ASPIRING TO BE GLOBAL: LANGUAGE, MOBILITIES, AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN A TOURISM VILLAGE IN CHINA GAO SHUANG (MA, BA) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE JOINT DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGAGE & LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE AND CENTRE FOR LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE & COMMUNICATION KING’S COLLEGE LONDON 2014 Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis has benefited from many conversations with many people over the years I am all too aware that their kindness and generosity deserve much more than a brief mentioning here, but let me try to count the ways I am most proud and grateful for having two wonderful supervisors, Joseph Sung-Yul Park and Ben Rampton I could not have started this research project without the encouragement of Joseph Park It is through many discussions with him that the research project took shape and finally got started At King’s, Ben guided me through every step of the final write-up He dedicated so much time and efforts to teach me the valuable lesson of ‘simmering’ when I felt like some ‘stir-fries’ To my both supervisors, I thank them for being patient listeners to many fragmented research stories, for their meticulous reading and insightful comments on multiple drafts, and for always encouraging me to achieve high standards Needless to say, I owe so much to them for my scholarship My deepest thanks to you, Ben! 대단히감사합니다, 박성열 교수님! I also received valuable feedbacks at seminars at the National University of Singapore and King’s College London and during conferences from Lionel Wee, Constant Leung, Roxy Harris, Mie Hiramoto, Adrienne Lo, Kira Hall, Miguel Pérez-Milans, Marnie Holborow, and Claire Kramsch Part of Chapter was published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, and benefited from the helpful comments and suggestions from its editors Allan Bell and Monica Heller, as well i as Adam Jaworski, who one year later identified himself as one of the two anonymous reviewers I also thank two professors from the Department of Chinese Studies at NUS, Lee Cher Leng and Yung Sai-Shing Their lectures provided much enlightenment during my coursework years and beyond As this thesis goes to the examination process, my three examiners, Jan Blommaert, Lionel Wee and John Gray, provided constructive criticism and valuable suggestions I thank them for bringing their intellectual insights to the thesis I want to thank my external examiner Jan Blommaert in particular, for his sharp insights, warm encouragement, and for always being a source of inspiration I must also thank the people I met and talked to during my fieldwork in Yangshuo This story being told here is theirs I could not have been able to present it here had they not so kindly revealed their stories to me in variously helpful ways As a first-time field worker, I was anxious yet bold But they were nice enough to have made this a less difficult and awkward and even an enjoyable process I am grateful, for instance, for having a pleasant conversation with a business owner whom I woke up from his nap in a comfortably sunny afternoon, for being warmly accepted as an unexpected stranger visitor into someone’s home in an early morning, and for the cheerful congratulations I got after, in her words, ‘finally getting into the backyard of my enemy’, that is, being allowed into a local language school I learnt so much from them, and was often overwhelmed by their hospitality I can only hope the readers would appreciate their stories, if not the way I told them ii For company and friendship along the PhD journey, I thank Dr Feng Dezheng, Dr Zhang Yiqiong, Dr Liu Yu, Dr Dang Zhiya, Dr Bae Sohee, Si Qiuxue, Wang Jie, Tina Yang, Khong Beng Choo, Yurni Irwati Said-Sirhan, and Stephen Wong They have been sources of joy and wisdom Finally, my deepest thanks to my parents for their best love at every step of my life 谨以此文献给我的父母！ iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Table of Contents iv Summary viii List of Tables xi List of Figures xii List of Maps xiv Chapter Introduction 1.1 Starting the journey 1.2 Overview of the thesis Chapter Sociolinguistics and Tourism Mobilities 11 2.1 Introduction 11 2.2 Sociolinguistics of globalization 11 2.2.1 2.2.2 Mobility and locality 15 2.2.3 2.3 Globalization 14 Historicity 26 Tourism studies and the mobility turn 28 2.3.1 2.3.2 Tourists 33 2.3.3 Tensions of space 36 2.3.4 2.4 Place-making 32 Educational tourism 37 Tourism and social change in contemporary China 38 iv 2.4.1 2.4.2 Tourism in China 41 2.4.3 2.5 Changing ideologies of mobility in China 39 Multiculturalism and multilingualism in China 47 Conclusion 55 Chapter Research Site and Field Methods 56 3.1 West Street, Yangshuo: A brief introduction 56 3.2 Field methods 60 3.2.1 Before entering the field: Working plan and working assumptions 60 3.2.2 3.3 In the field: Working to learn and learning to work 68 Some brief stories 77 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.4 ‘You are here to learn English, aren’t you?’ 78 ‘What you mean by “global village”?’ 