Bilingual Commodification in La Mancha: From Language Policies to Classroom Practices

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the emergent discourses about bilingual commodification (Heller, 2010) in the current “boom” era of the Bilingual Programmes. These situated discourses dealing with “bilingualism” have been analysed among a group of students attending a prestigious religious semi-private “bi-trilingual” school in Castilla-La Mancha, where the social actors co- construct those discourses through interactions (Gumperz, 1982). From a critical discourse analysis perspective (Fairclough, 1995) and a critical interpretive approach (Tollefson, 2002), this linguistic ethnography analyses bilingual education in Castilla- La Mancha region as well as the links between the classroom social practice, the linguistic policies and wider social and ideological processes of globalization and neoliberalism in late modernity.