Presented at the 16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, 27 August 2011.

This symposium aimed to capture the multiple and dynamic processes of language and identity in the context of globalization. The pervasive process of globalization has inevitably affected the previously existing social and linguistic order. Broad, stable and normal patterns of conduct are being deconstructed and reshuffled; multiple, overlapping and conflicting forms are being shaped and reshaped. The abnormal becomes normal; disorder becomes the new order. The symposium explored this issue from two complementary perspectives – a macro perspective that focuses on language policies, and a micro perspective that focuses on how people struggle to articulate their identities.

The first part, ‘Policing identities’, opened with an introduction entitled ‘Disordering processes’ by Jan Blommaert (Tilburg University) together with Sjaak Kroon (Tilburg University) and Gao Yihong (Peking University). This paper outlined the theoretical and practical challenges addressed by the symposium. On the theoretical level, the emergence of a new paradigm – a sociolinguistics of globalization – demands a new set of concepts for ‘sociolinguistic order’. In the world of practice, language norms are no longer the result of formal language policies, but appear as multiple, polycentric patterns of formal and informal language policing. Individuals organize themselves in relation to these new patterns, and display communicative competences by skillfully maneuvering the numerous normative complexes at their disposal. In his paper ‘Overcoming the global/local dichotomy in language policy and language education’, Stephen May (University of Auckland) critiqued the dichotomous construction of global and local varieties that underpin language hierarchization, placing the global on top of the local. He argued that both global and local language varieties had a crucial role to play in the formation of language policy and language education. In ‘Regulating language and identity in a cosmopolitan city: A Singapore case study’, Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore) delineated the conflict between Singapore's language policy tradition, which was based on historical ethnolinguistic boundaries and the value of cultural neutrality, and contemporary society, with its opening up of economic, social and cultural possibilities. Singapore wished to cultivate a ‘cosmopolitan city’ image, so had to come to terms with changes in the social order that were no longer ‘neutral’, such as the economic development of China, the rise of English as a home language, and increased numbers of mixed marriages. In another case study, Joseph Lo Bianco (University of Melbourne) discussed the history of language planning in Australia since the 1970s. Entitled ‘Patrolling who belongs: Language planning and administration of time and place and nation’, his paper identified four meta-discourses characterizing Australian Federal language policies: Australia's Asian geography, its immigrant multiculturalism, indigenous reconciliation, and American and British links. It was shown how the four discourses were composed, disputed, compromised and implemented at various historical stages.

The second part of the symposium, ‘Voicing identities’, presented micro-level studies from various parts of the globe. Doreen Wu (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) proposed ‘A glocalization perspective of studying media discourses in cultural China’, based on a review of relevant literature. Examples such as advertisements with linguistic and cultural blending were provided, to illustrate the intricate processes and outcomes of confrontation and hybridization between global/Western/modern and local/Eastern/traditional elements. In ‘Identity and (dis)orderliness in translocal practices online’, Sirpa Leppänen (University of Jyväskylä) discussed the heteroglossic linguistic and discursive practices in young people's translocal communities of practice online, and the double characters of such communities – the later modern ‘communitarian’ spirit on the one hand, and a shared normative order on the other. Also focusing on online discourse, Wang Xuan's (Tilburg University) ethnographic study ‘The internet, hip-hop and languages in China’ presented two cases of grassroots hip-hop artists in China who engaged with the global cultural flows of hip-hop via the internet. Speaking from different spatial-temporal perspectives – centre versus the deep margin – of globalization in China, the rappers’ discursive performances online suggested a symbolical reshuffling of the hierarchical orders of English, Putonghua and dialect Chinese through their selecting and mixing of different (combinations of) global and local language resources in order to construct their sense of authenticity. Dong Yan's (Jilin University and Tilburg University) presentation ‘Can I take your order? Reordered language in a Chinese restaurant in the diaspora’ through an analysis of (i) a Dutch Chinese restaurant's menu, containing complex features of Dutch, Cantonese Pinyin, Indonesian and self-invented simplified Chinese characters and (ii) interviews with the restaurant owners regarding the languages learnt by their children, showed the linguistic consequences of globalization leading to polycentric language use in work and family contexts. In her paper ‘Voicing identities: An ethnographic study of the globalized Chinese in late modernity’, Dong Jie (Tilburg University) drew on examples of language use among ‘elite migrants’ in urban China to explore the complex and dynamic processes of discursive identity construction indexed through the employment of languages and language varieties in social encounters. She further illustrated the emergent process of Mandarin as a major means of communication at a global level. Based on empirical data from a four-year longitudinal study, Gao Yihong and her research team discussed Chinese students’ motivation and identity development associated with English learning. Unlike the classical orders of instrumental learning versus cultural integration in the form of subtractive or additive bilingualism, multiple and dynamic processes of L2 identity development were found to occur, including that of ‘productive bilingualism’ where native and targeted identities positively enhanced each other. While the L2 identity of a faithful imitator based on the hierarchy of native/non-native speaker remained, that of a legitimate speaker was becoming prominent, and still emerging was the identity of a dialogical communicator, who converses – both speaking and listening – on the basis of mutual respect.

Taken as a whole, the symposium called for new perspectives, new concepts and new frames to explore the multiple and dynamic processes of language and identity in the context of globalization, at both macro and micro levels. The panelists’ presentations illustrated some possibilities, but opened up still more opportunities for conceptualizing these (dis)ordered processes.