Exploring Taiwanese students' stances on the Bilingual 2030 policy: Multiple perspectives, positionings, and discourses (original) (raw)

English Teaching & Learning, 2024

Abstract

This paper explores how Taiwan’s recent Bilingual 2030 policy—an initiative that endeavors to boost Taiwanese citizens’ global competitiveness by strengthening their English proficiency—has been perceived and received by its intended subjects. Through the lens of Stance Theory (Du Bois, 2007), the paper analyzes position papers written by a group of Taiwanese university students on the bilingual policy to understand their evaluations of the policy, their self-positioning vis-à-vis their evaluations, and the possible language and social discourses shaping their (dis) alignment with the policy. This survey of students’ evaluations unveils the multiple positionings that the student-authors took when evaluating the policy, the diverse social and language discourses shaping their evaluations, and the dialogic nature of their stancetaking acts. Meanwhile, this opportunity to understand and evaluate the bilingual policy has allowed the students to critically reflect on the nuts and bolts of it and assess their stakes beyond the popular “English opens doors” refrain. Compared to the policymakers’ top-down imagination of the nation and its people, their responses to the policy articulate the multiplicity embodied in Taiwanese people’s linguistic and social realities and showcase a more complicated outlook for the nation in the globalizing world.

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