Linguistic Entrepreneurship in Sino-African Student Mobility

This book explores African international students’ lived experience within Chinese higher education, including their language ideologies, investment in Chinese language learning and the (re)shaping of identities and aspirations. Whilst high English proficiency has been sought by globally mobile stud...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Xu, Wen
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Singapore Palgrave Macmillan 2024, 2024
Edition:1st ed. 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: Springer eBooks 2005- - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 03587nmm a2200325 u 4500
001 EB002210812
003 EBX01000000000000001348012
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 240603 ||| eng
020 |a 9789819721757 
100 1 |a Xu, Wen 
245 0 0 |a Linguistic Entrepreneurship in Sino-African Student Mobility  |h Elektronische Ressource  |c by Wen Xu 
250 |a 1st ed. 2024 
260 |a Singapore  |b Palgrave Macmillan  |c 2024, 2024 
300 |a VIII, 234 p. 1 illus  |b online resource 
505 0 |a 1. Introduction -- 2. International student mobilities (ISM) and African students in China -- 3. Setting the context: The hierarchical ordering of languages in the world -- 4. The logic of linguistic exchanges and model of investment -- 5. Chinese language ideologies reflected in African students’ discourses -- 6. Discourses on Chinese as ‘linguistic capital’ -- 7. Sleepless in China: Linguistic investment and a burden of perfectionism -- 8. Transcending time and space: new images of the world and self -- 9. Conclusions and implications 
653 |a Higher Education 
653 |a Language Education 
653 |a Sociology of Education 
653 |a Sociolinguistics 
653 |a Educational sociology 
653 |a Education, Higher 
653 |a Language and languages / Study and teaching 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b Springer  |a Springer eBooks 2005- 
028 5 0 |a 10.1007/978-981-97-2175-7 
856 4 0 |u https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-2175-7?nosfx=y  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
082 0 |a 306.44 
520 |a This book explores African international students’ lived experience within Chinese higher education, including their language ideologies, investment in Chinese language learning and the (re)shaping of identities and aspirations. Whilst high English proficiency has been sought by globally mobile students to play the ‘class game’ and gain entrée to the circle of elites, considerably less attention has been paid to how shifting global structures and China’s semi-peripheral position shape its language learners’ investment and identity construction. Drawing upon a series of interviews, the book deciphers African students’ logics of linguistic exchanges within the geopolitical and geo-economic context of China-African relations. The students invested heavily into Chinese language learning and use, while displaying perfectionism, linguistic entrepreneurship and linguistic insecurity. As the value of their Chinese linguistic capital increases, they reassessed their sense of themselves and produced different social identities, which includes the idea of ‘the world is my oyster’, contributing to Africa’s sustainable development and the disposition to ‘tell China’s story well’. This work transgresses monolingual dominance (i.e. English) in the existing body of international student mobility and second language acquisition (SLA) research, as great importance is assigned to Chinese as linguistic capital in South-South student migration. The book is of interest to researchers in international higher education, international student mobilities, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, languages education, and Chinese language teaching and learning. Wen Xu is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Language Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of language, education and society. Currently, her research projects and publications encompass studies of international students’ lived experiences in China