Contesting neoliberal discourses in EAP: Critical praxis in an IEP classroom

This article explores ways in which a university Intensive English Program (IEP) featuring English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at a U.S. university functions as an institutionalized discursive space of neoliberalism. By examining discourses that one program adopts in promoting itself online, and in the curriculum material used in IEP/EAP classes, I investigate how neoliberal discourses articulate with the website and academic content in their institutionally mediated interactions with students. I first present an overview of neoliberalism and discuss how its discursive practices have been taken up in everyday life. I then contextualize the university as a specific site of neoliberalism. This is followed by my multimodal analysis of one IEP website and two chapters in commonly used textbooks in an IEP/EAP curriculum. Lastly, drawing on my past teaching practices, I offer how pedagogical interventions through critical engagements with these discourses can open up spaces for alternative subjectivities in contesting neoliberalism. These interrogations in the EAP classroom can be part of an ongoing critical and self-reflexive response to the challenges that neoliberalist ideologies and practices present worldwide.