Dancing K-Pop with Chinese and “English in Class Please”: Policy Negotiations as Relational-Languaging Episodes

Pointing out that language policy negotiations in classroom discourse are an understudied kind of “language-related episode”, and proposing Tim Ingold’s notion “meshwork” dissolves a boundary typically encloses their analysis, this paper examines how rich indicative example student group interaction on British university campus China becomes interwoven with multiple threads, including: different languages, Korean pop dance moves, coffee from the Starbucks, teacher’s repeated attempts at English-Medium Instruction enforcement. Our was discovered corpus recordings activities during classes English for Academic Purposes, then transcribed embodied activity (primarily speech gesture) further explored relation to threads which visibly audibly became involved. Analysis episode shows students’ relational-languaging behaviours must negotiate, respond, adapt enforcement, illustrating some tensions immanent transnational higher education experience.