ABSTRACT
Critical applied linguists are able to identify strategically deployable shifters and recycled metaphors which may not accurately reflect the values held by academic staff and students. Despite nominating ‘getting a good job’ as one of their primary motivations for entering a university course, students appear less inspired by the notion of employability or expectations of graduate earnings, than with their actual academic accomplishments. Students, as well as academic staff, must be educated in critical thinking to play a key role in resisting neoliberal discourse. A. Sealey argues that in order to form academic critiques, language is the agent in the redefining of subjectivities. New formations of academic labour are relational – when students are customers, academics are service providers. Perhaps, though, a necessary sensitivity to discursive changes, and to their significance, has been overlooked for too long by academics. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