85 Conclusion 88 Chapter Commodification of Place, Consumption of Identity: The Sociolinguistic Construction of a ‘Global Village’ 90 4.1 Introduction 90 4.2 The recent socio-historical transformation of West Street 92 4.3 West street as brand: English, tourism and (post-)modernity 95 4.4 Semiotics of the ‘global village’ 101 4.5 Performance, stance and identity: Post-tourists and anti-tourists 107 4.5.1 Post-tourists 108 4.5.2 Anti-tourists 112 v 4.6 Conclusion 117 Chapter Tensions of Space in the ‘Global Village’ 120 5.1 Introduction 120 5.2 Historical transformation of the ‘global village’ 125 5.2.1 Till the late 1990s: A laisser-faire West Street 125 5.2.2 First wave of development: ‘Global Village’ and ‘English Corner’ 132 5.2.3 Second wave of development: Geographical expansion and business investment 136 5.3 Types of Space in the ‘Global Village’ 155 5.4 Living in a Changing ‘Global Village’ 161 5.4.1 5.4.2 5.5 Closing-down and Moving-out 161 Local foreigners’ niche of sociability in Yangshuo 169 Conclusion 177 Chapter Interactional Straining and the Neoliberal Self: Learning English in the Biggest English Corner in China 180 6.1 Introduction: A mobilities perspective on English language learning 180 6.2 English Educational Tourism and Its Strategies of Mobilization 187 6.2.1 Contingent exploration of the exception 189 6.2.2 Assembling flows of English resources 192 6.3 English Market and the Neoliberal Self in a Globalizing China 199 6.4 Learning English in Yangshuo 209 vi 6.4.1 Talking to foreigners all over the place 209 6.4.2 Intrusive exploitations of interaction: Foreigners’ perspectives 216 6.4.3 Excitements, frustrations, and strategies: Students’ perspectives 228 6.5 Talking to Foreigners: A Precarious Genre 236 6.6 Conclusion 243 Chapter Conclusion 246 7.1 Summary of findings 246 7.2 Implications 248 7.2.1 Sociolinguistics of globalization 248 7.2.2 English language studies 251 7.2.3 Tourism studies 252 7.2.4 Chinese studies 254 7.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research 255 7.4 Conclusion 256 References 258 Appendices 284 vii Summary This thesis contributes to our understanding of the sociolinguistics of globalization by examining a tourism site in Yangshuo County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China A former residential neighborhood street West Street (西街 Xī Jiē) in Yangshuo has been gaining increasing popularity among domestic Chinese tourists, known as a ‘global village’ and ‘English Corner’, as Yangshuo transformed from an agriculture-based into a tourism-based economy during the past three decades This observed tourism development in West Street differs from existing research in other tourism communities (see e.g Heller 2003; Coupland, Garret and Bishop 2005; Thurlow and Jaworski 2010) in that its sociohistorical transformation involves the re-evaluation of non-local, instead of local, linguistic resources This study investigates this socio-historical change as an issue for the sociolinguistics of mobility (Blommaert 2010), wherein the English language, along with other semiotic resources, is appropriated and commodified for domestic Chinese tourists Specifically, it seeks to address how has West Street become a ‘global village’ and ‘English Corner’? 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How did you decide to learn English at Yangshuo, instead of other places? What were your expectations for learning English here? What you think of your learning experience here? Do you try to find some English learning opportunities by yourself? Do you think it’s worth the price, time and travelling? What’s your plan for the future? Appendix A café with books for sale Photo by author, 2011 284 Appendix A customer message in a coffee shop Photo by author, 2011 Appendix Stone carving of ‘Yangshuo’ on the bank of the Li River Photo by author, 2011 285 Appendix Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Number of tourists in total 229 240 280 282 320.2 353.5 415 516.3 559.1 720 811.3 Number of foreign tourists 38 37 39 23 38.5 63.8 82 86.6 89.9 101 123.8 Number of people stayed overnight 17.7 21 29.6 23.3 51.2 60.9 118.7 142.7 157 212.3 279.2 Average number of days stayed 1.44 1.25 1.2 1.32 1.24 1.13 1.17 1.38 1.38 1.36 1.38 Number of farmers doing tourism 0.6 0.8 1.3 1.45 1.5 1.8 2.5 3.5 3.8 286 Total avenue 1.85 2.14 2.41 2.44 4.06 5.51 9.64 12.77 17.9 24.2 31.5 Tourism statistics of Yangshuo: 2000-2010 (Unit of number of people: ten thousand; Unit of money: a hundred million yuan) ... introduce tourism mobilities and social change in China in general, contextualizing the present study of Yangshuo in the changing ideologies of mobility, tourism, and language in a globalizing China. .. 34 in particular) where appropriate, to provide otherwise unavailable historical anecdotes of tourism in China in general and tourism in Yangshuo in particular Of course, there are reasons to. .. examines a tourism site in francophone Canada She explores how economic restructuring and entry into the global market requires a re-evaluation of the multilingual repertoires in francophone Canada and