it is specifically because this interaction is not conducted in English that allows it to occur in relative tranquility, separated from the otherwise fraught aggression of the group. In this distinct discursive space, the members are able to reflect on the injustice of the status quo they oppose in 2.5–7, forge ties of solidarity in 2.8–9, bring in personal experience from other contexts (2.13) and construct a shared resistant voice by jointly demystifying the ideologised image of the ‘native speaker’ (2.16–18). This underlines the need for context-sensitive investigation of resistance – while bordering is in many cases a strategy for enforcing the status quo (e.g. through the marginalisation of ‘poor English’, as was often seen in the community), it can also serve as part of the struggle against dominant groups, as in this instance.

8.5 Reflecting on Language Policy and the Management of Belonging

The case study of how hegemonic notions of English were proliferated and resisted among non-local teachers in Thailand on Facebook highlights the way language policy can facilitate inclusion or exclusion in different types of communities. In Chapter 2, I discussed how language is instrumentalised to police political borders, for instance when language testing regimes are created to control who can access a particular space (e.g. who can migrate to a particular nation). The Facebook interactions above highlight another aspect of how language policies can serve to police space in communities, that is by helping perpetuate dominant notions of belonging. While bordering regimes enacted through language testing or other institutional instruments are powerful determiners of access to social space because they are backed up by the threat of violent coercion (physical denial of entry, deportation), they are merely superficial manifestations of deeper convictions in the community about who belongs to a particular space. In the Facebook community examined in this case study, as in many settings, such convictions were centred on the intertwined concepts of ‘nativeness’ and ‘whiteness’, since it is these that were primarily mobilised to draw the line of who is and is not a natural part of the English language teaching profession in Thailand. Another case where language was mobilised in this way as a means of symbolic exclusion occurred when British retired footballer and broadcaster Alex Scott was chastised on Twitter by Digby Jones, businessman and former member of the House of Lords, for her pronunciation while presenting the BBC’s coverage of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics:

Digby’s criticism, later brushed off by Scott with an expression of pride in her (as she described it, ‘working class’) accent, runs parallel to the Facebook interactions examined above in the sense that it mobilises language to perpetuate notions of who belongs and does not belong in a particular professional community. In English-language broadcasting, this has been an area of significant evolution, with those heard on major British outlets now speaking a much broader array of varieties than would have been the case previously (part of an overall liberalisation of language attitudes, see Crystal, Reference Crystal, Upton and Davies2013). A similar opening-up has also taken place in English language teaching, where previously unquestioned notions regarding who English belongs to as well as what Englishes should be taught to and modelled by learners have begun to be eroded over the last decades (Rose & Galloway, Reference Rose and Galloway2019). Yet, as illustrated by the debates seen on Facebook and by Digby Jones’ criticism, there is also significant pushback in communities where such changes are taking place. This recalls a point made above, namely that analysis of resistance must take care not to idealise it – where some action against policy is of great value because it can help construct alternatives to the dominant ‘totalising sense of language’, resistance can also help perpetuate such belief systems and obstruct social transformation (see e.g. Drackley, Reference Drackley2019).

8.6 Further Reading and Discussion Questions

A number of recent studies have looked at resistance in online spaces, perhaps a reflection not only of the tendency in online discourse to turn to conflict but also of the fact that online settings are characterised by dynamic fluctuation of power. This is particularly the case when it comes to community language policies, seemingly the more relevant type to such settings, given that, in many cases, attempts to create and enforce policy are made by actors with little recourse to instruments of institutional authority. One may thus find studies which, as the one above, observe a large amount of back-and-forth between members of online communities when it comes to issues of language, in the case of Phyak’s (Reference Phyak2015) research on a Nepali Facebook group featuring both enforcement of conventional, one-nation-one-language ideological agendas as well as a variety of resistant voices. More specific attention to resistance was paid by Heuman (Reference Heuman2022), who looked at how entrenched notions of correctness were trivialised in the comments section of two Swedish blogs and identifying several specific examples of resistance strategy, including appeals to reason, humour and mockery, as well as forms of metalinguistic discourse. Other studies, such as Canagarajah and Dovchin (Reference Canagarajah and Dovchin2019) and Qi and Zhang (Reference Qi and Zhang2021), have instead focused on how online spaces can facilitate grass-roots resistance to broader language policies, in particular through translingual practices.

Another series of studies has dealt with resistance to language policies in other settings, particularly different institutions under the state. Shohamy (Reference Shohamy, Menken and García2010) for instance reviews the various grass-roots initiatives that have sought to resist the monolingual focus of language policies in Israel. In many cases, this type of resistance can involve collective mobilisation and result in the formation of counter-narratives at the level of entire schools (e.g. Freire et al., Reference Freire, Delavan and Valdez2022), though in other cases research has shown that individual teachers are just as able to act as resistant actors (e.g. Liu et al., Reference Liu, Wang and Zhao2020). A notable case of the latter is Forman (Reference Forman2014), where the language policy text being resisted by teachers was the global ELT textbook – the study gives a number of examples of how teachers at a Thai university worked around the textbook while pursuing pedagogical solutions they believed in. A final case to be considered is one where policy itself is framed as resistant, as is the case when it comes to English language education policy in a context like Iran. Babaii (Reference Babaii2022) presents how this occurs in a detailed analysis of Iranian policy texts, tracing how these are represented as a type of counter-narrative to the Western cultural values of which English is seen as symbolic. Other contexts where language policies have placed a focus on resisting English as an embodiment of Westernisation, such as Indonesia (Zein, Reference Zein2020), present similar characteristics, though it’s also key to consider cases where English is resisted through activism (e.g. Selvi, Reference Selvi2022). Underlining the need to consider grass-roots agency in resistance are linguistic landscape studies such as Helal (Reference Helal2023), which highlight how sign makers use their semiotic repertoires to construct narratives that often counteract officially declared policies.