558 35 Exploring neoliberal language, discourses, and identities Christian W. Chun Introduction The term ‘neoliberalism’ has been described as ‘a dismal epithet … imprecise and over-used’ (Watkins 2010: 7), which has led to some confusion among the general public as well as con- testations among scholars regarding its meaning. Neoliberalism will be used in this chapter as a shorthand indicator to name the complex and dynamic changes that have occurred in many countries since the 1970s that have led to political and economic rearrangements and redistri- butions of power in favour of capital and governance over labour. These changes include the ever-increasing ‘extension of market-based competition and commodification processes into previously insulated realms of political-economic life’ (Brenner, Peck and Theodore 2010: 329) along with systematic attempts by democratically elected governments acting on behalf of cor- porate governance to deregulate and privatise state-owned and run institutions and defund social services, such as education and healthcare. Efforts towards neoliberalism in the past 35 years have resulted in the massive accumulation of private capital through the concerted dispossession of public wealth (Harvey, 2005). A fuller discussion of the various aspects and understandings of neoliberalism will be featured in the section, ‘Current issues in exploring neoliberal language and identity’. Why is neoliberalism relevant to applied linguists? Why is neoliberalism relevant to the applied linguistics field and why should we care about it as researchers, teachers and students? Neoliberal policies and practices have attempted to remake our everyday lives so that every aspect is minutely measured, assessed and evaluated as ‘outputs’, in accordance with manufacturing-based standards of production, and defined as ‘best practices’, which is another term adopted from corporate culture now widely used in education. Those of us who work or study in applied linguistics, including TESOL and English language teaching, and/or as language teachers at primary, secondary or tertiary levels are all affected and adversely impacted in varying ways. For example, in the case of public school K-12 teachers working in the United States, their students have been forced to take a battery of standardised tests, the [1544] Chapter 35.indd 558 [1544] Chapter 35.indd 558 13/11/2015 10:07 13/11/2015 10:07