Abstract
ABSTRACT Private English education has been expanding rapidly across China during the past three decades. This study investigates the resignification of English through the linguistic landscape of a private English training centre in Datong, a small and less-developed city of China. The findings show that the centre draws from both neoliberal discourse and other discourses to give rise to a particular resignification of English that becomes relevant to the specific context of Datong. English is appropriated symbolically in the linguistic landscape to invoke positive associations of professionalism for the centre, despite various errors found in the linguistic landscape. In addition, English is packaged as a valuable skill and English learning is constructed as a route for linguistic entrepreneurship, to the neglect of the role of social class in students’ access to English education resources. At the same time, English learning in the language school also serves the purpose of transmitting national values and moral principles. Such a hybrid construction also reveals the national-global tensions in China’s English education and constructs a flexible nationalism which views English learners as figures of good citizenship in contemporary China.
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