The Economic And Political Factors For A National Asian Language Learning Program In Australia

In 1994 the issue of prioritizing certain Asian languages and promoting their proficiency at the national level was officially settled with the initiation of a national Asian language program named the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (NALSAS) strategy. A NALSAS taskforce was established by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) to enhance priority Asian language study in Australia. The strategy lasted into the new century till 2002 with the support of huge amount of funding. Considering that the implementation of the NALSAS strategy to enhance Australia's Asian language proficiency marked an unprecedented move made by the federal government in its history of language policy-making, it is meaningful to explore the rationale behind this major language initiative in Australia.This paper brings forward a research hypothesis that a national Asian language learning program in Australia is out of economic imperative, the increasingly close trade and economic relations between Australia and Asia is the basis for Australia's enthusiasm for learning Asian language, Asian language is taken as resource and human capital to serve Australia's economic interests. Data analysis, discourse analysis together with content analysis are undertaken to check the validity of the hypothesis.The examination is unfolded by analyzing economic factors for the national Asian language learning program in Australia from various perspectives including Australia's trade relation with the rising East Asia, the transformation of Australia's trade pattern, language demands from domestic industries and business, the emergence and evolution of priority Asian languages, the macro-economic reform taken by the then government and the influence of Asian economic crisis on Australia's shift to literacy and numeracy. Studies over those aspects demonstrate that Australia's passion of learning Asian languages does have inseparable relations with economic motivation. Then a closer scrutiny of the policy-making process of the NALSAS strategy and its subsequent development reveals that there are also political factors influencing the shaping of Asian language study program in Australia. The hypothesis made above can only be partly verified in that economic interest is by no means the only motivation, political influence also plays a crucial part in the formation of the national Asian language strategy when tensions between the two levels of governments, PR (public relations) management embodied in the initiation process, struggle over the control of the strategy and the shifts of the new federal governments are all taken into account. It is economic motivations together with tangled political determinants that collectively constitute the rationale behind Australia's initiation of a national strategy on learning priority Asian languages.