Mexico’s foreign language policy: the implications of dominant ideologies in ELT

Abstract

When the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, Mexico started what some have called ‘neoliberal period’ in domestic policy making. This, in addition to the OECD and World Bank recommendations, imposed a neoliberal agenda which was materialized through a series of ‘strategic’ reforms (tax, labour, energy and education). In the education domain, traces of neoliberalism can be found in curriculum (competency-based), teacher labour rights (the weakening of trade unions), and ELT. Drawing from a political economy (Block, 2018 & Holborow, 2015) and Lo Bianco’s (2009) three-dimensional CDA approach to LP, public discourses (official documents and speeches) and institutional practices were analysed to identify the ideological orientations which underpin Mexico’s government policies and, consequently, its English language policy and how the institutional practices reproduce the ideology underpinning Mexico’s English language policy. Findings indicate that official documents and public discourses served the purpose to a) introduce the neoliberal agenda as a desired scenario for domestic policies and b) legitimate the implementation of neoliberal policies and strategies. Developing from this, the official ELT documents and public discourses analysis revealed that the contemporary ELT programmes a) legitimise the necessity of implementing English, as a public policy, by reducing it to a desired labour market skill, which resonates with the characteristics of a commodity, b) represent an extension of neoliberal strategies in education, particularly regarding teachers’ labour rights and c) have created a very profitable language qualifications and teacher training market for transnational ELT companies.

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ORCID for Alison Porter: orcid.org/0000-0002-8462-1909

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